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His smile was easy.
He’d slept well. He felt good.
Amber tried to ignore the resentment that washed over her, the crowded feeling that whispered, I was supposed to get three days off from that phone.
Because now that she’d heard it, she knew she’d hear it again. Knew she’d catch him sneaking glances at it all day, and if she so much as raised an eyebrow?
It could be work. It could be the kids. Patrick.
It could be important.
She didn’t care.
She tried to breathe away the unpleasantness. To feel the way his eyes looked—focused on her. Steady. Happy. But the phone had flung her into a headspace that she’d been desperate to escape, and now she couldn’t help but remember what her life felt like. She couldn’t help but recall that she was a mother, a wife, a fixer of problems and packer of lunches, a chauffeur and tear-wiper, a floor cleaner and toilet-paper purchaser.
She was all those things, and Tony was Tony, and nothing would change because they’d had good sex.
Great sex.
Still.
“Morning, sleepyhead.” He touched her bare shoulder with one fingertip, drawing a line over it and down to her collarbone. Pausing at the dip of her neck.
“Morning.” She cleared her throat. He lifted his feet off the floor and twisted around so that he was lying on his back, hands tucked behind his head. Gazing at her.
The towel rode low on his hips, and she told herself to be tempted. To unknot it.
The breeze caressed her bare shoulders. Tony was warm and damp beside her, his gaze as heavy as a hand stroking down her spine. Focused on her. On them.
She told herself to kiss him and not to think about what came after.
The phone rang.
They tensed together, Tony rising halfway up, bracing his elbows beneath him.
Another ring, and he looked at her, the question in his eyes. Should I?
He wanted her permission, a nod that said Go ahead. Put me second. Put me third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. I understand why you do it. I don’t blame you or hate you for it.
It’s just the life we’ve made between us.
Not your fault. Not mine.
The combination of both of us. Fixed. Inevitable.
Amber got up and walked into the steamy bathroom and shut the door.
She turned on the water as hot as it would go and got underneath the spray and tried not to think about it, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t, because she lost him every time he picked up the phone.
For years now, she hadn’t really had him to lose, but last night had been diff
erent. This morning had been different.
She’d had him. She’d lost him.
She felt it. It hurt.
Amber applied shampoo to her hair and rinsed it off. Rubbed in conditioner and rinsed it out. She didn’t know how much to measure out. Her hair felt strange, soft and slippery like an underwater plant. Like washing a baby’s hair. Insubstantial.
