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I can hear the moment he parts his lips, and my eyes instinctively close.
“Tell me why you’re early, Babygirl,” he whispers and the gentle tickle of his warm breath travels down my shoulder, both front and back. Eliciting a warning down my spine yet the goosebumps cause my nipples to perk and my core to heat as it travels down my front.
His hand moves to the front of my hip, curving against it.
“I didn’t like the waiting,” I answer him.
“No dress today?” he asks a little louder this time, less inviting, with less desire and more intrigue.
Instead of responding verbally, I shake my head. The crook of my neck must be more sensitive with his stubble rubbing against it as his thumb slips along the waistband of my favorite pair of blue jeans. I know it’s more sensitive because even the shake of my head brings a spark of knowing as the strands of my hair brush along my heated skin.
I have to step out of his hold just to breathe. I take one step in my tan leather booties and look down at myself. Dark skinny jeans and a simple oversized cream cardigan covering a blush tank top. It’s a more casual look than yesterday’s. “I had a date before you,” I comment, subconsciously teasing him.
I can see an alternate life in this instant. One where I’d never left him, one where we’re still together and the vision gives me shivers. In my mind, I watch as I place my purse down on the coffee table, taunting him about my coffee date until I confessed it was only Bethany. And he smiles all the while, knowing I was toying with him, knowing he had me all to himself. I can practically hear the laugh I make when he jumps on the sofa in front of us I’d so casually laid on, giggling as he slips between my legs and nips my neck for teasing him.
Another life, a different one.
But I can feel it.
“I know you were with Bethany.” Seth’s response is all business and the moment he steps around me, not touching me, his absence gives me a different kind of coldness.
The one that lingers with this reality.
“You’re tracking me?” I question him although it falls flat. Of course he is. He doesn’t even bother to answer. “Spies?”
Again, I get no answer. He simply walks to the kitchen, a small one at that for the large, open-concept main floor.
I listen as he pours the drinks, noting how there’s no art on the wall except a single piece. It’s a black-and-white modern artwork, very sexual with the silhouette of a woman’s figure straddling over a chair. It’s so close up, and the contrast muted, that at first glance, it’s only lines. Abstract art with no meaning. But then I can see what it is clearly, because I remember the day he took that photo of me.
My breath leaves me and I lose my composure the second I recognize it.
“I thought about getting rid of it.” Seth’s confession comes from the kitchen and rips me away from the memory I long to go back to.
His dark blue eyes pierce through mine, holding me captive as he lifts two glasses off the counter. “Sit,” he commands and caught in his trance, I move. I even place my purse right where I had in the fucked-up reality my head had conjured a moment ago. Instead of tossing it playfully, I set it down methodically and sit back against the gray sofa, gripping the edge of it and trying to hold on to my sanity.
“I bought it just before you left. Before that night. It hadn’t come in yet, but I got it for you.” My nails dig into the sofa, and suddenly the fire raging across from me seems too much. The heat is too overwhelming.
“I don’t like you bringing that day up,” I’m quick to tell him, feeling the anxiousness roll inside of me.
It’s quiet for a long moment. With my eyes closed all I can hear is the fire, followed by the sound of our glasses being set on the slick all-black coffee table and then of Seth drinking from his.
“It stayed covered for… it had to have been three or four years. I’d forgotten about it until I unwrapped it along with everything else that was shipped here.”
The sofa dips with his weight as Seth sits on the opposite end of the sofa.
“It stayed on the floor, leaning against the wall with its back showing, for a long time.”
I finally peek up at him through my thick lashes and dare to question, “Why? Why not get rid of it?”
“It was a reminder of what I lost. Those memories can give a man a lot of power. And motivation.”
I only nod my head before reaching for the glass. It’s cold and the beads of condensation are welcome when I grip it.
