Page 13 of The P Arrangement

After a minute or two, we both lay there, him draped over me, as we tried to catch our breaths.

Preston lifted himself up onto his hands and stared at me a moment. But rather than say anything, he hauled me into his arms, his cock still inside me.

“What are you doing?”

Not only did I not know where he was taking me, but I also wasn’t a small woman. I kept myself trim, but I was still midsize and not exactly light.

Yet Preston didn’t seem fazed. “I’m taking you upstairs. You and I aren’t done for the night.”

SIX

DELANEY

I wokeup to the familiar feeling of a little arm and leg thrown over me and smiled. No matter how many times I put Paxton to bed in his own room on the nights he stayed with me, at least half the time, I woke up with him in my own bed.

When he’d first transitioned to his big-boy bed, I used to wake up when he crawled in with me. He wasn’t either stealthy or quiet, and I would send him back to his own room. But the kid was smart, and he had realized if I stayed asleep, I wouldn’t kick him out. And I liked when he snuggled up next to me, so I couldn’t really be mad at him for coming into my room. He was only going to be little for a short time. He wouldn’t want to cuddle with his mommy forever.

Pushing the covers off my face, careful not to disturb Paxton, I blinked at my surroundings and froze. I recognized everything in the room, but the thing was, it was no longermyroom, and panic slowly began to sink in at what I had done last night.

I’d had sex—a whole ton of sex—with my ex-husband.

I winced.What the hell was I thinking?

I didn’t really need to answer that. I had been thinking I missed the way he touched me—the way he fucked me—and I’d wanted it too damn badly to say no.

I could have at least been wise enough to leave after he fell asleep or woke up before the sun rose in the sky. Because I wasn’t sure I was ready to face what I had done last night. More importantly, I wasn’t ready to facehim.

If I saw any sign of remorse on his handsome face, I just might lose it.

All throughout our relationship, Preston had always been affectionate with me. He always held my hand and put his arm around me in public. He loved being close when we curled up to watch movies at home. And I never questioned his attraction to me. When it came to sex, he couldn’t keep his hands off of me, even after years of marriage.

After Paxton was born, in the beginning, Preston was still his usual loving self, and for a while, he got more doting while I recovered from my C-section. He was especially attentive when it felt like I was constantly breastfeeding Paxton. I didn’t think much of it until after I went to my OB/GYN and got the all clear to have sex again, and Preston turned me down.

At the time, he was working full-time, and we had a baby at home, so I figured he was exhausted. I knew I was tired, so it made sense he was too. But Paxton eventually got on a sleep schedule, and when I went back to work, we hired Madison as our part-time nanny, which really helped us out. But even after that, every time I tried to initiate intimacy, Preston always had one reason or another as to why he wasn’t in the mood.

He would tell me he had been tired lately, or he was just busy at work, or any number of other excuses. But a woman could only be fed bullshit so many times before she knew something was wrong. I was no exception. But every time I brought it up, Preston tried to reassure me everything was fine even though I knew deep down that it wasn’t. And soon, he stopped touching me altogether. Even in a nonsexual way.

Wanting to understand what had happened between us, I ran through every scenario I could think of. I considered that maybe he was jealous about my judgeship. But I had been granted that before Paxton was born, and Preston had been nothing but proud of me. Being a lawyer, I had heard many stories and even painfully considered that Preston was cheating on me with our nanny. But the nanny cams I had installed for child safety showed that not to be even remotely true. When I ruled out every other reason I could think of—from wondering if he secretly wanted me to give up my career to be a stay-at-home mom to if he had erectile dysfunction—I came to the conclusion that it was me.

My husband was no longer attracted to me. He no longer loved me.

Unfortunately, every time I asked him, he told me he was, but it wasn’t long before that felt like a lie. Because nothing had changed in or out of the bedroom. I gave him until our son turned six months old. Paxton was sleeping well, we had settled into a normal routine at home, and we were no longer parents of a newborn, struggling with the ins and outs of parenthood. So, when the time came and I was rejected by Preston once again, I knew I’d had enough. I couldn’t live with a man who didn’t love me and no longer desired me.

But the final straw was when I accidentally found out he had scheduled a vasectomy without saying a single word to me. He hadn’t discussed it with me. He hadn’t even told me he was thinking about it. And before Paxton had been born, we’d always talked about having more than one child.

Preston had never hidden things from me before, and with us not sleeping together, we were basically roommates. Roommates who barely even talked to each other anymore. I was miserably unhappy. And since I didn’t want a roommate for a husband, I left.

I wasn’t going to stay and beg him to love me. I deserved better than that.

Foolishly, when I moved out, I thought Preston would come after me. That he would fight for me.

Instead, he gave me everything I wanted in the divorce.

That was still a slap in the face. He had wanted out of our marriage so badly that, even as alawyer, he didn’t fight me on one single cent. The only thing he had been firm about was joint custody of Paxton.

So, while I had no idea why last night had happened or what had changed, I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I wasn’t going to risk getting hurt again by someone who was sure to be full of morning-after regret.

He had already fled from his own bed. It was barely seven in the morning on a Saturday, and I could hear the shower running on the other side of the wall. That was the cue I needed to get out of there before he came back.

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