Page 39 of Maverick
Yeah. I like to imagine that she and I would’ve been forever. The vows we spoke on that day would’ve been enough to carry us through for the rest of our lives, but I don’t know that for sure. I don’t know if I would have failed at hiding who I really am at some point – wearing a mask while I waited for real change that wasn’t coming. That never did.
We had problems. Like everybody does. We were happy. Mostly.
But I’m also messed up, and I wanted badly for falling in love to fix that. To heal me. For her to heal me.
My experience with her just broke me in a bunch of fun new ways.
I almost want to laugh. Except it’s not funny. None of this is funny.
I’ve been in denial about the passage of years. About the way that my behavior affects other people. About having connections with other people.
Tonight it came back home to roost. With a giant crash.
I used to keep the bad guy chained up. Locked away.
Tonight, I let him out to play with Stella.
It’s a lot less fun to play the villain when you know you actually hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.
Chapter Eight
Stella
It’s a stupid thing to go to his house. I know that. What I should do is take a hint. Take a goddamned hint. I know that, even as I get in my truck. I tell myself the fact that I know it proves that to an extent I am taking a hint, I’m just not doing anything with it. I’m doing what I want.
He doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t want to talk to me. But I want to see him. I want to talk to him. I want to find out what the fuck that was about. Why he took me like it was the most transcendent, wonderful experience, like he was dying for me, starving for me, then looked at me like I was an alien before walking out without saying a word.
Letting sleeping dogs lie is not my forte.
I will not be letting freshly fucked cowboys off the hook either.
Because literally, how dare he? How dare he do that to me and then…
Okay, the real issue is he left me without water. I’m going to go with that. I need water.
I don’t know where the valve to turn it back on is, and if I do turn it back on, there are going to be rat-bitten pipes leaking into my bathroom. So not only did he abandon me post-sex, he abandoned me with a broken house. And I think it’s reasonable to chase him down for that reason.
I pull my truck up beside his in front of the house. Then I take a deep breath and go to the front door. I knock.
He doesn’t answer.
I swallow hard, and turn the doorknob. It turns. It isn’t locked. I don’t really know what I should do with that. I think I should probably turn around and walk away. But even as I think that, I’m opening the front door and walking in. I just saw him naked. I had his penis in my mouth. It seems like a fair enough thing to go into the house. Or at least, it doesn’t seem like a total violation. All things considered. The intimacy we have shared, etc.
I tell myself that even as I creep in quietly. I bite my lip and look around. I don’t know what I expected his house to look like inside. But it’s…
I frown. There’s a shelf in the entryway that’s decorated beautifully. A few little vases. Bunches of dried flowers in those vases. There’s a little plate with a horse painted on it. Very nice decorations that must be heirlooms. Something maybe he got from his mother or…
And then I stop in front of a wall of photographs. It takes me a minute to figure out what I’m looking at. And then it all comes to me with startling clarity. There he is, at a wedding. Not just at a wedding, he’s the groom. Dressed in a tuxedo, holding onto a beautiful brunette woman in a fitted white gown. He’s looking at her like the sun rises and sets with her smile, and she’s looking at him the same way.
My stomach cramps painfully.
It’s tempting to completely lose my shit. Because if I just had sex with a married man I might fling myself off the nearest cliff. Because it would be one thing if I made the decision to have an affair with a married man – I wouldn’t – but it would be one thing if I had decided to go. Quite another to be dragged into someone else’s potential betrayal without consent.
But that’s just a brief thought. The truth is, no one has ever talked about him having a wife. Ever. He looks young in that picture, too. It’s not recent. Is he divorced? No. Divorced men don’t leave pictures up in their houses. Not of their weddings and not… I look at the pictures that surround the wedding portrait. Engagement photos.
Him dipping her like they’re dancing, twirling her in the middle of a field.
He did that for her. Because he’s not the kind of man who would ever choose to do something like that. I know it.
