MATT ENJOYED MORNINGS AFTER. When he was alone, sated, relaxed and a little nostalgic for the previous night’s experience even though the details were already hazy.
But this morning, standing in the kitchen Romy hadn’t seen even though he’d kitted it out especially for her, he was neither sated nor relaxed. And the details weren’t hazy—each one was crystal clear.
Romy, so hesitant going up the stairs.
Romy, diffident and wanting to get it over with once they’d reached the bedroom.
Romy, talking about returning to her hotel room after he’d gone at her like a battering ram.
What did that fucking tell him? That she wasn’t his speed!
Why hadn’t he fucking listened? Because he was a fucking monster!
What had he done about it? He’d forged ahead and done her again! Shoving himself into her deep and hard and relentless, wringing a double orgasm out of her, making her beg for it!
And his reward for that brutality was for her to jump out of bed even before she’d stopped gasping his name, grab her clothes as though he’d steal them if she wasn’t fast enough, and run for the shower like she couldn’t wait to wash him off her skin.
That’s when he’d seen the purple marks on her hips, and he’d thanked God she wasn’t staying the night after all because he’d have marked her black-and-blue and scraped her raw all over by morning.
He’d pulled on his clothes and waited impatiently for her to reappear from the bathroom, rehearsing apologies, explanations. But when she’d resurfaced, scrubbed and dressed, paper white and jittery, he’d known there was no excuse that would make it right.
“Well, that’s that, then,” she’d said. And the look on her face as she’d said it had ripped a hole in him. Like she was going to cry, like she was going to break.
And so Matt had called her a cab, and trailed after her like a stray dog all the way down that overwrought staircase, and fetched her overcoat and briefcase from the overstuffed library while she waited in the pretentious entrance hall of his mausoleum of a house. And then they’d stood by the door and stared past each other for a million fucking years until the taxi arrived. Then she’d said, “I’ll know one way or the other in two weeks, so I’ll be in touch then.” And with a restrained, chicken-like peck on his cheek, whoosh! She was gone, the door had closed, the taxi was driving away.
Matt had stayed at the door, and it wasn’t until three minutes had passed that he’d realized he was waiting for her to come back. Because she never left him without hugging him like a maniac and ruffling his hair. He’d actually rested his hand on the door handle, preparing to wrench open the door the moment he heard the cab pull up.
Another minute—no cab.
His knuckles had turned white as it registered that she wasn’t coming back. That the peck on the cheek was all he was going to get. That it might be the last thing he ever got from her. And he’d raced up to strip his bed, as though by doing so he could rip the experience out of his room, out of his house, out of his exploding head.
That was when he’d spied the tiny ball of lilac, scrunched up behind the armchair. She’d been so eager to leave, she hadn’t even looked for her panties; she’d gone commando—something his Romy would never, ever have done because she’d have been all, What if I get hit by a bus?
And even knowing that that meant she had to have been in a panic to escape him, he couldn’t stop himself from picking up those panties and sniffing them like a sexual deviant, which triggered a leap in his cock that infuriated him because those were Romy’s panties! His Romy’s panties that he hadn’t let himself near for ten fucking years!
He’d grabbed the sheets, screwed them and the panties up together, strode into the bathroom and shoved the lot into the laundry hamper so hard he pushed his hand right through the wickerwork, giving new meaning to the term basket case—which he clearly still was the morning after a sleep-deprived night because here he was standing in her kitchen, his dick throbbing like the devil, willing her to come back even though he knew she was already in the goddamn air.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuck!” he yelled, and when that didn’t release enough pressure, banged his fist on the counter. “Fuck.” Bang. “Fuck.” Bang. “Fuck this!” And he swept an arm across the kitchen counter, knocking the coffee he’d made for himself but hadn’t drunk into the sink.
Fuck the coffee, too! Why was he drinking coffee? He needed an anesthetic, not a stimulant. He wrenched a beer from the fridge—and he was beyond fucking caring that Romy always tsk-tsked him out of drinking beer in the morning—and made his way out onto the deck because it was past time for his dick to start behaving like a regular body part and not a Viagra-fueled nightmare and he hoped the frigid wind would knock an inch or two off his erection.
Throwing himself into a seat at his purpose-bought-for-Romy outdoor setting, he took a vicious swig of his beer and forced himself to look out toward San Francisco Bay, where he was going to keep looking until he calmed the fuck down.
An intention that lasted forty seconds, when he experienced an overpowering need to check his cell phone just in case he’d missed a text message from Romy.
Aaaand nope. Moron. If he hadn’t gotten a text by now he wasn’t going to get one, because she was already-in-the-goddamn-air-how-long-did-it-take-to-get-that-through-his-head!
He tossed his phone onto the table, only to pick it up again immediately to call up the message Romy had sent him after their phone call two weeks ago—the selfie, in which she was blowing him a kiss. “My hero” was the text that accompanied it. He’d rolled his eyes at that, but he’d laughed, too, because her mouth was too wide for that expression to be anything other than comical. Maybe seeing it now would give him hope that the two of them might laugh about last night in due course.
But when he pulled up the photo, instead of laughing at her duckbill lips, he found himself running his fingertip over them while his breathing went haywire and his heartbeat went bump-bump-thump and he could almost...taste her.
He snatched his hand away from the phone, picked up his beer, took another swig. But swilling the beer around his mouth did nothing to disperse the taste of her, which seemed to have drenched him at some cellular level.
She should be here, telling him he was still her hero even though he knew he was an asshole. She should be here, forgiving him the way she said she always would. She should be here, easing his rage the way being around her always did—that bitter strangle of fury he’d been carrying inside forever, forever, for ever, at what his parents had turned him into. This...thing, dark and twisted and disgusting, that made him not good enough for her.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuck!” Another gut-wrenching yell. Because he wanted her here...and yet he should be glad she wasn’t. He’d spent ten careful years keeping her away, blocking every sexual thought of her, trying not to ruin what he’d felt that first night he’d met her, that glimmering sense of comfort she gave him.
It was ever-after stuff, what he’d felt that night. And what he’d felt for her had stayed in the realm of ever-after through three and a half years’ living in the same house, through six and a half years’ living on different continents, through the past two weeks of knowing the baby was his gateway to a permanent link with her because she’d have only one child and that child would be his and whoever came after him could therefore never take his place in her life.
If he were a decent human being, he would have told her everything about himself and given her the chance to find better sperm. But he could live with not being a decent human being. He’d lived with it a hell of a long time now.
He reached for his beer, saw that his hand was shaking and took a long, painful breath.
If he’d succeeded in accomplishing the ultimate betrayal and impregnating her, would she hate the thought of having his child, after last night? And if she wasn’t pregnant, would she write him off and look elsewhere?
Two weeks, and he’d know. Two weeks—that’s when she’d said she’d be in touch.
Although he could contact her, couldn’t he? He could text her now, if he wanted to.
He picked up his phone again, racking his brain for something funny to say. Maybe something about preparing the kid for a lifetime of dealing with redhead jokes...?
But...no. She might get all serious and tell him again that she loved his red hair. Loved his hair...loved everything about him...loved...him...?
No!
No, she couldn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t let her tell him that.
The text would have to be something simple like checking she got home all right. He always sent that text when she was flying home. And it never mattered that he sent it while she was in the air, because she got it when she landed and she always responded straightaway and that way it would be only hours—not two weeks—before he heard from her.
He tapped out the message...and then froze.
What the fuck was he doing?
She’d said two weeks. The inference being she didn’t want to be in touch until then.
Was he going to start hounding her when she didn’t want to be hounded? After he’d told her he didn’t do that stalking shit? Why make her more uncomfortable with him than she already was?
Nope. Delete. Delete that message. Delete, delete, DELETE, GODDAMMIT!
He realized he was about to crack the case on his cell phone, and forced himself to ease his grip. He threw the phone down, got up and strode over to the edge of the deck. The view was the only thing he liked about this house. He should be out on that damn bay, kayaking. It would be worth freezing his ass off to get out of the house.
He strode back to the table, scooped up his phone—in case a message came through—shoved it in his pocket—because he knew it wouldn’t—and headed inside to the library to find his kayaking map because no way was he taking his cell phone with him; odds were instead of using it to check his coordinates he’d obsess about text messages he wasn’t getting and didn’t want to think about getting.
But once in the library he was drawn to the desk, where Romy’s paperwork was, and he lost interest in looking for the map. He could see her, even with his eyes open, muttering to herself as she flicked through pages. And when he closed his eyes... Oh God, the images. Furtive flashes of naked bodies, eager thrusts, cries and tongues and fevered flesh.
His eyes bolted open. “Jesus Christ, stop!” he cried.
And as if in answer to a prayer, his cell phone pinged with an incoming text.
Bump-bump-thump went his heart.
Romy!
So she hadn’t caught her flight. She was still in San Francisco.
He put his hand over the phone in his pocket and smiled. She’d forgiven him.
Call or text back?
Call, he decided. He’d suggest she come over and hang out here, strictly friend zone now their one-night stand was over. He’d remind her about the paella she owed him and then help her make it, and they could eat it while watching a movie—there was a TV behind a panel in this godforsaken library and it didn’t get more innocent than watching a movie; they always watched movies together when she was over. He fumbled the phone out. He’d get her new flight details, drive her to the airport at the appointed time the way he usually did, when she wasn’t running for her life. And if she didn’t hug him goodbye he’d headlock her!
He swiped his cell on. It would all be back to norm—
“Shit.” As he saw who the message was from.
Not Romy, Camilla.
Coffee? Can meet you in ten.
Coffee. Camilla’s daytime euphemism for sex. Nighttime was margarita.
Well, obviously that wasn’t going to happen. A guy who’d offered to impregnate a friend didn’t fuck his way around town until the job was done. Still...hmm...any red-blooded man would get a libidinous spark at the thought of sex with Camilla—so why wasn’t he?
He tried picturing Camilla. Honey-blond hair; aquamarine eyes; sharp, high cheekbones; pouty mouth; curved in all the right places and perfectly proportioned. A very beautiful woman. She was fun, too. She laughed a lot; she ate like a normal person and drank beer. She was even clued up on tech talk, unlike Romy, who thought the only Java that existed was an island in Indonesia. He liked Camilla. They were good together. They thought alike. And she was the type to flay the flesh off a guy—literally, not metaphorically—which was exactly what he needed at that moment, a physical pain to replace the other kind.
He tried to coax some hot blood into his veins, some rigidity into his cock. But it was no use. His veins remained disinterested. His penis positively uninterested—in fact, it was...deflating...? Oh God, he really was deflating!
He sighed, and sent back a simple text to Camilla of the sorry-no-can-do-some-other-time variety. Then he stared at the phone some more, but no matter how long he stared, no text from Romy materialized.
He shoved the phone into his pocket. He was going to go back to his bedroom. He was going to take the sheets out of the hamper and rip the fuckers in half.
He was three strides to the door when he recalled that there was a pair of lilac panties in with the sheets and—whooshka—up came his dick, like an amphetamine-loaded cobra from a snake charmer’s basket. Un-fucking-bearable.
He whirled again, returned to the windows, desperate to calm down, but there was no calm to be had out there. Swollen gray clouds were gathering over the bay, like they were building apace with his turbulent mood. The weather wouldn’t stop him taking out the kayak—in fact, he relished the idea of carving through the water in a storm.
He watched until the first raindrops dotted the window...gathered power...started pelting. He turned into the room, strode to the desk, looked down at those motherfucking pages. Their only saving grace was that Teague hadn’t drawn them up; he’d hate to have to beat the crap out of Teague for getting between him and Romy.
Not that the documents really mattered. The crux of the deal was that Matt’s name wouldn’t be on the birth certificate. He didn’t need fifteen documents to confirm he wasn’t going to be a real father.
He picked up a three-page document at random and ripped it in half. An action that reminded him of what he wanted to do to his sheets, so he ripped it again. Again. Again. He hated those fucking pages. Rip, rip, fucking rip. To the next document. Rip. Rip. Over and over and over, page after page.
He was breathing heavily by the time he’d finished his harried tearing and looked at the pieces scattered across the desktop. What a mess. An all-round fucking mess. On the desk, and in his head.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. It was meant to be easy. A carefree donation of easily produced body fluid. So why had it felt like something else, something more, last night?
Oh God, why could he see her so clearly? His red-haired, hazel-eyed daughter, looking at him with the same quiet trust he’d seen in Romy’s eyes last night.
He didn’t know how to banish that image; he didn’t know how to fix him and Romy; he didn’t know how to stop wanting forever; he didn’t know how to reconcile all those things into a way of existing that didn’t feel like he was being ripped into pieces, like those fucking pages on the desk.
He rubbed his fingertips up and down his forehead, trying to ease the ache that was building in his head. His sinuses felt swollen. The back of his nose was stinging. He blinked hard and swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat. Swallowed again, but the lump remained.
He imagined getting Romy’s regular parcel of photos, and that in with the shots of her parents, a guy she might be dating, restaurant dishes she was about to consume and shoes she needed a second opinion on before purchase, were photos of his daughter. The birth. The home-from-the-hospital shot. First tooth. First crawl. First birthday. First walk. First day at school. First French fucking snail being eaten. Photos of a normal kid, who had a normal mother and normal grandparents. A normal, innocent childhood.
He spun away from the desk, strode to the window, kicked aside the ruined curtains, stared out. The rain was pelting down now. “If only...” he said, conscious of a horrible, clawing, push-pull need in his life for less...and yet more. He placed the palms of his hands on the glass, wishing he could feel the storm. “If only...” But he blocked the thought before he could finish it. No point in going there.
The back of his nose was stinging again, and there was a crushing ache in his chest.
There was no use pretending he didn’t know what it was.
It was grief.
And it was out of his control.