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I turn to tie off the garbage. He comes around the counter and reaches out as if he’s going to take it from me, but pulls my forearm instead. In the second it takes me to gasp, he’s turned me, my back pressed to his front, his arm wrapped tight around my neck. Shock gives way to anger and to something else as well—something I intend to ignore. The trash falls from my hand. “What thefuck, Beck?”
His mouth rests near my ear, his breath rustling the nerve endings there, making heat pool in my stomach and sink lower. “That fast, Kate. It could happen that fast. Go ahead. Show me how tough you are.”
I struggle against him, but he’s got me held so tight I might as well be frozen. His skin is warm, his body immense and solid. My knees want to buckle in response. “Let go.”
“Come on. I want to know what you’re going to do, since you’re so tough. How do you plan to stab me? Where are yourkeys?”
Jesus Christ. What’s wrong with me that I find this so hot? If his arm slid from my neck to my breasts right now, he’d realizeexactlyhow hot I find this. I bet if I squirmed a little against the bulge pressed to my lower back, I’d makehimrealize how hot this is too. “Okay,” I snap. “You’ve made your point.”
He releases me and I spin toward him, scowling. His eyes drift, for half a second, to what is very obvious given that I’m wearing a T-shirt and no bra. And then he grabs the trash and his helmet and stalks off without a word.
I slap a hand to my face and groan after the door shuts.How humiliating. It was okay when it was just me, fantasizing about Beck inside my own head. It’s another thing entirely for him to know I’m doing it.
But...I’m not going to be stopping anytime soon either.
I can still almost feel the heat of him behind me, his absolute control. I’m used to calling the shots, but I suspect that with Beck, I wouldn’t be.
I like the idea way too much.
* * *
He’s notbehind the bar or in the office when I get in. That’s probably for the best. And when he doesn’t come back to get me for lunch, I decide I’d rather starve than go out in search of him as if I did something wrong. They were nipples, for Christ’s sake. They respond to loads of things—he can’t say for sure it was him.
At five, I grab my laptop and purse and walk out. Though he’s still in the wrong and I’m not, I’m hoping I can persuade him to come home early so we can watchGame of Thrones, a peace offering of sorts.
He’s behind the bar, standing in front of a woman who’s clearly mid-story, her arms wide as she gestures.
He’s nodding, engrossed. I can’t hear what he says in response, but it’s not his typical monosyllabic grunt of an answer. It’s thought-out, his brow furrowed in concern. And I probably wouldn’t think a thing of it if the woman didn’t look like she was on her way to aPlayboyshoot. She’s beautiful and curvy in the ways I’m not, with lush blonde hair that falls abundantly past her rib cage.
Suzanne.
I remember meeting her once, long ago. She’s one of several women Beck has been entangled with at some point—and apparently still is. I can’t take a full breath, and I’m not sure why. He can fuck whoever he wants.
I walk straight to the exit with discontent scraping the inside of my chest, and pull out my phone when I get to the car.
Lucie is not a frequent poster, but today is the exception. She’s uploaded a carousel of pictures of her kids at the beach with Caleb beside them. He never made it to a single goddamn sonogram, but now he’s taking time off work to build fucking sandcastles?
I slam the phone against the steering wheel.
I hate that she has my husband. I hate that she’s giving him what I didn’t. I hate that she didn’t just get one kid buttwo. Her profile picture is all dimpled smile, as if she’s made of sugar and rainbows, when in actuality, she’s the person who stole my entire world.
Fuck it. It is, according to Kayleigh, #TimeToGetMyDowndogOn.
We haven’t progressed far in our friendship, but one of us always manages to take a potshot at Lucie before we breathe out stress and breathe in peace. I’ve built the necessary foundation to move this shit forward, and today’s the day.
“You want to get coffee afterward?” I ask Kayleigh an hour later, unrolling a mat beside hers. “Mountain Brew does the prettiest cappuccinos.”
Everything about Mountain Brew annoys me. The coffee isn’t good, and they’ve got all this outrageously priced, spectacularly shitty “local art” on the walls, as if Elliott Springs is just rife with people in the market for a ten-thousand-dollar watercolor of a gas station. Theydeserveto be run out of town by a huge conglomerate. I need to write Starbucks again, suggesting it.
“I love that place,” she says.
I already knew this, of course. She tags them so often on Instagram, she must be on their payroll.
We walk down the street after yoga, and Kayleigh gets checked out as often as I do. It needles me, this reminder that Kayleigh is beautiful, that Kayleigh is the kind of woman men want, yet Caleb still chose Lucie of the perky ponytail and“look at my twins being cute!”social media posts.
We get coffee and tuck ourselves into a table at the back to bond. The simple fact that Kayleigh loathes Lucie makesmyloathing feel justified, righteous.
Lucie is a bad person. She stole my husband. She got Kayleigh fired. She deserves what’s coming to her.
