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She put her underwear back on. Put the dress back on. And for the first time in six years, the dress didn’t feel... Like her. Her clothes didn’t feel like they belonged to her. Which was crazy. Because of course they did. They were the only things she’d had for six years. And they had been so much a part of her identity. That woman who looked sophisticated and classic, and rich. Even though she wasn’t any of those things.
They didn’t fit her now. Not now. Not the woman who’d had crazy sex in the back of a pickup truck with Brody McCloud.
He’d called her Lizzie.
She pushed that away.
He got dressed too, and they got back in the truck. He settled a blanket over her lap as he started the engine.
She snuggled into it.
“Will you come back to my place?”
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.
She had a feeling that was momentous for him. But she didn’t ask about it. Instead she thought she’d give something to him.
“I took these clothes. In the divorce. And I have taken really good care of them, because there’s no way that I could ever afford to buy clothes this nice again.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“It just explains some things.”
“Like what?”
“Why they don’t really look like you. I made a lot of assumptions about you, based on those clothes. But I don’t think... They’re not really you, are they?”
“No. I wanted to be... I wanted to be something different than what I was. My...”
Tears gathered in her eyes. She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Didn’t know why she was even mentioning it at all, except he had called her Lizzie.
“My name isn’t Elizabeth.”
“What?”
“Well, that isn’t true. It is. You know, you can change your name to anything. And when you get married, your name doesn’t just change. You have to change it, and it seemed like a good time for me to change my first name too. Because I’d been going by Elizabeth for a long time.”
“What was your name then?”
“Lizzie. Just Lizzie. No Elizabeth. But it sounded so... Sounded like the name a teenager might give to her kid. Which is exactly what it was. It wasn’t a real name. Not to me. It just made me feel different. Of course, most people assumed it was a nickname. But there were lots of times when grown-ups would ask me if it was short for Elizabeth, and I’d have to say no. And see how mystified they were by that. Because it’s usually a nickname.”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. It doesn’t mean there was ever anything wrong with you.”
“I don’t see how that can be true,” she said. “Because it sure feels like there is. It sure feels like there always has been. Things got a lot easier for me when I became Elizabeth Colfax. And not Lizzie Barton.”
“Is that why you kept his name?”
“No. I kept his name so that I would have the same last name as Benny. But I realized when Ashley introduced herself to you the other day just how weird it is. I don’t especially like being connected to them. Not because they’re awful. They aren’t. Just because... You know, it’s all those connections. I don’t think I have my own life, Brody. I really don’t.”
“Can I call you Lizzie?”
“Sometimes,” she said, her chest getting tight.
“I’ll call you that. And nobody else will. So there you go. That’s your own life. Something no one even knows about. The name no one else is allowed to use. And you like it, because when I say it, I’ll be making you come.”
She throbbed between her legs. She couldn’t help it. How did he make her feel things in her heart, and in intimate places, all at the same time?
