“Aislin came over on the second day,” I tell him truthfully. “She came to get my appointment schedule; I needed someone to take my clients. No one else was here.”
Some of the tension in his face releases, letting his sadness show through, and I take a tentative step closer to him. I inch toward him as if he’s a bomb that I’ve been tasked with defusing, carefully moving closer until I’m near enough to take his bruised face in my hands.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” I whisper with a trembling voice.
My thumbs gently stroke his skin and the rough stubble lining his jaw. I don’t think I’ve seen him with anything more than overnight growth since he decided to try out wearing a mustache after his high school graduation.
He hasn’t been taking care of himself.
Closing the distance between us, I press my lips to his. His fingers work their way up the base of my neck and into my hair, oily and pulled into a messy bun so I wouldn’t have to wash it. I could nearly cry when he hums as his tongue slides against mine.
It feels like us again.
It feels like we’ll climb up the stairs and fall into our bed and the world around us and all of its problems will melt away.
But I won’t get that lucky, will I?
“Jules,” he says, putting his hands on my shoulders to push me away from him. “I need you to tell me everything.”
“I can’t,” I tell him with a shake of my head. My fingers slide into his belt loops, holding onto him as if he’ll disappear the second I let go of him. “It’ll hurt you.”
“I’m already hurt,” he says with one side of his mouth pulling into a tight line. His hands cup my face, and he leans toward me to press his forehead to mine while he speaks. “I need to know when, and who started it.”
His voice breaks as it drops to nothing more than a whisper, and his grip on me tightens.
“I want to forgive you, and I want to understand why, so I need to know.”
“I can’t,” I tell him with a shake of my head.
“Julia,” he pleads.
My hands wrap tightly around his wrists, my eyes squeezing shut as I brace against the pain that claws at the inside of my chest. The last time I heard my husband sound like this was just over a month before we started down the road to Miami.
It wasn’t my name that clawed its way past his lips in an agonized plea that day, it was his mother’s. He’d sworn up and down for years that he hated his parents; and maybe that was true, but when they told him that he wasn’t a part of their family anymore, it broke him.
Now I’ve broken him, too.
“I begged him,” I finally admit, my voice breaking as my throat goes raw with the threat of tears. I can’t bring myself to open my eyes, but I feel Tripp’s body deflate against mine. “I was drunk and we’d been fighting and I begged him to do it. Lovey, I’m so sorry. I never meant—”
Feeling him pull away from me, I open my eyes and watch as he pivots, bracing his hands against his knees. Lifting a hand, he scrubs it down his jaw, looking at me as if I’ve just shot him point-blank in the chest.
It might have been less painful if I had.
“The night you got sick?” I nod. Tripp’s features contort into agony and he looks as if he may be sick. “I took you home because you fucked him? I was washing mybest friendoff of you?”
“Lovey, please,” I plead. Tripp sits on the floor, lowering himself onto his back with his knees raised, and I drop onto the floor before climbing on top of him, leaning forward to rest myhead against his shoulder. “I won’t try to excuse it; I can’t. I’m just sorry.”
My lips meet the side of his neck, peppering kisses up to his jaw until I reach his lips.
“You have to know that I didn’t plan it,” I beg, pressing my lips to his.
As I pull open his belt and unzip his jeans, my hand slides into his boxer briefs, seeking out his cock to offer it a gentle stroke. Tripp’s hand takes hold of mine as he leaves our kiss, breathing hard against my skin.
“I’m so pissed at you right now,” he chokes. “Don’t get me hard.”
In spite of his protest, his fingers flex against mine, holding them securely in place while I tease and stroke his cock. His eyes drift shut as it swells in my hand, and I quickly work off my sleep shorts to toss them aside.
As I trail my finger along the underside of his cock, I remind myself of the presence of my name tattooed there, a gesture he’d surprised me with early into our marriage. Only his arms and his chest were covered in artwork at that time, and now my name is surrounded by so many other pieces; but it’s still there.
