Page 51 of Indulgence
“It was nice of you to make breakfast, Brooke,” he told her as I counted backward from ten in my head as a way to distract myself from the situation. “This isn’t something we normally do. Truthfully, I don’t know if we’d have done it without all the alcohol, and we need some time to come to terms with everything.”
“Oh . . . all right. I’ll just grab my things.” Brooke looked startled and a little embarrassed as she left the kitchen, but I couldn’t give two shits. I felt as if my life was imploding. All I could think about was how we allowed this woman into our home, into our bed, into our private sanctuary from the world.
Matteo had sex with her.
My husband had sex with another woman while I watched. The face he made as he came last night invaded my head as if it was being spotlighted in a museum. The memory was vivid, technicolor almost. He looked possessed, as if he were on another plane he’d never reached before sexually. I couldn’t remember him ever making that face while he fucked me. And he fucked her last night. Hard.
And . . .
And he came inside her.
We didn’t have condoms, and I didn’t remember anyone stopping to even look for one before he slid into her.
Anger, hurt, and straight up fear festered in my gut like a Molotov cocktail shattering against bricks.
“You didn’t wear a condom, and you came in her,” I snarled at Matteo, lashing out at the closest thing to me. Him. “You better go figure out if we have anything to worry about.”
His face dropped, and fear etched all over every inch. I wanted to die.
How could this have happened to us?
I couldn’t look at his face as everything came smacking into us. My chest felt as if it were on fire as I darted out of the kitchen and into the kids’ bathroom.
Sinking to my knees, I dry heaved into the toilet. If there had been anything in my stomach to come up, it would have.
What if Matteo knocked her up last night?
I had the implant in my arm, so we didn’t have to worry about condoms.
How could we be so stupid?
What if she had some kind of STI? Oh, dear god!
Sweat poured out of every possible place it could. I needed a shower. I needed to wash this all away.
This was a nightmare. All I wanted to do was wake up.
Wake up, damn it!
The hot water from the shower didn’t help me feel any less dirty as I jumped in and let it pour over my head. We brought some strange woman into our home. What if she’d been an axe murderer or a con artist who was waiting to clean house as soon as we fell asleep? What if she was leaving a window unlocked somewhere so she could sneak back in? She had been up first. She was chipper too. I doubted she was hung over. I questioned if she had even been drunk last night at all.
When I exited the bathroom, Matteo had pulled on a shirt and was sitting on the couch, waiting for me.
Sure, he put on a shirt after she was gone.
The first thing I saw when I looked at him was that damn face again. The wave of nausea surged back up. Fuck, would I be able to see anything but?
Things were not right between us. The difference was so evident in the air that it could have been tangible. I pulled my robe tighter, almost warding off the chill the distance between us was throwing at me.
Matteo’s eyes were rimmed with red—from the hang over or emotion, I didn’t know. While I felt ready to explode, it seemed Matteo was ready to fall apart. His voice cracked when he spoke. “She said she’s on the pill but will stop and grab a morning after pill on the way home. She offered to come back here and take it in front of us, but I didn’t think that was the best idea. She’ll send video confirmation when she’s taken it. We exchanged phone numbers to follow up. She also said she’s clean, but we should get tested anyway.”
A torrent of fury radiated up my body. “So, now she has our addressandyour phone number.”
“It was necessary, and once we know we are in the clear, I can block her,” he said, leveling me with a hard stare. “I don’t have any intention of contacting her outside of making sure she doesn’t wind up pregnant.”
A sob ripped from my chest as he said it aloud, casually putting the idea into the universe as if it didn’t have the potential to destroy our lives. Matteo was off the couch in a heartbeat, but I still couldn’t tolerate his touch. When he wrapped his arms around me, it felt tainted.
“Don’t, please,” I cried, stepping away from the man who could usually fix all my problems.
