Page 38 of Shame

I’m horrified to realize she’s crying.

She shakes her head when I try to say something. Whatever I was about to say—it’s okay, don’t cry, I understand—would have been all wrong.

“I’m still young,” she finally mutters. “But I feel like I’ve started my life over again a few times now, and I don’t want to. Not again. I really liked this one, Luke. The loft, the studio, the lake, being downtown.” She turns and glares in the direction of our building, now in the distance.

“I wanted that life,” she yells, startling the joggers around us, and an older couple walking down by the water.

I force myself not to be embarrassed. It doesn’t matter. It’s fine. I don’t know why she needed to be quite so loud about it, but I understand the sentiment.

A sinking feeling drags the next question out of me. “Grace, how much of that life is tied up in your art?”

She turns around and starts marching down the path again. Fierce and frightened. Like a kitten, I think, and regret twists my insides into barbed wire.

We walk in silence for a while, then she slows. “We should go back.”

“If you want.”

“This hasn’t been the business talk walk I advertised it to be.”

“That’s fine.” I clear my throat. “Sam realized I’m not working at the office anymore.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I’m going through some things. General mental health stuff. Probably a coward’s way out of the conversation, but I wasn’t…” It was too soon.

“It’s okay. He hasn’t said anything to me.” She makes a face. “I guess I’ll tell you if he does. It’s probably better to wait until after the show, anyway. The last thing we want is a scene.”

“Right.” Although that’s not really a Grace thing to say. That’s a Preston concern, and she’s only ever worried about those on my behalf.

“We should go back.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

She rolls her head. “I’m just—this isn’t what I thought—”

“What do you want from me, Grace?” I hope to tell my voice sounds pleading. I’ll do anything she wants, I just need to know what that is. “Let me in. At least as a friend.”

"No."

“I’ll be gentle."

She laughs bitterly. “I don’t want gentle. I want safe."

Fuck me, I don't even know what my wife wants. “What do you mean, you don’t want gentle? Is this about kink?”

She gives me a strange look, then shrugs. “Sure. Okay. I don’t know how to answer that. I think it’s just about life. And maybe my life, maybeIam kinky, in a bone-deep way you will never understand, because when it’s this intrinsic to someone, you get scared. But it’s okay if it’s play acting. I don’t know, Luke. But you scare me. Not in a threatening way, but in a dangerous way. I don’t want a gentle conversation from you. I don’t want friendship from you. I wanted a desperate, needy, possessive fuck from you, and that was never on the table. Not for me. But it was for someone else. I’ve had enough of gentle from you for a lifetime and it was all deeply dangerous to my psyche in the end. Do you want to know something highly embarrassing?”

How am I supposed to answer that?

She glares at me with challenge in her eyes. “No?”

“Yes,” I shout back. Now I’m the one attracting attention. “I want to know everything about you, Grace.”

“Well, that’s new.”

Shame roars inside me, loud and wounded. It’s my old standard, the driving force that built a firm to rival my father’s in just a few years—and then let my brother destroy it. But then I fucking rebuilt it.

I can rebuild my marriage, too. “Yeah. It is new. And desperate, and needy, and possessive. So if you want to see that insideme, let me assure you it’s there. Maybe I’m the one who should start sharing embarrassing shit with you, right? How about that?” I stalk over to a garbage can and get rid of my coffee. Then I spread my arms wide. “I’m a stupid fucking man, Grace, but I love you. If you don’t want gentle, I’ll give you something else. Just give me a chance.”

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