With my back against the car, Alec asks, “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I confirm before he presses into me, pushing my body harder against the door.
And this time, his mouth moves purposefully with mine. His hands hold tightly on to the sides of my face as he moves me to his liking. Using his tongue, he opens my lips, and I take my first taste, getting punch-drunk as he controls every movement. Each lick is a softly spoken curse, intoxicating me even more.
My limits blur when I feel the throbbing between my legs. How could a single kiss do this to me? I want to fuck him right now, but if he fucks like he kisses, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to walk away from him.
Alec abruptly tears his lips away from mine, leaving me panting. A cloud of vapor billows between us as flakes of snow float down from the low-hung clouds.
He grinds his hips against me. “You feel what you do to me?”
I drop my head to his chest, close my eyes, and savor the touch of his erection pressing against me. He’s got me so wound up, I’m ready to let him fuck me right here in this parking lot. When he takes a step away from me, I take a step with him, not trusting my wobbly legs to support me. He then opens my door.
“I’ll text you my address.”
I slip into my car, and before I can say anything, he closes the door and walks away. Unable to catch my breath just yet, I watch him until he pulls out of the parking lot and drives away.
“Holy shit,” I exhale, wondering if that really just happened or if I’m lost in a dream. The nagging between my legs is the only proof I need to know the truth. I lean my head back and cover my face with my hands as I laugh at how unbelievably happy I am right now.
I never thought I’d ever have another first kiss in this lifetime, and holy fucking hell, that was unbelievable!
The touch of his lips against mine threw me into throbbing excitement, but it wasn’t just his kiss—it was everything about him. It was the way he triggered my heartbeat with his eyes, which screamed “You’ve never known a man like me.” My heart is still pounding from that look, and I can’t believe that actually just happened.
I park in front of Brooke’s house, blazed in excitement, and rush to her front door. I don’t even knock. I just walk right inside wearing a shameless smile.
“Brooke,” I call.
“In my bedroom.”
I walk in to find her emptying a laundry basket of clean clothes.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” I blurt, and when she shuts the drawer to the dresser and turns to face me, I tell her, “I met him!”
“Met who?”
“Alec.”
Her face drops, eyes wide and mouth agape. “Rewind,” she says as she sits on the edge of the bed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Her tone kidnaps my elation, slowly bringing me down from my high. I walk over to the corner of the room and take a seat in the chair next to the window.
“I called him this past weekend.” My confession sparks another bout of astonishment in her eyes.
“Are you crazy?”
“Maybe I am. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.”
“What if Landon finds out? My God, Tori, what are thinking?” she scolds harshly. “The two of you are supposed to be working on your marriage and getting it back on track.”
“We didn’t just slip off track, Brooke. We completely derailed,” I exclaim. “I’m miserable. You have no idea what it’s like living in that house with him. He treats me like a prisoner, always watching my every move. When I went to Austin, I finally felt free, and when I called Alec, I finally felt happy.”
“You have to give it time. It won’t always be like this, Landon just needs time to trust you again.”
“That’s so easy to say when you’re not the one living it day by day. His distrust is driving me away, and before you say anything, I know I deserve it. And I know he has every right not to trust me, but . . .” I drift, not knowing how to explain my heart. My throat tightens, and I turn my head to look out the window. “I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling. None of it makes sense.”
“Then maybe you need to press pause.”
I look back to Brooke. The concern she now wears for me chokes me up, and the tears finally fall. “What if I don’t want to?”
“You’re playing with fire.”
The fire has been burning for months now, but it’s never been enough. Today Alec set that fire ablaze, and tomorrow, I’ll be going to his place with a can of gasoline.
“I kissed him,” I confess as my face crumples in my own self-inflicting agony, and I cry more when I continue admitting, “It felt amazing. Everything about it felt like everything I’ve been missing in Landon.”
“You can’t see him again.”
“I’m going to his place tomorrow.”
“Don’t do it,” she cautions. “You know if you have sex with him, and Landon finds out, he’ll divorce you. Don’t be stupid, Tori. Think about your kids.”
I sit here as emotions pour out of me, responsibility and desire war within. I’m so lost, and I’m wondering if being with Alec is where I’ll find myself.
“You’re not this girl, Tori.”
“What if I am?”
“You’re not,” she states adamantly.
“What if I want to be?”
“Trust me, you don’t. You don’t want to be the woman who cheats on her husband and loses everything.”
“But what if it’s already lost?”
She walks over and sits on the small ottoman in front of me. With her hands on my knees, I see her own tears flooding in her eyes. “I love you,” she affirms. “And I will always love you no matter how badly you fuck up, and I’m telling you right now, as your friend, you are about to lose everything. You don’t want to do this. You’re caught up right now. Everything is exciting and new, but those feelings are just temporary. And when they’re gone, and you’re left with nothing, you’ll realize that you made the biggest mistake of your life.”
But what if Landon never finds out? I can keep my family intact while having Alec too. I mean, are we really built to remain with one person for our entire lives? We’re ever-changing, constantly evolving. Maybe I’m not the enemy; maybe marriage is the enemy, and I’m merely its victim. Are we really expected to deprive ourselves by committing to one person, knowing that both partners will eventually grow new wants and likes? Are we supposed to deny our inevitable evolution and settle for a less than fulfilling life just because we say “I do”?
Landon used to fill the spaces in my heart that were vacant when I was in my twenties. And now, in my thirties, there are new spaces that have opened up and need to be filled, but he can’t fill them. No one person is capable of being someone’s everything. Landon fills the security and goodness in me, and Alec fills the need for spontaneity and this newfound desire to explore a different side of my sexuality.
But because marriage says I can only choose one, am I suppose to be forever incomplete?
“Do you love him?”
“Alec?”
“Yes.”
I shake my head. “No. But we have this connection that feels . . . I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s a hard feeling to walk away from.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t get it. It’s got to be more than just this feeling.”
“I guess it’s a combination of a lot of things. He’s older, more seasoned in life than me. It’s the lifestyle he lives and his views. It intrigues me, and I’m wondering if I’m more like him than Landon at this point in my life. But I have to try to find out, and Alec . . . I trust him to be the one to show me and to teach me something new about myself.”
“But what if you talked to Landon about trying something new and exploring it together?”
“No. Landon is nothing like that. It would just be awkward. Plus, Landon and I are so out of sync right now. It would never work.”
“There’s
no talking you out of this, is there?” she questions with worriment.
“I don’t know.”
“Promise me something?”
I nod.
“Promise me when you go home tonight that you’ll look at your girls and think about how it would feel to not have them all the time. Think about how it would feel to spend Christmas all alone while they’re with Landon and whatever woman he’ll be dating or married to, because you know he will find someone else eventually if you do this to him. He will move on.”
I nod again, unable to speak around the knot in my throat. I don’t even want to think about any of that happening, so I quickly shut it away and tell myself I will just have to be extremely careful. I’ll have to cover every single track of mine because I can’t lose my family, but I’m also not strong enough to walk away from what I’m about to do. The pull is much too powerful to even attempt resisting.
When I notice the time on the clock that sits on Brooke’s nightstand, I realize I must get going to cover the tracks from today’s indiscretion.
“I have to go.”
We walk together to the front door, and when she hugs me she says, “I’m going to call you in the morning, okay?”
“Okay.” But I already know I’m going to let that call go to voicemail.
I get back in my car and head over to the mall to pick up my phone and buy a couple gifts for the girls. I need proof that I was shopping in case Landon tracked me on his app today. When I arrive, I make my way through the Macy’s to the garment rack that aided me in my deception today. I part the hangers to find my cell phone safely guarded by an army of slacks.
Bending down, I retrieve the phone to see no calls or texts from Landon came through. And since none came through on my disposable phone, I don’t need to worry about lying to him in case he did call and there was a glitch in the call-forwarding.
As I walk out into the mall, I pass Victoria’s Secret and stop. Turning, I look at the satin and lace. I can’t remember the last time I bought a new pair of sexy panties. What do you need to buy this stuff for when you’ve been with the same man for as long as I’ve been with my husband? But I can’t show up to Alec’s in a worn down pair of panties with broken threads of elastic popping out from the seams and an unmatching bra.
I step inside, my stomach trilling with excitement, and look around. As I browse, I find myself enjoying the thought of wanting to please Alec with my selection. It’s an enticing feeling to know that whatever I buy, it’ll be Alec’s hands that will take them off of me.
Black is too obvious. Red is too slutty. White is too innocent.
I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard, so I opt for a pair of lacy panties in a light blush color along with the matching lace bra. The sales clerk rings me up, and I pay in cash. The last thing I need is for Landon to see this charge on the credit card. When she hands me the little pink bag, I thank her, and quickly make my way back into the mall and find the nearest trash can. I take my new lingerie, stuff them into my purse, and toss the bag.
After I buy the girls some shirts and toys, I drive home where Landon is already waiting for me. I power down my disposable cell and take my purchase out of my purse before stashing them into the emergency roadside kit in the trunk.
I don’t trust Landon not to search my purse.
I used to love being at home, but now, every time I walk through the door, it feels like I’m suffocating. This place no longer houses the once-happy family it used to.
“What were you doing at the mall all day?” the warden questions from the kitchen, not even trying to hide the fact that he checked up on me.
“Nothing much,” I tell him as I set the shopping bags on the counter. “I tried on a bunch of clothes that I didn’t wind up buying, ate lunch, and picked up a few things for Jill and Emily.”
“You didn’t work today?”
“I couldn’t get in the right headspace. So instead of forcing the words just to end up deleting them, I decided a day out of the house would clear my head.” I walk up to him and give him a hug. “I didn’t think you’d be home so early. How was your day?”
“I have to go back. We are fully booked tonight,” he tells me before giving me an emotionless, mindless, closed-mouth kiss to my lips, tarnishing the lingering traces of Alec.
“Again?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” he says as he walks over to the fridge to grab a bottle of water.
Ever since the Times review, Chin-Chin has been booked out for months, leaving me on my own with the kids.
“I’m not surprised. I’m just wondering when it’s going to slow down enough for you to be home.”
“Don’t know.”
“Why are you being so short with me?”
“Bad day,” he snips.
“You want to talk about it?”
“It’s nothing you want to hear.”
“Landon,” I say as I take his hand. “I want to know what’s bothering you.”
He leans against the counter and sighs heavily. “I’ve had a sick feeling in my stomach all day. The same feeling I had when I found all those text messages you were sending that guy,” he says. Landon goes through waves of good weeks and bad weeks when it comes to his anxiety about me. “And then I tracked you, even though Dr. Lapinski told me to stop doing that. When you weren’t at home, but at the mall, I started thinking the worst.”
“Honey, I was just shopping and wandering around. That’s all.”
“I almost drove up there because I kept thinking you were there with that guy.”
“Alec? I haven’t talked to him in three months. It’s over and done with, Landon. You have nothing to worry about.” I assure him with my lies, feeding him my sugar-coated poison.
He then turns to me and, with growing frustration, asks me his never-ending question. “Why did you do it? And don’t give me that ‘I guess I was bored and got swept away’ bullshit. I need to know the truth.”
“I don’t know. What I’ve told you is the truth.”
“I can’t get this shit out of my head, Tor. I close my eyes at night with the vision of you fingering yourself and cumming while that fucker watches you.” His words come harshly. “You have no clue how you’ve fucked with my head.”
“It was one week,” I stress, trying to excuse my behavior. “You act like I had this full-blown affair or something.”
“You might as well have, because it’s exactly what it feels like to me.”
“How long am I supposed to be punished?” I snap. “It’s been three months and you still track my phone and everything. It’s fucking ridiculous, and I’m sick of it.”
“You’re so fucking selfish.”
“I said I was sorry a million times. I don’t know what else to do, but I’m here. I’m not leaving you. If I didn’t want you, I’d be gone.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” he shouts, his face flaming in rage. “You’re too scared to leave because you’re afraid of being the one to break up this family. You’d rather push me to do it so you won’t have to carry the blame.”
“Is that what you want? You want me to leave?”
“Do whatever the fuck you want to do.”
“You’re such an asshole!”
“You’re lucky you have me because most men would’ve left your deceitful ass already,” he seethes and then walks away, grabbing his coat that’s lying on the couch.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the restaurant. I came home to relax, but you shot that to hell.”
He slams the door to the garage behind him, leaving me drowning in the aftermath of my destruction. I hate the man I’ve turned Landon into, a man who holds so much resentment for me. I asked him the other day after we fought if he still loved me.
“I care about you,” he told me. “But I will never love you the same way I did because of what you’ve done.”
I hate that he’s still so angry. I betrayed him, I know, but how long am I s
upposed to live like this? Why can’t we just move on? But no, I’m constantly being punished. He throws what I did in my face all the time, and I can’t take it anymore. We live under a gray cloud of doom and depression, which is most likely why I’m still obsessing over Alec. He’s the ray of light that filters through all the murk and grants me moments of assuagement.
He gave me relief from my life today when I saw him. I can’t remember the last time I felt so exhilarated, only to come home and have Landon piss it all away with his constant gloom and accusations. Maybe we wouldn’t be in such a fractured state if he could just let go of the anger and move on.
I’m no longer the only one to blame for our marriage falling apart, because when we fight like this, he’s practically pushing me into Alec’s arms. If only he would leave the past in the past, maybe we could have a shot at making this work.
I created the wound, but it’s Landon that’s pouring acid on it and driving me away. Sometimes I wish he would fuck some random woman to even the score so we can go back to being okay. That’s how bad I want the peace back, even though it won’t be enough to make me walk away from Alec.
When did I lose my heart?
When did my blood go cold?
I kissed my husband goodbye this morning. I told him I loved him.
And when he left, I pulled out the bra and panty set I bought yesterday along with my disposable phone.
I now stand outside the entrance to Alec’s building. My hair whips in the gusting wind as snow swirls like dust along the sidewalk. People walk past me from every direction, but I remain still. I wonder if any of them know what I’m about to do. Can they see the disgrace on me?
I look up, wondering which window is his, wondering if he’s watching me.
I don’t need anyone to tell me what an awful woman I am; I already know. But if there’s one person that can erase the world around me, it’s Alec. With him, I’m free. With him, nothing else exists.
My feet move, taking me through the doors and leading me to the bank of elevators. I step inside and press my finger against the button to illuminate number five, and when I reach the floor and the doors open, I hesitate.