Page 68 of When We Had Forever
“Why don’t you go somewhere with Kate?” he says, his voice taut. “Book a trip to Cancun or something?”
“I don’t want to go with Kate,” I force out. “I want...”
I grope to fill the blank as taunting possibilities cascade through my mind. I want to travel withhim. I want him to wake up. I want him to wake me up, to stand under the stars again and hold my hand.
Michael closes his eyes, as if forcibly mastering himself. When he looks again, his gaze is calm. “Mina. Come here.”
I hesitate, because I know, even before I circle toward him and his fingers go skimming up my bare thighs, what will happen next. One touch, and I melt into a puddle of want.
This never fails to distract me, and he knows it.
Sure enough, when he pulls at me, need takes over. I tear open his shirt, buttons flying, then yank down his zipper. He whisks my underwear off and I sink onto him right there at the dinner table, a mindless cry simmering out of me as two become one.
His artist’s fingers hike my dress up and dig into my bare ass. I ride him hard, with a kind of desperation, my hips rolling as my back arches and my eyes fall closed.
Michael clutches at me. I rise and rise and rise inside until I crest somewhere in the stratosphere.
When I come to my senses again, limp and draped against him like a rag doll, I raise my head.
He looks up at me. “Thisis what we have, angel. This, and our house, and our life. Where we take care of each other. Forget the past.”
“I can’t,” I murmur. “And none of this changes what I just said.”
Alarm crowds his gaze, quickly masked.
“What Ireallywant for our anniversary,” I press, “is to go somewhere. With you.”
A slow sigh bleeds out of him. “Fine. The Oregon coast, then? We could drive down next weekend and—”
“No.” We did that last summer, and it wasn’t enough. We only managed to bring all the same work—emails, Michael’s conference calls, my lethally boring articles forMedical Devices Monthly—to a different place and do it there. “I want to go somewhere real. On an actual airplane. No half measures this time.”
His muscles lock. I’m afraid to see what I’ve just done, so I concentrate on disentangling our bodies and snagging a clean napkin to stem the flow of him down my legs.
“I don’t like flying,” he says tightly.
I frown. He’s never said that before, and when I finally meet his eyes, the shutter that has become so familiar has dropped into place.
“I didn’t know that.” Maybe I should chalk up his hesitation to a flying phobia and be done with it, but my mouth keeps on producing words. “But are you telling me that’s it? We’re just never going to go anywhere we can’t get to in a car?”
Michael makes a noncommittal noise and tucks himself back in his pants, then stands to clear the dishes. He leaves me standing there with a napkin pressed between my legs and an awful, stony lump in my throat.
I try to fight it, but when he retreats to the sink at the island, I feel myself losing ground. Fear of flying or not, it feels like he’s taking our night at the observatory and yanking it straight out of my hands—hands that have turned that memory over and over again in adoration.
He glances up from the dishes. “You’d feel better if you went for a run.”
I don’t want him to see how close I am to breaking, so I march upstairs, exchange my cocktail dress for running clothes, and pelt out into the night.
Even though it’s nine o’clock and pitch black, I run until my lungs crack open and my teeth jar in their sockets.
When I finally stumble back inside, Michael has cleared off the dining table and polished the granite. The whole kitchen looks brand-new. But he hasn’t gone to bed. A pool of light brightens the lawn out back, which means he’s in his office. Again.
I mount the stairs. For once, the run hasn’t taken enough out of me. For once, I refuse to back down.
Ican’t. I miss him too much.
In the doorway to his office, I prop my hands on my hips. Michael looks up, startled.
“I can’t live like this,” I announce. “I can’t be married to someone who won’t go anywhere with me. You promised we’d travel, and we haven’t, so if your answer’s still no, I’m finding us a couples therapist tomorrow.”
