Page 16 of Hold Me for Now

But not his.

Mine.

My breath catches as the truth unfurls inside me. It wasn’t his love that gave me permission to let go. It was the love I found for myself.

I swallow hard. “Love,” I whisper. “That’s the key. Oh! And communication.”

“And trust.” He looks at me, his eyes glowing. “I trust you, K.”

My chest constricts, but not in a bad way. It’s different this time. Safer. Realer.

“Me, too.” I snuggle closer and break into a giggle. “We sound like a Hallmark card.”

He laughs with me. “I know, and that’s okay.”

I shift, tilting my head up so I can see him better, and he mirrors the movement, grinning down at me. The space between us hums, something new and unspoken hanging in the air. Slowly, he leans in, his lips pursed like he’s going to kiss me—

Dr. D’s voice cuts through the moment. “Excellent job, T and K! Really good work. I couldn’t be happier with your results today. I’m confident you’ll be able to reproduce this with your current and future partners now that you’ve had this breakthrough.”

Current partner.

His wife.

T freezes, his lips so close to mine I can feel the warm exhale of his breath. Then he backs up. He puts his head on the pillow and stares at the ceiling, his face—usually so animated—wiped clean. A tense silence descends. In it I hear the echoes of our whispered I love you’s. The words I clung to, that I let myself believe. But now, in the cold light of reality, they don’t sound romantic.

They sound like betrayal.

My stomach twists. Dr. D said his wife would be okay with this, but would she really? Would I be okay if our roles were reversed? Sure, I can justify it with the fact that they’re separated, maybe headed for a divorce, butIcan’t be the one to force that decision. I don’t want the blame for their failed marriage.

Scrambling, I push off T and sit up to comb my fingers through the snarls of my tangled hair. I let the strands fall like a curtain, shielding me.

“You’ll receive a follow-up questionnaire,” Dr. D continues. Since he’s not in the room, maybe he doesn’t understand how the temperature just plummeted twenty degrees. “I’ll send my bill to the email addresses you provided earlier. Just a hundred dollars. A very reasonable fee.”

The lights turn up, flooding the room with clinical brightness. I hiss through my teeth, blinded by the sterile glare.

Reality punches its way to the front of my post-orgasm–addled brain, and it’s not pretty. This isn’t love. This was a mistake. I need to remember that it’s a business transaction, nothing more. All parties got what they came for, and now there’s no reason to linger. I shuffle off the bed and separate my clothing from T’s. My shirt is inside out. His pants button is somehow caught in my fishnet stockings. Painstakingly, with numb fingers, I free it, then toss T’s clothing onto the bed where he still lays, frozen like a statue, naked as the day he was born.

“Here you go,” I say, my tone sharper than I intended as I avert my gaze from his near-perfect body. I’m not sure how to handle this. How to come down from this high without feeling like I just went skydiving but my parachute never opened.

The pants hit T in the chest, and he flinches. I watch out of the corner of my eye, not brave enough to stare at him head on in these harsh conditions.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. He turns away from me as he dresses, which shouldn’t matter, I tell myself it doesn’t, but in reality it cuts deep, like he just plunged a knife into my heart. After all that intimacy, now I’m back to being a stranger, not allowed to see him naked.

Chapter twelve

Oncehe’sfullyclothed,T comes to me with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as if he’s hiding them. I wonder what they would do if he released them. Would they reach for me? Touch me? Hug me?

I’ll never know. There’s a distance between us, a frigid tundra colder than the air conditioning that blasts over my head.

“Well, uh, thanks,” he says, his eyes focused on something over my shoulder. I glance behind to see what has him so fascinated but there’s nothing, just emptiness.

I force my arms to stay at my sides. I willnotreach for him. I refuse to be the only one reaching.

“Yeah.” My voice has lost all inflection. Something in me is dying a slow, tortuous death. “You too. Thanks.”

“Well…” He rocks on his heels, seemingly at war with himself. “I’m not sure what to say. My wife—ex—whatever. I promised her I’d try, and I feel like I should let her know what’s happened. That I can do it now.”

His throat works. His jaw flexes. His voice is careful, deliberate. Like he’s trying to convince himself as much as me.

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