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“I haven’t been … keeping track,” she answered, somewhat haltingly.
“Well, I have.”
“You have?”
“Yes. You see, I wanted to know how long it would take for you toinstigateit, or if you even would—and I really wanted you to. Do you know why? Because I wanted to know that you wanted me. But it’s been thirty-seven days, and I guess that’s my breaking point. That’s the longest I can go without wanting, or needing, to have sex with you. But you obviously don’t need, or want, to have sex withme.”
“That’s not true,” she protested.
“Yes, it is.” With a deep sigh of resignation because he knew she was lying, he put his hands in his hair. “And it’s a real bitch.”
There was shuffling behind him, and then a moment later, she was pressed against his back, with the sheet bunched between them. “I love you,” she whispered.
“And I love you,” he returned, not letting the sound of tears creeping into her voice sway him. “But it isn’t enough, and I can’t keep lying and telling myself that it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, only having parts of you isn’t enough to sustain me. I needallof you, like I used to have—”
“You do haveall of me.”
“No, I don’t.” His fingers pulled at his hair, making his scalp hurt. “Now I only have scattered fragments, and I just can’t live with them anymore.”
Slowly, Paige moved, until she was sitting at his side. Her heart pounded in an awful beat because he looked wrecked, in a way she’d never seen before. “What are you saying?”
He cleared his throat. “I think we should separate.”
“What? No,” she stuttered in disbelief. “No.You can’t mean that.”
“I’m sorry, but I do. I want you in ways that you no longer want me—”
“I do want you!”
“I think youwantto, but you don’t. Not anymore, anyway. And I need to have that sexual connection with you, in order to be whole. Without it, my heart … starves.”
David watched her eyes fill with tears, then struggle to keep them from falling, and it took everything he had to stand up and start getting dressed. Boxer briefs, jeans, the shirt he’d worn that day, and socks all got pulled on in a room that was now filled with her choked pleas.
“Please don’t do this. I love you. We can fix this.Ican fix this, I promise.” She crawled off the bed, slightly clumsy because of the bedding and got between him and the bedroom door. “You can’t leave—”
He cut off her words by taking her face in his hands and kissing her, tasting the salt of her tears and desperation on her lips. When he pulled back, it was with overwhelming sorrow because he wouldn’t be with her for the rest of his life, and the rest of his life was starting right now. “I have to. I’m sorry.”
As Paige stared after him in stunned dismay, he stepped around her on unsteady legs and headed down the hallway to the front door, stopping only to put on shoes and grab his keys.
Numb, he got into his car, and as he drove away from the house, the weight of the hardest decision he’d ever made almost suffocated him.
Chapter 1
The present
When her alarm went off at 4 a.m., Paige almost cried.
Real, honest-to-God tears.
She thought she might’ve logged three hours of sleep the entire night, mainly because she’d been unable to stop questioning the decision to use her ex-husband for sex. Once she was no longer dry humping him at his kitchen table and was alone in her apartment, a multitude of doubts crept in and proceeded to torment her throughout the night.
She was terrified of hurting David again and even though he’d said that wouldn’t happen, there were no guarantees it wouldn’t, just like there were no guarantees she’d like sex this time around. His claim they would ‘do it’ until they succeeded sounded good in theory, but what if they ‘did it’ for weeks and it wasn’t working? Or months? How long could he engage in unsuccessful sex with her before it became something he didn’t want to do anymore?
That would be devastating. For both of them.
