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“It was… beyond any of the best sex I’ve ever had,” I said finally, Alex’s needy expression making me not want to leave him hanging. “I mean, we’d had sex before, but that was—”
“In high school, and therefore the erotic equivalent of two people flopping around like wet fish?” he interjected. “Trust me, we don’t need to go there. So… I assume he’s improved? He must have surprised you, you’re walking around like you’re on cloud nine and climbing higher and higher than that.”
I flushed but gave him a self-satisfied smirk. Actually, Walker and I had had some damn good sex in high school—not a floppy fish to be found, thank you very much. But still…
“Oh, he’s definitely learned some new moves since then.”
Alex wolf whistled. “Well, I’m proud of you, Mackers! It’s about time you got laid, it’s been ages.” He tilted his head. “So how does that affect your real but fake marriage?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t. We’re just… friends with benefits. We’re going through with everything as planned. The marriage, the divorce, all of it. Nothing has changed.”
“Except for the apparently mind-blowing sex.”
I threw a balled up napkin at him. “Except for the mind-blowing sex. We’re taking it as it started out. We’re just… adding a little bit of flavor into the mix. That’s all. Besides…” I arched a brow. “A man and a woman living together in that close proximity? It was bound to happen anyway.”
Alex laughed. “Only because he’s straight.”
I wadded up my napkin and threw it at him.
“What? It’s the truth.” He smirked. “But you can keep him. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re going to.”
12
Walker
It was strange, the contrast between how my life was now and how it used to be. I used to think that I loved the high-octane environment that work cultivated. And I supposed to an extent, I did. But damn, was it wearing on me. Maybe it was because I had something so amazing waiting for me back home now. Before Mackenzie came back into my life, it was just work, work, work. That’s all I had to look forward to, so I never thought about anything different.
Now, work feels like more of a chore than it used to. That’s what I got for running a business almost single-handedly.
Coming home became the highlight of my day as opposed to my lowlight. I found myself stepping through the door every night with more enthusiasm than I could ever remember when I’d lived on my own.
It had been weeks, and I still marveled at the welcoming nature of the music that filtered through my house. It always came from Mackenzie’s back art room, and I never went in there. I still hadn’t been invited.
“Nothing in there is good enough,” she had told me the first time I’d tried to take a peek. “None of the pieces are ready. I’d rather not show them until I know that they’re at their best.”
I found the idea that any of her work might be subpar absurd. I’d come across a lot of so-called artists in my time; it was hard not to when you lived in New York City and your peers were millionaires and billionaires with connections everywhere across the city. But Mackenzie had always been the real deal—and so had her art.
She hadn’t heard me come in; she rarely ever did. Some kind of cutesy pop ballad filtered out from the art room, and Mackenzie’s voice with it. I laughed at the wobbliness of her voice. It had… character. The thing that surprised me as I approached the room was the fact that the door was partially ajar. Macks usually left it closed tight.
Maybe it made me a nosy asshole, but I couldn’t help myself.
I peeked.
Through the sliver of open door, I spied Mackenzie, surrounded by a rainbow of canvases. Grand, yard-by-yard paintings were displayed all around, intermingled with smaller ones. Mackenzie’s forte was fantasy, and it was elegantly displayed in hyper-realistic depictions of faeries and sirens, great elven battlescapes, and witchy scenes. The real and the mystic married together as I watched her carefully laying strokes of auburn, likely expertly mixed to the perfect custom shade on her pallet, in thin strands of hair on her current subject, a freckle-faced beauty of whimsical proportion, dressed in gossamer green robes.
“She’s beautiful,” I eventually spoke up. “Have you named her?”
Mackenzie jumped, looking over her shoulder at me. Her eyes widened, and a flush came to her cheeks. I chuckled as a small container of paint clattered to the floor, spattering paint all over the stretch of cloth that covered the space, keeping the marble clean.
“Shit, Walker, you scared me,” she breathed. She had her hand on her chest, holding her heartbeat inside it. Something stirred in me, something a lot like the passion that rose the first night we made love in this very house. I wondered for a moment if it was possible to continuously relive the intensity of loving someone, then I pushed the thought aside to step into the room.
“I see that. You made a mess,” I commented dryly.
“To be fair, it was your fault,” she countered.
I smirked. “True.”
I bent down, eyeing the small pool of paint on the floor. It would have—probably should have—irritated me. But for some reason, I couldn’t find it in myself to be annoyed. It was just a fucking floor.
