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“No,” I shake my head honestly. “I hate the news.”
Tucker swallows, nodding more to himself than me, then steps even closer. Close enough to know he’s been drinking coffee. “Pete Bryson got arrested last week. And it’s… serious.”
I blink at Tucker, and stare at the way his hair stands up awkwardly, likely having had someone’s hand running through it the last hour. I’m not seeing his hair though. I’m remembering the last time we heard from Pete.
He showed up at Otis’s, not knowing it was Otis’s. And because Otis felt some type of way about being duped by Pete in the first place, he made sure Pete saw his way down the stairs.
Pete never found out we live just across the hall, and while Scarlett ultimately changed her phone number to avoid the unending calls, he never showed up at Crave again. And I never felt like it was good enough. I never thought him being able to slither away into obscurity was punishment enough for how he treated her, the things he said to her.
I smile at Tucker. “Good.”
His eyes dart between mine before he cracks a smile. “Yeah, man, it is good. I just didn’t know if you’d heard.”
I loop an orange cord around my elbow and over my palm, wrapping it up. Tuck stands there, watching me. I freeze with the end of the cord still on the floor. “What?”
“I don’t know what happened between him and Scarlett, but I wanted to tell you in case you wanted to break the news to her.”
I shake my head, missing the understanding of why this even matters. “She hasn’t thought about Pete in a long time.”
He nods a thousand times if he does it once. “I know, I know, it’s just… he killed his girlfriend. Well, allegedly.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, letting the length of the cord drop to the floor. “He what?”
“I don’t know how that information will impact Scarlett, or if it even will. I don’t know. But I wanted to tell you because… well, we’re glad she got out. And I think I speak for all of Crave when I say that.”
He outstretches his hand to me and I shake it. “Thanks, man,” I tell him.
I head back to the office, knowing I’ll find my wife there, and I’m processing what Tucks just said. I don’t know if she’d want to know, but it feels like something I have to share. Not because I want to talk about Pete and what a piece of shit he clearly continued to be, but because we’re married. Withholding information like that would be wrong.
I close the door behind me, and lock it, too. I glance at my watch, knowing not many people are left in the studio, and the ones that are, won’t be looking for us. From behind her computer, Scarlett lifts her head.
“Hey, babe, you wanna go? I can wrap it up in like, five minutes. Just waiting for my download to finish,” she says, spinning in her office chair as I come around the side of her desk. She slides her feet out of the high heels she insists on wearing, and I crouch at her feet. I kiss the top before I drive my thumbs into the ball, spreading and kneading her sore and tired feet like I do everyday. It’s not a foot thing, it’s a Scarlett thing.
“Ahh,” she moans, “that feels so good.” Her eyes close as she sinks deeper into her chair. I look up at the download bar, monitoring the progress. It seems to be moving slow, so I clear my throat as my eyes fall to her business card. Scarlett Steele, Head of App Development and IT, Crave & Cure Productions.
“Scar,” I start, still kneading stress from her feet.
“Hmm,” she murmurs, lost in the attention and affection.
“Tucker just told me Pete was arrested. It was on the news.”
Her head lifts from the chair and she offers one peeking eye. “Yeah?”
I level her a serious look, and she opens her other eye. “Tuck says he’s allegedly killed his girlfriend.”
Her eyes go wide, and a medley of emotion runs through her face in the span of thirty seconds. Shock, horror, sadness, sickness, and finally, acceptance. Not for the life lost but for the harrowing news. “That’s awful,” she says finally.
We sit in silence as we process what’s transpired. The man whom she lived with, who ran her life and was almost part of her life forever, he killed someone. When our eyes finally collide in a heated gaze, we know we’re thinking the same thing. It could’ve been her.
She leans down to me as best as she can, and takes my face in her hand. “And you say that I saved you.”
I grab her fuzzy slippers from under her desk and slip them on her feet before rising, her heels pinched together in one hand. I get our things ready while she waits at her computer and amidst the comfortable silence she says, “You saved me.”
I turn to hold her gaze, and my chest splits as I process her meaning. It was out of my control when it came to Addie. I wasn’t there. And it was an invisible attack, one we couldn’t control. But I saved Scarlett, and there’s a sliver of redemption in that knowledge. And she knows it.
The download slows considerably, and Scarlett’s lumbar was aching, so what started as a back rub has, as the history of all backrubs would tell you, turned into sex.
Hot, slow, intentional sex. On all fours she rocks for me, naked and whiny. I feed my fist through her hair, and pull her head back slowly, leaning forward to kiss her neck.
