“What do you feel?”
“The wet fabric of your dress shirt against my skin.”
“What do you hear?”
“The water running through our old pipes. Your breath against my ear.”
He kissed it then, and the tenderness nearly broke me. I whimpered, but my breath was evening out. He put his fingers on my chin and turned my head so he could find my lips with his warm, sensual mouth.
His love crashed over me, and I turned into him. Into his kiss.
“What do you taste?”
“You,” I said. “Your love.”
He lifted me in his arms, turning off the water before leaving the shower, dripping wet. He grabbed one of our large, monogrammed towels and carried me to our bed. He stood me up, wrapping the gigantic body towel around me as he dried my skin. When I climbed into bed, he tucked the comforter around me and ran his hand over my wet hair, glancing at me with a love I was sure I didn’t deserve.
“I’m going to change, then get in bed with you. Is that okay?”
I nodded. “Sorry about your tux.”
“It’s just clothes, Liv.”
Ryan shrugged out of his dress shirt on his way to the bathroom. The muscles in his back flexed as he yanked the wet material from his skin. I longed to reach out and touch every ridge of his body, to familiarize myself with it again.
He lowered his pants over the round curve of his backside, strong and muscular from working out. Even at forty, his body was a work of art. I hated that I’d shut him down so many times over the past few years, at times turning our intimacy into a baby-making endeavor instead of a union of love.
When Ryan finally crawled into bed, he slid his large SU T-shirt over my head. I sunk back against the pillow, my heart ravaged from my admission. He still hadn’t addressed it, but I had to make sure we were going to be okay. That we could somehow get through this.
“Talk to me,” I said.
“I wish you’d just told me the truth that day.” He stared up at our ceiling as if invisible answers were written there. “Why didn’t you?”
He wouldn’t look at me, his jaw set hard as he waited for an answer.
“I don’t know. I was so upset and ashamed, and you were mad. Things were so tense between us after our fight. I just needed time to think. To process everything. I should’ve said that, but you kept pushing for an answer I wasn’t ready to give. I was scared, I guess. So, I panicked. It was stupid, but I couldn’t answer truthfully when I was still in shock myself.”
“Did you know you were going to sleep with him when you went over there that day?”
“No,” I answered.
“Have you always wanted to sleep with him alone? Without me?”
“No!” I cried out truthfully.
“I know this isn’t going to make sense to you, Ry. I didn’t mean to fall in love with him, but I did. I’m sorrier than you can ever know for that. But it was harder than you can imagine—to open my heart like that again. Let someone into my body that wasn’t you, or one of our babies. You asked me to be emotionally raw and vulnerable with you and Brighton. There was no way to do that with a closed heart.”
“I’m the first to admit I made a lot of mistakes, too, Liv. But I would never lie to you. I wish I could say it didn’t hurt so fucking bad. But it does. It gutted me. Then you just walked away. It felt like everything was over. That we were over.”
“Ryan, please. No.”
“How can I ever trust you again? Trust in what we have?”
“Because even though I love him, I don’t love him more than you. We have a history that Brighton and I will never have.”
“But what if he’s meant to be your future? Wouldn’t that be easier? Less complicated? You could start fresh with him—if that’s what you really wanted.”
“I don’t!” I insisted.
“Then what? Why did you have to sleep with him?”
I bit my lip, remembering back to that day. It was etched into my heart every bit as real as the letter A that woman had to wear in Ryan’s book. “I was so angry with you,” I admitted, my breath small with shame.
“For how you acted during our fight. For blowing up at me and hitting the damn door—breaking the glass like that. I was sad and emotionally drained. Brighton was there for me as a friend. We mostly talked, but then, I don’t know. I guess I had to figure out if it was Brighton I wanted, or if I just missed the three of us being together. I had to know what the intimacy meant for myself.”
“Do you want to leave me for him?”
“No.”
“What then, Liv? What are we supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you slept with him since then?”
“No,” I promised, shaking my head. “That’s the god’s honest truth. I will never, ever lie to you again, Ryan.”
“I wish I could believe you, but that’s going to take some time.”
I nodded, wishing he would look at me.
When he finally turned to face me, I couldn’t bear the pain reflected at me. He was holding so much inside. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. I’d done that to him.
“If I could take it back, I would. Sleeping with him alone. Lying. All of it. That’s not me. You know me.”
“I thought I did.”
“You do. This isn’t fair. I never would have slept with him to begin with! You pushed the issue, Ryan. Even though we both had reservations.”
“But it didn’t stop you, did it?” he said ruthlessly. “Admit it, Liv. You wanted him all along.”
I took a deep breath, willing my emotions not to spin out into anxiety all over again.
“You once told me that sex wasn’t really about the sex. I had no idea what that even meant then. But I think I do now. My heart was broken for so long because of our miscarriages, and then losing Laelynn changed everything. I couldn’t feel anything for the longest time. I didn’t want to live, really. Not without them. But you didn’t give up on me. The intimacy that we felt with Brighton was an opening for us to love again, harder this time. To heal all the pain we’d held inside for so long. It’s hard to go through something like that with someone and not fall. To not feel. It was about so much more than just our bodies, Ryan, and you know that.”
“Yeah, but what you two did—that was only about your bodies. And your own selfish needs. Did you once stop to think about me? Think about how it would gut me to know he was inside of you without me? One minute I think I understand how it could’ve happened. The next, I’m fucking wrecked by it.”
“You’re right. It was selfish. I don’t have any excuse to justify what happened. But it wasn’t just about our bodies. Maybe I wish it would’ve been, because then it wouldn’t be as complicated as it is now.”
“It’s complicated, all right.” He put his arm over his eyes and lay back again. He was so close, yet his heart was as distant as it’d ever been. I didn’t know how to make it right.
“Maybe we could see a couple’s therapist?”
“And say what, Liv? Are you going to talk about our threesome? You think a shrink has a playbook for how to deal with the repercussions of having an open marriage?”