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Now it was making sense.
Jonathan’s temple now throbbed along with the ache in his chest as he pictured her in those heels, pictured what he had done to her in those heels.
He sprang to his feet, anger like a tight metal coil inside him. “You tripped? Or you went back inside the club after I left and found someone to knock you around how you wanted?”
Her eyes widened, the tears instantaneous. So was his regret.
That was cruel. It was easy to lash out; he felt stupid. Since seeing her at the club, he kept thinking what an amateur he was, mustering all his nerve to pull her hair or slap her ass and do her at the same time. He remembered his excitement as he scrolled around the kink shop website, clicking toys into his cart, when she apparently was far more hardcore.
Geez, he had been nervous about tying the fucking silk scarves too tight. What a clown.
“That wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.” He reached to pull a tissue from the box on the nightstand and handed it to her. “But at least tell me the truth. We have no reason to lie to each other.”
She dabbed the tissue between her eye and the bandage. “I’m not lying to you. I tripped outside. When I left . . . Some guy . . . I thought . . .” She began gulping for air between the fragments.
He touched her shoulder and tried to soothe her through the gown. Did the asshole hurt her? Did he put a hand on her? Jonathan needed to know. But this was about her, not him, and he bit the inside of his lip to keep his mouth shut until she finished.
“Some guy approached me outside. I got a bad feeling, and I ran. Stupid heels.” She glanced at the bag the nurse had set on the bedside table. “When I fell, he laughed and walked away.”
He wiped a falling tear with his thumb as she continued. “Octavia and the club monitor saw something on the security footage and they came outside to see if anything was going on. The people at the club aren’t some dangerous sex-crazed maniacs like you seem to think.”
“No, no, no, you’re right. I don’t think that at all, and I was way out of line showing up there tonight and with what I just said—it was insensitive and wrong and I’m sorry.”
Her gaze remained on the ceiling, not on him.
“I have to ask you something.Why?I get that different sensations—pain, even—can feel good, erotic. And I get that hurting physically might distract you from the emotional stuff. But that night with me, when you wanted me to hit your face, that part I don’t understand.”
Her chin quivered, and her eyes welled again. He tugged at the bed rail until it released and, careful not to jostle her, he climbed in beside her and placed his palm on her chest, hoping the touch, the pressure, would soothe her.
No matter what the future held for them, if anything at all, it killed him to see her distraught.
“Talk to me,” he whispered. “Please?”
She sniffed and wiped away more tears.
He turned further toward her, until his forehead touched hers, until there was hardly a hair’s width of space between them—their own little bubble. “Help me understand.”
She kept her eyes closed while she spoke. “I don’t know how to stop feeling guilty. I know it wasn’t my fault, not directly, but if I had done things differently, it might not have happened. That sick feeling,”—she touched her stomach—“it won’t go away.
“And then I have sex with someone else . . . you. The only way I could justify it was to focus on the pain. If it hurt, then I wasn’t such an awful wife. Widow. That’s why I couldn’t talk to you. I hated myself for what I was doing. It felt like I was cheating. But I couldn’t stop. Without talking, with the pain, I could almost pretend I was someplace else.”
She sniffled again and dabbed her cheek with the tissue. “It started to feel so good, like so much pressure finally releasing. Like having a nightmare, running away from something, and then suddenly you see a safe place to hide, and you feel this huge . . . relief. It spun into a cycle—the more I wanted, the guiltier I felt, which made me want to hurt even more.”
“Back up for a second. What wasn’t your fault?”
She moved her head away from his and looked down at her hands, toying with the base of her ring finger, as if her wedding band were still there. “The accident. He was coming to see me.” A tear dripped onto the white pillowcase.
He remembered now. Leigh had told him, and it had been in all the articles. She had won some award, a fellowship, to attend an artist colony upstate, and she was away from home when Harris was involved in a terrible car crash.
“Jesus, Quinn. It was not your fault. How could you think that?”
“I left without saying goodbye. We were supposed to have dinner together the night before I was scheduled to leave. I finished packing early, I’d finished all the errands I had to do, and I decided to leave that afternoon instead. He was still in court, so I left a voice mail to tell him I was going early. A voice mail.”
“I’m sure it thrilled him you got the fellowship, and he must have understood you wanted to get up there to write.”
“He called me back just as I was putting my stuff in the car. He asked if I could stay, if I could drive up in the morning as planned so we could keep our dinner date. I insisted I wanted to get going, and I hate myself for that—I was selfish. I put writing first, before my husband. We could have had another night together.”
She wiped more tears away with the heel of her hand, and his heart felt about to split in half seeing the pain in her eyes. He rubbed her chest.
