Page 34 of Not Quite Perfect

“You don’t think …” She paused, as if considering her words. “Do you think he came out to take the heat off me?”

I’d had a similar thought, but with a different take on the situation. “More like to take the heat offme,” I answered. “Again, I’m sorry you had to find out about Stacia that way.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to belabor the point. If she was willing to forgive me, I wasn’t going to press my luck.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I answered, kicking my feet out in front of me as I settled against the headboard, the shadows from the flames in my fireplace dancing over the walls. “From here on out, I’m an open book.”

She pulled a long, slow breath into her lungs and I waited for the words to spill forth. I had a pretty good inkling what they’d be. “Why’d you get divorced?”

I took a moment to compose my thoughts. My marriage—and subsequent divorce—didn’t paint me in the best light. Hell, it didn’t paint either of us particularly well. It was a relationship that had been doomed from the start, and instead of acknowledging that, we just kept compounding mistake after mistake after mistake … until the only thing left was bitterness and betrayal.

“I think the better question is why we got married in the first place.” I’d promised Victoria there’d be no more secrets between us, so it was time I came clean about the whole sordid affair.

“That sounds … ominous.”

“We were young,” I began, going all the way back to the beginning. “Stacia was the life of the party, and I … well, I wasn’t. I was always studying or working, and she was my escape. Unfortunately, we weren’t always responsible, so when she came to me and said she was pregnant, I did what I thought was right.”

On the other end of the line, Victoria sucked in a shocked gasp. “You have a kid too?”

“No,” I rushed to assure her. “It turns out she wasn’t pregnant. She had a cyst on her ovary that was causing her to have irregular periods.” I shook my head at the stupidity of it all. Stacia had never even taken a pregnancy test. If she had … well, my life would have turned out quite differently.

“One night it burst and she started bleeding pretty bad. I rushed her to the hospital thinking she was losing the baby, only to find out therewasn’ta baby. By that point, we’d been married for six weeks, and I honestly did care for her. Once she got out of surgery and the shock wore off, we decided to stay married. I thought we could make it work.”

“But?”

“But …” I dragged a hand across my jaw, the stubble abrading my skin. “But she had other ideas. I’m honestly not sure she has it in her to be faithful.”

“She was cheating on you?”

“From the beginning, it turns out.” And then I admitted the ugly truth that I’d learned way too late. “Had sheactuallybeen pregnant, I’m not even sure the kid would have been mine. It turns out I wasn’t the only guy she was being irresponsible with. I was, however, the only one clueless enough to buy her lies.”

The line fell silent as Victoria processed my confession. Eventually, she let out a long, slow breath. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder you don’t do relationships.”

“Not until you.”

“Right,” she answered. “Why is that, David?”

Her question caught me off guard. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s just …” She paused, and I pictured her chewing on her lip, a tic that came out when she was mulling something over. I didn’t know if she was even aware that she did it, but I’d noticed it almost immediately. Hard not to, when you were busy staring at a woman’s lips, hoping and praying that you’d get to taste them someday soon.

My answer was on the tip of my tongue, but I took a moment to play the words in my head before speaking them. This was probably the most revealing conversation Victoria and I had ever had, and I didn’t want to fuck things up twice in one night.

“Initially, I thought you’d be someone I could spend a few fun hours passing the time with. Not to be too crass about it, but I wanted to fuck you. Desperately.”

Victoria laughed. “No, that wasn’t crass at all.”

I smiled, remembering how charged our conversation on the ferry had been. At one point I’d had to inwardly recite Chaucer to keep from giving into my baser instincts and dragging her to the bathroom. Christ, how I’d wanted to get my hands on her. But as the discussion wore on, my lust was matched by my need to know her. Not just her body, but her mind as well.

“The more we talked, the more I realized that it wasn’t just physical. I mean, it was, obviously, but you were smart and kind, and I was fascinated by more than your luscious lips.”

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