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She shakes her head at me. “I don’t know, Knox. Not all rumors are true.”
My name on her lips is like razor blades slicing into me. Death by a thousand cuts. I step forward, and she lifts her chin in response.
“Crazy girl,” I murmur. “You want to go against me?”
“We’ve been against each other since you left for college,Knox,” she replies. “What are you going to do? Divorce me?”
I laugh. “No.”
I touch her hair again, twisting it around my fingers. Tugging her head back. She’s fucking putty in my hands, and she doesn’t even realize it. Her hair is soft, her eyes are accusing. It’s why I lean in and trail my lips down her throat. Categorizing her scent, remembering it for later.
Goosebumps rise on her skin. I’m close enough to see it, to taste her if I just opened my mouth a little…
“It’s too late,” she whispers. “I’ve already filed abandonment charges. Youabandonedme in the eyes of the court—so you don’t get a say in whether we divorce. It’s up to a judge.”
I bite her.
It’s really just an impulse, but the way she immediately reacts, I relish it. I don’t break her skin—I’m not a fucking animal. I bite until it hurts, until I know it’ll bruise, and then I release her. There are teeth marks in her skin, at the slope between her neck and shoulder.
“You’re an ass,” she snarls, covering the bite mark with her palm.
It’s like pissing on a tree. Marking her as mine. I hope when Joel peels her dress off later, he questions her about it. And I hope she comes up blank with excuses.
She turns back around, meeting my gaze in the mirror and slowly lowering her hand. She pulls at her dress’s collar, seeminglysatisfiedwith how it covers the now-red bite. She picks her purse up from the ledge just under the mirror. She fixes her hair, runs her hands down the sides of her dress. She reapplies her damn lipstick.
And then she’s gone, slipping out the door, and leaving me standing here like a fucking fool.
Abandonment. I never thought of it that way. Never assumed that was a loophole she’d actually use. But the longer I stay in the restroom and look into it, and how to prove it, the angrier I get.
And then… a plan forms.
“Knox?” The waitress slips back into the restroom.
I stash my phone, the wheels still turning. Even as she locks the door and shimmies out of her skirt, giving me afuck meexpression, and my dick responds accordingly.
Because at the end of the day, I’ve got a reputation to keep.
And my wife is not going to derail it.
5
AURORA
The typewriter is new and shiny and absolutelynotperfect.
I broke my last one, my perfect old one, in the move. I’m not sure how it happened—I packed it poorly maybe, or it got jostled too much—but when it arrived the frame was bent and it seemed like it had barely survived a hurricane.
But this is no time to mourn. I’ve got readers clamoring for another book, begging for a side character to be written, and the story ideas have run dry.
I haven’t written a word in six months. The book came out right when my break was ending, and then… I think I froze.
How can I top the last?
I was in a dark place when I wrote it. Like, angry at myself and everyone else, and I took it out on characters who were cruel and vile, and later… a little bit soft for the heroine.
I scrub at my face.
When I met Joel, I had just finished the first draft of the book. It wasn’t really a topic of conversation until it came out and then my name was everywhere. Then we talked about it, sure, but it wasn’t athing. It was just my job.
