Page 64 of Love What's Left
My hope that she’d be distracted and move on to another topic withers on the vine. “I didn’t realize Franki would tell you those theories, but we weren’t having a secret affair forsevenyears.”
“I remembered choosing your tattoos. We went on trips. Finished each other’s sentences.”
“Yes. But it was more of a . . . complicated business relationship for most of that time. I tried to flirt for years, but you didn’t take me seriously.”
“I can understand why,” she muses.
I slouch against the counter and paint an expression of bored amusement on my face out of sheer defensive instinct. “Sick of me already?”
“I meant because you’re you.” She indicates my face and body. “You’re gorgeous. Charming. Successful. I’m just . . .” She trails off with a twist of her lips.
“Just what?” My hands grip the edge of the counter to keep me in place. I shouldn’t stalk her across this kitchen or press her back against the refrigerator with my body. I shouldn’t tip her chin up and look down into her eyes. I shouldn’t skate my parted lips across her cheek, then nuzzle her soft skin, damp with clean perspiration, beneath her ear.
There have always been too many “shouldn’ts”with Sydney Walsh McRae. And the longer we listen to them, the bigger the “Fuck it”that follows.
She moves close, and her hands twist my shirt where she holds on. “I’m just me.”
Fuck. It.
She gasps when my hands land on her ass, and I jerk her into the V of my thighs. My lips meet her silky skin and trail kisses up her neck to her earlobe.
“You”—kiss—“aren’tjustanything.” I became defensive and closed down, but, unlike the woman I married, this Sydney didn’t bristle at my attitude, flip me the finger, and leave the room. She allowed herself to be vulnerable with me.
“You’re out of my league,” she breathes. “I’d have thought you had much better options than me.”
I straighten and open my mouth to disagree with her, but she hurries on.
“I’m not insecure. I like myself. But the only special thing I had going for me was athletics and that was over with college graduation. I suppose it would’ve mattered if you wanted someone to try to breed D-1 athletes with you?” She attempts a weak joke.
I shake my head, the mention of kids a sore spot I’m not ready for this Sydney to poke at. “I’ve never been interested in preconceived ideas of who my children would be, and there are no ‘leagues’ when it comes to you and me. We were made for each other. You are sostubbornin the best possible way. You’re competitive, persistent, nurturing. You gave to others when you were barely surviving yourself. You make me want to be a betterperson. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Inside and out.”
For a moment, she looks lost. “You seriously see me as your equal?”
“No.”
She swallows hard, her gaze skipping away from mine.
“You’re a goddess. I’m just a man trying to deserve you.”
She throws her hands in the air, then lifts a finger between us. “If I didn’t take you seriously, then that’s why. You can’t say things like that.”
“It’s how I feel.”
I see the exact second she checks herself and chooses not to argue. Her expression changes from frowning to chagrin. Maybe she was going to tell me “No you don’t”or “Don’t be silly.”But she must have taken my words to heart when I told her she didn’t get to tell me how I feel.
She takes a breath, then speaks in a halting voice. “It’s hard for me to understand. But you don’t need to deserve anyone, least of all me. If I didn’t take your feelings seriously, it was about my insecurities, not about you.”
And we’ll go straight back to them when she remembers. “You’re missing too many details to make that call.”
“I understand enough to know what I did. I thought you’d go through women like toilet paper. That was fear left over from my childhood.”
The oven timer for the pizza goes off, and she steps out of my arms. “Can you grab that for me?”
“Do you want to eat at the table?”
She nods, then gathers place settings while I use the bulky black-and-white-checked oven mitts to slide the stainless-steel pizza peel under the hot pie and transfer it to a waiting wooden board.Pepperoni, olives, and green peppers.
Her sauce smells like home. No matter what house or apartment we stayed at, if we were there for more than a week, she cooked something with a version of this sauce. Seeing it now. Smelling it . . . The temptation to pretend none of the last months happened curls around me like a lover. What’s wrong with stealing a moment to imagine an afternoon on vacation with my wife and not a worry in the world?
