Page 59 of Off Limits

“Hm.” She takes a sip of her coffee, both hands wrapped around the mug. The oversize white dress shirt she’s wearing slips off of one shoulder. For a second, despite myself, I can’t help but notice she looks cute…but then I realize it’s my shirt she’s wearing.

I tamp down a surge of irritation. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t wear any of my clothes while you’re here.”

She widens her eyes in mock confusion and then looks down at the shirt. “Oh, this? You used to love when I wore your shirts!”

“Not anymore, Melanie. I’m trying to divorce you, remember?” It comes out with an unexpected bite, but I don’t falter, holding her gaze.

“J.L.,” she says with exasperation, as if I’m the one who’s being difficult. “Listen. We need to sort this out. I need money. If you restart the monthly payments and give me the house back, I can live there while you take the space that you need to heal. But I don’t think it makes any sense to get divorced. I’ve made some mistakes, yes, but everyone makes mistakes. It takes two people to ruin a marriage, you know!”

“I’ve never cheated,” I point out, with just a flicker of doubt. Even though Melanie and I aren’t technically divorced, it certainly never felt like cheating with the women I hooked up with after we separated. But with Dani…I’m not sure what that counts as.

Her smile falls, and her eyes turn cold. “For the millionth time, I’m sorry! You need to learn to stop dwelling in the past.”

“The house sold, Melanie. And I’m not your piggy bank anymore. The only way you’ll get money from me is if you sign the divorce papers. I paid for you to have a good lawyer, and he fought for that amount of spousal support. It’s more than the monthly e-transfers. I don’t understand your resistance.”

Her eyes soften, and her mouth twitches, and she blinks a couple of times before looking up at me. “Because I don’t want to give up on us, babe. I love you.”

It’s a testament to the damage that’s been wrought in this relationship that I don’t trust her answer. Instead of pacifying me, her confession of love makes me suspicious and puts me on guard. Melanie has manipulated me so many times over the course of our history that I no longer trust anything she says. So instead of meeting her doe eyes with tenderness of my own, I lean forward with a shrewd look. “Why don’t you want to get divorced?”

She blows out an irritable breath, and when she speaks her voice has a hard edge. “Jean-Luc, I’m thirty-seven years old. What am I going to do if I’m divorced? Even your alimony won’t keep me in…” she waves her hand, “a house like this. It won’t pay for the vacations we used to take, or the dinners we used to have.”

“It should come pretty close,” I say tersely. I’ve agreed to share a significant portion of my family trust with Melanie for the rest of her life. She’ll want for nothing.

“But it’s not the same!’ She reaches for my hands, covering them both with hers in a supplicating manner. “At our age, it’s better to be married, settled down. We have a good thing, honey. You just have to think bigger. Your thinking is always so small, J.L., if you could just be more open-minded—“

“What is your point, Melanie?”

She sighs. “The point is this: We could both have what we want in this marriage, if you can just expand your definition of what a marriage is.”

I roll my eyes, pulling my hands away. “Didn’t we try this already?” Years ago, at Melanie’s insistence, we’d tried swinging and I’d hated it.

“See what you’re doing? You’re closing your mind already. You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”

“Fine.”

She continues. “I miss our lifestyle. I love being the wife of big, strong, rich Jean-Luc Rochat.” The description irks me—those three things are all I am to her. “But we could lead separate, independent lives. Free to see or fuck other people if we want.”

“But I don’t want that, Melanie. I’ve never wanted that.”

She leans in, a satisfied look on her face like she knows she’s about to score the winning goal. “But don’t you? With me as your wife, J.L., it doesn’t look weird for Dani to be living here. No one will raise an eyebrow. What you do behind closed doors, no one will know about. I’m the perfect beard for you.”

My blood turns to ice as fear pricks my skin. We’ve been careful…haven’t we? How could she suspect anything?

“What are you saying?” I ask warily, thinking there could still be a chance I’ve misunderstood something. She can’t possibly know about me and Dani.

She smirks. “You know exactly what I’m saying. You think I don’t know what’s going on here?”

I take a breath. My heart is pounding so loudly in my ears it’s hard to hear anything else. “And just what do you think is going on?”

“I went down to the basement to see you last night, J.L., but you weren’t there. You weren’t on the living room couch, you weren’t in your office. You think I can’t guess where you’re spending your nights?” She gets up from her stool, and walks up to me, trailing a teasing finger over my frozen chest. “I get it, you know,” she says in a low voice. “You never wanted to open up our relationship because I was the only one you wanted. But a younger version of me? It’s perfect for you, isn’t it?”

Despite the ice in my veins, my face heats up. I knew that if Melanie found out about Dani and I she would use it to manipulate me, but never in my wildest dreams did I think she would be supportive of it in order to get what she wants. Even though I’m the one committing the heinous act of fooling around with her daughter, I’m offended beyond all reason.

“Don’t you even care?”

“For fuck’s sake, Jean-Luc, she’s eighteen. You’re both consenting adults. You two can do whatever you like as far as I’m concerned. But eventually she’ll grow up, and you’ll realize she was still never me. And I’m saying I’m okay with that. I can be here, J.L., when you’re done with her. We can have separate rooms, whatever you like, but as long as I stay Mrs. Melanie Rochat, you can have your cake and eat it, too.”

Her words horrify me. When I’m done with her? Have my cake and eat it too? My mind balks at the hellish future that Melanie is imagining.

---