Page 72 of The Auction
“I just want to remember this night like this, you know? All the good stuff and none of the pain.”
He nodded once in acknowledgement.
But it had to be some sort of fucking universal truth that the best night of my life had to be followed shortly after by the worst.
EIGHTEEN
JULIETTE
In the end,what truly sucked, was that it was all my fault.
After my birthday dinner, I’d made some life altering decisions. The most important being, that I was going to have sex with Creed. I was physically ready. I was emotionally ready.
And I’d had a stern enough conversation with myself that sex with him didn’t have to change my ultimate goal, which was freedom.
I was twenty-one. I had my entire life ahead of me. This marriage that I was trapped in was temporary. Convincing Creed to let me go in an equitable manner, had nothing to do with basic human attraction.
I liked his stupid, ugly face. Didn’t mean I wanted to be married to him for the rest of my life. His body was inarguably hot. That didn’t have to spell out a lifetime commitment.
Sex didn’t have to mean forever. Like ninety-nine percent of the population knew that. So why couldn’t I have that with him for now, and then when the time was right, move on to the next phase of my life?
All I wanted, at this point, was my fair share.
When I started thinking long term, I thought about bringing in the crop. Waiting until Creed could reap the reward of all of his efforts, and then sitting him down and having a thoughtful conversation with him about my future. Maybe we could split the profits evenly, minus his investment, of course, and I could set up my own bank account. Then after maybe one or two more harvests, I would have enough to move on with my life.
There was no point in appealing to his good angel, about divorcing me now. For one, I wasn’t sure how much better those angels were than his demons. For another, it felt like spilt milk, or water under the bridge, or whatever. It was done.
And he hadn’t been wrong when he said he hadn’t been the worst of my options.
So all those things had coalesced in my brain to paint this simple, elegant picture.
There was only one catch.
How did I know that I wanted to have sex specifically with Creed?
Like what if some hormonal switch had just tripped inside me, and I was ready to have sex with anyone?
Sexually, Creed was the only man I’d ever known. Aside from a single coffee with Kevin.
It felt…limiting.
Did I like hanging out in his lap while we made out? Yes. Did I fucking love rubbing my ass against his dick to get him intentionally worked up? Totally. Had kissing him become this sort of delicious dessert that felt like a hidden secret? Yup.
But what if that happened with every guy I was into? What if it wasn’t magic or chemistry or any kind of connection?What if it was just straight up estrogen meeting testosterone?
I owed it to myself to find out. Didn’t I?
I was standing in aisle six of the hardware store, my head filled with these thoughts. Creed was back at the farm re-enforcing the chicken coop and making sure the rooster had his own space, because the ladies were just not having him. I hadn’t told him yet, because it felt like he was invested in brokering peace, but if the ladies didn’t eventually except the rooster, we were going to have to eat him.
Literally.
Kevin was lingering at the end of my aisle, pretending to re-arrange the same pliers on display for the past ten minutes, all while shooting me surreptitious glances. I knew that because I was shooting him surreptitious glances back.
Finally, our eyes met and something just popped out of me.
“Hey, Kevin. What’s going on?” I slowly made my way toward him and tried to ignore the smattering of pimples on his chin.
“Nothing. You?”
