The hallway floods with soft yellow light, and I look up to see an antique light fixture with an old-fashioned Edison bulb. I’ll have to admire that later, when my cock isn’t throbbing in my pants at a lifelong fantasy about to be fulfilled. I focus back on her perfect face, expecting to see lust in her eyes and the pink flush of passion on her high cheekbones, but instead she looks shocked. And not a good kind of shocked, but a devastated kind of shocked. “What’s wrong?” I ask and slowly turn around because her eyes are focused over my bare shoulder.
The hall is empty. Not a table, not a picture, nothing. My eyes move to the opening into the living room and there doesn’t seem to be anything in that room either. She starts to walk toward the archway into the living room, and I follow behind her. “You said he was going to move out his stuff, right?”
She nods, but it’s in slow motion. “We had an itemized list. In the pre-nup. Not everything, but most stuff.”
Her short sentences and the confused tone in her voice make me realize that shithead didn’t stick to the list of what was his and what was hers. “He took it all.”
She nods slowly. I reach for her shoulder, to squeeze it and pull her to me, but she starts walking, moving into the dining room. There’s a painting on the wall and nothing else. It’s of snow-capped mountains. “That was a birthday gift I bought him. He was supposed to actually take that.”
She doesn’t sound upset or even angry; she sounds indifferent. Unaffected. But her body language is telling me this whole thing has affected her—greatly. I follow her as she walks into the kitchen. All the cabinet doors and drawers are open, and most are empty, although there are a few random things, like a potato peeler and a cheese grater, which I would love to use on this asshole’s balls if I were her. Then I notice the large, round oak table in the nook area and the high-back chairs around it. “He left the table.”
“Because I hate that thing,” she explains, and there’s a hard, pained smile on her face. “Adam picked it out and brought it home and insisted we put it in here, even though it’s too big and looks like it belongs in Dracula’s castle.”
There’s a piece of paper in the middle of the table. If that fucker left a nasty note rubbing this in her face, I’ll shove it down his throat. She walks over, picks it up, and sighs. “A check for the car he took. So at least there’s that.”
But then her whole body tenses suddenly, almost violently, and she bolts. Out of the kitchen and running down the hall. She takes the stairs two at a time and I can barely keep up, which says something. By the time I reach the upstairs landing she’s already run into a room at the back of the house, flipped on the light and stopped dead just inside the doorway.
I walk up behind her.
“Of course. Of course. Of course,” she whispers the words over and over, and when I reach out and touch her shoulder it’s nothing but tightly wound, hard and shaking muscle. She’s so tense I feel like she’ll shatter. And then…she does.
She crumples to the wooden floor of the nearly empty room. There’s nothing in here but two nightstands and some bedding on the floor. I walk around her and drop down to my knees in front of her. I try to pull her to my chest in a hug, but she pushes me away. She leans back against the wall next to the door, knees bent and palms pressed into her eyes. “He thought it was a stupid hobby. He made fun of me for it. At first jokingly and then bitingly, but of course he took every single last one of them.”
“What?”
“I collect teapots,” she explains and sniffs as tears well in her eyes. “He broke one a couple days ago, so I took them all down from the shelf in the kitchen and put them under my bed. He took them.”
He’s a petty piece of trash. If there was ever any doubt before, it’s gone now. “You’ll get them back. You’ll get everything back. He screwed with a legally binding document.”
A tear spills down her cheek. I follow its path, rage swelling inside me with every millimeter it slips. She wipes it away roughly and lets out a heavy, ragged breath. “No. I won’t. I can’t. I just can’t anymore. He can have it all. Fuck him. I’m going to sell this place.”
“But you love this place, don’t you?”
She sighs. “I really did, but he’s ruined it. Every room in this place feels like it’s been tarnished now. He won. He ruined it.”
She moves to stand, but I stop her when she gets to her knees, pulling myself to my knees in front of her and cupping her face with both my hands. We’re kneeling in the corner of the room, face-to-face, and I slowly, purposefully cover her mouth with mine. The kiss is slow, sensual and deliberate. It’s also a promise. A promise to take away her pain, to tear down the painful memories and replace them with good ones. I want to do that for her. Ineedto do that for me. She holds on to both my forearms, her fingers wrapped tightly, and pulls her lips from mine just enough to speak. “What are you doing?”
“Taking away the power you’re giving him,” I tell her, kissing her slowly again before adding, “You’re going to make new memories in every single room of this house. With me. Starting tonight.”
She hesitates for just a second, pulling back a fraction of an inch when I try to kiss her again. But then she blinks, her grip on my arms gets tighter and she kisses me.
19
Zoey
Nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t know how I got here—twenty-nine years old, divorced, with a shaky new career, in a pillaged house with my teenage crush convincing me to screw the bad memories out of my life. All I know is that as crazy, messed up and completely insane as my life has become, his offer is the only thing that feels right. So I kiss him.
I need something—anything—to feel like a victory. To bring me joy, peace, release, something positive. I need to feel something positive. So I kiss him, and I let him pull me to my feet and walk me over to the pile of bedding Adam left, probably only because he couldn’t find enough room in his moving truck to take it, and I let him lay me back on it.
He lies on top of me, and the weight of his muscular body pressing into me sparks an explosion of incredible sensations—warmth on my cheeks and a tingle across my skin and dampness between my legs. He’s right, I need to create good memories here, and he can do that. More important, he makes me feel good—and not just physically.
I run my hands into his hair and down his back, but then he pulls back, moving onto his knees between my legs. Then, as he puts his hands under the hem of my shirt and pushes it up, he moves his lips over the newly exposed skin, kissing his way up my torso. I lift a little so he can get my shirt up and over my head, and before I can drop back onto the pile of bedding, he cradles the back of my head in his hand, covers my mouth with his again, and lowers me gently. I feel cared for—worshipped—and then he cups my breasts through my black silk bra and I feel pleasure. Dear God, when was the last time that happened?
I arch my back, pushing myself into his hand. “You like my hands on you?”
“Yes.” I sit up and reach out and press both palms to the ripples of muscle creasing his abdomen. “And I want my hands on you too.”
He bends down so our lips meet again and reaches behind me to unclasp my bra. As the straps slip down my arms, I finish what I tried to start downstairs and undo his pants. I pull away from his kiss, lean forward and kiss his stomach, just above his belly button, as I push his pants off his hips. He’s wearing tight black boxer briefs that feel soft and luxurious under my fingers, but I want them gone too. Before I can push them down, though, Jude is pushing me onto my back again. He makes quick work of my button and fly and then curls his fingers into the waistband of my pants. “Lift those beautiful hips, baby.”
