I moaned as he glided into me from behind. “But I have a job in Portland.”
He continued fingering my clit as his cock slid deeper inside me. “If you’re adamant about having a job, I’ll ask Nate to get you a real job as a programmer or analyst at his company,” he replied, removing his hand from between my legs right as my thighs began to quake.
“Don’t be an asshole. Just let me come.”
He laughed. “I love your dirty mouth. And I’ll let you come when you tell me you’re moving back.”
I groaned. “Does Paulina still work with Nate?”
“Of course,” he replied, licking the rim of my ear.
The sweet, hot friction as he thrust himself in and out of me was pure torment. I tried to slide my hand between my legs to pleasure myself, but he beat me to it. Using his huge hand, he cupped my mound, covering my clit to keep me from touching myself. Then, he slowed the pace of his thrusts to piss me off even more.
I moaned with frustration. “I can’t work for him. I don’t want to see Paulina.”
His teeth bit gently into the side of my neck. “Why?”
“Faster please,” I begged.
He laughed in my ear and the vibration sent a chill over my sweaty skin. “Why can’t you work with her? She’s married now.”
“You know why,” I replied angrily. “Come on. Fuck me right. Please.”
I didn’t need to explain why I hated Paulina. The bitch tried to come on to Jack less than a month after we buried Junior. He insisted she wasn’t trying to come on to him, but you don’t ask a married man out to dinner on a Saturday night to talk business. Even if he did turn her down, I felt I had every right to hate her.
“I’ll fuck you properly when you say you’re moving back home. Come on, baby. Just promise me you’ll say yes.”
He stopped thrusting completely as he awaited my answer. Just as I had blackmailed him into going to counseling, he was blackmailing me into coming home. Our marriage was a fucking hot mess, but goddammit if we weren’t made for each other.
“Yes,” I breathed. “I’ll move back once you, or I, find me a job in Hood River. But I need at least a week, maybe two, to tie up loose ends here. I need to transplant one of my mom’s trees, get my final paycheck, and I need to figure out a few things.”
He groaned in my ear as he thrust into me harder this time. “What things do you need to figure out?” he asked, very gradually quickening his pace.
I moaned every time he pushed himself farther inside me. “I need to figure out a way to get my coworker, Dylan, to move in here.”
He slid out of me and stopped dead. “What the fuck?”
“Dylan is gay!” I replied, reaching back to grab his cock. “He hasn’t come out to his mom, so I just want to offer him a place to stay in case she kicks him out when he tells her. Can you fuck me now?”
He chuckled sheepishly. “Fuck. I love hearing you beg.”
I stroked his cock, and tried to guide it back inside me, but he grabbed my hand and pulled it away. “You want me to beg? Because I don’t give a fuck. I’ll beg.” I rubbed my ass against his erection. “Come on, Jack. Give it to me, baby. Make me come. Please.”
It was mildly degrading, but I’d never felt more empowered, knowing the sound of my pleas was driving him crazy.
He sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. “Jesus fucking Christ. I could listen to that all day,” he said, his hand sliding between my legs again and quickly finding my clit. “But I can’t hold off anymore either. You should grab something to bite down on, pixie.”
I smiled as I reached for the comforter and brought it to my mouth, releasing a surprised gasp when he wrapped his arm around my waist and lifted me up onto all fours.
He came at me full throttle.
I pushed the comforter aside so I could breathe. I didn’t care who heard my screams. I rubbed my clit as he tore into me with the force of a raging bull, until we both found our release.
As we collapsed onto the mattress, me on my belly with half of Jack’s body draped over mine, he ran his fingers through my hair. He knew how much I loved when he did that. Goose bumps sprouted instantly all over my skin.
He leaned over and planted a soft kiss on the back of my sweaty neck. “God, you’re a pain in the ass, but I love the fuck out of you.”
I chuckled softly, still trying to catch my breath. “Speaking of pains in the ass…”
“Are you fucking kidding me? After all that, you want some backdoor action?”
I laughed harder this time. “I think your voice just climbed four octaves.”
He smacked my bare ass. “Don’t fuck around with me like that. You’ll make me feel like I’m too old to keep up with you.”
“You’re four months older than me. You’re practically ancient.”
He ran his fingers lightly over my back. “Remember Ayanna’s wedding last year? I know you didn’t want to go, but you have to admit that was the best laugh we’ve had since we lost Junior.”
My heart raced at his mention of Junior, but not because I was afraid to talk about him. I was surprised that Jack could mention him without going into a fit of rage or talking about the case.
I smiled. “I feel guilty just thinking about it. I actually don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in my life… When her dad came out of the restroom plastered, with his coat buttoned to his trousers, slurring about how he was having a stroke because he couldn’t stand up straight, I fucking died.”
“Ah, but when his wife found him and fixed his coat, and he finally stood up straight looking all bewildered, that was pure fucking comedy gold right there.”
I shook my head. “Poor guy. Can you imagine? We shouldn’t laugh about it. One day we’ll be that old and we’ll mistake being totally hammered for the symptoms of a stroke.”
He swept my hair back so he could whisper in my ear. “And I’ll be right there to laugh at you when it happens.”
I was giddy on the outside, but inside I was still overwhelmed.
First, Jack confirmed his desire for another baby. Now, he was talking like he used to, as if we were going to be together for the rest of our lives.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to feel happy that we had turned a corner, or scared that we might be speeding toward another brick wall. Was it possible to rush things with a person you’d been married to for five years?
I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel, but I knew exactly how I did feel.
I felt as if Jack had taken my bruised heart and wrapped it in warm cashmere. I was on cloud nine.
20
Jack
Waking up in Laurel’s old bedroom without her made my muscles tense. Having abandoned the wet spot in the guest bedroom last night, at first I was reluctant to sleep in Laurel’s bedroom again, since the last time this happened, I went home without her. Sleeping in this bed almost felt like a bad omen.
But as I sat up in bed, I quickly relaxed when I heard the sounds of someone moving around downstairs. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was 7:13 a.m.
It was a good thing I didn’t have any important meetings at work today. I could go in late or take the day off. Though, I probably shouldn’t slide back into my old habits. I’d call Jade later to tell her I would be in after lunch.
I found Laurel in the kitchen, her blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail as she flipped pancakes on a griddle. The sizzle of the batter hitting the hot iron made me nostalgic for the first year after we began living together.
Laurel thought she had to make me my favorite lingonberry pancakes every weekend. It took me an entire year to work up the nerve to tell her I was sick to fucking death of lingonberry pancakes.
“Oh, great,” she said, spotting me out of the corner of her eye. “I was trying to let you sleep in, but I was getting hungry. So I went to Freddy’s and got some stuff to make breakfast. I’m making pancakes — not lingonberry.”
I shook my head. “Did you buy a new griddle and utensils just to
make breakfast?”
She laughed. “I know it’s wasteful, but I didn’t feel like having cereal again, and I was too hungry to dig through the boxes in the garage for the one that has my mom’s old griddle and baking sheets.”
I came up behind her, grabbing her hips as I leaned in to kiss her neck. “When did you start waking up so early?”
“I have a job now, remember?” she said, wiggling her hips to squirm out of my grasp. “You’re gonna make me burn myself. Go sit down and I’ll bring it to you.”
I cocked an eyebrow. Who the hell was this person?
The Laurel who left me a month ago only cooked after she’d read the latest self-help book on grief. Those bouts of motivation only lasted a week or two before she would start refusing to eat again and staring into space for hours at a time. It made me wonder if the answer to her withdrawal was just to hire one of those self-help writers to bloviate their comforting platitudes at her all day long.
Someone once told me that proverbs were platitudes until you’d experienced something that gave them meaning. That wasn’t true for me. All that shit, the motivational quotes and words of wisdom we were fed through our social media feeds, it all became meaningless nonsense.
No wise man or woman could ever string together the right combination of words to make sense of what it felt like to lose a child. The pain defied description. It transcended words. I understood why Laurel ran from it.
But as I watched her pull a sheet of foil layered with crisp bacon out of the oven, I hoped that this busy, cheerful mood she was in wasn’t just another way to bury the pain.
As Laurel had spent the past two years trying to hide from her agony, I had been trying to chase mine down, hoping to one day tackle it and beat it to a bloody pulp. Though I had done a pretty good job of remembering not to fill Laurel in on the details of the case, it didn’t mean it wasn’t always on my mind.
Every night, I opened my laptop and checked the latest posts on the websleuths.com thread dedicated to Junior’s case. Every day, I checked my Facebook app to see who had posted and commented in the Justice for Jack Stratton Jr. group.
I weathered the ups and downs of the promising leads that went nowhere. I stayed up at night remembering the moment I had to check my baby boy’s cold body for a pulse. In the end, I did it as much for Laurel as I did it for myself. I knew when — not if — we cracked this case, she would finally understand why I needed this so badly.
She served the food and set down a carafe of French press coffee and some mugs in the center of the table. “Can you help me look through the boxes in the garage for the rest of the kitchen stuff?”
I waited until she was sitting in the chair next to me. “Baby, I have to go to work today. But I promise I’ll come by after work and bring in anything you need. I’m sure you want the pictures of Junior, too.”
She paused as she picked up her fork, balling up her fist around the handle in a white-knuckled grip. “On second thought, I’ll look for the boxes myself. I don’t want to make you drive all the way back here.”
I tilted the maple syrup bottle over my pancakes and cursed when I accidentally poured too much. “It’s not that far. You know I drive into Portland regularly. Do you not want me to come back?”
She was taking too long to answer. I had to stop myself from telling her to spit it out. Did she not want me to come back or was she just trying to deflect my attention from the missing pictures of our son?
She admitted to me in the letter I burned that she hated how I put up dozens of framed pictures of Junior in our house. Well, she didn’t say she hated it, but it was implied.
I wanted to be supportive. I did. But this was one of her many coping mechanisms I couldn’t understand. It made me wonder if she was trying to forget Junior.
She finally answered. “Okay. Yes, you can bring in the pictures. But just one of the boxes. I… I can’t handle going through all of them. Not yet.”
I nodded. “I understand. I’ll get the boxes before I leave,” I said, cutting a chunk off my stack of pancakes. “I actually have a favor to ask of you, too. I know you already agreed to go to the Halloween party with me, but I was hoping you’d also come with me to my dad’s birthday party in a couple of weeks. You should be home by then, right?”
Her gaze flicked toward me with panic in her eyes. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe I almost forgot that.”
I swallowed my pancakes. “I would have reminded you. So can you come?”
She let out a heavy sigh as she stared at her untouched pancakes. “Do they know we were separated?”
“Of course not. I promised Jess I’d murder her if she told them.”
The tension in her shoulders loosened at the mention of my sister. From what Jess had told me, Laurel and her had struck up some kind of long distance friendship since she left.
They used to mostly tolerate each other. Jess thought Laurel was too much of a goodie-goodie. She didn’t know my pixie’s dirty ways. I supposed now that Laurel left me, Jess felt she could relate to her a bit more.
“Will Jess be there?” she asked, finally digging into her breakfast.
“It’s my dad’s sixtieth, so she and John will definitely be there. As will his golf buddies and his friends from work and the homeowner’s association and every relative in a hundred-mile radius. I’ll understand if you’re not feeling up to it.”
She chuckled. “Of course I’ll be there. You know I love your dad more than I love you.”
“Yeah, no fucking shit,” I said, cracking a smile as I stuffed my mouth with more pancakes.
As I watched her eat her breakfast with gusto, I was torn between two emotions. I was happy to see her eating again, but it also made me a bit angry, maybe even suspicious.
Why did it take being apart from me for her to regain her appetite? Why did she have to leave me to gain the strength to bring out Junior’s pictures? What was she doing in Portland to overcome the debilitating anxiety that had kept her so closed off for the past two years? This couldn’t all be attributed to her new gardening hobby, could it?
I thought of the wedding ring I’d accidentally left at home. Maybe it was a fateful slip of memory. Knowing Laurel was out here without her ring gave me a reason to keep fighting for her to come home, to keep attending those counseling sessions.
After breakfast, I located five more boxes in the garage labeled KITCHEN STUFF and one labeled BABY PHOTOS, and left them on the counter. “Do you need me to come back later and help you move some more stuff?”
Laurel joined me in the kitchen, shaking her head as she looked up at me. “Nope. I’m just going to work in the garden. I need to get that laurel tree transplanted before the rain comes.”
I reached up and clasped one side of her face in my hand, smiling as she leaned into it. “I love the fuck out of you, you know that?”
She smiled and nodded, then she surprised me by wrapping her arms around my waist and squeezing me tightly as she buried her face in my shoulder. “You don’t have to come back… unless you want to.”
I laughed as I crushed her in my arms. “Would I ever say no to you?”
As soon as the words came out, I regretted them. Thinking of all the times I’d said no when she asked me to have another baby. Talk about putting my big foot in my big fucking mouth.
Her arms loosened and she stepped back, looking up at me with so much trepidation in her wide brown eyes. “Did you really mean it when you said you want to have another baby?”
“Of course I meant it,” I replied without hesitation, though inside me a battle of heart and reason raged on. “I know we’ve still got work to do, and I’m going to ask Jade today to help me find a support group, like Bonnie suggested. But I want to move on. I—”
I cut myself off before I made the mistake of bringing up Junior’s case. There had been some recent developments — a possible suspect living in Idaho who was brought to our attention by someone in the Facebook group, a woman who noticed similarities in a str
ing of burglaries in Boise. But I knew Laurel wouldn’t want to know about it until someone was actually arrested.
Her gaze fell and she took another step back. “Jack, I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about how things might be different… better if I moved back in. Not in a couple of weeks, but now, like, as soon as I get the tree replanted. And there’s one thing I would need you to do before I can even consider it.”
My heart raced as I anticipated her asking me to do a fucking cartwheel on a tightrope. It sure as hell felt like that was what I was doing lately. Trying to figure out how to get Laurel to come home was like trying to wrangle a difficult piece of code. It was keeping me up at night and driving me absolutely fucking insane.
“What do you need me to do, pixie?” I replied softly.
She looked like a child about to confess to stealing from the cookie jar. “I need you to get rid of your guns.”
I fucking knew it. Pressing my lips together, I took a deep breath and, once again, swallowed my discontent.
“Baby, we’ve already talked about this. I’ll get rid of the guns if and only when you let me get a full-time security team.” I stood up straighter, not afraid to use my size to make a point. “Marriage is a compromise, but I will never compromise your safety. Those are my terms.”
I didn’t understand how she could fault me with wanting to keep her safe; especially after all the weird threats we received in the months after the murders.
She closed her eyes as she let out a deep sigh, and I knew I was breaking her down. Laurel always got this look when she was ready to give in: eyebrows raised as she chewed on her lower lip. She had so many tells, and I knew every single fucking one, because they all belonged to me.
She exhaled a deep sigh. “Okay, we can get a security team. But I still need a couple days to wrap things up in Portland.”
I couldn’t control my Kool-aid grin. “So you’re moving back home when? Tomorrow or Sunday?”
She shrugged. “Tomorrow?”