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A wave of sadness crashed over her, threatening to ruin the moment. She forced herself to smile and sat up, covering herself with the wrinkled bedsheet. “When will I see you again?”
His lips stretched into a lustful grin. “You want more?”
She’d lost all her dignity the day he’d touched her the first time. “Yes,” she replied, her voice trembling, choked with raw emotion. “You know I do.”
“Then you’ll see me again,” he said, walking toward the door while tucking in his shirt and tightening his belt.
She rushed after him, draped in the lilac sheet that smelled like him and his lovemaking. She stopped in the open door, unwilling to step outside looking like that. “Wait,” she called when he was almost at his car, “I—”
He turned around and rushed to her. Still hungry for her, he found her lips and kissed her breathless, tilting her head back in a fiery embrace that fused their bodies together. Then he let her go. “Bye, babe. Got to run.”
Moments later, long after his car had pulled away from her driveway, she closed the door and locked it. The silence in the empty house was bringing tears to her eyes, tears that weren’t supposed to come, tears she despised.
She pushed herself to make the bed and pick up after herself, then she got dressed again, this time in a pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt. She wasn’t going shopping anymore, not today.
Finding the sofa, she lay down, giving her trembling muscles a break. She was insane… this relationship wasn’t healthy. They weren’t dating; they weren’t even friends. She knew very little about him, and he probably knew even less about her. But the chemistry between them wasn’t anything Alexandria had encountered before. One touch, and she’d catch instant fire, going ablaze for another, needing him more than she’d thought possible.
What future did it all have?
None. No future whatsoever. One day, one of the many she spent wishing he’d come to visit, getting dressed for him, yearning for him, he’d just stop coming. She’d be left alone, barren, forgotten, unable to reach out and ask why he’d vanished because she already knew.
He belonged to another.
That made Alexandria loathe herself and her secret love affair just as much as she needed him to touch her again. To other men, she used to be the girlfriend, the fiancée, the wife… what was she now, to him?
One day would be the last time they’d made love, and she wouldn’t even know it, not for a while. Was that day today?
She whimpered, shuddering at the thought. Chasing the terror away, she stood and walked over to the kitchen, where she found a bottle of wine in the fridge. Struggling a little with the corkscrew, she managed to open it and poured herself a glass, filling it to the brim. Then she took it back to the sofa and started drinking it with small sips until the fear subsided and only the memory of his sensual whispers was left to haunt her.
The second glass was almost empty, abandoned on the small coffee table. She’d dozed off for a minute when Alana came home, the slamming of the front door waking Alexandria up. She tried to stand, but felt weak and resigned to lean back against the cushions.
“Whoa, Mom, it must be five o’clock somewhere, huh?” Alana quipped mercilessly, giving her mother a stern, disapproving look. “Well, don’t stop the party on account of me. I’m just here to change. I’m meeting Nick for a movie at six.”
An unfamiliar feeling left a bad taste in her mouth.
Envy.
Alexandria envied her own daughter for going to the movies with her boyfriend, for the normal life she was leading. For a moment, she envisioned herself putting on lingerie and a little black dress for her lover, anticipating the date and what followed after the movie, the butterflies in her stomach.
It wasn’t going to happen. Not for her. Not with him.
She closed her eyes, but the tears she tried to stop still fell. She topped off the wine in her glass with whatever remained in the bottle, then took the burgundy to her lips and let it soothe her aching heart.
SEVENTEEN
NAME
One of Elliot’s best-kept secrets was his contempt for social media. Keeping his opinions to himself unless someone actually asked him, the Texas-born detective strongly believed social media was solely responsible for the psychological damage suffered by youth everywhere.
The darn thing spat out narcissists faster than a well-oiled press, creating hordes of people busy patting themselves on the back, so spoiled salt couldn’t save them. Especially the young ones. The older ones, maybe up to his generation, had caught a little of the old-style education when kids still had to pull their weight and prove their worth before earning the right to open their mouths.
Social media had rewritten the way cops investigated crime. Despite his feelings toward the time-sucking, brain-eating, nuts-numbing platforms, he had to pore over thousands of inept postings, photos, and comments, to try to piece together what a victim or a witness might’ve said, seen, or done.
No one talked to anyone anymore. People didn’t call other people; they texted. They had followers they didn’t know and online friends they’d never met. In some cases, those so-called friends were stalkers, pedophiles, and murderers waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
In all fairness to said platforms, and although it didn’t make him appreciate them any bit more, social media brought a certain advantage. People bared their most intimate thoughts on there, without restraint or censorship, not realizing that everything they put on the internet was no longer private. Of course, the same people also lied on social media, posed as something they were not, and hunted for prey better than lions in a jungle. Some were even born for it, naturally gifted to hide in plain sight and deceive like chameleons.
Elliot accessed Jenna’s newsfeed and postings, gaining some insight into what the girl had been up to since April. Kay had been adamant about finding out what had happened to Jenna to cause the change in her behavior her parents had described. Not that his partner had to insist on doing that; it made tons of sense, like everything else she wanted to do.
