Mind F*ck (16 page)

And finally, I earn a laugh.

And it does something to me.

The tinkling of her sweet little laugh—it fucks with shit that I’d thought died years ago.

“I guess, I think I have to say I agree with you on that.” Once her laughing subsides, she quietly answers, “I actually love to cook. Not the types of food Liam likes, but I do love to cook. Umm…” Her words trail off and after a few moments, she picks up where she left off, “Salads, or a little Totino’s pizza, but doctored with extra cheese and sliced roma tomatoes, with salt and pepper. Only not just baked for the allotted time, but baked,
then
oven roasted with the broiler. Others? Like loved ones?” Her brow furrows until one of her eyes closes and it’s the cutest thing I’ve seen her do all day. “I loved the few times I made Thanksgiving dinner for Liam and his dad.” She must get lost in thought for a moment, and I leave her there for the time being.

I go through the cupboards and fridge, grabbing stuff as I go. And after I have everything I need I start cutting up oregano, garlic, basil, and onion, then move on to making the base for my spaghetti sauce, and once that’s done and simmering I start on the noodles. Dash of olive oil, salt and pepper, and some Italian seasoning in the boiling water, and voilà—not bad for an ex-convict.

And at some point between eating our salads while sharing chicken parmesan from the same plate, using the same fork, a bottle of wine turned into two.

She’s the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.

And that thought scares the living hell out of me.

She already consumes my every waking thought, what is next? What else does she want to possess? My dreams too? Done. My soul?

It won’t fucking be long, I promise you that.

It won’t fucking be long.

My husband’s been MIA since the week before last. No word, no calls, no texts. Nothing.

I’d like to tell you that after he stormed out the night Rhett moved in, he came back home and we talked everything out and made up. I wish I could to tell you that, then I’d tell you he explained the note and whoever the fuck doll was on the 44
th
floor was a joke, and after he explained, I got it.

But none of that happened, instead…radio silence on his end.

And the first few nights were pretty rough on me, like really rough. I’m still reeling from the pathetic voice messages and texts I sent.

So humiliating.

And for what? Why?

For nothing. No reason at all. And that’s the hardest pill of all to swallow.

I don’t even know if he’s okay…well, as far as he knows, I don’t. Unless of course Rhett’s told him I’ve asked about him, and he’s told him he’s informed me that he’s okay. That he’s safe and alive and still showing up to work every day.

From the monitoring and surveillance cameras and audio equipment Rhett’s found while taking apart my side of the house board by board, I now know he’s been monitoring me. I now know I’ve lived like a gullible gold fish in an aquarium. I now know I’ve had absolutely no privacy from the moment we moved into this mirage prison.

God, do I think out loud often?

“Shit, I hope not,” I mutter before blowing my bangs out of my face and then changing direction of my blow to my coffee to cool it for a sip.

My eyes are just settling on the sun rising when I hear running feet crunching up the drive. But before I can react, or stand up and tuck my robe closed, since I’m wearing next to nothing for a top and a pair of booty shorts,
booty shorts!

“You hope not, what, little miss Lexy.” I hear him before I see him, so by the time he’s circled past my peripheral and straight into my field of vision, front and center, I’m half way standing, and I’ve
not
gotten my damn robe closed yet.

Humiliation. Again.

“Jesus fucking Christ, woman. If you get any damn sexier, Sexy Lexy, I won’t be held responsible for my actions. Mark my words. I’m warning you…When I squared the fact that you’re still legally married, as unhappily as it may be, with myself, a fuck ton of other morals were left at the wayside with that one cardinal sin. Am I making myself clear?”

His shirtless body…

Basketball shorts riding low on his narrow hips, strongly and proudly professing it’s anatomically perfected V just above his hip bones, sweat soaked, plane after plane of rock
hard
abdomen. I swear I counted like eighteen rivets and divots
or whatever the hell the Latin medical term for them is.

I’m trying to collect my thoughts, I’m trying to gather my words and spit them out. But I’m stuck, opening and closing my mouth like a freaking idiot fish. The light dusting of dark blond hair across his chest and his prominent happy trail…I lick my lips—because my mouth’s gone bone dry.

He’s so long.

That’s the only, ridiculous thought circling my head as I watch the beads of sweat drip and roll their way down, sometimes seemingly following the lines previously inked into the dermis of his skin. Like a follow the line…

Or a follow the leader.

“Lexy? Lexy?” His chuckling pulls me from the trance his flesh and sweat and the mosaic of, has created and pulled me in with, then a few seconds after his words register. “Lexy? Did I lose you again, sweetie?”

I snap my mouth closed for half a second before slamming my eyes into his dark brown ones.

Wow. Eye’s aren’t like Liam’s. Body and body hair, is
obviously
not like Liam’s. Liam’s shaved
everything
since high school.

He’s nothing like Liam.

Nothing.

“No. You didn’t lose me. Sorry.” Embarrassment wins out half way through my brave statement, and I feel myself retreat just before finishing quieter than I began. I shrink in on myself. Both physically and mentally.

I watch the sun highlight his tanned and tattooed flesh, casting the darker shades and demons into light while shadows cover the angels and praying hands. His muscles, each and every one, flex differently as he jogs up the stairs to the second floor balcony and heads towards where I’m sitting.

The same balcony I last felt my husband’s
loving
hands on my flesh.

Shit.

I sit up, trying to shake off bad, negative thoughts.

And when he’s near enough to the chaise lounge I’m still semi-curled up on, he smiles down at me before sitting on the foot end. Once he’s sat, he pulls the sweat shirt that was hooked around his waist, over his head and when it’s adjusted he turns back to face me and smiles before speaking, “Good. I hate it when that happens.” His shoulder nudges my knee. “Sorry, I didn’t know you woke up this early. I would’ve started bugging you days ago.” He laughs, “I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Am I bothering you? If so, just say the word and I’m gone.” He raises his hands in surrender, the same way he did the morning he snuck into my room and I woke up and found him. “Scout’s honor,” he quips with a smirk.

“Oh?” I joke. I joke because he’s joking, and
yes,
I mean NO, I don’t know how to joke. No, I don’t know how to flirt. I suck.

Have you been reading this story? Have you been following it?

My social interactions have been so horribly neglected, that I’m surprised I’ve been able to maintain a functioning progressive friendship with Mary. And she’s pregnant.

So it hasn’t even been solidified in the usual wine and deepest, darkest secrets ritual yet.

And I’m explaining all of this to you so that you’ll understand the second part of my return quip, when I say: “I didn’t know scouts grew up to be convicts.”

The look that flashes across his face instantly tells me my words cut. Deep.

And immediately I want to take them back. As soon as I see the hurt, though it’s covered with another nonchalant smirk and that same devious gleam in his eye, I still saw it. And I still regret saying it.

“You’d be surprised, I guess.”

I’m so stupid.

“Rhett.” I sit up, and without even thinking, I place my hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know your story, I have no business—“

But whatever guilt that’d started creeping in, for actually initiating physical contact with this person that I’ve been living side by side with for the last three and a half weeks, whatever ugly thing that was about to lift it’s big head and turn this sweet, kind moment into something it isn’t, Rhett’s hand settles on mine and it instantly slays it. Keeping this moment what it is.

His dark brown eyes pierce into mine, and it feels like he’s digging out pieces of my soul and showing them to me for the first time. Then he speaks, “Hey, Lexy, I already told you, I’m not a saint. I like that your expectations of me are low. That’s good. Believe it or not.” He chuckles. “I mean, you do have an asshole, a
cheating
asshole as a husband. And I could’ve fucked with you about that.” His eyebrows shoot up, but the joking smile stays on his face. “Then I did. There? Now are we even?” he asks.

“Yeah, we’re even.” I tell him.

He turns completely towards me, spreading his thighs on the chaise lounge until there’s one long strong leg on either side, then he just looks at me, expectantly.

I sputter around my coffee, asking, “What? Stop looking at me like that. What?”

“Nuh uh.” He shakes his head and twitches his pointer finger from side to side at me. “No, ma’am. I sit like an idiot, you sit like an idiot. I’m about to say something a little important. And you’re gonna be apart of it. You’re in this as much as I am, sweet tits.” His mouth drops open like he’s astonished his words fell out of it. Like he’s
offended
the room.

I belly laugh, for the first time in as long as I can remember. I literally laugh my ass off! I lmao!

“Sweet tits?” The pitch in my voice is almost shrieking it’s so loud. “Did you just call me, ‘
sweet tits’
?” I’m crying tears by the time I sit up, mirroring his opposite position of mine towards the head of the patio chair, and I tuck the tails of my robe between my legs to hide anything my boy shorts may not be.

All of which, I do completely without awkward pause or hesitation while maintaining our conversation. “That’s definitely a first. I must say. My
cheating
asshole husband has certainly never referred to me or my tits as being sweet.” My laughing and joking, however is interrupted by my phone whistling, notifying me of a text.

“Well, as sweet as they may be. I still need you paying attention. Just because your tits are sweet and you’re sitting the way I asked you to— like a good little girl, by the way—doesn’t mean you can check out mid-convo and start texting Mary or God forbid, sexting Liam. Shit—“ I see his head duck in my peripheral, and I glance up at him.

Whatever he’s rambling isn’t registering. Whatever has fallen out of his mouth from the moment my eyes first read the text, has fallen on deaf ears. 

“Sorry, I almost threw up in my mouth thinking about it,” he jokes.
Jokes.

But we’re past joking. I’m past joking.

My entire LIFE is so far past JOKING that I don’t know if I’ll ever fucking joke again.

What’d he say?

I briefly remember wondering, thinking maybe whatever Rhett had to say could possibly fix this. Correct it. Make it stop, make it go away.

Make it
SOMETHING.

Make it nothing.

“It’s Wednesday.” I interrupt whatever the hell it is he’s blabbering and he stops and just stares for a second before narrowing his eyes on mine and nodding, as if to acknowledge that yes, it is indeed Wednesday.

“You’re running. You always run? Even on the days you go to the office? Even on the days you work with Liam?”

I ask the important questions as simply as possible.

And he answers, simply nodding.

“Th-The monitoring—err, surveillance, was…did you have any reason to see if his side of the house was being monitored too? Or w-was it just—“

“Just yours. Most of the files must’ve been on whatever hard drives they took out when they cleaned it out that first night, though. I haven’t seen any. Not of your side, or any of his.”

“Okay,” I whisper. Thinking.

I keep looking back at my phone and rereading Liam’s words.

Why? Dear, God. Why?

I clear my throat and ask the question I don’t want the answer to, begging him to lie to me with my eyes, I know it. “Today’s your birthday?”

His expression is completely void for twelve seconds before he speaks, “Yes.”

“Because my husband just text me.”

I spit. I’m pissed.

I want to know how much, if not all, does he know about this. I want to know when I got dragged into it. I want to know WHAT THE FUCK Liam is thinking, and what the hell kind of MINDFUCK black hole, fifty eleventh dimension, worm hole I have slipped into where
normal
people and
sanity
no longer frequent.

I gather every bit of courage and every ounce of pissed I possess, and I open my mouth before slamming every word I want to deliver, completely below the belt:

“And apparently, because my husband got your, what? Ex-girlfriend? Pregnant, which just so happens to also be Travis’ little sister, that means
you
get
me
for your birthday. There’s a celebration planned and half of New York has been invited, per old man,” I make air quotes, “Jackson’s request. Apparently, he’s just being told his long lost adoptive son has been released from prison. Loyal as he is, even after all these years and all the reasons you shouldn’t be. And it’s his birthday to boot.” I fake smile and clap like a Barbie or a cheerleader.

Yaasss!!!! Because I’m so mature.

I throw my cell phone at his face, but miss as it hits his chest then flops to the pillow top chair we were just laughing and joking on.