Page 35 of A Different Husband

Despite how much it hurt to see him so chummy with that woman in his office, after thinking about it, I had already come to the conclusion that there was most likely nothing going on between them. If there had been, his office door wouldn’t have been wide open, nor would his blinds. Did it bother me that another woman was so close to my husband and he lookedhappy to have her there in his space? Yes. Did that mean he was cheating on me? No.

While it was a sucky situation for me, waking up in bed with a man was way worse, especially since I was only in a bra and panties. At least I wasn’t totally nude. I wasn’t stupid though. There were exactly zero circumstances where a husband would be okay with his wife waking up in her undies while draped across a naked - or nearly naked - man.

I cracked my eye open and noticed a little scar right under the man’s nipple. I damn near heaved a sigh of relief. Flynn had that scar. It was his body I used as a pillow. I wanted to leap up and jump for joy that I hadn’t completely annihilated any chance of making my marriage work, but the minute I started to shift, my tummy rocked and rolled in the worst possible way.

I jumped up and stumble-ran to the bathroom just in time to try out for a lead role in The Exorcist. Whatever demon crawled in my body through the numerous shots I took the night before, wanted out in an explosive way.

My throat felt raw as tears tracked down my cheeks. Every time I thought there was no way there could possibly be anything else in my stomach, my body worked to prove me wrong. I was fairly certain that my organs were liquifying and purging because there was no other explanation for the volume of of vomit I spewed.

“Be gone, demon,” I whimpered as someone grabbed my hair and pulled it back into a half ponytail, half bun type thing.

“Demons, huh?” Flynn asked. There was no judgement in his tone as he stepped back to give me some space.

“Sorry. It was a rough night.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“I’m the one who brought you home.” I turned my head to the side and looked at my gorgeous husband as he stood therein nothing but his boxer briefs and ran a washcloth under the faucet. “Got a call from you,” He stopped and thought about that for a minute. “Well, I think you started the call and got sidetracked, so this man picked up your phone and told me where I could find you.”

I crinkled my brow in confusion. “A man?”

Flynn brought the rag over to me and after I wiped my face clean with it, he rinsed it out and then ran it under cool water before he placed it on the back of my neck. “It will help,” He said to stop me from removing it. Then he told me all about the parts of my nights I hadn’t been coherent enough to remember.

“I could have been hurt.”

“Yeah, you could have, but I think everyone learned a lesson about that last night.”

“Are you sure Hadley was okay?” I didn’t know why I wanted to cry. Flynn had been placed in a bad situation the night before, or maybe earlier this morning. It sucked that he had to make the decision between staying with me or checking to be sure my friend was secure. I understood why I would be his priority, but it didn’t stop me from worrying about my bestie.

“I talked to her about an hour ago.”

“She was awake already?”

“Yes, she called me to make sure you were doing okay, since you weren’t answering her calls. She feels a good bit of guilt for leaving you alone to pass out with a stranger while she hooked up with his friend.”

“I’m a grown up. It’s not her job to babysit me,” I grumbled.

“Speaking of being a grown up,” My husband mentioned. “Please, don’t ever do that again. You were at a biker bar. If you hadn’t been sitting with the one decent guy in that bar, things could have turned out very differently, Court.”

I nodded, too afraid of my own overwhelming emotions to say anything in my defense. Truthfully, there was no defendingthe fact that I got that drunk in a place I wasn’t familiar with while surrounded by strangers. I don’t think I even registered that we were at a biker bar because my feelings after seeing my husband cozy with another woman blinded me to everything else.

“You wanna talk about why you were there in the first place?” Flynn asked.

“Not really,” I murmured.

“I think we should. It’s not doing us any good to keep going in this cone of silence the way we have been.”

“I’ve barely seen you,” I argued. “It’s hard to talk to someone who isn’t there.”

“You’re right. That was my fault. At first, I wanted to give you time to work through whatever you needed, but then I was afraid that in working through everything, you would decide to leave me.”

“We’re a mess.” I groaned when my stomach heaved again like I might throw up some more. Flynn took one look at me and backed toward the door.

“I’m going to grab some Ginger soda and crackers for you. Maybe it will help settle your stomach.” He was gone before I could argue that there was no way I would ever put food or liquid in my body again after puking up an entire ocean of alcohol a few minutes ago.

When my husband came back, he helped me to our bed and tucked me in before he handed me the soda and left the crackers on the bedside table.

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