Brett

 

All I felt was relief. Pure fucking relief that that asshole’s night with my wife was over.

My jizz was squelching like cold custard in my pants after buckling myself up at the bleep of the alarm. I felt dirty as sin as I led my Grace back downstairs, but that didn’t matter. None of it mattered except the fresh chunk of cash in our joint account and making sure my trooper of a wife was back on her feet.

She was dazed to all hell, not that I blamed her — pressing tight to my side as I opened the door through to our own quarters and led us on through. It was only as I took a proper look at her face under the harsh lighting of the bathroom that I realised how fucking mortified she looked.

My gut spat with a truckload of regret. That and fear. The nasty chill of something I didn’t want to face yet. Something grimy and unwanted, sickly smug like that asshole upstairs.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s over. We wave him off after breakfast and enjoy the rest of our lives together.” She closed her eyes as I kissed her forehead. “You did it. You did so fucking well, Grace. So well. I’m so fucking proud of you.”

“But I didn’t…” she whispered. “I didn’t do it…”

There was a heavy pause as I fathomed her meaning. She was shaking her head as it fully dawned on me.

“Fuck it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Who cares, right? He got his nine hours, that’s all he paid for.”

I did. I cared a fucking lot. Not that the sonofabitch didn’t get to shoot his load as part of his investment, but that she was feeling like some kind of fuck-up for not giving it to him.

My thumb brushed her cheek hard enough that it dug into her soft skin. “Grace, you did more than enough. That shit stain got more than he deserved. You gave him fucking everything.”

I didn’t believe her shrug. Didn’t believe the smile she shot as though she believed me.

“Done,” she said. “Good fucking riddance. Amen.”

“Good fucking riddance,” I repeated. “Now let’s get you in a nice hot shower.”

I turned on the water and stripped her bare with hands that struggled for calm. Her body looked different this morning, reddened and stretched and pawed by the prick upstairs. But that wasn’t it. The difference was in the blaze of memory, seeing her so fucking different on that bed earlier. Different to the woman I knew well enough to call her the other half of me. Different to the woman I’d spent every single minute that meant anything with over the past ten years.

“Steady,” I said with a smile as I helped her step under the flow. She flinched as the jets landed hard on her shoulders, then tipped her head back to take it all over.

I was out of my own clothes in a tangle of madness, kicking my jeans so hard they landed on the toilet seat and flopped down onto the tiles. Her arms were waiting as I stepped in to join her, her face pressing tight to the nook of my neck as I held her close.

“Soap,” she whispered. “I need soap. I need to clean myself…”

I didn’t let her go. Didn’t want to let her go. Not now, not ever.

“Give yourself a break,” I said. “Just breathe, Grace.”

Her body sagged against me, as though every single inch of her needed the support of mine. She could take it. Take everything. Take my beating heart from my chest if it would help her stand tall.

“I got you,” I whispered. “He’s nothing. Just a sad fucking memory.”

“I’m just tired,” she lied. “I’ll be fine in a few hours.”

I massaged her shoulders and forced a grin. “I’m thinking a full English when that asshole’s gone. American pancakes with syrup to follow. Maybe even a chocolate milkshake. Maybe even two.”

“Chocolate milkshake sounds good.”

I kept rolling with the promises.

“I’ll check in today’s guests and we’ll spend the afternoon watching shitty TV in the lounge. You and me, that fluffy throw from the armchair, and reruns of that crappy sitcom you like so much.”

“You hate those shows.” She whispered a laugh against my skin. The thought of a cosy Tuesday afternoon seemed to bring her a little closer to her senses. She managed a smile up at me, pushing herself away just enough to meet my eyes. “I don’t deserve you, Brett Foster.”

“Oh, you do.” I laughed. “You deserve the moon after that performance you just gave for this little piece of paradise.”

It was her thumb that brushed hard against my cheek this time around. “It was worth it, for us,” she told me. “For my sister, too. For the money we owed her and the rest of the world. For our dreams. For our cute little picnic benches out the front and the kids we’re going to bring up here.”

I nodded, but didn’t break her flow.

“We’re going to have dogs.” She grinned. “And maybe a hot tub. Maybe even a four poster in the suite upstairs. And a chef.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A chef?”

Her smile was beautiful. “Evening meals. The whole works. That crap hole down the road won’t have shit on us.”

“We’ll put an ad in the paper this afternoon,” I told her. “We’ll get the best chef this side of the border. They’ll be coming for miles to sample our menu.”

She sighed as she pressed her cheek to my chest. “We really did it. The money is really ours.”

“Really ours.”

“I don’t even know how to say goodbye to him after breakfast,” she whispered, and I felt it too.

How the fuck do you say goodbye to an asshole like that?

As much as I hated the cunt, he’d been true to his word. All fifty fucking grand’s worth of it.

“Fuck knows,” I said. “Maybe I’ll give him an extra slice of bacon for saving ours, no matter how much I still want to kick his fucking head in.”

“He did everything he said he would,” she commented, voicing my own grudging thoughts out loud.

“And so did we. We’re evens. Worth a handshake at least before I tell him to never show his smug fucking face around here again.”

Her arms squeezed me tight. “Maybe we should eat with him, a token gesture before he goes. I mean the bad feeling’s over now, right? We delivered, he paid.”

I’d squirted shampoo onto her hair before I had an answer for her, lathering up her curls with fingers determined to wash that asshole away.

The bad feeling would never be over, but I didn’t want to trash her optimism by pointing it out. It wasn’t even my bad feeling I was talking about, even though I’d still happily bust his nose across his perfect fucking face just for the hell of it.

It was his bad feeling that wouldn’t die off with a generous breakfast and token handshake. That spite was rancid, inhuman. Fucked up beyond measure. The nasty chill crept back up my spine as my memory blurred its way through faces, names, connections.

Nothing. I found nothing.

Thomas Heath.

Who the fuck was Thomas Heath?

I soaped Grace slowly, fingers gentle as they scrubbed his prints from her skin. She lapped it up with her eyes closed tight, sighing with relief as I coaxed the knots from her tense shoulders. She tipped them back as my palms brushed the tits he’d slavered over, but I didn’t linger there, uncharacteristically fleeting with my touch as her nipples hardened for me.

She didn’t say anything, not until my hands were between her legs, lathering her up as quickly as I could then sweeping down lower to the tops of her thighs.

“You can touch me,” she told me. “I’m not too sore.” Her smile was bright, even though her eyes were nervous. “I mean I’m sore, but not too sore. Not too sore to touch.”

Her fingers snaked around my dick and it hardened on instinct as my belly tightened. “Breakfast,” I said. “We’ve got to get to breakfast.”

She didn’t nod, nor move her hand away, raising up on tiptoes and aiming her wet lips right for mine.

And I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t. Not knowing how that asshole fucked her throat like a fucking demon.

Shying away from her kiss was the biggest mistake I’d made this whole fucking affair. Her eyes were so hurt as she dropped back away from me that I’d have punched myself in the face along with him.

“It’s him,” I grunted, feeling like a piece of shit. “Where he’s been.”

She nodded, but her eyes still hurt raw. I knew they were welling as she tipped her face under the cascade and bared me a weak smile.

“Grace,” I said. “It’s just a stupid guy thing. I’ll be over it by the time we’re done with bacon.”

“I get it,” she told me. “He’s been there, all over me. I just…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just get dressed.”

She was away from my body and washing hers off before I could protest, head down as she stepped right by me and grabbed a towel from the rail.

“Wait,” I said, but she didn’t. I soaped my own privates even quicker than I’d soaped hers, barely even washing off the suds before I was out and after her.

The towel was wrapped tight around her as she pulled out clean underwear from the drawer. I stared mute as she tugged on knickers over her still-wet legs, cursing my own idiot clumsiness as she turned away from me to put her bra on.

“I’m a dick,” I told her. “I’m fucking things up before I’ve even managed to make them better.”

She shook her head. “You’re not. It’s just weird. This whole thing is weird.”

“Nothing milkshake won’t fix,” I said, but my stupid goofball humour didn’t even touch her.

She’d pulled on a top and jeans before I’d so much as wrapped a towel around my waist. I was fumbling around for a clean pair of boxers when she headed back for the bathroom, trying to shove my foot through the leg hole as I hopped back over there.

And then I heard it, the screech of a bolt on the other side.

My hand was firm as I slapped at the door. “Grace. Let me in, I promise I’ll be less of a dick this time around.”

But she didn’t. I pressed my ear to the wood in time to hear the basin start up. The sound of her toothbrush was frantic, ragged, as were her heaves as she spat into the sink.

She brushed her teeth for a full five minutes as I stood helpless in my boxers on the other side. I started as the bolt screeched back again, ready to grab her tight when she stepped right out at me.

It was her who shied away this time, turning her cheek to my mouth as I came in hard for her. I was a dripping fool with a dripping ego, hating the caveman part of me that ran loose with paranoia as the woman in my arms pushed right off me.

“Let’s just get breakfast,” she said and I nodded.

“Sure.”

She didn’t wait for me to finish getting dressed before she headed out there.

This time it wasn’t the door I slapped but the wall. More of a thump than a slap, three times over as I cursed myself for not having the slick-sure moves of a slippery sonofabitch like Heath.

He’d know what to say. How to fucking smirk. How to do fucking everything, just like he’d known how to make my wife come like I’d never seen her fucking come in her life.

And me?

I was just a fucking fool. A fool who’d cared more about bricks and sand and fucking sea than the woman who’d been my life since it meant anything.

I brushed my own teeth with the same vigour she’d brushed hers, spitting the taste of shame right out of me. I got dressed with a face like death, the relief I’d felt at seven just a hazy memory as I spritzed myself with aftershave and tried to pull my shit together enough to serve up breakfast and shake the motherfucker’s hand.

But it turned out I didn’t need to.

Grace’s face was pale as I joined her in the dining room, her mouth open slack as she stared at her palm.

A business card. I couldn’t see the lettering before I was right on top of her, but it didn’t matter, I already knew what it would say.

Mr Thomas Heath.

CEO Heath Global.

And his telephone numbers. Three of them. Office, direct line and mobile.

“He’s gone,” she said, and I wished there was more relief in her tone. “This was at reception. His car’s gone from outside.”

“Good,” I said. “Good fucking riddance.”

I plucked the card from her fingers while she was still staring, storming right to the nearest trash bin and tossing it in while she watched.

“Won’t be needing that,” I told her. “Now, let’s get that fucking milkshake.”