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NINE
EOGHAN
“I don’t feel guilty,” I told her as I watched her wiping her face with some concoction that made her skin gleam.
“Did I ask you if you did?” she countered stiffly, not looking at me, not even through the mirror’s reflection.
That didn’t stop me from studying her or from taking note of her lack of expression.
With a sigh, I stepped away, giving her some time to herself as I quickly changed into workout clothes.
There was only one good point about tonight’s farce, and that was that we hadn’t had to eat the food she’d ‘made.’
Once I was changed, I left the bedroom and I headed to the gym.
Switching on the TV, I watched the geopolitical situation unfolding in Asia and dove into the latest bad news from the stock market as I went on a ten-mile run.
By the time I’d finished, I’d half-expected her to have wandered into the gym.
We tended to discuss a lot of things in here. Those discussions usually morphed into my bending her over the closest piece of equipment and resolving things that way.
I went through the free weight flow I’d already completed this morning, then when that was done and there was still no sign of her, I returned to the bedroom and saw she wasn’t there.
Narrowing my eyes, I retreated to the hall and tested each spare bedroom to see if she’d moved into one of them.
That, of course, was when I heard the TV blaring on our home cinema.
Relieved she wasn’t hiding from me, I cleaned up and had a shower then joined her in there.
One thing about marriage I’d learned? Never leave shit to fester overnight.
Like gangrene, it only spread and made everything worse.
Walking into the theater room, I found her with her legs tucked under her, a big blanket around her shoulders, a tub of popcorn on her lap, and one of her favorite movies on the screen.
The sight ofLove Actuallyhad me rolling my eyes.
I’d seen this over a dozen times, and I knew why it was on—because she wanted to punish me.
With a grunt, I slouched over to the fridge that stocked all manner of drinks and snacks, pulled out two beers—one to gulp down, the other to savor—then retreated to her armchair.
Without my having to say a word, she’d gotten up, her attention on the screen, and the second I’d taken a seat, she dropped onto my lap.
I tugged another blanket over us both, placed my hand on top of her feet which were always cold, then snagged one of the bottles of beer and took a very long sip.
She’d clearly been waiting on me because we were pretty much at the beginning still.
My eidetic memory was a torment in this situation as I could recount the entirety of the script back to front without too much effort, and if I dared to fall asleep, I knew she’d wake me up each and every time.
My woman, in her own way, was cruel as hell.
When we got to the part where Alan Rickman gave Emma Thompson the Joni Mitchell CD, I was prepared for her tears.
She buried her face in my neck and sniffled through ‘Both Sides Now.’
“I’d have your balls if you cheated on me with your PA,” she sobbed against my neck.
“Would you pickle them?”
