Present Day

With AC/DC playing in my earbuds, I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my T-shirt while I wait for the elevator to arrive. My heart is still pumping and my breathing shallow, more so than usual. I pushed myself this morning, cutting five minutes off my four-mile trail through Balboa Park. Pretty sure my urge to do that had something to do with a certain infuriating blonde who I’ve been thinking about almost nonstop since our confrontation on Wednesday.

I was in my early teens when I discovered that I loved running, loved how it would clear my head and make me feel more at peace with…everything. Myself. The world. The people who piss me off.

It didn’t work today, though. She’s still there, in my head, lingering at the edge of my consciousness like a chronic disease. My gorgeous, clever, sexy, independent control freak of a wife. A year apart, and I still don’t know for sure how we got to this point. Is she happier without me? I sure hope so, because if she’s not, she’s putting us through all this shit for nothing.

Paige hates running. She was on the swim team in high school, preferring plowing through water to shoes hitting the pavement. Sometimes I wonder: if we had more small things like that to do together and bond over, maybe our marriage could’ve survived. But then I remember the reason everything fell apart and realize that’s a ridiculous thought—wishful thinking.

The elevator door opens, and it's a smooth and quiet ride up to the fourteenth floor. When Paige changed her mind about staying together for the sake of our kids, I lived in a hotel for a whole month. I just couldn’t find the time and energy to look for a place of my own—and I suppose a part of me expected that she’d last only a week or two before she realized she was being stupid.

She never did.

Oddly enough, it was Hammer who finally convinced me to stop dragging my ass by telling me a buddy of his was selling his condo in this downtown high-rise, and so here I am. It’s an easy ten-minute drive to work, within walking distance to the park, and there’s a pool deck and a fully equipped fitness center. What’s not to like?

The recessed ceiling lights turn on automatically as I step into the foyer. Taking off my running shoes, I toss my keys and phone onto the hall table before walking through the modern living space with its hardwood floors, sleek kitchen, and cozy living room—all attractive and inviting, thanks to the interior decorator I hired to make it look like I give a crap about this place.

I head toward the master suite at the end of a short hallway, passing the second bedroom—and then stopping abruptly, remembering the phone call I got last night from my oldest daughter, reminding me of the fidget spinner she left behind last time she was here and asking me to bring it this weekend. I’d better grab it now so I don’t forget.

The kids’ room is the only one I cared about furnishing myself, carefully choosing everything from the girls’ bunk bed to the colorful, checkered rug. Only Freya and Abigail stay in here all night; in the morning, I always wake up with Elliott next to me. I’m assuming that means he does the same thing to Paige and that she’s allowing it.

Which is strange behavior for her—she never let the girls sleep in our bed—but so far it hasn’t been worth bringing up with her. Our boy is not even two yet, and I guess we both tend to spoil him a little.

It’s the guilt, probably.

After combing through the room for Freya’s toy, I finally discover it between the nightstand and the wall, where it’d obviously fallen. In the master suite, I toss it down on my bed for when I pack for the trip later, and then I start shrugging out of my clothes on the way to the bathroom.

When I step through the glass door into the oversize shower stall and the hot water washes over me from the rainfall showerhead above, I brace my hands on the cool marble wall and close my eyes. I could stand here forever, just soaking in the heat and zoning out. This morning I don’t have time to do it for more than a minute, though, so way too soon I have to grab my shampoo bottle.

As I lather up my hair, I’m seeing her again, standing in my office the day before yesterday in her formfitting…everything. Suit jacket, skirt, fuck-me shoes. Her hair was pulled tight, too, and so was her face whenever she looked at me. She was trying so hard to be cordial, but I know Paige. What she really wanted to do was tell me to go fuck myself.

Not in those words, though. My wife only swears when she loses control, which is pretty rare.

Having her there at my work in that sharp, professional outfit reminded me of the first time I saw her. I don't think I've ever wanted anything with the kind of instant urgency as when I noticed her there in the conference room all those years ago.

Maybe it was the way she held herself, all stiff back and square shoulders but still somehow at ease, like she’d already found her place there—like she belonged.

Or maybe it was how perfectly put-together she looked, like she should be on the cover of a magazine for young and ambitious career women—and how much that had me itching to dishevel her.

It could also have been the way she met my eyes so boldly and then kept watching me with that enigmatic expression, leaving me burning to find out what was going through her mind.

Most likely it was all of those reasons. And the other day took me back there again.

Suddenly I'm picturing things ending differently. Instead of sitting down with my desk as a buffer between us, I move closer. I grab her and stop the vitriol coming out of her mouth with my own.

I could picture her moaning and melting in my arms, but that’s not how it would go. Not with her. She’d fight me, goad me into fighting back. There’d be pain. Maybe blood. Definitely bruises. But in the end she’d surrender, because if there's one thing I'm sure of where Paige is concerned, it's that I can make her spread her legs for me. It's easy. It's always been easy. Even when she hates the sight of me and can’t stand talking to me, she still lets me touch her.

God, it's been so long since I've touched her.

So while the hot water drenches me and the steam swirls around my head, fogging the glass walls of the shower stall, I lather myself up and imagine turning her around, bending her over my desk, yanking her skirt up, and burying myself inside her.

And I keep thinking about fucking her there on my desk while my cock grows so hard and achy that I forget all about being in a hurry right now. In my mind, it's her slick and tight pussy wrapped around me, not my hand. And in my head, I’m coming inside her instead of spilling out into the shower, where the water washes it down the drain and I feel like another piece of myself is flushed away with it.

Because jacking off to a fantasy about a woman who's your ex-wife in every way except on paper?

That's so goddamned pathetic I should have my man card revoked.

* * *

I’m cruising in the left lane on the freeway with The Black Keys on the stereo when the music mutes and the dashboard screen lights up with an incoming call from Stuart Garnett. I puff out a sigh before I tap the button to answer the call.

“Hey, Stu,” I say, raising my voice. “Thanks for calling me back.” Jewell spent Wednesday afternoon and the entire day yesterday trying to get ahold of him. I even called him myself, and it still went to voice mail. The cool thing about Stu, though, is I don’t have to keep my annoyance hidden, because he doesn’t notice, anyway.

“No problem,” he says over the car speakers. “What’s up?”

I'm frowning at his monotonous response as I come up on a red Mustang going barely above the speed limit. Flipping on my blinker, I check my side mirror and blind spot before jerking the steering wheel to pass the guy in the middle lane.

Even when Stu was under indictment and facing a possible prison sentence, he always sounded upbeat, that high and croaky voice of his irrepressibly chipper. His tone right now confirms that this case is going to be a pain in the ass.

“You missed the meeting with your wife and her attorney on Wednesday,” I tell him.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says after a short pause. “I just couldn’t do it. I’m a wreck, Logan.”

Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, I reach the other up to rub my forehead. “Not showing up doesn’t solve anything.”

“I know. What else am I supposed to do, though? She just told me out of the blue that she wants out. I’m totally blindsided here.”

“Did she give you a reason?” I ask, even though it doesn’t matter much, but the handholding comes with the territory, especially in a goddamned divorce case.

“Only that she’s…tired of it.” Stu’s voice cracks. “I don’t get it. There have always been others—for both of us—but no one that mattered. We stray. But we always come home.”

I swallow the groan that rises in my throat. When I represented Stu four years ago, I learned way more than I wanted to about his and Caroline’s sex life when they told me they had an open marriage and I had to counsel them to keep that to themselves for the duration of the case. They were under intense scrutiny by the local media, and the last thing we needed was a headline that painted their marriage as anything outside the lines of what most people consider normal.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say as I see my exit coming up, and so I start drifting over into the right lane. “If your wife wants a divorce, you can’t stop her.”

As I say those words, my chest tightens, and it hits me with sudden and stark clarity the real reason why I’m hating this with such passion, having this case foisted upon me: it feels too personal.

Because all of the anger and the anguish and the arguments that come with a divorce case is shit I don’t want anything to do with right now.

Because I can relate too much.

“So what do we do?” my client asks miserably.

“We make sure she doesn’t clean you out in the process.” I switch lanes again and ease up off the gas pedal as I approach the curved off-ramp. “So if there’s anything in your past that she can use against you, you need to figure that out and tell me as soon as possible.”

Stu is quiet for a while, and I'm trying to picture what the man looks like when he’s heartbroken, and all I can come up with is that maybe he’s wearing a little less gel in his thinning blond hair and that his tie clip is crooked. Any more unkempt than that would probably mean he’s ready for a straitjacket. I smile to myself, shaking my head.

Eventually he says, “I just want her back.”

Slowing my car to a stop at a red light, it occurs to me I should root for him to do exactly that, because it would make this case go away.

“Have you suggested counseling?” I ask as I turn off the street into the parking lot in front of a three-story stucco office building.

“No, and she stopped answering my calls on Wednesday,” Stu replies, an edge creeping into his voice. “Do you think her lawyer told her to do that?”

“It’s possible.” Actually, probable would be a better word choice there. Because that sounds exactly like something Paige would do.

Which reminds me that my client doesn't know about Paige yet. Should I tell him? Glancing at the dashboard display, I see that it's already eight fifty-three. I don't usually worry too much about arriving late for stuff—court being one exception, these appointments being another—but if I tell him now, finishing this conversation could take way longer than the seven minutes I have left.

Bottom line, though, is that if Stu somehow finds out and has a problem with it, I'll be in for a world of pain. He’ll learn about it eventually, so the right choice is obviously to speak up now.

Who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky, and he’ll decide he wants someone else to represent him instead. Someone who does family law and isn't in an “it's complicated” relationship with opposing counsel.

“Listen,” I say as I pull into a spot and put the car in Park, “about Caroline’s attorney…”

* * *

The tiny waiting room is empty and quiet except for the sound of trickling water from the tropical fish aquarium in the corner. At her taller-than-her-head desk, the politely aloof receptionist assured me it’d only be a couple of minutes, and here, unlike doctor’s offices, that usually means it will take that much time—or less.

I shift in my chair, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my suit-pant-clad knees. After I’m done here, I’ll be heading straight to work for a deposition that’d better not take all damn day, or I’ll be running behind this afternoon and my dad and I will have some tired and cranky kids to tuck into their sleeping bags tonight.

Not to mention the look Paige will give me when I pick them up later than I said I would.

Stu sounded almost happy about Caroline’s change in counsel. “I know you’ll do your job, Logan,” he told me, which I suppose is trust I earned by getting him acquitted on all charges last time I represented him.

Not that winning that case was much of a challenge. The prosecutor had so little evidence I have no idea why they wasted their time, and I still don't doubt that Stu was innocent. The man’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. To think he could take bribes and somehow manage to hide it from everyone is ridiculous.

When the verdict was read and Stu broke down crying and hugging me, it was one of those moments that reminded me why I chose criminal defense. Because in between the scumbags and the lowlifes—who I still defend to the best of my ability—there are people who are wrongly accused, and helping them and seeing justice served? That’s why I became a lawyer.

I definitely did not become a lawyer to handle divorce cases.

“Logan? She's ready,” says the grumpy little receptionist with the mousy-brown hair as she opens the door beside her desk, and once I've moved past her into the office, she steps out and shuts the door behind her.

The first thing you see in here is the big mahogany desk, but I've been here twice a month for the past year, and it's always sat unused. I turn to the opposite corner, where a woman unfolds herself from the leather armchair that always looks like it’s trying to swallow up her diminutive body.

Sharon Lorentz’s head reaches only to my chest, and she has to crane it to meet my gaze. The psychologist is old enough to be my mom, has a broad and friendly face with reading glasses perched permanently on the tip of her nose, and seems to have an affinity for shirts in loud colors and patterns. Today she’s wearing a blouse that looks like a short-sleeve, summery beach version of an ugly Christmas sweater.

“Good to see you again, Logan,” she says, and we shake hands as I return the greeting. Which is what we always do, and it always feels awkward. It should be just normal politeness, but somehow it seems like she's using the gesture to remind me of what our relationship is and what it isn't.

I get it, and I don't blame her. When your job consists of getting people to reveal their heart and soul to you, boundaries can get blurry.

“How have you been?”

“Same as usual, I guess,” I answer with a shrug, the couch giving a dry, leathery creak as I sit down.

While Sharon nods and picks up her folder from the small coffee table between us and starts flipping through her notes, I settle my elbow on the armrest and sink back against the cushions, getting comfortable. Which has never been hard for me to do here, although it took me a while to figure out why I feel so at ease with this woman.

I actually came here a few times with Paige. The first couple of visits she was at the end of her pregnancy with Elliott, when it became clear that things having gone to shit between us wasn’t going to magically fix itself. And then I convinced her to go again just one more time about a year and a half ago, when panic started to set in and I realized I was losing her.

At each instance, I’m the one who pushed for it and Paige resisted. Just the word counseling had her prickling and clamming up, her walls raised, eyes glazing over. She has such an aversion to opening up and sharing, to asking for help, that I can guarantee she hasn’t told anyone why our marriage failed, not even her family.

That reluctance of hers to reveal anything to a stranger meant these sessions were a waste of time for us. After we separated, though, I started seeing Sharon by myself. Mostly because I was ready to face that the majority of the blame for all of this is mine, and I needed an unbiased person to help me figure out why I did what I did and how to fix it.

But the reason I’ve been keeping up these bimonthly appointments even though I started thinking I’d probably be fine without them? It’s become pretty obvious. And when the reason dawned on me, I had to accept that maybe I wasn’t ready to give this up yet after all.

“Last time you said you thought you might be starting to come to terms with the situation between you and Paige,” Sharon says, looking up from her notes to settle her calm, sharp gaze on me. “Do you still feel that’s true?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I clench my jaw. Before Wednesday, I’d probably have said yes, but now…

My therapist tilts her head slightly. “Did something happen?”

After a brief hesitation, I tell her about the Carne/Garnett case and the conversation with Paige in my office.

With a mild frown, she seems to chew on that for a while. “And there’s no way to avoid this?”

“Not really. Neither of us can afford to give up the case.” There’s a twinge in my chest as I say it, because I know I didn’t acknowledge to Paige that I understood her dilemma. But just like with our pending divorce, we’re facing the same obstacle: there’s no room for compromise.

“How do you feel about that?” Sharon asks the banal question with a brisk curiosity that sounds genuine.

“Annoyed.” Drawing in a breath, I add, “But probably not as much as I should be.”

Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean by that?”

“Uh.” I swallow hard. “I don’t know.”

Pursing her lips, Sharon says, “I think you do.”

My pulse starts pumping a little faster. She’s right, of course. I’m annoyed at having to handle a divorce case, and I didn’t want to ever deal with Stu and Caroline again. But seeing Paige more often, in situations that have nothing to do with the picking up or dropping off of kids? That’s not irritating. It’s…a challenge? A possible escape route out of the status quo?

When I remain quiet, the older woman finally asks, “Have you pursued any other romantic relationships yet?”

“No.” Bitter humor rises in my chest, but I push it down, focusing on the wall behind her. In between a pair of bookshelves packed with dark volumes, there’s a row of framed diplomas, including the one for her Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA.

“I know you said that would look bad in case you and Paige end up in court over this, but have you at least thought about it? Wanted to?”

“Not really.” Still avoiding her eyes, I shift on the couch cushions, the leather giving off a groaning noise.

That sex is the only topic it’s hard for me to talk to her about is probably what clued me in on why I still find myself in this office, month after month.

Because that’s not something I’d want to discuss with my mother, either, is it?

And that’s what she’s become: a substitute for the mom I haven’t had since I was a kid.

Sharon looks down at her notes, flipping pages. “Last time you said that you’d finally told Paige about everything you did around the time you two started having problems. You said she was upset but that it turned out to be not as big of a deal as you’d been afraid of.”

Shit. My chest grows tight. Why had I thought telling her that would be the end of her questions about it? I brush my hand over my mouth, worried she’ll see my thoughts on my face.

Because what I told her at my last appointment? It was a lie.

“Has that topic come up between you again?” she presses on, her sharp gaze probing.

I shake my head. “Nope.”

A crease appears on my therapist’s forehead, and she tilts her head as she asks, “You don’t think that’s odd?”

“It was a long time ago,” I reply with a shrug, my pulse racing. Is this a new low for me? Seems like you have to be a special kind of fucked up to lie to the person you’re paying to help you deal with the shit you’re lying to her about.

Guess I just got tired of her asking about it, though. Got tired of that restrained disappointment of hers, the quiet disapproval. It makes me cringe.

And my answer to her question was never going to change. How could it? A burning sensation starts in my gut at the memory of the look on Paige’s face. The hurt in her eyes, the utter disbelief.

What did I do to deserve this, Logan?

Sharon is watching me with her pen poised above her notes. “And how do you feel about having told her?”

“It’s a relief,” I tell her without missing a beat, because I know that’s what she expects to hear. It’s why she’s been pushing for it for so long, saying that she thinks keeping such a big secret from Paige has been weighing on me.

But how would it help me to make my wife hate me more than she already does? I can’t even start to picture how that conversation would go. Would it make me feel better? I seriously fucking doubt it. How would it be a relief to see my own shame and disgust reflected in her eyes?

She’s pissed enough at me already. If I told her everything, told her the full and dark and ugly truth of what I did, she probably would never speak to me again. There’s just no sense in making things more fucked up than they already are, is there?

“Well,” Sharon says when it becomes obvious I’m not going to elaborate, scrawling something on her notepad before looking up and fixing her tight-lipped stare on me again. “I think it’s time for you to find a way to move on, Logan. You’ve been in this limbo for almost a year now. It doesn’t seem like there’s much hope for a reconciliation, so maybe you should consider pushing for finalizing your split.”

It’s like she kicked my legs out from under me, and I’m falling flat on my face. My therapist has hinted at this before, but she’s never said it so plainly. She prefers to let me figure things out for myself.

“She wants to take the kids away,” I point out. “There’s no way I’m letting that happen.”

“Mhmm,” the older woman says, because that’s not new information for her, is it? “You can't resolve that unless you sit down and talk about it, though. Paige has said she’s open to mediation. Maybe it’s time to give that a try?”

I clamp my mouth down on my gut reaction, which is to say, Fuck that shit. What does she think Paige and I’ve been doing the past year? Burying our heads in the sand? No, we’ve talked. And it pretty much always goes down the way Wednesday’s conversation did. Mediation would be a train wreck at this point.

I get that Paige feels untethered here now and wants to live closer to her own family, but I still can’t wrap my head around why she’d think there’s any chance in hell I’d let her move five hundred miles away. That I’d be okay with her taking my kids away from me. Take them away from my dad, for fuck’s sake. She’s seen the connection they have, how much they worship their grandfather and how spending time with them is the highlight of his life.

There’s no talking about that. There’s no negotiating. She’s not doing it, and that’s that.

“I’m thinking,” I grind out, clenching my hands into fists, “it looks like I moved out, abandoned her and the kids, and that I don’t care. So if I push her now and she files for divorce, a judge might just give her full custody.”

Sharon’s countenance turns thoughtful. “You think that’s why she’s been waiting? Because the longer you go on like this, the stronger her position gets?”

My chest puffs out as I scoff. “I know that’s why she’s been waiting.”

Because to my wife, life’s like one big chess game, and she’s goddamned good at it. Always thinking ahead, envisioning her opponents’ moves and planning how to respond. Not for the first time, it crosses my mind that my life would’ve been so much easier if I’d fallen for a dumber woman.

Which is kind of like telling an alcoholic he’d be better off being addicted to drinking water.

“So,” says Sharon at length, “what are you going to do about it?”

Well, there’s the question of the century—and another reminder of how Sharon’s become a proxy for what I haven’t had in my life for almost three decades now. She doesn’t coddle. She tells it to me straight. She makes me see things in simpler terms, and I trust her.

Like a mom might. If she were a good one.

As I’m sitting there on the couch in my therapist’s office, I don’t have the answer to what she’s asking.

But her words still feel like a slap over the head, hitting me with a startling realization.

I’ve been letting Paige get away with calling the shots.

It’s time to do something about that.