Page 20 of Chosen Road

Today was the last day of my second week back at work full-time, and I probably should not have put in as many hours as I did. The first week was worse. Thankfully my assistant, Jacqueline, came back from vacation in full swing, competent as ever.

Other than a few odd looks, she was mostly herself.

After the third time I caught her peering at me, I laughed. “Jacqueline, for shit’s sake, I’m as good as new! You’re tiptoeing around me like I’m going to explode.”

She smiled, but something about her smile seemed off, maybe a little sad, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

She retreated to her workstation and the rest of the afternoon went smoothly. On my way out I stopped at her desk. She stopped what she was doing and trained her big baby blues on my face.

My heart tripped in my chest, a quick spurt of unexpected anxiety.

I rapped my knuckles on her desk softly. “I’m heading home.”

“Okay,” she said softly, her blue eyes wide, searching.

“Have a good weekend. I’ll see you Monday.” I turned to walk away, and she called after me softly.

“If you need anything over the weekend, let me know.”

I waved over my shoulder. “I’m good. Thanks.”

Several times Jacqueline had hinted that she was open to more than a working relationship since she split with her husband. The day she told me she had left him, I asked her if she was sure they couldn’t save their marriage, then made the unfortunate admission that things with Amber could be better. She started looking at me differently after that. Although I was careful not to say anything further about Amber and me, Jacqueline’s doe eyes made me uncomfortable. I needed to figure out how to nip that in the bud before it became a bigger problem.

Stretching out on the couch, I thought about my relationship with my wife while I waited for her to come home. Perhaps tonight, with Alex out of the house, I’d be able to get her to open up to me.

The woman exasperated me. I knew she was private and closed off when I married her, but with the passage of time I figured she’d learn to open up. Especially now, after coming so close to losing one another, I hoped she’d be more willing to work on our marriage.

At least things between us were better than they were before the accident.

She lay in my arms every night instead of clinging to her side. That was a massive improvement.

We’d even made love several times over the past month. Once she even initiated. Not once did I get the feeling she didn’t want me, yet I never felt like she was totally with me either.

The thought of the divorce papers sitting in my desk drawer upstairs, the ones I had drawn up two weeks before the accident, made me cringe. I’d come so close to giving up on her, on us.

We were still far from good, but at least now, I had hope. And it was with that hope for our future, along with a mental plea that the painkillers would soon kick in, that I fell asleep.

An hour later, I bolted up off the couch.

“Oh, God. Oh, fuck, no.”

My eyes squeezed shut at the same time as I pressed my head between my palms, but neither did anything to extinguish the memory of Jacqueline on her knees with her hand on my fly, her hungry blue eyes looking up at me, lips parted in a pant. Worse than that was the strong, vivid, sensory memory of her hair locked in my fist, painting me as a willing participant.

“Hell, no. Fuck,” I hissed as I paced around the family room.

“It can’t be. Please, Lord, please.”

I was not that kind of man. I could not be that kind of man. Divorce papers or no, I wouldn’t do that to Amber.

More of the memory invaded. I remembered the surprise of Jacqueline’s tongue in my mouth, her taste so foreign. I remembered the anger and need that boiled in my gut when she kissed me. I remembered pulling my mouth away from hers, and then I remembered freezing when she dropped to her knees and lifted her hands to my belt.

I swiped the back of my wrist across my mouth, disgusted, but could not stop the memory from rolling any more than I could dispel the memory of her taste from my mouth.

I clearly remembered roughly grabbing a fistful of her hair, as angry with her as I was with myself.

As I was with Amber.

But Jacqueline had no one waiting at home for her, and no reason to say no.

---