“Or it might have something to do with an injury said man sustained in a ruthless round of Jiu Jitsu.”
My head angled over my shoulder in his direction. Noah was sitting up in bed, closer than he normally slept beside me. One dark brow was elevated ever so slightly, his eyes half-closed as though he could hardly keep them open.
“You’re an extraordinary woman, Grace. No man could say no to you.”
Something tingled inside my chest, the way it had in Noah’s and my early days.
“Except you,” I whispered.
He reached across me, folding the blankets down my body. “I’m not saying no.”
As I angled toward him, the weight of his body coming over mine rolled me back into the mattress. A gasp rushed from me, nerves firing to the surface from the weight of him above me.
My arms wound behind his back to draw him closer, giving myself over to the solace of submission, the relief that came with surrender. When Noah held me like this, there was nothing left to fight; all that was left was to succumb.
He reached between us, tugging at the waistband of his shorts, his legs coaxing mine wider at the same time. A breath caught in my throat when I felt him, ready and wanting. My back arched off the bed, feeling myself close to falling apart at the mere thought of him rocking inside me, his uneven breaths keeping time outside my ear.
As he pushed inside, my body curled around him, legs winding around his backside, hands digging into his sides. A sharp hiss of air spilled past his lips at the same time he flinched.
“Sorry,” I breathed, attempting to clear some of the fog clouding my head. Pulling at the hem of his shirt, I stretched it up his back to inspect the injury. I blinked to make sure I was seeing right. “Oh my god!”
Before I could say anything else, he pulled away, tugging his shirt and shorts back into place. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine.” I sat up. “You look like you got into a fight with a steel-plated cyborg.”
When I reached for the lamp, Noah caught my hand. He waited for me to look at him. “I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
A smile formed, the contrived kind I’d grown used to lately, the one that accompanied vague answers and distracted responses. “I got into a fight with a steel-plated cyborg.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t . . . lie to me.” My voice shook as I studied my husband. He was only a couple of feet away, but the distance felt immeasurable. “What else are you lying to me about?”
His counterfeit smile faded. “What do you mean?”
“Where were you really tonight?”
His leg swung over my legs, dropping his feet to the floor. “I told you.”
“We’ve been married for seventeen years. I can tell when you’re lying to me.”
He stared out the same window I spent hours of my life pondering through, his eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you get it out in the open and say what you’re accusing me of?”
“No, I want you to tell me the truth.”
“I was working. That is the truth.” His voice was level, controlled. It was worse than him shouting at me.
I stared at him gazing into the darkness as though he were communing with it. “Look me in the eye and tell me that.”
The muscles running down his back pressed through the worn cotton of the shirt I’d gifted him in another life.
“You don’t trust me anymore,” he stated in the way one might mention what they’d had for lunch that day. He rose from the bed, turning toward the door. “I’ll sleep in the spare bedroom.”
I reached for him as he left, calling his name.
He didn’t hear me.
It wasn’t until the sound of his footsteps moving down the hall faded that I realized it wasn’t me who’d uttered his name, reaching out for him as I promised we would figure this out—it was the woman I wished I was.
Five
Noah was gone.
He’d left before I got up the next morning, and he was already asleep when I got back later that night. He’d gone back to the spare bedroom.
I couldn’t fall asleep that night, and instead of popping a sleeping pill like I usually did when stress kept me awake, I gave myself over to it, letting the emotion run its course. Dark was fading to light when sleep took me, though it didn’t hold me for long.
My phone woke me soon after, as the veiled light outside conveyed. I was cursing myself for setting the alarm for so early on a Monday morning when I realized it was a call coming in, not my alarm set to go off in a half hour.
“Connor? What’s the matter?” I sat up in bed, blinking the sleep from my eyes.
“I take it from your half-asleep voice you haven’t heard yet.” On the other end, he sounded as if he’d been hooked up to a caffeine drip.
“Haven’t heard what yet?”
“Darryl Skovil.” There was a pause. Long enough for me to brace myself for the confirmation that he’d hurt another child less than seventy hours after being set free from the accusation of harming a different one. “He killed himself.”
The skin on my arms prickled. “Are you serious?”
“I know it’s a few months early, but happy birthday, Grace.”
My hand was trembling enough it made twisting on the nightstand lamp a challenge. It wasn’t the tremble of shock or sadness; it was caused by relief . . . drifting into the realm of vindication.
“How did he do it?” I asked as I rushed into the bathroom to turn on the shower.
“Does it matter if he carved out his cerebral cortex with a melon scooper? He’s dead. There’s such a thing as happy endings after all.”
While the water warmed, I dashed into the closet to pick out my outfit for the day. “Connor—”
“I don’t know yet. The news hasn’t released any of the details, just that he was found dead by self-inflicted means in his apartment late last night.” The sound of a television streaming in the background cut through. “Hopefully whatever way he went with involved a slow, painful death. Suicide by a million paper cuts. Something like that.”
“My sentiments exactly,” I said, grabbing the ivory pantsuit I saved for special occasions. Today qualified as one of those days. “I’m getting ready and will be in the office by six. Six thirty at the latest. I want to be in before the reporters show up on our doorstep. I want to know the details of what happened before I go on record tooting an imaginary party horn.”
“I’m sure the PR department is already typing up an approved list of appropriate responses.” Connor breathed. “Darryl Skovil is dead. There really is a god.”
The smile reflecting back at me in the bathroom mirror was one I didn’t recognize. “Thanks, Connor.”
“Hey, thank Skovil for offing himself. I’m simply the messenger.”
The line went dead a moment later as steam filled the bathroom, clouding the mirror screaming reminders at me of grown-out roots and injectables nearing their expiration.
Dead. Gone. Exterminated.
Few things in life had made me as happy as the death of a demon masquerading as a man.
By the time I’d gotten ready, left a note for Noah to drive Andee into school, and made the hour commute to work, the office was unusually busy for before seven on a Monday morning. Word had spread of Skovil’s suicide and, like me, everyone was keen to learn the circumstances surrounding his demise.