Chapter 6

Derek

 

I woke up with two sensations I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

One, the obnoxious throbbing of a hangover.

Two, the warmth of soft, naked skin pressed against mine.

It only took a few disoriented seconds for my brain to catch up. Last night was faintly fuzzy around the edges, but most of the details were clear enough. I knew exactly who had his arm slung over me. Whose soft breath was whispering over the nape of my neck. I remembered everything we’d done, and how much I’d loved every brush of his lips and stroke of his hands.

I found his hand and gently clasped it. As I ran my thumb along the backs of his fingers, I grazed the faint indentation where his wedding ring had been. I thumbed my own ring finger, finding the corresponding groove.

Eyes closed, I released a long breath. Last night had been fun. I wouldn’t deny it, but while the hangover left a terrible taste in my mouth, it was nowhere near as sour as the regret burning in the back of my throat. Rhys and I were over. There was a reason we’d spent the last five months in separate bedrooms. A reason I couldn’t ignore and couldn’t erase.

Except, apparently, long enough to have sex.

I grimaced. Well, lesson learned. No good could come of drinking with Rhys on this trip. Oh, and also that my libido was still alive and kicking, and I was absolutely making a Grindr profile when I got home. And a Tinder profile. And…well, profiles on whichever apps people were using to get laid these days.

In the meantime?

I gently lifted his arm off me and sat up. Rhys mumbled into the pillow, then stilled. Fine. Let him sleep a little longer. I wanted him to collect his clothes and get the hell out of my room so I could get my head together, but if he slept for a minute or two, that would give me time to get dressed. Whatever conversation came after this seemed like it would be less awkward if I wasn’t bare-ass naked.

I picked up our clothes off the floor and put his on the bed beside him. Then I started getting dressed. As I did, I indulged in a long look at him. That was one thing even the bitterness and resentment couldn’t chase away—how gorgeous my ex-husband was. All those smooth planes and angles. How many times had my fingers traced those grooves and contours? The edges of his tattoos?

Unwelcome emotions tried to bubble to the surface, so I pulled my gaze away and swallowed hard to force them back. I didn’t want to still be grieving what I’d had with Rhys. I wanted to be over him. Like, now. I sure as shit didn’t need to start tearing up while we figured out how to navigate the most awkward morning after in the history of mornings after.

As I was pulling on my shirt, Rhys stirred. He scrubbed his hand over his face, grumbled a bit, and then sat up. “What time is it?”

“Um.” I glanced at the clock beside the bed. “Almost eight.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Fuck. Why the hell are we awake?”

I chewed my lip.

Rhys looked up at me. I could practically hear the “what?” on the tip of his tongue, but then he straightened, eyes widening slightly as if he’d remembered where he was, who he was with, and everything that had happened. He broke eye contact with what sounded like a defeated breath, then eased himself toward the edge of the bed. He glanced at the clothes I’d laid beside him, then leaned down to pick up the prosthetic and its liner. As he started to put the liner on, that all too familiar uncomfortable silence hovered between us.

My head pounded. I was way too hung over to think about this, never mind talk about it, but we couldn’t just ignore it either. “Um. So. Last night. Just so we’re clear, what we did doesn’t mean…” I couldn’t say it. Why the hell couldn’t I say the words? “Things haven’t changed.”

Avoiding my eyes, Rhys nodded. He was still intently focused on rolling the liner into place, probably to give his hands something to do. “I know. I didn’t expect them to.”

“So we’re—”

“Derek.” He met my gaze, his expression plaintive. “We got drunk, and we got carried away. I’m not reading anything into it. I promise.”

I swallowed. Then nodded. Good. Good. We were on the same page.

So why didn’t it feel like the right page?

Neither of us spoke as he dressed. Once he was done, he gathered his jacket, phone, wallet, and cane.

I cleared my throat. “When did you want to hit the road?”

Our eyes met.

When do we have to stuff all this awkwardness into a single vehicle for the next several hours?

“I still need to grab a shower.” Rhys didn’t look at me. “I’ll, um, text you when I’m ready to go.”

“All right.”

Neither of us spoke, and I didn’t watch him go. It was only when the door clicked shut behind him that I released my breath.

Alone in the silent hotel room, I sank onto the edge of the bed and kneaded my throbbing temples. At this point I wasn’t even sure what was making my head hurt more—the hangover or the barrage of thoughts banging around in my tender skull.

Fuck. Fuck. I had no idea how I felt about last night. Or how I should feel. Or how I wanted to feel. The only thing I knew for sure was that I’d gotten drunk, tumbled into bed with Rhys, and had some seriously hot sex that I hadn’t realized I’d been needing. I’d broken the longest dry spell of my adult life with the man who was the reason for that dry spell, and it had been amazing, and I hated that I felt like shit now.

At least there was no question that this changed anything. That this was somehow a step toward going back to us. We’d slept together. End of story. If I was honest with myself, I hadn’t started feeling bad about last night until I’d started over analyzing it. Basically until I’d convinced myself to feel bad about it.

Did it have to be like this, though? Was there anything that said I had to feel bad about last night? I’d been dubious of Rhys’s suggestion that we could put aside our differences enough to be friendly for the duration of this trip, but he’d been right. Yesterday had been surprisingly relaxed—even kind of fun—and that was making me look at everything else with some new perspective too.

We’d had a good time at the bar last night, and then we’d come back here and screwed around. I’d been sober enough to know what I was doing, drunk enough not to overthink it, and… I shivered at the memory of Rhys’s body against mine. Even while I’d been drunk and hard, I hadn’t been under any illusions that we were returning to the way things had been before Rhys cheated. I hadn’t had stars in my eyes or hearts fluttering above my head, thinking everything was forgiven and all was well again. I’d been turned on, and I’d felt good, and it had been that simple.

It was just the morning after when things had started to feel complicated.

But did they have to be complicated? Did they have to be weird and uncomfortable?

What if we could turn off the weird just like we’d been able to turn off all the resentment? It was only for ten days. Less than that, really. And we’d already slept together once on this trip. So which was better for keeping things civil between us—fucking or not?

Ugh. I didn’t know. I had no fucking idea because there wasn’t a Road Tripping with the Cheating Ex-Husband You Still Want to Fuck instruction manual for some goddamned reason.

What I needed was some advice from someone who had no problem telling me when to pull my head out of my ass. Fortunately, I knew for a fact she’d be awake because she’d told me yesterday she planned to come in today to get some work done, and when she had to come in on the weekend, she came in at the crack of dawn so she wouldn’t kill her entire day.

“Don’t tell me he left you on the side of the road,” Maxine said instead of hello.

I laughed dryly. “No, we’re at a hotel. We’re actually getting along all right.”

“Oh really? What did you do? Spike his drink?”

“No, actually… Actually, it was his idea.”

“His idea, what?”

“To put everything on hold and at least pretend we can stand each other until this trip his over.”

“And that’s working out…how?” She sounded dubious. “I’m assuming you’re not calling just to chat, so what happened?”

“Um. Well.” I coughed. “We, uh…”

“Christ, Derek.” She groaned. “You fucked him, didn’t you?”

“I…”

Maxine sighed with palpable exasperation. “For God’s sake. What were you thinking?”

That someone was touching me and I needed more because it’s been too long.

I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. “To be fair, we’d had a bit to drink.”

She snorted. “Uh-huh.”

“Look… I know. It wasn’t the smartest thing we could have done. And yes, now things are weird again, and I…” I pressed my elbows into my knees and wiped my free hand over my face. “I can’t change last night. He can’t change last September. We’re stuck together for the next week and a half. And that whole thing he suggested? About just putting aside being pissed at each other? It really did work. Yesterday was… Hell, it was great. So now I just don’t know if… I mean, would it be crazy to think…”

“Derek.” I could feel her glare over the phone. “Are you calling me because you want me to say yes, it’s totally a smart thing to jump into bed with your ex-husband in the name of keeping the peace until you get home?”

“I…” I chewed my lip. “Well, when you put it like that it sounds insane, but yeah, I guess that’s kind of why I called.”

“I see.” She fell silent for a moment. Then she sighed. “Honestly, it doesn’t sound as insane as you might think.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, and I hate that I can’t think of a better alternative, but…” Another heavy sigh. “Damn you for making me say this, but you two might as well keep screwing until you get home. At least when you’re fooling around, you’re getting along, and you’re both a lot less insufferable when you’re getting laid on a regular basis.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Hey, you called me for advice. And don’t act like it isn’t true.”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help laughing. “So you’re serious. You think I should keep sleeping with Rhys.”

“I’m assuming that at least on some level, you want to sleep with him?”

I fidgeted on the edge of the bed. “Well, yeah. I can be pissed at him all I want, but I don’t need beer goggles to want him naked.”

“That’s what I thought.” She paused. “And let’s face it—once you’re in Oregon, you and Rhys are going to be so focused on the wedding and everything, it’s going to be a moot point anyway because you’ll probably be too tired for each other. If screwing around on your road trip means you’re not trying to kill each other at your daughter’s wedding, well, that seems like the best possible outcome to me.”

I blinked. “I swear, sometimes it’s frightening how much sense you make.”

Maxine laughed. “What can I say? I know you. And we both know this trip is short, so anything you and Rhys do is a temporary fix. Why not do everything you can to mitigate the stress between the two of you?”

“Assuming this doesn’t make that stress worse?”

“Why would it? You said yourself you got along with him all day yesterday. Sex only makes things as complicated as the people involved want make it. Plus if you’re fucking, you’re not fighting, am I right?”

“I guess.” I rubbed my fingers along my unshaven jaw. “I still feel weird about it. I told myself after he cheated, that was it. I was done. I wasn’t touching him.”

“That’s because he hurt you,” she said in a gentler voice. “Nobody blames you. Including him, if I had to guess. But you also said you would never be able to look at him again without wanting to break down or read him the riot act.”

“I did, yeah. So you don’t think I’m back-peddling on something I promised myself?”

“When you promised yourself that you wouldn’t touch him again, did you foresee being stuck with him for a week and a half like this?”

“Hmm, no.”

“Exactly. You can still be mad at him for what he did to your marriage, and you can still divorce his sorry ass when you get back. If banging him during your trip keeps you from being at each other’s throats at your daughter’s wedding or driving yourselves insane in the car? I don’t see how anyone—even you—could hold that against you.”

I huffed. “You and your…logic.”

Maxine laughed, though she sounded more sympathetic than anything. “You’re overthinking this, honestly.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Not in the least. Now go talk to him and get him back into bed.”

I laughed. “All right, I will. Thanks for the advice.”

“Any time. I’ll see you when you get back.”

“See you soon.”

After I’d hung up, I sat for a moment, letting everything she’d said percolate. I tried to tell myself it sounded just as crazy coming from her as it had inside my own head, but no, it made more sense than it had any right to.

“Plus if you’re fucking, you’re not fighting, am I right?”

She really did have a point. In fact, throughout our relationship, Rhys and I hadn’t been above shelving a fight, having sex, and then talking things through afterward. Nothing ever seemed like it was worth a screaming match once we’d blown off some steam together, and most fights were smoothed over in pretty short order.

This time, I wasn’t asking myself to suck it up, screw him, and then smooth over the fact that he’d cheated. That was settled. We were done. Any sex we had now was just to keep the tension to a minimum so we could make it through the road trip and the wedding. Plus we probably would get along better if we were sleeping together. Maxine was right about Rhys and me being easier to deal with when we were getting laid. So…why the hell not?

Okay. Rhys had been right about the being civil part. My gut told me Maxine was right about the sex. We could do this, and we could get through this trip without killing each other. We might even like each other by the end of it. Enough to finish going through the motions of our divorce with minimal headache, anyway. After the last few months, I’d take what I could get.

I pushed myself to my feet and took a deep breath. First things first—shower. Then get dressed. Then pack.

And then came the really fun part—broaching the subject with Rhys.