Page 3 of Perdition
Sarah was young, skinny, beautiful, and took care of herself.
Butshewasn’t Sarah, and apparently, Mads had noticed.
How long? How long have I not been good enough that he now needs options?
Sucking in a breath to stop the spots from dancing in her eyes, Em tried to take a step back but couldn’t. The pair of jeans in her hands were leaving marks in her skin from where she was squeezing them so tightly in her fists, her fingers ached from the force.
Sarah, not knowing she was tearing apart a marriage word-by-word, cooed, “Hey, how ‘bout we grab some food from Lowry’s and head to that spot by the lake you showed me. It’sbeautiful there, and that big red tree is the perfect place for a picnic.”
Spot by the lake…big red tree….
Em gasped, quickly pressing her hand against her mouth to muffle the sound.
No. Sarah, the club whore, the young, buxom, blonde cum dumpster, couldn’t be talking about the overlook on the lake on Mads’s grandpa’s property, the land the old man had gifted to Em and Madsen on their wedding day, the land where she had always hoped to build their dream home, but Mads kept putting it off, with one excuse after another. The land with the big red maple tree, the one Mads had carved their initials into twenty years ago when he’d made the promise to love her forever.Theirspot. Theirspecial place.For the two of them.
He’d takenhertotheirspot?
After a moment of weighty silence, her husband replied, “Sure, yeah, that sounds good.”
And he was taking her thereagain. Totheirspot. Ontheirland…wheretheirdreams of a future, family, and forever had been etched into that same red maple tree.
The red maple tree she and Mads hand planted, by hand, when she was twelve and he was sixteen. It had symbolized their—then—budding friendship that had quickly turned to young love when she’d turned sixteen, and then forever love when she’d married him at eighteen, pregnant with their twins. That tree was them, their story, their timeline—roots, trunk, branches, and leaves.
And he was taking another woman to sit beneath those branches, to be shaded by the leaves, to settle against the trunk, and picnic on the soil nurturing those roots.
Tainted. Diseased. Withering. Dying. That tree was no longer a testament to the growth, strength, vitality, and longevity oftheir marriage…it was a carcass, still standing, but in need of culling.
He took her to our spot…is taking her again….
Had he…had he made love to Sarah under the tree…as he had with Em all those years ago when she’d gifted him her virginity…and he’d gifted her his. They were each other’s first…under that red maple tree.
Had her husband, her one and only, taken another woman and given himself to her at the base of that tree, with only fallen leaves as a soft blanket beneath them? Had he slowly undressed her, or was it a desperate shedding of clothes fueled by raging desire for one another? Had he looked down at her naked body and compared it to his wife’s, a body that had wear and tear, and stretch and sag? Had his eyes burned with lust and his body grow hot and hard with need for her, for the body that was perfect—unlike the worn, lumpy, not so shiny body of his wife?
Em’s mouth flooded, bile rising to coat her tongue and teeth with sour acid, the need to vomit rising with it.
Trembling, Em finally found the strength to push away from the wall, to stumble down the corridor, back toward the door leading to the rear parking lot where she’d parked. Sliding into her 2024 Dodge Durango, she didn’t remember anything after hitting the start button, but she had to have known where she needed to go because in a blink she was parked in the two-car garage of their home just outside of Wilkes-Barre, the one they’d bought when their family of four had outgrown the tiny apartment they’d rented right before Mads’s first deployment. This house, with its two thousand five hundred square feet was only meant to be a stopover, a place to rest until their forever home on Granddad’s land was built. But year after year, they remained, and year after year, Mads spent less and less time there, and now that the twins were off to college, it sat empty a lot of the time. She worked long hours as the owner and managerof Flower’s Blooms, and Mads spent more and more time at the clubhouse. So the home that she’d painstakingly built over the years, the resting place, the safe haven, the heart and soul that she’d seeded, planted, and nurtured over the last fifteen years was now simply a cold, desiccated husk.
Sliding out of the driver’s seat, Em set to work. She dropped the jeans she’d meant to give her husband on the kitchen counter beside her purse, then she headed to the smart home hub located on the wall in her home office. Mads had demanded they upgrade the house because he was tired of losing and then having to beg her to find his keys. Also, the home was wired with exterior cameras, window sensors, and all the bells and security whistles an MC president required in his home.
It's going to bite him in the ass how, aint it?
Unlocking the system, Em proceeded to change the key code for the front and back doors. The interior garage door, leading into the kitchen, didn’t have a key, since they only ever locked it once everyone was in for the night, so no one ever needed a key for it.
That, too, would bite Mads in the ass.
The Flowers’ home lockdown complete, her legs trembling, her chest aching as her heart attempted to lurch from it, she collapsed onto the floor just inside the back door, her limp and yet frozen body slumped against it.
Hands shaking, she took out her phone, sending a text she never thought she’d ever have to send.
QueenEm: CODE RED.
Sitting on the cold tile floor, in the kitchen of the home she’d built with the man she loved, the man who betrayed her, she promptly fell apart.
TWO
Frost groaned,throwing his head back, his throat working, his eyes closed tight, his body vibrating with unspent tension.
Fuuuuuck….
