Page 37 of Without Apology

She declared the same words I’d told myself over and over. It was only one date. Two kisses. Yet the thought of losing her left me in a panic. She was retreating, both figuratively and physically, putting money on the bar, ready to go.

“Then why do I miss you? Why do I sit in my office, quiet as a church mouse so I can hear your voice through the walls? Why do I think about you all of the time?”

She stilled. Her lips parted in surprise while the magnitude of what I’d admitted hit me. But there was no going back.

“I keep telling myself it was only one date, too.” I’d tried to convince myself it was insane to have this connection with someone I barely knew. But I felt as if our time had been cut short in some sort of tragic way. If she knew the depth of my thoughts on the matter, I was sure she’d be running for the hills. They weren’t the thoughts of a rational man who’d been out with a woman once for dinner.

She moved her body towards me until I could feel the heat from her leg next to mine. The sexual tension radiated from the both of us like a low hum while my heart thumped in my chest.

“Maybe it’s because it’s now forbidden we want it more.” Her voice was down to a whisper, full of a need that hadn’t been evident before.

“Meaning you feel the same way?”

“Yes.” She let out a sigh, her finger rimming her glass with a seductive action I doubted she was even aware of. “Evidently, we’re both crazy, or maybe we simply can’t stand not getting our way?”

I smiled and watched her do the same. Catching the bartender’s attention, I ordered another whiskey and then threw back the one in front of me with one motion.

“I do enjoy getting my way.” And right now, I’d have loved nothing more than to pay the tab and take her up to my room. I’d have her naked in two seconds and my tongue buried in her pussy in two more.

“Me, too.” The way her eyes darkened made me wonder if she wasn’t thinking the same thing.

“My family,” I blurted out.

“What?”

“My family, or rather my father, is the reason I don’t give apologies.” Even saying the word in a sentence was hard to get out. Yet giving her something was important if I was to bridge the gap caused by any wrongs I’d done her.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

No. I didn’t. I shook my head. “Do you miss your father?”

She took my cue for changing the subject onto her family. “Every day. I miss my mom more, which I suppose I should feel guilty about, but my father traveled a lot. She was around for the day to day.”

“You lost both parents? At the same time?”

“Yes. In a horrible accident.”

I assumed a car crash. “You were a minor. What did you do?”

“My sister became my guardian. Can you imagine at age nineteen in your sophomore year, having to quit college and come back home to take care of your teenage sister?”

“No. I can’t.”

“It’s what she did. She finished her degree locally by attending school at night. Had a long-distance relationship with her now-husband while he was at college—all so she could keep me in our home town and with her.”

“Pretty selfless.”

“She is. Are your parents still alive?”

I wasn’t accustomed to talking about my family at all. Yet here I was putting it out there. “My mother died five years ago. My father lives, although I haven’t spoken to him in almost two decades.”

“Twenty years?”

“Just about. He wasn’t a good man.”

“If I were to guess, he had something against you saying sorry?”

Quite the opposite. I simply nodded, not wanting to burden her with how I used to get beat until the word would pass my lips. It started when I was about four. My father enjoyed the groveling, the tears, and most of all, the pain. He saw an apology as weakness. The words would empower him while defeating me. It had taken me years to realize it was he who was truly the weak one. A man who would prey on a child and his wife with his fists.

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