I offer her the glass back. She snatches it from my hand and leans back against the tub, scowling at me while she sips, both tits now fully exposed.
They’re perfect. Her nipples darken from pink to brown when she’s pregnant and nursing, and she gets these little freckles on her aureolas. The freckles fade eventually and everything returns to normal, except her tits get a littlebigger and hang a little lower with each baby. I could stare at them for hours. My mouth is watering now.
When she’s not nursing, she loves for me to touch them. Right now, she’s watching me look, and her pupils are widening, but she’s not yelling at me. She must be really tipsy.
“I didn’t invite you in here,” she says.
“It’s my house, too.” I grab one of her bottles of Madeira and help myself to a sip.
She snorts. “It’s all your house. I just live here.”
“I built it for you. You picked out everything in it. You love it.”
“Not anymore.” She frowns and swirls the water with her free hand.
The instant that we got out of the car, she fell in love with the place, moved to tears that I’d had it built right after we met with her in mind. She immediately started planning what she was going to change and how. The nursery would need to be moved. A play area would go at the back of the gardens. We’d need a smaller dining room for family meals.
She was so excited, waddling from room to room. She was heavily pregnant with Pearl then. She chatted my ear off in the car on the ride back to Maddox Tower.
I miss her voice, not this bitter one, but the high-pitched chirpy one from before. I miss her smiles.
It’s all my fault. I changed the entire way she speaks to me, and I didn’t consider the weight of the loss for a second. I assess risk and reward for a living, but not the one time when the cost was actually too high. Why?
Because I was on edge. Was I angry? At her?
Maybe. Sometimes I’m angry for a reason, and sometimes I’m angry, and a reason presents itself. I don’t know any men in my circle who aren’t the same way. It’s the testosterone, maybe, or the pressure. Or the fact that most of thetime, people are quick to appease a pissed-off rich man. In a way, we’re socialized to be bastards.
Cora drains her glass and tries to set it down again. I rescue it before it topples off the ledge.
“Talk to me,” I say.
“Pour me another glass.”
“What about the milk?”
“I’ll pump and dump. The fridge in the pantry is stocked.” She frowns. “And besides, it’s my body. Not your business.”
I pour her another glass and then polish the bottle off. I’ve been plying her with the finest vintages for five years, and yet, she onlyreallylikes dessert wines, the sweeter the better. Madeira is meant to be sipped with a sticky toffee pudding, not guzzled by the bottle. She’s going to be hating life tomorrow.
“You and the girls are my most important business,” I say, wrapping her hand firmly around the top of the glass.
She tries to glare at me. Her brow creases, and her mouth thins, but there’s too much sadness in her eyes to carry it off. My stomach hollows, the stone that lives there now a weight in my guts.
“Then why did you do it?” She draws her legs to her chest again and rests her chin on her knee.
There is no good answer. There’s norealanswer. I don’t know. I was off. I’d been off for weeks. Months. That night, Delaney was there, and she offered. I didn’t think. I’m an asshole. Maybe I have issues I’ve never bothered to unpack since they never inconvenienced me.
I didn’t predict that it would be the end of everything if Cora found out. It never had been for my parents until the money ran out.
I didn’t appreciate that therewasan everything that could end.
I didn’t know that when she took herself away from me, it would feel like walking around the world without skin.
“I’m an asshole.” It feels the closest to whatever the truth is.
She rolls her eyes. “You think admitting it is going to do anything for you?”
“I doubt it.” I ease the glass out of her fingers. She seems to have forgotten she’s holding it. As I polish the wine off, I notice her sea wool sponge floating beside her. When we met, she was using a synthetic puff, just scrubbing microplastics into her skin daily.
