Текст книги "Crosstown Crush"

Автор книги: Cara McKenna

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sam was jogging for the front door the moment she heard Mike’s key in the lock. The hour since he’d left for Bern’s had been the longest of her life.

“And?” she asked, watching him push off his shoes.

He didn’t answer. And that made her wonder what on earth Bern’s answer may have been, regarding what there was between him and Sam.

“Mike?”

He passed her, heading down the hall. She followed him into the kitchen, confused when he opened the freezer. More confused still when he pulled out a bag of corn and walked to the couch.

“Mike, say something.”

He took a seat, and Sam wedged herself between his knees to face him, sitting on the coffee table. “Talk to me. Please. What happened?” She watched him drape the bag over his right hand. “Oh God.”

“I fucked up. A little.”

“You hit him?”

“Just once.”

“And I suppose he was asking for it?”

“In that exact moment, yes.”

“But in general?”

He considered it, frowning. “Hard to say. Probably not.”

“Oh, Mike… I knew I should have gone.”

“It had to be me. Anyway, it’s done now.”

The bag’s frost was melting, dripping onto Mike’s jeans.

“Hang on.” Sam got up to grab a dish towel and wrapped the corn in it for him. “Where did you hit him?”

“Jaw.”

“Tell me you didn’t break it.”

“Guy never seemed to shut up, so I’d say no.”

She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything nasty, did he?”

“Not exactly.”

“He didn’t call me a slut, or threaten to tell everyone what we’ve been doing?”

“No.”

“Then he didn’t deserve that. You’d never punch me in the face, and I’m more responsible for what happened last night than he was.”

Mike sighed, eyes shutting for a moment. “Until your wife develops feelings for another man, I won’t ask you to understand.”

“I guess this answers all those questions I had, about how far into reality your kink could actually cross before the threat stopped being sexy and just started being threatening.”

“My kink is about sex. Sex isn’t sacred to me, apparently. But feelings are.”

“He can touch my body but not my heart. Is that it?”

Mike nodded once.

Sam heaved a sad breath. “Wish I could separate the two as tidily as you can.”

He met her eyes at that. “He basically told me the same.”

“And is it really so hard to understand?”

He looked to the floor, thinking about it for a minute or more before glancing up. “For me? Maybe it is. I can’t imagine looking at another woman and feeling anything more than the smallest flicker of curiosity.”

She touched his knee. “You’re different, though, Mike. You’re so hardwired for loyalty – it’s right at the heart of your sexuality.”

He frowned, like he’d never thought about it like that.

“You’re almost pathologically a one-woman man,” she went on. “I’ve always found that attractive about you. But most people aren’t like that, I don’t think. Loving one person doesn’t stop us from finding others attractive, or even having crushes – harmless ones, usually. Ones we have no interest in acting on. But me and Bern… We acted first, and then the feelings followed. We fucked up, believe me, but we never meant to. He’s never asked me if I’d leave you to be with him. Not even close.”

A pause. “You swear that’s true?”

“Absolutely. Never once has he made me feel like he wanted that – to replace you. Why? Did he say something to you?”

“He did.”

Her heart stopped. “What, exactly?”

“That if things were different, he’d want to date you.”

She frowned. “And was that all of it? That he’d date me if you weren’t in the picture somehow?”

“You don’t find that inappropriate?”

She shook her head. “No. Not at all. My feelings would be a little hurt if he didn’t think that, frankly. Maybe I never spelled it out, before we started all this, but I want for the man we mess around with to like and respect me. I mean, don’t you?”

Mike set the corn aside and scrubbed at his face. Through his fingers he said, “I don’t even fucking know anymore.”

She rubbed his thigh for a moment, then stood and grabbed her purse from the easy chair.

He looked up. “Where are you off to?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I need to be doing stuff. I’ll pick up some groceries or something. I’m not going to see him,” she added, meeting his eyes over her shoulder.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I’ll be back. Hour or less.” She couldn’t quite make out what she was feeling, and staying so close to Mike’s jumble of emotions wasn’t helping. They both needed space, and a little time to process.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Drive safe.”

Sam shut the door quietly behind her and headed for her car. She didn’t start it, just sat there holding the wheel and feeling her wedding band rubbing against its seam. She’d gone three years barely aware of that ring, it had become such a part of her body. As invisible as her knuckle or fingernail. Then last year, it had become something so much more loaded when she began removing it for their games. And a couple of months before, when she’d first seen Bern Davies’s gaze catch on it. And last night, when she’d felt it click against his empty wineglass after she told him to leave. She almost wanted a new one now. This one had seen too much. Seen the rise and now the fall of their sex life 2.0 – a glorious, thrilling ascent; a stumble, a fall, a punch.

Could be way worse. This could have wrecked her and Mike, and it didn’t feel as though it would. Her regrets wouldn’t fade quickly, but she wouldn’t have the blood of their ruined marriage on her hands.

Still, this wasn’t how it was supposed to end – their experiment with Mike’s sexuality. They’d turned that contentious, thorny kink of his from something that upset him into something that took sex to a completely new reality. They’d let the beast free, and it hadn’t ripped them to shreds. Instead Sam had poisoned the poor creature, and she didn’t know if that thing that had fueled Mike’s body like nothing else would ever recover.

He wanted me to cheat on him. In a way. With her body, in their games – in their imaginations. Then with her body, for real.

She’d always known the experiment would end, just not the way it had. In all her planning, she’d never thought to worry about this. Call yourself an actuary, do you? Hell of a job she’d done gaming the dangers, spending all her time getting spun up about privacy and discretion, about blood tests and leaked sex tapes.

Then again, her red flags always waved from amid the fields of cold, hard figures. She’d been out of her depth, up to her neck in a system whose dynamics she’d known nothing about, and with her marriage at stake. No numbers to go by, only gut feelings. Intuition. Good intentions.

And when have intentions ever guaranteed a given outcome?

Human error was always on her radar… yet falling in love had never entered the equation. If that’s what this had been.

She looked to the house, and saw Mike’s face framed in one of the small windows that flanked the front door. Her shoulders dropped… then squared as she realized what she needed to be doing.

Mike got his chance to end this thing that I started. And by all accounts, he’d fucked it up. His trust was a lot to demand after last night, but she swung the car door open and headed for the house. Mike let her in and she faced him in the entryway.

“I’m going to say good-bye to him.” Even just saying those words aloud, something grated inside her. Saying good-bye to him… it felt wrong. As wrong as her actions of the previous night.

Mike’s own reaction was instantaneous – a wince of surprise and disgust. “I don’t want you to.”

“I appreciate that. But this is complicated for me. I don’t think you know what it’s like to let someone into your life in such an intimate way, then to suddenly not be able to say good-bye. To end it for yourself. I won’t touch him – not in any way. But I’ll say good-bye to him, face-to-face. For maybe three hours now, he’s been somebody you wanted to punch – and now you have. But for the past couple of months he’s been as much a part of realizing your fantasies as I have. I’m going to tell him thank you for that, and apologize that it’s all had to end the way it has. And then I’ll never see him again.”

“I think it’s simpler, just letting it be done with —”

“I wasn’t asking for your opinion, or your permission.”

His expression hardened, then surrender smoothed his brow. “Fine. If that’s what you need.”

“It is. I’ll be back in an hour and a half. If he’s even home.”

Mike nodded, and she turned back around and walked out the door.

She found Bern’s address in her e-mail. The drive took less than twenty-five minutes in actuality, yet it also took three days, thanks to her impatience, and three seconds, according to her nerves. In a blink, in an ice age, she was taking her cue from the other vehicles on Newett Street and parking her car half on the sidewalk.

She eyed Bern’s truck, and his house. So many intimate things she’d come to know about the man, yet she’d never seen his home. Her heart beat hard and her legs felt like water as she walked up the little concrete path to the front porch. Her steps creaked the boards and a dog’s distant bark answered her.

“Molly,” she muttered, remembering Bern’s smile in that video he’d sent her, seeming like it was a million years ago. She pushed the bell.

His tall shape appeared through the door’s pebbled glass. Dog nails clicked on the other side and she heard that deep voice say, “Down.”

He cracked the door, his surprise evident in a heartbeat. “Sam.” He let the door swing in, stooping to take hold of the Lab’s collar.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

“Look up a sec,” she told him.

He did, and she studied his jaw. It looked swollen and red, and it would no doubt look ten times worse in the morning. “How does it feel?”

“Like an angry cop punched me in the mouth.”

“I’m sorry. He didn’t come over here expecting that to happen.”

“Did you want to come in?”

She nodded.

Bern stepped back and Sam shut the door behind her. He let his dog go and Sam gave her ears a scratch.

Bern pointed to a bed in the corner. “Go lie down, Molly.” She obeyed reluctantly. Bern crossed his arms over his chest. “He know you’re here?”

“Yeah.”

“And why are you here?” It wasn’t anger putting that edge in his voice, Sam realized, but uncertainty. A lot was riding on her answer, and that scared her.

“To apologize for how everything seems to have ended. And to say good-bye properly. If that’s okay.”

His shoulders drooped.

You wanted to hear that I’ve come running to you, didn’t you? And she’d be lying if she denied that her body wanted to cling to his just now. But in the bright and sober light of day, the temptation was powerless.

“Can we sit?” she asked.

Bern nodded to his couch and they sat with most of a cushion between them.

“I’m sorry about your jaw.”

“I may have earned it, just a little.”

“Well, it should never have happened. And it wouldn’t have if I’d had a decent set of boundaries last night and not let you stay the way I did.”

“We didn’t know anything would happen.”

Sam bit her lip, letting herself entertain a scary question. “Didn’t we?”

Bern’s eyebrows rose a fraction.

“I can’t speak for you, but I can admit I fucked this up. You should have been a close-enough man. I should have liked you… been attracted to you, not infatuated with you.”

“You should have settled for someone you weren’t that into?” he asked.

“In the wake of what’s happened, and feeling all this guilt, and regret? Maybe.”

Bern laughed, sounding incredulous. “You should have stuck with some guy you could go through the motions with, so your husband could get his mind blown?”

“I don’t know. But probably.”

Another shocked laugh and he shook his head. “I think you deserve way better.”

And in her heart, she knew he was right. The way she’d let things get away from her last night, that had been wrong. But feeling for this man, given everything she’d done with him, for Mike’s pleasure… Bern was right. What felt wrong, truly wrong, was the way it was all ending now. And all because she’d fucked up, and lost track of priority number one, Mike’s primacy.

She sighed, tired. “He never asked me for this, you know.”

Bern frowned. “No?”

“No. I offered. I offered to role-play it with him, and I offered to make it happen for real. It was always meant as a gift, from me to him.”

“One fuck of a generous gift.”

She shrugged. “I’m not kinky like him.” Or she hadn’t been. Lately, she wasn’t so sure. “I had a perfectly satisfying sex life from the moment he and I met, but he always had this secret thing he was yearning for – this thing he never asked to be hardwired to want. This thing he never got to experience outside his own head. I mean, his fantasies scared the crap out of me when he first explained them.”

“Understandably.”

“But like I said, he didn’t choose those things. After I sat with them a long time I thought, if it took… I dunno, getting slapped in the face, say, for me to have really, truly satisfying sex, would he go there for me? And at first, no, he wouldn’t have. He’d have been horrified, like I was when I found out he liked to imagine I was cheating on him. But if getting slapped could light me up the way the cuckolding thing lights him up? We’d have found a way to go there, if that’s what it took to blow my mind. And I’d have felt like I was suddenly being served a feast, after always settling for scraps. Does that make sense?”

“You’re talking to a man with a kink of his own. So yes.”

“There you go. So when I quit being afraid of the things that excited him, I was ready to see what they might do to him. And it was fucking amazing, finding out. I even found a few little kinky seeds of my own hiding in there, the deeper we’ve dug into it. So this was never about me getting pushed, or submitting. He never pressured me, or guilted me, or even asked for it. He never made it feel like anything other than my gift to give him.”

“You promise?”

She nodded. “It’s been my hands on the steering wheel, from the moment we pulled away from the curb.”

Bern stared at her long and hard, blue eyes narrowed.

“I can’t decide if you look angry or curious,” Sam said when the silence grew too heavy to bear.

“What makes it work, the two of you together? What does he give you that was enough to make you think, I’m gonna marry this guy?”

“That’s so hard to say… Lots of things, really. He makes me feel secure and attractive, and he sees the things in me that I most want people to see. That I’m smart and fun. I can relax around him. And I dated a lot of guys I didn’t feel that with before I met him. We just fit.”

“Sexually, too.”

She nodded. “He always fit for me that way. And since he came clean about his needs, I’ve been able to fit for him. With a little effort, and some nerve.”

Bern nodded. He looked sad, she thought.

“Had you wanted to hear something else? That I had doubts about me and Mike?”

His smile was faint and unsteady. “Am I that transparent?”

Sam didn’t think she’d ever felt so simultaneously flattered and uncomfortable.

“I want you,” he said softly. “You have to know that. And yeah, for more than just the sex – not just because you realized my fantasies.”

“Mike would say the same.”

Bern’s jaw was clenched, and she wondered how badly that must hurt. As much as whatever he was feeling had to hurt?

“I won’t leave him. But exploring with you was incredible. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.” Maybe at times when I shouldn’t. And hopefully, someday, Mike will want that. For me to remember you and fantasize about you. Just not any time soon.

“So it’s all over?”

She nodded. It has to be, doesn’t it?

“You guys gonna look for another man to fit the bill?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine it just now.” Though saying good-bye, burying this bond while it was still so vibrant, and vital… It was far harder to imagine that this was how things really had to be.

Another sad smile. “You telling me I was special?”

“Yeah, you were special, Bern. And it’s looking like this could only have worked if you and I hadn’t been quite so good together.”

“That’s some cruel twist, huh?”

“Yeah. It really is.”

Though as Sam walked to her car a minute later, she couldn’t help but wonder, Does it really need to be? It felt like a crime, when she and Mike had discovered more chemistry with that man than she’d ever bothered hoping they might. And just as they’d reached a point where all three were getting their wants fulfilled – Mike’s curious appetites, Bern’s desire to show off, and Sam’s newfound craving for two men at once – now it had to end? Shouldn’t right now be the point at which it all took off?

Except we fucked it all up last night.

But had they really? Permanently? And fucked it up how, precisely?

By being human beings. With feelings, and impulses, and moments of weakness.

So many times, for the sake of her role, she’d imagined cheating on her husband. She’d always been cruel in those fantasies, selfish, shameless. But now it had actually happened, in a way, and yes, she had been selfish, but not cruel. Vulnerable and mixed up. And while she didn’t feel ashamed, per se, regret hounded her. Her actual infidelity hadn’t fit Mike’s script. It had been too quiet, too emotional, too real. Too human.

What had Bern said to her that had set these gears turning? Something about how the alternative to their present predicament was to do all those things with a man she was indifferent toward. The way Mike looked at it, that was the only safe option, if they wanted to try this again someday. The thought turned her stomach.

And beneath the uncertainty lay sadness. Grief, to imagine losing all those vibrant new facets of her sexual self. To imagine she’d never again feel what she had, with her body worshipped by both of theirs.

I’ve given everything I have, accommodating Mike’s needs. Last night I needed to feel those things with Bern. Not for keeps, but for a little while. With a man she’d performed a hundred filthy acts with, and yet true romantic attachment was too taboo to ever move on from?

Why did that smell so distinctly of bullshit?

Sam sat holding the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at nothing, as an unexpected emotion took shape in her chest, growing and solidifying with every breath.

Anger, or something like it.

And as she drove home, she assembled those feelings into thoughts, into an argument.

These sexual adventures had been worth gambling their marriage on, after all. Surely preserving them was worth fighting for.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Mike paced the front landing for fifteen minutes or more, mind and heart racing, pulse pumping, body tight. When the sound of his own footsteps began to grate, he went to the living room to stare blindly at ESPN. He’d been pissed when Sam had left, but it mellowed quickly, leaving him feeling scared and stupid, ashamed of how he’d lost control. He squeezed his aching fist and let the pain humble him and cool his temper.

Beneath the jealousy and the anger lay sadness. They’d had it so good, these past few months. They’d ridden his kink further into the wilds than he’d ever expected, and now that was over. Thanks to Bern losing track of his place… and thanks to Mike as well. It was all thanks to him, in the end. He’d drawn them all together, created this whole new entity among the three of them, and now he’d stomped on the thing the second it slipped off its leash. The second that human nature hijacked the script, and —

He sat up straight at the sound of the lock flipping. “Sam?”

“It’s me.”

He stood, his legs feeling boneless, and met her in the hall.

“Let’s sit down,” she said. “I want to talk.”

“Okay.” Jesus, that didn’t sound good. She had her business face on, and Mike had to wonder, how had his actions sounded, as retold by Bern? Psycho, no doubt. And had they been? He’d felt nothing but blind, searing righteousness in the moment.

Mike switched off the TV. Sam sat cross-legged on one end of the couch, and he did the same – close enough to take her hands in his and rub her knuckles. “What happened?”

“Very little. I told him I was sorry it had to end like this. He said the same. I thanked him for everything he’d been for us, and we said good-bye.”

“Okay. That sounds civil.”

She sighed, shaking her head, then met his eyes squarely. “Mike, it doesn’t have to end like this.”

“He has feelings for you. You… you have feelings for him. I know it’s hypocritical – I know it’s fucking ironic, given my fantasies, but this can’t work. It could only ever have worked for as long as it stayed purely sexual.”

“Do you think we’re ever going to find someone as right as he was, ever again?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure we should ever even try, given how it’s gone.”

“You can’t really mean that. Not after all the fun we’ve had these past couple of months.”

“I know it sucks, but it’s a catch-twenty-two. You need to feel something for a guy if you’re going to feel secure enough to sleep with him. I won’t feel secure if I’m worried you might have feelings for him, for real.”

Another sigh, and she gazed down at their hands. “I just feel like…” She looked up. “I just kind of think that’s bullshit, Mike.”

He blinked, confused.

“It’s bullshit, and it’s unrealistic, and it’s not fair. I drove around after I left his place, and I thought a lot about this. Before last night, all three of us were living our fantasies. You were getting cuckolded. Bern was getting watched and recorded.”

Mike rankled at the man’s mere name, whispered by Samira only last night, no doubt, too quiet for the computer to catch.

“I was getting to be with two men,” she went on, “something I never realized would light me up the way it has. And he and I aren’t teenagers, incapable of keeping our feelings in perspective. Now that it’s all out on the table, I don’t understand why it has to end. I told you already, I’m not going to leave you for him. If you can trust that, and he can accept it, why does this have to stop?”

“Be —”

“You’ve had no trouble dealing with me sharing my body with another man. Can’t you see your way to sharing just a tiny piece of my heart? Just one little sliver?”

Mike didn’t reply, way too muddled to make sense of his feelings. It all sounded so idealistic, so naive, after what had just happened.

She squeezed his hand. “I know I hurt you. We both hurt you, last night, but we never meant to. Maybe he does have feelings for me, but he didn’t plan this. I believe that. I know it.” She pressed a fist to her heart. “And the entire situation is so complex and intense, it feels like the only thing we can really control is our intentions.”

“You have no idea how much that scares me.”

“If he can accept that he and I can only be together within the bounds of the three-ways, why can’t this go on?”

Mike didn’t answer, paralyzed, too afraid to entertain logic.

“Why does the fact that I have feelings for him have to equal failure, Mike? Why does that have to be a bad thing? It’s been so much hotter for me since those feelings developed, so much deeper. I went into this willing to do those things as a gift to you, but now I’ve found things in it that I want for myself, too. Because I value him, and what he’s brought into our sex life, and because I feel valued in return.”

Of course, when she put it like that, he felt like an ass.

“My body and my heart are a package deal,” she said softly. “I don’t want a man touching just one or the other. And I think if we’d tried those things with some guy I felt apathetic toward, we’d have found that out the hard way, and maybe turned me off the idea permanently. But instead we kind of hit the jackpot, Mike. Can you see that? Just a little?”

He kept his gaze on their hands, no words coming, just echoing uncertainty. Everything she said made perfect sense, but logic wasn’t any comfort to his mangled ego.

“We could change the rules,” Sam said at length. “There’s no reason this needs to end, not for good. We can take a break, get some perspective, figure out what it might take so everyone’s getting their needs met and everything feels balanced again, but then… Jesus, Mike. It seems wrong to throw this all away, after everything we’ve done, the three of us. I know how hot it’s gotten you since it started. And it’s done the same for me, and for him. What are the chances we’d meet someone out of the gate that we clicked with the way we did with him?”

“I know that, but —”

“All three of us have found a place in this arrangement – something about it that sets us on fire. And I’ve never known sex could do this to me.”

The sting must have shown on his face; she hurried on. “Not just because of him – because of both of you, or just the taboo of it. I didn’t know I could feel that way, like sex has gone from two dimensions to three. It’s not something either of you could do on your own. It’s not something he has that you don’t. And I can only be honest and say I don’t think I want to give that up forever.”

Fucking Pandora’s box, then, was it?

“Can I give it up for now to prove to you that you come first?” she asked. “Absolutely. Eagerly. But eventually, I think I’d want to get back there. I’ll want to feel that fire again someday, when we’re ready. Just like you should fight to keep what lights you on fire in your life. We can fix this, Mike. I’m sure of it.”

He let her hands go to rub his face. “All I’m sure of is that I’m scared to fucking death.”

“I’m just not willing to believe that we’ve wrecked this – not with one night of too-emotional sex, and not with one punch.”

“He cares about you. More than I’m comfortable with.”

“And he’s also a thirty-six-year-old man. He can control his expectations and his emotions, if the payoff is worth it to him – if what the three of us can be for each other is worth it to him, and I believe it is. We need a little space and some time off, and some firm rules, if we all decide this is worth working on.” She rubbed his forearm. “And, Mike, I really think it is.”

He stared at her, long and hard, and took a deep breath. “I don’t know yet. I just don’t. Can you really promise that you won’t… fall in love with this guy?”

She frowned, said nothing for a long breath, then broke his heart. “No, I can’t promise that.”

He buried his face in his hands, feeling he had his answer, right there. “I know it makes me a big fucking coward, and a hypocrite, yeah, but I can’t deal with that. Pretending you want him more than me – even imagining maybe you do, for real… That, I can handle. That gets me hot – I’ll admit it. But love…? I can’t risk that much. I can’t share that much, Samira.”

She spoke calmly, plainly. “I can’t promise I won’t fall in love with him. But I can promise he’ll never take your place. I’m never going to leave you for him. We’ve built a life together. We’ve been testing and strengthening what we’ve got for years. Whatever Bern and I are, it’s new. In some alternate world, it might last a month or forever – we’ll never know, though, because this is reality. You and me. We’re the constant in all this. I think maybe I trust that more than you do.”

“After watching that tape… Yeah, you probably do.”

She winced, and he knew it had been a low blow.

“I can’t ask this of you now,” she said. “But in time… unless it’ll tear you apart, in time I want to try it again. I want to crawl up inside your kink and take it as deep as it goes – with him. Let me be with a man I feel for. Not more than you. Different from how I feel for you. Trust that it’ll always come back to you and me. Let’s try, and I’ll prove to you it’ll always come back to you and me.”

He turned that around in his mind, feeling blindsided by it all. Shocked by her insistence, when this morning she’d been so mired in remorse. Remorse, or fear? Fear that she’d hurt him – he knew that to be true – but perhaps also fear of losing what they’d found with Bern.

“You really care about this,” he said.

She nodded. “I do. I think I want it as badly as you want the cuckolding.”

Something she’d said earlier nagged at him…

“I never fought for my kink,” he said. “Not like this.” What he had fought for, though, was to keep Sam, back when his jealousy and dishonesty had nearly driven her away. He was struck now by the tone of her voice, its strains of both neediness and insistence. So like how he’d sounded himself, begging for a second chance, a chance to explain. A chance to prove he could control his emotions and articulate his wants.

We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

“There’s so much in this for you, for both of us,” she said. “Where we are now, it grew out of your desires. I found my own along the way. Just tell me you’ll think about it, and we can all maybe still have exactly what we want. Just with rules, so we don’t end up back here again.”

He breathed slowly, feeling lost and scared and exhausted and utterly uncertain. What if back when he’d fucked up, acted like an ass, and almost wrecked their relationship… What if she’d denied him a chance to fix things? To prove himself rational, just as she was pleading for a chance to prove herself trustworthy. What if she’d refused and simply ended it all, shot what they had between the eyes and walked away? He’d be years into missing her, years into wondering what might have happened, if he’d had a chance to fight to keep them together. Years into treading water, trying not to drown in all that regret.

A long breath hissed through her nose. “Say you’ll think about it, Mike. Please.”

He held her gaze and took her hands. “I’ll think about it.”