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And I swear I can actually feel his hug, feel his arms coming around me, feel the hard muscles of his chest and the warmth of his body sinking in through my clothes. Smell the spice of his scent and?—
He starts moving.
My pulse leaps.
Hope blooms…
And is extinguished as he rounds the bed, putting it between us, his attention completely on our sick daughter.
As it should be, you fucking egomaniac.
Guilt pours into the wound in my heart, burning like it’s salt water, but I grind my teeth, push it down, and focus on what I should.
What I need to.
Roxie.
“They gave her something to sleep,” I say. “She was in a lot of pain and they’re waiting for CT to come down and take her.”
His eyes flick to mine and he nods, smooths back her hair. “Do they know how long that will be?”
I shake my head. “They want to get her in as quickly as possible, but who knows how long that’ll take.”
Another nod, but his focus is Roxie. “She still puking?”
“No.” I clear my throat. “They gave her something for that too.”
“Good,” he murmurs.
And then, because there’s nothing else to do besides wait, I sit down in the chair I pulled up next to the bed, and…I wait.
Wait as my head slumps forward and my eyelids grow heavy from the lack of sleep.
Wait as the only sounds that fill the room are Roxie’s even breathing, the noise from the hall, from other patients—a baby crying, a parent soothing, nurses and doctors talking.
But not Stefan and me.
Nope.
No fucking way.
We’re just silently ignoring each other for absolutely no reason—and really, after more than a decade, you would think that we’d have something to say to each other.
Alas…not so much.
What do I say to an ex-husband who dislikes me enough to divorce me but then beats up my date (rightfully—and as much as it pains me to admit—thankfully so)? Oh, yeah, and then he finger fucks me until I come so hard I can barely move before he dumps me on my bed then leaves.
And I spend the night wondering and thinking and not sleeping and…
Hoping.
Before I go over early in the morning, that hope still growing, blooming into something fragile and beautiful and?—
Easily destroyed.
Like, say, when I stumble upon my husband with a woman who’s beautiful and nice and younger than me, a woman who’s more of a woman than I’ll ever be, a woman who?—
Left me with absolutely no question about where I stand.
