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“Where are you going?” She wasn’t headed to the bathroom.
“I have to be at Healthy Food early tomorrow. It will be easier if I drive home tonight.”
Her words grated against his skin. “Your home should be here.”
Slight and short, with only her pregnancy breasts and her barely there belly to give any heft to her figure, she still managed to look formidable in just her underwear, her arms behind her back as she hooked her bra together. “Remember how after the last time I was naked in your bed, you said, ‘this can’t change anything’?”
Fuck. “Yes.” And, at the time, nothing had changed. Now, three weeks later, having seen Vivian every night at Healthy Food, at family dinner and after having plenty of conversation but no sex, everything had changed. This wasn’t about a one-night stand gone wrong. This was about his life. Their lives. Their life together.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn’t say anything else. He was going to make her say the words.
Her black-silk-covered breasts rose and fell with her sigh. “This doesn’t change anything.”
“So we’re married and you’re pregnant with my child, but you’re still going to be living with my mom and we’ll just be what—fuck buddies?”
He could tell he’d hurt her when she blinked rapidly several times, but she was hurting him by leaving.
“Would you prefer I found another fuck buddy?” And she walked away, the coward.
Karl scrambled out of bed, tripping over his pants as he shoved his boxers on and followed his wife. For the second time that night she was walking away and he was going to fall on his ass. Except time was working in reverse. When he stumbled into the living room, Vivian was at the entry, zipping up her dress. Her coat would follow and…
“You can’t just leave.”
“A month and a half ago you couldn’t get me out of this apartment fast enough.” She was tying that goddamned ribbon that had started this nonsense in the elevator. Irrational though it may be, he couldn’t escape the feeling that once that ribbon was tied, she was lost to him.
“But a lot has changed since then.” He winced at the whine in his voice. Years of practice at being unemotional and suddenly all his pent-up feelings were coming out over this one woman and the stupid, sexy knobs of her spine that smelled like jasmine. “We have different responsibilities to each other.”
“Like what?”
“Like…like…like…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words she wanted to hear. The words that would convince her to climb back into his bed and stay there until morning.
The still-untied ribbon swayed with her movements as she put her hands on her hips. “Do you still judge me for nearly cheating Middle Kingdom and getting fired?”
“I understand better what drove you to it.” The lessons he’d learned at his father’s knees lingered at the back of his mind. How did those ghosts get enough strength to prevent him from telling the woman he loved what she wanted to hear?
He couldn’t see the reaction on her face as he said the words because she was looking down, tugging on the ends of the ribbon to tighten the knot. When the bow looked as pristine as it had before the wedding ceremony had even started, she raised her gaze to his. Any emotion she felt had been worked into that knot. “But you still judge me for it, and so I am a fool for having come over here tonight.”
“When you were sitting on that couch, all you wanted was a place to live and health insurance. I’m offering you that—and more. What else do you want from me?” He asked the question knowing what the answer was, hoping it had changed and knowing it shouldn’t.
The apartment was silent as Vivian slipped her arms into her coat and buttoned up against the early spring night. Finally, when she was entirely bound up and so far from him that she might as well have been at his mother’s house already, Vivian answered, “When I was sitting on your couch I was one step away from being homeless and pregnant. My situation has changed and I now know that I’m worth more—that I deserve more than just a place to live and health insurance. That’s not good enough for me.”
