Flying (21 page)

There aren’t even any tears. Just dry, staring eyes and chattering teeth. Her hair is wet and sticks to her face. The rain falls outside, heavier. Shielding them. Craig could reach for her over the center console, but he doesn’t, and Stella’s not sure if she’s grateful or angry that he doesn’t offer her that comfort.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he tells her finally, when she falls silent.

Blinking, Stella can finally focus on him. “You don’t have to say anything, Craig. Just kiss me. Please.”

But when she leans to kiss him, he recoils. Just enough to wound her. Just enough to sting.

“Look. Stella. You know I like you a lot. And I was really surprised you called me, after... Well.”

She knows what he’s referring to, what he means. The day they’d walked along the river. “Things have changed. Jeff moved out. I asked him to.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Craig says.

“You don’t have to say anything. Just kiss me.”

But he doesn’t. He can’t; she sees it on his face, and the rejection is too much for her. Stella withdraws, hand on the door, ready to flee into the rain. She can’t look at him. What had she been thinking? That he would still want her when he could finally have her? That wasn’t how things like this worked.

“I feel like I can tell you everything,” Stella says as the rain pours outside, battering the roof of the car and turning the windows blank. She can’t see through the window; the fog of their breath has made it impossible.

“You can. You know that.” Craig’s hand pushes her wet hair off her shoulder. His fingers linger, brushing down her arm to take her hand. Linking their fingers. He squeezes gently.

But she can’t tell him everything. She wants to, but she can’t. Not like this, after months and years of their friendship have become something else even when they didn’t want them to. How can she tell him what happened now, after all this time of keeping it a secret?

She finally pushes her way out of the car, slamming the door behind her. She’s halfway to her car when he catches her. Turns her. Takes her in his arms. The rain batters them both now, hard and stinging, and she opens her mouth to it because he still will not kiss her.

“But I want to be a choice, not something you fall into,” Craig says. “Maybe you can patch up your marriage—”

“No.” She shakes her head violently. “No. That’s not going to happen.”

Now,
she thinks.
Tell him now how you lost your son. How you blame your husband, and he won’t take any responsibility for any of it. Tell Craig how you wake in the night listening for the sound of Gage’s breathing and in those few moments before your brain is fully conscious, sometimes you still hear it.

“What do you want from me?” he asks her.

“I want you to kiss me,” she says one more time. Aching for it. “And take me somewhere. Take off my clothes. Fuck me, Craig. I want you to fuck me until I forget.”

How can he say no to her yet one more time? But he steps back, letting her go. Shaking his head. “I don’t think that would be right.”

“Goddammit, Craig,” Stella cries into the night, the rain, in a diner parking lot like something out of an episode of bad reality TV, “any other man wouldn’t have to think twice about it!”

“Then find yourself another man!” Craig shouts. “I don’t want to just fuck you, Stella! Because what happens after that?”

She has no answer. Can’t know the future, wouldn’t try to guess it, anyway. This is Craig. Her friend. The man for whom she’s yearned for so long she can’t remember a time before she wanted him, and now she’s offering herself to him.

And he won’t take her.

“I know you think all guys are just a hard-on waiting for pussy,” Craig says. “But if I just wanted to get laid, I’d find someone else. I don’t want that with you, Stella.”

“You don’t want me?” She’s shaking again. Teeth chattering. She thinks she will fly apart with the force of her shudders.

“I want you. But not like this. Stella...I love you.”

No. No, no, she can’t have this. Not now. Not like this. Because the moment he says it, Stella thinks of waking up next to him. Going to bed beside him. She thinks of standing with him, holding his hand, of making a brand-new life. It all spreads out in front of her, all the opportunities. New chances. New life.

And how can she do this? How can she put the past away, when the past is the only place where she can be with her son? How can she move forward without leaving him behind?

“I...I have a great emotional attachment to you,” Stella says. The words are bitter and clog her throat.

Craig nods, face shuttering. “I get it. Right. Well, listen, Stella, I’m glad I was the one you called when you were desperate for an empty fuck, but maybe next time, just lose my number. Okay?”

She should tell him to wait. Call after him. She ought to explain, but all she does is watch him walk away.

The letter comes a few days later. She’s never had a letter from him before, and she doesn’t know his handwriting, but the moment she sees the way her name is written on the envelope, she knows it’s from Craig. It isn’t very long, but it is very brutal. Honest. Unflinching. Stella knows she deserves all of it, every word.

There’s not much she can do to make it right except call him to explain, but Craig never answers the phone. She leaves messages he never returns. When she tries to email him, she gets no reply, and the fact that she no longer sees him on her instant message list tells her he’s blocked her.

Craig shuts her out of his life, and Stella can’t forgive him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“You look tired.” Matthew kissed her mouth, then each cheek. He took her bag from her so she didn’t have to carry it.

“I didn’t sleep very well,” Stella admitted. “Bad dreams.”

She’d tossed and turned, dreaming of the past and mistakes she’d made. Some would never be fixed. Some no longer mattered. Still, reliving those memories had left her with a headache this morning. Puffy eyes. Sore throat. Or maybe she was coming down with something, which would be just her luck, to be sick during her weekend with Matthew.

She was quiet on the drive to his apartment. About halfway there, Matthew reached for her hand and held it the rest of the way. That felt right, Stella thought, looking at him when he focused on the road. Watching him when he wasn’t watching her. Her hand in his, no need to force conversation.

“It’s nice to just be with you,” she said when he had to let go of her hand to pull into his spot.

Matthew shut off the ignition and turned toward her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. He smiled back.

He leaned to kiss her. “Welcome to Chicago, by the way. What do you want to do today?”

They’d spent so much time talking since that it felt impossible they hadn’t spent more time in person. “I’d like for you to light a fire and make me breakfast foods. Then I’d like to lie around all day and watch movies and read. Oh. And you can make out with me, in between.”

Matthew’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, I can, huh?”

“Yep.” Stella brushed her mouth against his and shivered at the contact. “Maybe, if you’re good, I’ll let you touch my tits.”

“Awwww, yeah!” Matthew punched the air a little before kissing her again. Harder, with a slip of tongue. “Missed you.”

It always warmed her when he said stuff like that. Suddenly, strangely melancholy, she clung to him for a long moment, her cheek pressed to his. Breathing him in. His hand cupped the back of her head, but he didn’t say anything, and it was perfect.

“You don’t want to go anywhere?” he murmured when they pulled apart. “You sure?”

“I just want to be with you. Hanging out. I’m tired. It was a kind of rough flight, and I’d like to just...be. With you. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Of course.” He gave her a curious look. “Are you okay?”

She was, and she wasn’t. By the time they got upstairs and she’d dropped her bag in his bedroom, used the bathroom and freshened up, Matthew had turned on the gas fireplace and set up a small tray with a bowl of strawberries and two glasses of what she assumed was champagne. He handed her one as she sat next to him on the rug.

“It’s early,” she said, but sipped it.

“Never too early for champagne. Besides, we’re not going anywhere. Right? We have all day to indulge ourselves.” He stretched out his long legs and plucked a strawberry from the bowl, offering it to her mouth.

Stella leaned to take it, mouthing his fingertips. She watched his face, his pupils dilating, the press of his tongue on his lower lip for a second or so. The champagne was smooth and bubbly at the same time, tickling as she swallowed it. The strawberry’s sweetness lingered.

Somehow they were kissing, and he’d pulled her next to him. Aligning her body with his, Matthew cradled the back of her head and slipped a knee between her thighs. He was slow and thorough in his attentions to her mouth. Relentless, even. Every time she tried to move or shift, he kept her still with a gentle but steady pressure, until at last she gave up and let him have his way with her.

His tongue slid along hers, and he gently sucked it. Nibbled along her lips. Then her chin, and down her throat to nibble and suck there as his hand slid between her legs to press upward. She’d worn jeans, and the denim was too thick to feel much except the steady press and release of his knuckles, but that teasing sensation built and built until she had to break the kiss with a gasp and the murmur of his name.

“Let go,” Matthew whispered into her mouth. “Come for me, Stella.”

It was more of a request than a command, and it sent her, trembling, over the edge. Her orgasm rippled through her as relentlessly as his kisses had and left her just as breathless. Stella’s eyelids fluttered as her body arched, shuddering, into the pleasure. The aftershocks continued for a minute or so as she pressed her face against his neck and breathed in his scent.

When she’d quieted, Matthew said into her hair, “I love it when you come. It’s so easy for you, isn’t it?”

“Not always.” Stella nestled closer, using the tip of her tongue to taste him briefly. She didn’t want to move.

“Just with me?”

He sounded as if he was teasing, but there was an undercurrent of something else there. Jealousy? Insecurity? Stella pressed her teeth against his flesh, not quite biting, then kissed him before looking into his eyes. “Just with you.”

It wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t been with another man since meeting him. Couldn’t imagine it, actually. And this thought, that it wasn’t that she hadn’t met anyone but that she’d stopped looking, made Stella sit up.

“I need a drink of water,” she told him, then kissed him to take away anything sudden or strange about how fast she needed to get away from him in that moment. “And some lunch. Can we order something in?”

“Of course.” Matthew watched her get up. His hair was endearingly rumpled. He adjusted himself in his jeans, and Stella thought about getting on her knees for him.

Taking him in her mouth. Giving him what he’d so generously given her. She wanted to make him feel good too. But something stopped her, and it wasn’t selfishness but self-preservation at the moment. She needed to get herself under control.

Matthew didn’t seem put out. He got to his feet and pulled her close for a brushing kiss, then looked into her eyes. Stella cut her gaze from his, unable to face him with what she knew must be her every emotion all over her face.

“Hey,” he said quietly, and waited until she looked at him. “You okay?”

She forced a smile. Fake it till you make it. “Yes. Yep, absolutely. Starving, though. Too much champagne, too early. I’m ready to fall asleep too.”

He grinned at that, hands sliding down to grip her ass. “I can wake you up.”

“Feed me first,” she told him, relaxing into his embrace, “and we’ll see what happens next.”

They decided on sandwiches from the insanely delicious deli around the corner. One problem—their delivery guy was out sick. But Matthew, hunching into a sweatshirt and leather jacket overtop, promised to be back in twenty minutes, and Stella, happy he was willing to go out into the rainy spring chill and even more grateful to have some time alone to compose herself, kissed him at the door.

“Hurry back,” she said.

Ten minutes later as she hummed to herself in the kitchen, heating up some water for tea that might chase the chill from her bones, the front door opened.

Two minutes after that, shit hit the fan.

“Who’re you?” said the little girl with Matthew’s eyes and a mop of tangled dark hair. “Mom! There’s a lady in Dad’s kitchen.”

Oh.

Fuck.

* * *

Caroline looked almost exactly the way she did in the wedding picture Matthew had never deleted off his Connex photo album. Ash-blond with dark roots and dark eyes. Subtle makeup. She wore a sleek pair of capri-length yoga pants and a matching slim-fit hoodie sweatshirt. Perfect soccer mom...except for her expression, which was that of a woman who’d just stepped in an enormous, steaming pile of dog crap.

“Hi,” Stella said when Caroline simply stared. “I’m Stella. A friend of Matthew’s. You must be Caroline. And you,” she said to the little girl, “must be Beatrice. And Louisa.”

The older girl standing beside her mother gave Stella a long, careful look. “Where’s my dad?”

Stella waited for Caroline to say something. Anything. But the other woman only stared with her lip curling.

“He ran out to get some lunch.”
Don’t fidget,
Stella told herself, trying desperately to think if she’d buttoned her blouse all the way, if her hair was sex-mussed, if her mouth looked as though she’d been kissing for an hour. If the stink of sex clouded her like perfume.

“He didn’t tell me he had...company.” Caroline spoke at last. Her gaze swept Stella up and down in that way women have with each other that’s supposed to leave scars.

Stella gave Caroline the blandest smile she could.
Not in front of the kids,
she thought.
Don’t you dare.
“He didn’t mention that you’d be stopping by.”

Because, of course, Caroline hadn’t called ahead. Because she hadn’t been invited. Because Matthew’s ex-wife felt so comfortable in his new apartment that she could walk right in, Stella thought with another neutral smile designed not to taunt.

“We were heading to the movies and the girls wanted to see if their father wanted to come along.” Caroline’s chin lifted, just a little bit.

“Ah.” Stella smiled warmly at the girls, who were still staring at her, though without the suppressed bitterness their mother had. Nope, Louisa and Beatrice were full-on glaring their hostility at her. “I’m sure that would’ve been fun.”

“We only want him,” Beatrice said. “Not you.”

Stella’s smile didn’t waver. Behind her, the teakettle hissed, and she turned to take it off the heat and turn off the burner. She pulled open the cupboard and found a mug, then a second she held up toward Caroline, who blanched, then shook her head. With another small smile, Stella put the rejected offer on the counter and found the teabags. She poured hot water into her mug, too aware of the weight of three sets of angry female eyes on her back as she did. Finally she turned around, mug in her hands. She leaned against the counter.

“He should be back soon,” she said. “You’re welcome to wait.”

Caroline’s eyes said it all. Of course she was welcome to wait in her ex-husband’s kitchen, and she didn’t need permission either. Stella sipped the hot tea, risking a burned tongue rather than an embittered one.

“Hey, I bring you food—” Matthew stopped in the doorway, brown paper bags held high. “Caroline?”

The girls ran squealing to him, and he put the food down to hug them. Over the tops of their heads, he caught Stella’s gaze. She couldn’t read his expression, but she took another sip of tea before putting the mug in the sink.

“Excuse me, I need to check my email.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and held it aloft. Without another word of apology or explanation, because fuck that, she pushed past Matthew and went down the hall into his bedroom.

Ten minutes later, he came in to find her propped on the bed playing an intense round of
Diamond Dash.
“Just a minute,” she said mildly. “Let me beat this level.”

“Stella...”

She let the time run out and tucked her phone back into her pocket to give him a look. Matthew ran a hand over his head, then rubbed at his mouth. He came closer and sat on the bed, but didn’t touch her.

“The girls...” he began, and trailed off.

Stella raised both eyebrows. When he didn’t say anything else, she drew her knees to her chest and linked her fingers together. “You’re not going to the movies with them.”

He didn’t answer.

“Are you?” Stella shook her head, stunned. She was halfway off the bed before Matthew grabbed her wrist.

“No! Stella, sit down. Please.”

She did, but gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “She walks into your house like she owns it. Or at the very least, like she lives here. And she had no idea I was here. Or that there was even a...me. Which, okay, fine, you don’t want to rub it in her face or something, but, Jesus, Matthew. You might want to fucking give her a clue that you’re dating. Or that you’re not available on the weekends when I’m here. Something. She walked into that kitchen and looked like I’d stabbed her in the throat.”

Stella paused, frowning, then said softer, “And your kids, Matthew. That’s not the way I would’ve liked to be introduced to them either.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. Or chastened. He sounded defensive, which made Stella sigh.

“You haven’t told her you’re dating?”

He made a low noise. “I’m not dating.”

“No. I guess you’re not. You’re just fucking me every few weeks.” She yanked her wrist from his grasp, but his arms were longer, and he snagged her shirtsleeve again as she moved away. He didn’t try to hold her, not when she pulled again, but it did stop her.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Actually,” Stella said, “I don’t know it.”

They stared at each other, awkward silence rising between them.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” he said finally.

There it was, the inevitable. Stella sighed and shook her head. “You know what I want from you, Matthew? Just don’t be a dick to me. Really, that’s all I ask. Don’t be a dick.”

He blinked and recoiled slightly but didn’t say anything.

Stella’s chin lifted. Jaw tight. Keeping her voice as neutral as she could, she said, “Look. I don’t have any grand notions about what this is, okay? We’re both grown-ups. We get along. We like fucking. There doesn’t have to be... This doesn’t have to mean...”

Her voice cracked and she cut herself off before she could embarrass herself with breaking down. This had been a cluster fuck of a day already. She didn’t need it to spiral into anything else.

Matthew’s phone chimed. He put his hand automatically to his pocket, but then stopped himself. It chimed again.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“It’s Caroline.”

Stella crossed her arms and cocked a hip, giving him a look. Matthew looked back. The phone chimed again with another text.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “Stella, I feel like I say I’m sorry to you an awful lot.”

Her stance softened. “Do you think I’m demanding?”

“No,” he said, but with enough of a hesitation that she thought he might not be telling the whole truth.

The first step toward him was the hardest, but she made herself take it. Then another, and a third until she sat on the bed next to him. They were close enough that she could shift a bit and touch him, but she didn’t.

“I like you, Matthew.”