Page 35 of Second Chance Husband

August

This time when I went to take a shower, Paisley wasn’t there, and I was grateful for her absence. I turned on the faucet, water falling from the rain showerhead, and I stuck my hand under it, grateful it was ice-cold. When I stepped underneath the flowing water, I gritted my teeth, bearing the ice-cold temperature as I tried to clear my head.

Too much drink, too many poor decisions, and not enough brainpower had led to what had happened.

Everything had been a terrible mistake, but it wasn’t as if we could take it back. Or perhaps I could lie and pretend, but I didn’t think so. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to either.

I quickly ran a washcloth over my body, using whatever soap that happened to be in the shower. It smelled like citrus and maybe a little coconut, and figured I would smell like a tropical drink the rest of the day but I didn’t care.

Part of me wanted to wash Paisley’s scent off me, the rest wanted to keep it. But then I remembered how her hair had smelled like this earlier, because she had probably used it when she had showered before.

So now I was going to smell like her anyway, despite the fact that I was trying to scrape off any semblance of the mistakes I had made the night before.

I had been the one to pursue her. To want to kiss her, the one to fuck her on the countertop. Yes, she had leaned in, had taken, had wanted as much as I had.

But I had made the first move.

I had been the one to step across the line after so many years of not doing so. Of staying away because it would be safer if I did.

So I was to blame.

And I didn’t have a good reason for any of it, other than the fact that I wanted her.

And I had wanted her for far too long.

I finished showering and turned off the water, getting out while wrapping a towel around my waist.

When I looked up, I realized I wasn’t alone.

Paisley stood in the doorway—her hair tousled as if someone had been running their hands through it all night. Well, that someone had been me. I had been the one to take her, to want her, and to not give a flying fuck about the consequences.

What the hell had I been thinking?

She looked like a damn goddess, wrapped in that white robe that had come with the room, her lips swollen from the night before. She had such a look of innocence in her eyes, weariness. That was on me though. We had done so well about not making poor choices all these years, and then here we were, making them again.

I was a damn asshole.

I had done my best to never fall in love with Paisley over these years we’d been apart. Or at least never to admit that I had fallen in love with her. No, that wasn’t right. It was all about admitting that I still loved her. That I had walked away because of that love, however selfish that may be.

And now here she stood, in our shared bathroom, looking lost.

Perhaps just as lost as I felt.

“Do you need the shower?” I grunted, while I took a step to the side and gestured toward it. “It’s all yours. There’s plenty of hot water.”

She frowned at me then, but I didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t do anything other than stand there and watch her try to think.

My beautiful, sweet Paisley who wasn’t mine. She was eternally on her toes, thinking faster than the rest of us, and smarter than all of us combined. Then I had broken her brain.

I was a damn asshole.

“Yeah, a shower would be good.” She cleared her throat, that smokiness that had come from either disuse, or screaming my name too loudly in the night making her voice sound husky as hell.

My dick hardened at the thought, which was surprising considering how many times I had come the night before. I hadn’t thought my dick had it in him. So I turned so the rise of my towel didn’t cause any attention and walked through her bedroom to the living room. Because I had not wanted to stand there any longer, nor be forced to walk past her into her bedroom. Because we hadn’t used the two rooms. Instead we had used my bed.

I was such a damn idiot.

I walked through the shared living room, and into my bedroom once I heard the bathroom door close. The sound of water reached my ears, and I was grateful that she had turned the shower on.

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