Fake flame, p.19
Fake Flame, page 19
“So you cut him loose.” It wasn’t a question.
Eva took a long drink of the hot tea and whiskey. “Yeah.”
“What did he have to say about that?”
“That he loved me,” Eva said glumly.
“That bastard,” Krystal said, her tone arid.
“Krys, I had to do it. He was playing with his nieces and nephews, and his sister said what a great dad he would be. And he would be. He deserves to be.” As much as she wanted to be selfish, to cling to this wonderful, adorable man, he deserved the autonomy to make his own choices about parenthood the same way she did. If he really did want to be a parent and she didn’t, neither of them could have this relationship without one of them sacrificing something huge. She wasn’t going to make him make that sacrifice any more than she was willing to sacrifice herself.
Krystal tapped her mug with one fingernail, considering. “Does he want to be?”
“He says he doesn’t know. I think he just kind of figured it would happen. You know how some guys can be about that kind of thing. They have all the time in the world. But he ran through all the arguments for having them before he said it wasn’t important, which gives me a clue about his real feelings. So I told him we needed to take a break while he figures out what he wants. Which will be babies, I know it. And he was so sweet. I was a mess and he held me and then got Timmy to go up to my room before he left. But he didn’t have a key, which was why my front door was unlocked.”
Krystal’s expression softened. “I’m sorry, hon. You’ve been through it today.”
Pain arrowed through her chest. “I think maybe Sean is the one who’s really been through it.”
“It’s not a competition.” Her gaze drifted across the room and she smiled. “Look at those nerds.”
Eva followed her friend’s pointing finger and found that Luther was curled around Timmy, ostensibly in Tim’s doggy bed, which would have been an insubstantial pillow for the larger dog’s head. Only a tiny bit of fleece fuzz peeked out from under Luther’s belly. Tim sighed and shifted his head, which was lying on one of Luther’s massive forelegs.
“At least someone in this house has found lasting love,” Eva muttered.
* * *
Felix started a fresh pot of coffee brewing as Sean assembled ingredients for a big scramble. Their squad-mates tended to filter in and out of the kitchen and were always hungry, so extra food never went to waste. “So what are you going to do?” Felix asked.
Sean cracked eggs into a bowl. “I don’t know. Think, I guess. Envision my life with kids, without them? I have no idea how to do this.”
Felix paused, his dark eyes cautious. And when he spoke, his voice was low and patient. “You do realize that if Kevin and I want kids, we’ll have to really think about it, plan and possibly move heaven and earth to do it? Whereas you can just drift through life thinking maybe it’ll happen someday, then just have sex without birth control, and boom.”
Sean paused, an egg poised over the rim of the bowl. Felix was, of course, right. He should have been more thoughtful, more intentional, about something so important. After all, this wasn’t just him. This was potentially bringing real people into existence. It wasn’t just an item on his bucket list.
He was just set to crack the egg when Thea walked into the kitchen and said, “What’s up with your girl?” Instead of cracking it, he crushed it in his hand.
“Shit,” he said, swiveling to the sink and washing away the goo and shell. “What are you talking about?”
She picked a few shards of shell that had landed on the counter and flicked them into the sink. “Heard it on the scanner last night. 911 call about a guy who was trying to get into a woman’s house. Something about them being professors. Sounded like your girlfriend and her ex. She hasn’t called you?” Thea’s dark eyes glanced up at him, surprise evident in her expression.
Sean felt hollow, like someone had taken an ice cream scoop to his guts.
“Thea, thank you for your audition for the role of ‘bull in a china shop.’ We’ll be in touch,” Felix said, putting his face in his hands and shaking his head.
“What’s going on?” Thea asked, her head swiveling between the two men.
“Eva and I are taking a bit of a break,” Sean said, amazed at how his voice came out levelly. He yanked the utensil drawer open, silverware crashing. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t so level. Grabbing a fork, he whisked the big bowl of eggs into a froth and then poured them into the hot, buttered pan. Looking up, he saw Felix and Thea were both looking at him as if he’d sprouted horns. “What?”
“You just nearly whipped those eggs into outer space, that’s what,” Thea said. Then her habitually sarcastic expression softened. “I’m sorry about the break, dude. That’s rough.”
“Thanks.” Sean avoided both pairs of eyes that seemed to be boring through him and dragged a spatula through the liquid egg mixture. “Will one of you make some fucking toast?”
“I’m on it,” Felix said. Without a word, Thea got butter and jam from the fridge and set them on the big family-style table that dominated the room. She got silverware from the drawer—much less violently than Sean had—and instead of her usual dump-it-in-a-pile technique, actually set three places. “Here, my friend,” Felix said, setting a cup of coffee next to the stove.
Somehow, his friends taking care of him made Sean feel worse. It felt like a wake. Because the thing he’d worried about most—Darren trying to get at her in her home—had happened and Eva hadn’t called him.
Twenty-Five
Tuesday evening came all too quickly for Eva. Her literature class on Monday had been an absolute shit show, too, so she was feeling like a total failure as an educator and a human being by the time she dragged herself into the room where they would hold their last self-defense class.
And it might be the last time she ever saw Sean again, too.
She would not cry now, though. She absolutely wouldn’t. She felt bad enough that he’d shouldered the burden of her emotion—quite literally—last time they’d seen each other. She took a deep breath before she reached the door and stepped inside. Sean was the only one there and seeing him caused a twist of pain to rip through her body.
He looked up from his phone and his face went still and expressionless. The pain intensified and she fought the urge to wrap her arms around her waist, to protect herself from the tide of grief inside her. He’d been so open before, so unguarded and warm. Now he looked about as warm as a block of ice in January.
“I heard about the thing with Darren,” he said, still without affect.
She blinked, shocked. “How?”
“The thing about emergency services is we kinda tend to know what the other branches are doing. Thea heard it on the scanner and told me.”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. I never meant to blindside you. I didn’t know...”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Everything okay with that now?”
She swallowed hard. “Um. I’m not sure. But he’s going to lose his job and he was never good with money, so I don’t see him being able to keep his condo for much longer. I expect he’ll eventually move in with his mom in Indiana.”
“Good.” He returned his attention to his phone and Eva felt like she’d been dismissed. She retreated to a far corner, dropping her bag to the floor and doing her best to ignore him. Or at least give the appearance of ignoring him. Pain seemed to radiate off him in waves, battering her. Well, yeah. She should be battered by his pain. She was the one who caused it. Twice now.
He’s going to choose having kids over you and that’s the right choice for him, she reminded herself, reaching for her own phone. But before she could even open an app, the first of their students arrived in a small group. She tucked her phone away and straightened up, her “welcoming professor” expression automatically masking her sadness.
Or maybe it didn’t. Because the students stopped just inside the door, looking from her to Sean and back to her as if they’d just heard that mom and dad were getting divorced. She stepped forward, words of welcome forming in her throat, but Sean stepped in front of her. “Here for the self-defense class?” The students nodded. “Good.” He returned to his phone. Swiping right on some younger women who could give him the family he’d always expected he’d have?
Stop it. That’s beneath you, she thought. But was it? She felt petty, restless and angry. At Sean, at herself, at Darren, at life.
“One hour. Just one hour,” she told herself. Then it would all be over.
* * *
With a harsh sigh, Sean put his phone away. It was time to get this over with. He half considered making one of the students his assistant this time. Would Eva even care? His shock had hardened into anger since Thea told him about Darren’s attempt to get into Eva’s house and subsequent arrest. He’d thought when Eva had suggested a “break” that meant she would welcome him back. But she hadn’t even cared enough to let him know she’d been in danger?
Yeah. Maybe her “break” was just a way to let him down easy. Or a display of cowardice he hadn’t thought she was capable of.
He looked around the room. The students watched him expectantly. He forced himself to look at Eva. Her face was pale and her eyes were huge. Yeah, if he suddenly used someone else to demonstrate, it would seem odd. He beckoned Eva over to him and some of the tension in her flooded out. Had she read his mind? She seemed relieved.
“Okay. Today we’re going to cover some of the most difficult kinds of holds to break,” Sean said. Was he describing self-defense or his life? He moved behind Eva, feeling stiff and robotic. Bending over, he wrapped his arms around her chest, pulling her to him as he trapped her arms at her sides. The familiar scent of her shampoo flooded his nostrils. Damn. His body, apparently not having gotten the memo about the breakup, flooded with desire. He forced himself to keep talking, telling Eva what to do to get free of his grasp even as he only wanted to hold her more tightly. When it came time for him to walk around the room and comment on the students’ technique, his mind was relieved at the respite from having to be near her.
His body was having none of it.
He’d never experienced such a total split between mind and body. It was exhausting. But what to come was even more exhausting. He asked Eva to lie on her back on a padded mat and he straddled her. Now his mind was defecting entirely as it flooded with images of her naked, her gorgeous hair spilling out over the pillows and her expression glowing with sated passion. The image was at odds with the way she was now. Her tight, pale face looked miserable; her hair was contained in a long braid.
Her clothes were most certainly on. As they should be. Because he might be touching her, but she wasn’t really here. She was gone.
* * *
Eva was in hell. The gorgeous man who had held her, cherished her and fucked her senseless was looming over her and all her brain could do was present her with images of him doing ridiculously filthy things to her body on a loop.
Not to mention he was wearing gray sweatpants that rode deliciously low on his hips and hugged his butt like a lover.
She struggled to maintain focus as he held her wrists to the mat and instructed her how to twist her hips and hook one of his legs with hers, a complicated maneuver that would have required all her concentration on a good day.
To say that today was not a good day was a masterpiece of understatement.
She struggled for a while, trying to master the move. Sean was like a Terminator, relentless and seemingly possessing an inexhaustible supply of energy. Finally, her body surging with pent-up frustration, she managed it, getting free and scooting away. Sean blinked, then hopped lightly to his feet, turning to address the class and ignoring her hauling her weary carcass to her feet, feeling sweaty and wrung out, like a discarded rag. This was not the Sean she’d spent weeks with. This was not the man who told her he loved her, who was always happy to see her. This was some stranger inhabiting his body, who walked like Sean and talked like Sean, but was absolutely not Sean.
It was worse than having him not in her life at all, somehow, to be able to see him and touch him and know that everything was different. That he was different.
Well, in just a little while it would all be over and he would be out of her life forever. That thought wasn’t comforting, either, but at least maybe she could find a little corner of peace in her misery. She hung back as he worked with the students, noticing that they were still looking from him to her, their expressions concerned. She’d always accompanied him as he moved around the room to issue corrections or compliments, ready to redemonstrate the move that he’d just taught her. But she couldn’t bear to be that near him now, to feel the warmth radiating off his body, to inhale the smell of his soap and skin. If she could, she would flee the room this instant, running for home and the comfort of curling up on the sofa and burying her face in Timmy’s fur while she cried.
“Hey.” She started, realizing she’d completely zoned out. Sean was next to her, his eyes scanning her face, his eyebrows drawn together. Pain twisted in her chest, because this was an echo of the real Sean. Her Sean. The Sean who would check in on her, make sure she was okay. The Sean who cared.
She swallowed hard around the lump that was forming in her throat. “Sorry?” Her voice was a tattered husk crackling in the quiet room.
“Are you okay?” The question seemed forced out of him, as if he didn’t want to be asking it. As if her Sean was in there somewhere, trying to take control from the Terminator.
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. This wasn’t one of her media classes where they dissected metaphor. Sean was Sean. He was angry and hurt and it was her fault. “I’m okay. It’s just been a really bad week.” The noise level around them rose and she realized that Sean had closed out the class, that the students were grabbing their things and heading for the door.
She couldn’t be alone with him again. She was too raw, too weak. She’d ask him to come back, for everything to be okay between them again. But it was too soon and that would only delay the inevitable heartbreak.
So she did the most cowardly thing she had ever done. She said a swift goodbye and left.
* * *
“Well, that’s it, then,” Sean muttered to himself. For a moment there Eva had seemed like her old self—vulnerable and warm. But she’d left so fast he could have sworn she had rockets for shoes. It was clear she wanted nothing to do with him. He gathered up his stuff and walked out to his truck, driving home, feeling the beginnings of what was bound to be a rager of a headache.
Once inside, he grabbed a beer from the fridge, popped the cap off and treated himself to a long gulp. He felt hollow and empty, lonely in a way he’d never experienced before. His phone rang in his pocket and he pulled it out—Cait wanting to FaceTime. He considered for half a second if he wanted to take the call or not, but yeah. Cait was going to hound him if he fobbed her off. He tapped the icon to answer and Cait’s face came up on the screen.
“What the hell, baby bro? You look like shit.”
Ah, sisters. “Good evening to you, too.”
“No, seriously. What happened? Are you sick or something? You look pale and like you haven’t slept for a week. You’re sporting serious luggage under your eyes.”
To tell or not to tell. If it was any of his other sisters, he wouldn’t say anything for fear of it getting around the rest of the family like wildfire. But Cait was better about privacy. And dammit, he did need to talk to someone. “Eva broke up with me.”
Cait blinked at him for a long moment. “Excuse me? The woman who was clearly besotted with you three days ago has broken up with you? Make that make sense.”
“One of our bigmouth sisters apparently told her that I’d be a great dad. And she doesn’t want to have kids. Says she’s too old.”
His sister seemed to ponder that for a little while. “Do you want kids?”
“I don’t know. I guess I kinda always figured I would have them. At some point. She said she wants me to think about it. Hence we’re on a break. But then she had an issue with her ex and the cops got involved and she didn’t call me. So it feels like more than a break. It feels permanent.” The word seemed to ring in his head like a closed vault door. Permanent. Done. Over.
Cait appeared to think about this. “What would you have done if she had called you?”
“I—I don’t know. Gone to see her? Something. I could have done something.”
Caitlin closed her eyes and sighed deeply. “My beloved baby brother, I’m going to say this as gently as I can. Get your head out of your ass.”
He laughed, startled. “Sugarcoating the hell out of the message, as usual.”
“I’m serious. If she was half as besotted with you as she seemed, her cutting you loose to figure out what you wanted had to have been hard as hell. Then her ex does something scary enough to warrant calling 911 and you’re upset that she didn’t make it about you? I know you have a white knight complex going, but that’s extreme.”
He thought about the way she had burst into tears before he left her house the last time. Yeah, she had definitely been upset.
“Do you think it’s okay to not want kids?” he asked.
“What kind of a question is that? Of course it’s okay. Don’t give in to Mom and Dad’s brainwashing.” The force of her denial was like a breath of fresh air rushing through his confused thoughts and feelings. She knew exactly what he was going through in a way that few other people could. The fact that she could so easily give him permission to step off the path he hadn’t even consciously known he was on made the tension in his shoulders ease.
