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Jack nodded, his expression calm, his dark eyes free of judgment. “Go on.”
“I called her disposable, Jack, replaceable. I told her she was nothing but a fuck toy.” He paused to scrub his hands over his face. “I’ve never said anything like that to her before, ever. No matter how rough the scene, no matter what kind of infraction she’d committed. It’s just not me, you know? It’s just not us. But last night, the words just came out. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“Sounds like you hit a landmine.”
“What?”
“A landmine,” Jack repeated calmly. “You had an emotional reaction to those words. Any idea why?”
“I don’t know.” James let his head fall back against the chair. “Maybe because my dad left my mom?”
“Did he throw her out?”
“Changed the locks one day when she was at the grocery store, a week after I started college.”
“Did he replace her?”
“Yeah.” James closed his eyes against the uncomfortable memory. “He married his girlfriend—the one he’d been cheating on her with—the day after the divorce was final.”
“There you go.”
He picked up his head to frown at his friend. “It can’t be that simple, can it?”
“Why not?” Jack tapped his glass with one finger, then pointed it at James. “You don’t want to treat your wife the way you saw your father treat your mother. Seems simple enough to me.”
James stared. “Shit.”
Jack nodded. “Yep.”
“Shit,” James said again. “I was so focused on not crossing any of her boundaries, I forgot all about mine.”
“It happens.”
“It happens?” James repeated. “That’s it?”
“You want more?” Jack rotated his wrist so the scotch in his glass swirled, glowing amber in the light. “Okay, let’s go through it. Was that the kind of scene the two of you had agreed to do?”
“Yes.”
“Did she safeword, or react badly in any way you could discern when you said it?”
“No, but—”
Jack held up a hand. “Did you mean it?”
James dragged a hand through his hair. “No, I didn’t mean it. But, Jack, I told her she wasdisposable.I all but threatened to throw her out into the snow.”
“Because you got caught up in the moment, not because you actually ever intended to do it.” He gestured with his glass. “You’ve been married for what, ten years?”
“Twelve. Married twelve, together for fourteen.”
“Would you say Amanda knows you well?”
“Better than anyone.”
Jack nodded. “I’d bet a case of this scotch that she knows you didn’t mean it.”
James stared into his drink, his gut still in knots, then looked up when Jack sighed.
