Lyla had thought that Bunyan and Paul would go postal about her moving back to her apartment.
They didn’t.
They said it was believable for there to be bumps in the relationship since the couple were so different from each other. The drama was exactly what they wanted.
She and Trick got through a whole week without seeing each other. Until Trick, Lyla had never missed a person so much that her body hurt whenever she thought about them. And she thought about her husband a lot.
It would be easy to go and knock on his door. Easy to call him up and ask him to come and visit her. But with the cameras set up in both of their apartments the studio were determined not to miss a thing and she didn’t want to share him, just like he’d said he didn’t want to share her.
So, the cameras followed her and they followed Trick. Separately. Her interviews revolved around being told stories about what Trick was up to and being asked to comment. Apparently, he’d been out clubbing a few nights this week and the interviewers were very interested to find out how she felt about that. Lyla tried to keep her responses short, knowing that they really wanted Trick. They didn’t want her. So, she tried her best to be polite, but vague.
The pressure was on Trick right now to carry the show. Lyla wasn’t clubbing or hanging out with famous people. Her life was as boring as it had ever been.
The show that aired last night had revolved around their second week of marriage. Seeing them back then, still new to each other, learning how to live together, was nostalgic. If it was possible to feel that way about something that happened two weeks ago.
Lyla was at work, in her old routine, sitting in the canteen, eating her packed lunch and sipping her smoothie when a shadow made her look up.
Ah, the Cronies, it had been a while.
“I guess it was only a matter of time before you did it,” Faith said.
“What?” Lyla asked, turning the page of her open magazine and picking up another carrot stick.
The three women sat down with her, two opposite, and one at the end of the table. “Do you feel ridiculous for doing it?” Chelsea asked.
“I still don’t know what ‘it’ is,” Lyla said.
“We saw what you were like with him at the team-building thing,” Faith said. “How did you get him to look at you like that? Is he that good an actor?”
“He?” Lyla asked, realizing she’d learned something from her husband about being a smart ass.
“Trick,” Dinah said. “We heard… you messed it up. It’s over… right?”
Ah, yes, the good old rumor mill. It was difficult to always be on top of the current titbit. Lyla knew she’d been a subject on the gossip list regularly since marrying Trick. But with the show airing two weeks after events, sometimes the masses were behind the curve.
The Cronies must be getting fresh information from somewhere. Good for them. It was reassuring to find that some things never changed.
“Yep,” Lyla said, biting into her stick. “I messed it up.”
“Aww,” Faith said, but Lyla didn’t believe she meant the sorrow in the exclamation. “Well, you did your best.”
“Sure, and I’m sure he’s only sleeping with five or six other women by now,” Dinah said.
“Least we can all be sure that’s a list none of you will ever be on.”
Looking up from her magazine, the last person Lyla expected to see standing behind the Cronies was Trick. But there he was.
Tilting her head in question, she watched him come around the table to slide onto the bench beside her, with one leg on each side of the seat.
Picking up her hand from the table, he held it in both of his and fixed his eyes on hers as he took it up to his lips. “You ladies want the skinny, watch the show, in the meantime… get lost. You don’t deserve to be in the presence of my beautiful, perfect wife. She’s worth a thousand of you black-hearted bitches.”
The Cronies squawked and objected, but when Trick turned a glare on them, it didn’t take long for them to scarper.
Only when the trio was gone, did he look at her. “Trick?” Lyla asked.
Sucking in a breath, Lyla tossed her carrot stick back in the box and drew her knee up on the bench to turn toward him. “Broke?”
His brows came down as his hand fell to the bench, taking hers with it. “I didn’t screw around. I broke by coming to see you… I was trying not to do that.”
“Oh,” she said. Lyla didn’t know if it was offensive that he was trying not to see her. “I knew you were avoiding me. I figured you had your reasons.”
“I did, but it’s not like you think,” he said, putting her hand back on her own leg. “I told you, I’m not what they say I am… I’m not a whore.”
“I didn’t say that you were,” she said, having not considered that he might be here to confess an affair.
But Trick was building up steam and didn’t seem to hear her. “Baby, you’re the one who came to me and threw me against a wall because you wanted to have sex on camera. If I’d done that to you, you’d have cursed me up and down every alley in the city.”
Lyla couldn’t deny how she would’ve reacted if the shoe was on the other foot. “I know,” she said, nodding. “That’s why I thought I could let you know—”
“Not before you gave them something,” he said. “You know we’re going to have to watch that? They have you unzipping your dress, flashing your tits at me… you putting your hand in my pants… They have that, and they will use it.”
Yes, they would because it was the juiciest thing they had on show. “I didn’t know what to do, Trick. They cornered me. Told me we had to do something spontaneous and—”
“And you didn’t think you should’ve said no? If you’d said you wouldn’t do a damn thing without bringing me into the meeting, do you think that blow out would’ve happened?”
So he blamed her for everything. “I… I didn’t mean for everyone to fight like that… I had no idea that Bunyan felt that way about me.”
“And the first thing you did after was leave me.” He sighed. “You did the right thing. I told you as soon as I wasn’t good enough for you that you should split and you did,” he said and stood up to pull something out of his back pocket. Throwing it on the table, he took his leg out from under the table. “It’s an invite to my birthday thing next Friday. I want you there. Show up or don’t, it’s your call.”
Looking at the white envelope on the table, Lyla was stunned. But when he turned to go, she grabbed his hand, halting him. “Nairn,” she whispered, and the heat behind her eyes quickly became tears. “I… I feel lost without you.”
Lyla was terrified as she lifted her gaze, and her fears weren’t allayed when she found that he wasn’t looking at her. But he didn’t try to pull away. After a second of nothing, he turned his hand into hers and just held her for a minute.
Twisting toward her, Trick bent over and touched his mouth to hers. “Come home,” he murmured and eased back a couple of inches to scrutinize her response to his request.
“I want to,” she whispered.
“Come back to my bed,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
His next kiss was softer, longer, and made a tear slip from her eye. But she kept them closed as his hand slipped out of hers. She didn’t want to watch him go. Couldn’t watch him leave her.
This was just a glimpse of how he must have felt when he got back to his apartment and found the note on his fridge from her saying she was going back to her place. It must have seemed to him that she’d given up on them. She hadn’t. She just needed him to be hers… she didn’t want them to belong to the world.