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I smiled in the dark at that, sipping again. I wiped the back of my hand across my cool, wet lips.
The instruction had been something I hadn’t expected out of someone like Dennis, especially considering the fact the man has a frustrating tendency to take Eva’s side in, well, just about everything.
Still, the wisdom of the proposal…was something immediately apparent to me. If nothing else, it would be a sorting out of what really lay at the core of the rift between Eva and me.
I just wasn’t sure if I was going to like what I saw there when it was finally uncovered.
Forcing her, even if only as part of a contrived “experiment” of sorts, to actually be honest, was a massive, almost unimaginable step in the right direction, as far as I was concerned.
For getting Eva to open up about what it was she was truly thinking was approximately as easy to figure out as the riddle of the Sphinx. Oh, she could talk, of course, a world class conversationalist, but she was exceedingly good at unleashing an absolute torrent of words…and yet revealing precisely zero about where she stood.
I glanced over my shoulder at the dining room table. The manila envelope was where I’d thrown it in disgust almost two weeks prior. Unopened. Unacknowledged.
The size of the envelope, the seal upon the clasp, they told me all I needed to know about what was held inside.
I hadn’t even read the return address. I already knew.
An empty house was both a blessing and a curse. It allowed me to focus on what needed attention—namely me, and what it was my goals actually were in life. Even more than that, solitude refined desires, needs, and values, in a way almost nothing else could.
But it was the nights that allowed the ghosts back in, of facing what might not be—and the dread of whatcouldnever be.
The nights were the worst.
Tonight, though? It had been the best since the day the wheels had come off, and what I thought I’d built my life around had walked out that door.
The instant the words had left my mouth I really expected her to scream at me, stomp out of the room, to say that precise combination of words that would end everything. For good.
But none of that had happened, and instead I had been stunned—and very pleasantly so—by the sight of a woman completely at sea, utterly unprepared for what she’d just heard. It was almost comical, actually, but she seemed not at all prepared for what would happen if Iactuallywent through with enforcing the rule. I smiled again in the dark, taking a long drink from the bottle.
It wasn’t so much a feeling of vengeance, or gratification at finally having her in a situation where she could no longer avoid the truth. No, it was something else, something deeper, more profound, and yet simple, almost eloquent. In that moment, as she’d stood in front of me, her fingers trembling as she played with the fabric of her blouse, she was just a woman: nervous, vulnerable, exposed, and yet even then, clearly aroused. That had been the one thing that surprised me most.
Eva’s nipples were so hard they could etch glass, and I knew her reactions quite well. I knew what that meant. It certainly was not any sort of confirmation of the temperature of the room.
It was a confirmation of the temperature of her desire.
And that was something I didn’t think I’d ever be exposed to. While it was fleeting, no matter what happened in the next six days I would still have that moment, that revealing of truth. That memory of how she looked, her breathtaking beauty, that almost pure vulnerability, her appeal at once wholesome and lascivious both.
No, Eva was every bit as magnetic and attractive as she’d always been. But I still saw her for what she was, still understood that what she presented to the world was not all, not even close, of what she was.
I accepted that it was too late, that that proverbial ship had sailed on a future I may have once wanted. But I would have this time, and if nothing else, I would use it to reveal what I was. What I needed. What I craved. What I valued—in life, and in love.
That she was the same Eva that I had always known was true, but she had yet to find out, to really understand that I was very far, very far indeed, from the man she thought she knew.
I took one last sip of my beer as I sat there in the dark. I shook my head slowly, smiling, a wistfulness to it that I couldn’t help at that moment. I could see in my mind’s eye the mouthwatering beauty of her breasts, their shape, their weight, the perfection of her form. I knew that it was possible, even likely, that today was the last time I would ever see them. There was a better-than-even chance that tomorrow morning she would call the whole thing off. Hell, I probably would if I were in her shoes.
Tonight, I was secure in one thing above all else. She’d seen, perhaps for the first time in years, that there was more to me—much more—than what she’d always assumed. And I found that I very much liked keeping her uncertain, off balance, always wondering. I knew too that she was sure to rally come tomorrow. I was certain to see the side of Eva that I had seen the day she left. She’d come roaring back.
I was ready for it, though. For if this was the end, then that would have to be okay with me. I was at peace with that possibility, even though as I drunk in her beauty, I couldn’t help but wonder, to ponder—if only in a theoretical way—what might happen if Eva wastrulyhonest with me.
What if we werebothhonest about what it was we wanted, and what it was the other wasn’t providing?
That in that moment, we both might see the true end of the road—or the beginning of what could still be.
I lay back on the couch, extending my legs upon the cushions, and stared up at the ceiling. The hum of the air conditioning spooled up once more, and it was the thoughts of what might have been that whirled round and round in my mind as a contented, peaceful sleep finally spirited me away.
Chapter 5
Tuesday
