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I didn’t say anything more. I simply followed him up the stairwell, down the hall, and straight into Room 553.
She wasn’t the first woman my husband took things too far with. I was thinking about the first as he closed the door. “So,” he said, donning his most appealing Cheshire cat grin. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
My eyes scanned the room. This was a party, all right. His mistress sat cross-legged on the bed.
I swallowed hard. Not because I was nervous—I was too familiar with this game. The big reveal. His biggest yet. “You remember Nina?”
My eyes shifted from my husband to her. Her eyes remained on him. She wasn’t even gutsy enough to look me in the eye.
“Nina and I have been seeing each other,” he exclaimed. “And we thought that you should know.” He said it like he didn’t know that I already knew, because that is the thing about my husband, he is an expert liar.
“I’m sorry,” Nina lamented. “We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”
“But someone always gets hurt, though, don’t they?” I remarked, directing my attention to my husband.
He smiled in a sad kind of way. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Laurel…”
“What’s that?”
“Why you had to go and fuck Max Hastings.”
“You know how it is,” I said. “An eye for an eye.”
His mistress looked confused. She laughed it off at first, a nervous kind of laugh, the kind that gave away the fact that the joke was on her. “Max? You’re fucking Max?”
“In that very bed,” I told her with a nod. “All over this room, really.”
Her gaze sharply fell to the floor. She recovered quickly, kind of shrugging like she didn’t care, although it was very obvious that she did. No one likes being betrayed, especially if they’re quite good at it themselves.
But it was more than that. Nina was not a stupid woman. If she had been, she would not have been able to weasel her way into my life and so thoroughly into my business. The wheels had begun turning in her mind. She was wondering, given that I was fucking her husband, if that was the sole reason mine was fucking her.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it wasn’t the point.
“Well, darling,” James said. “Now that everything is good and properly out in the open, what do you suppose we do now?”
I looked to Nina and then back at James. “Now, you do what you do.”
Why James initially lied to me about Nina Hastings I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that if I wanted to protect everything I held dear, there was only one thing I could do. Strike preemptively.
“Did you bring the rest?” he asked, sliding into his favorite pair of gloves. He wore them a lot this past winter, and I tried to tell him not to get too attached. Not everything is built to last. It was a sentiment that only two people long married, two people who understood the other’s strengths and weaknesses, maybe better than their own, could offer. He smiled and said he was just breaking them in.
I couldn’t see it at the time. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. I’m good at lying, best when it comes to lying to myself. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. He wasn’t trying to prove a point. He was trying to raise the stakes. “I’ll get you a new pair for Christmas,” I’d said, using the power of suggestion.
He told me there was no need; winter wouldn’t last forever. That’s my husband, always speaking in code.
It’s also how I knew this one was a problem. She wasn’t going to go away as easy as the rest.
“Laurel—the stuff,” he demands. “Did you bring it?”
Things move in slow motion when you get to the end, so it takes me several beats before I answer him. “Of course I did.”
He was on her before I finished my sentence. That fire in his eyes, the hunger I’ve so rarely seen over the last few months, was lit and burning bright. Even though I could have done without the drama, just to see its return is surely worth it. “What about the rest of it?” he asked, landing a blow to her temple. “Tell me you didn’t forget.”
“Well, it’s not like you told me it was going to be tonight.” I was toying with him, of course. Any time James mentions an appointment, I make sure I’m prepared. After that first time, it would be a mistake not to.
I retrieve the items from my bag and hold them up. He grinned. “God, Laurel. What would I do without you?”
I smiled because he knows me so well. Over the months, I’d collected things from Max. A belt. A tie. A pocketknife. Little things. Mementos. Things he should have noticed but didn’t. I suppose it’s easy to flee without all of your belongings when the woman you’re having a fling with suddenly starts pressuring you for more. I was almost disappointed. Max was such a thorough kind of guy. Although, I can speak from experience, it’s normal to be a little distracted when you have injuries you have to contend with. Injuries you’re worried about having to explain away.
