Good Karma (53 page)

As she approached the silver elevator doors,
the red down arrow lit and dinged. Then the doors opened.

Mark rushed out then stopped when he saw her.
His wet hair stuck out in all directions, he wasn’t wearing shoes,
and the few buttons he had fastened on his shirt were buttoned
crookedly, making one shirt tail longer than the other.

If they hadn’t just had a fight, she would
have laughed. This was so not the typical Mark look.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His chagrined
expression tugged at her heart.

She joined him in the elevator, and he took
her bag.

They rode in wary silence back to the ninth
floor. It was as if Mark didn’t know how to act around her right
now, and it seemed as though he were wrestling with a thousand
thoughts, all of which he kept to himself.

Once they were back inside his apartment, he
led her to the bedroom, set her bag back on the floor where it had
been earlier, and took her hands.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said.

“And I’d like to hear it, but first…” She
tore her hands from his and brushed her fingers through his
still-wet hair, making some sense from the chaos. Then she began
unbuttoning his shirt. “We need to make you look a little less
insane.”

Brow furrowed, he glanced into the mirror
then down at his shirt’s placket as she rebuttoned it, this time so
that the buttons and holes aligned properly.

“I guess I was in a bit of a rush to catch up
to you.” He grabbed his brush and finished making sense out of his
hair.

“I guess.” Some of the steam had evaporated
from her anger, and she sat down on the edge of the bed.

Mark set his brush on the dresser. “Okay,
explanation.” He sat down beside her and peered at her sideways. He
offered a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I was engaged
once.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

“Her name was Carol. I mentioned her
before.”

For the next forty-five minutes, Mark poured
out the details of what had happened. How he met Carol, how they
got engaged when he was twenty-three, how, on their wedding day,
Carol never showed, and how he had gone to her home afterward to
find her in bed with her dance partner.

“I fell into a horrible depression,” he said.
“I began drinking a lot. A functional drunk, I think is what they
called me. I could work, and I got the job done well enough, but as
soon as the workday ended, I drowned myself in a bottle.”

Karma took his hand and scooted a little
closer.

“Rob sat with me every night, talking me down
from the ledge of full-blown alcoholism, until finally, some of
what he said got through. After a while, the bite of what Carol did
stopped hurting quite as much, and then, gradually, it faded to the
point I only felt it when I thought about her.” He looked at her.
“I messed up with her. Somehow, I screwed things up and she left
me.”

“How so? What did
you
do to chase her
away?” From what Mark had told her, she didn’t see any of this as
his fault, but for whatever reason, he blamed himself.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never found
out. She never told me. But it had to be something.” He met her
gaze. “So, I started working on making myself a better man. The
kind of man…”

“That Carol would want.” Karma let go of his
hand and looked down. This Carol certainly was a special lady.
Karma would kill to have Mark love her as much as he loved
Carol.

Mark quietly cleared his throat and slowly
reached for her hand again. He folded it inside the warmth of his.
“At the time, I’ll admit I wanted her back. That’s what motivated
me. But then she married her dance partner, and it became clear she
would never want me back, no matter how much I changed.” He
shrugged. “But I still wanted to make myself a better man.”

“Why? If you don’t want long-term, committed
relationships, then why is being a better man so important?”

He paused and shook his head. “I don’t have a
good answer for that. All I can say is that part of me still hopes
that someday I’ll be good enough to try again, but another part of
me is too terrified to try.” He glanced away. “I just can’t seem to
get past what she did. I keep thinking that if I could just find
out why, then I might be able to go on, that I can fix it, but she
never told me why, and I can’t let it go.”

“Why don’t you just ask her?”

He looked to the floor. “I can’t. I can
barely be in the same room with her without feeling the trauma all
over again.” He shook his head, closed his eyes, took a breath,
then met her gaze with an air of shame. “She was at the benefit.
The night you and I met. She was there, and do you want to know
what I did?”

The pain in his eyes nearly throttled her.
“What?”

“I threw up.” He smiled sadly. “I left the
benefit, went to my room, and threw up.” He sighed. “Not because I
still want her, but because I can’t get over what she did. Because
she’s pregnant now, and that was supposed to have been my life. I
always wanted children.” He hung his head.

What a sad story. Here was a man who Karma
thought was perfection in every way. The perfect boyfriend who
would make the perfect husband, and yet he had been so severely
traumatized by his ex-fiancée that he had all but taken himself off
the market.

Carol was in his past, and he didn’t seem to
have any illusions that he belonged with her, but clearly she still
sat first and foremost in his thoughts, even if only
subconsciously. Carol affected every decision he made. Like a
chronic case of indigestion, Mark couldn’t exist without thinking
that at any moment, Carol would rip at his insides and lay him to
waste again. He had been through hell because of her, and her
memory tore at him like a relentless succubus.

And here Karma thought
her
past was
painful. Even though she and Mark shared a similar childhood, Mark
had her beat hands down in the relationships department. Carol had
splayed his heart and filleted it like nothing more than
yesterday’s catch, leaving behind a man’s body in which resided a
scared and wounded little boy. A little boy Mark worked hard to
protect by putting up walls and donning a shell of armor. He held
his share of insecurities, but he hid them well behind his
successful, confident, and controlled façade.

What a shame he couldn’t get past what Carol
had done, because he was a remarkable man. One any woman would be
lucky to call her husband. He unjustifiably shouldered the blame
for her leaving, and he had ventured out on this quest of becoming
a woman’s ideal man to prove he wasn’t the loser he accused himself
of being. It was a vicious Catch-22. No matter how close to
perfection he became, in his eyes, he would always be a
failure.

“I think you would surprise yourself if you
gave yourself a chance, Mark,” she said. “For the record, I think
you’re pretty terrific.”

He inhaled and squeezed her hand, almost as
if to reassure himself more than her. “The fact is—especially after
what you just witnessed…my behavior…my complete meltdown—I think
you would agree that this is all I’m capable of right now. I can’t
give more, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.”

She stared, speechless. He was confirming
what he had told her from the start, but this time it sounded like
he wished he
could
give more, as if he wanted to give more
to
her
.

“I’ll understand if that’s not enough for you
and you want to end this now. I don’t want to hurt you, Karma. The
last thing I want to do is hurt you. You’re such a sweet, lovely
woman. One who deserves better than this.” He let go of her hand,
stood, and gestured toward the door. “Like I said, I’ll sleep on
the couch tonight…give you some space to think.” He grabbed a
blanket from the closet then stopped in the doorway and looked over
his shoulder. “But I want you to know how sorry I am for the way I
treated you earlier. It had more to do with me than you. What
happened wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I never should have gotten
angry.”

She knew that now. “I know.”

“I just didn’t like seeing that awful ring on
you. It’s cursed, and you’re too good for that.” He smiled sadly,
looked away, and quietly closed the door behind him, leaving Karma
alone with her thoughts and a blanket of compassion for the
remarkable man who had just poured out his soul.

Mark was a truly troubled man, but then, in
her way she was a truly troubled woman. But Mark had begun to
change all that. He had helped her discover how beautiful she was,
both inside and out. Did that mean she was cured? No. But it did
mean she was a better woman because of him. There would always be
ghosts of her past to haunt her. She would never completely cast
out Johnny’s and Jo’s and all the others’ taunts, but now she could
minimize their effect. Mark had shown her that. He had given her
the tools to deal with her past. Wasn’t there something she could
do to give a little back?

She lay down. Surely there was, even if it
was only a small token.

* * *

Mark lay on the couch, unable to sleep, even
though both his mind and his body were weary. The quiet ticking of
the clock wasn’t even enough to lull him.

How had the night gone so wrong so fast? He
had made a wreck of an evening that had been meant for savoring.
Karma was sleeping in his bed, and he should be in there with her.
Instead, he was on the couch like a kicked-out dog.

For what felt like the hundredth time, he
closed his eyes and tried to force himself to sleep. A minute
later, he heard the snick of the bedroom door as it opened, and
then Karma’s silhouette glided around the corner.

He propped himself on his elbow as she
approached. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” she said, dropping to her knees on the
floor beside him.

Shit. How badly had he screwed things up?

“Because you’re not in bed with me,” she said
a moment later.

Wait, what? He blinked several times, not
sure he understood.

His confusion must have shown even in the
darkness, because she smiled softly. “I know this is all you’re
capable of, Mark, but I want it. Whatever you can give, for however
long you can give it, I’ll take it.”

He sat up, and she shifted so she knelt
between his knees.

“What are you saying?” He brushed her hair
off her face.

She rose so that her lips were barely an inch
from his. “I’m saying that I want you to come back to bed with me.”
The way she said it left no question what she was asking for.

His body sprang to life, and gratitude
flooded his veins. Even now, faced with the truth of his past, she
still wanted to be with him.

She took his hand and stood.

He let her lead him back into the bedroom,
where she pushed him onto the bed, undressed, and crawled on top of
him. “I came to Chicago to be with you, Mark. Nothing has changed
that.” Her mouth crashed against his, and all he could do was hold
on, still shifting gears to catch up.

Once he finally did, he gripped her arms and
rolled over, pinning her to the mattress as her feet hooked inside
the waist of his flannel pants and pushed them down his thighs. Her
gaze pleaded with him to make love to her, awakening that primitive
part of him that needed a physical outlet for all the fear, worry,
and anxiety of the last two hours.

“Do you know what the best part about
fighting is?” he said.

Her bright eyes sparkled from the city
lights. “No. What?” She bit her bottom lip as the corners of her
mouth turned upward.

“Make up sex.” He shimmied the rest of the
way out of his pajamas and snagged a condom from the bedside
table.

Her lips spread into a coy smile. “Is that
so?”

More than ever, he needed the physical
connection. After what had happened earlier, being with her, making
love to her, feeling her warm body against his…that would make
everything right. That would help heal his heart and reconnect them
to one another.

He pulled back and positioned himself on his
knees between her thighs. “Yes.” He lifted her legs and placed her
ankles against the front of his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” She smiled up at him as
he hoisted her legs higher and held them against his torso.

“Giving you the best make up sex you’ll ever
have.”

“Is this even…oh!” Her eyes shot open and her
hands slapped down on his thighs as he thrust inside her. “I see
what you—OH!—mean.”

Lifting higher, he crossed her ankles over
the front of his neck, making the connection between them tighter,
more snug.

“Mark!” Her nails dug into his thighs as he
pumped harder.

In this position, her G-spot was in his
direct line of fire. Every thrust hit it head-on. Every rock of his
hips connected the most virile part of his sexual anatomy to the
most receptive part of hers. He knew without her saying so that he
was about to deliver a shot of pleasure that would split her nerve
endings wide open.

“Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop!”
Desperation filled her gaze.

With a death grip on her thighs, he drove in
and out of her, teeth clenched. What they had was magical. She made
him feel things he had never felt. She made him want to be a better
person, not just as part of some plan to be perfect, but because he
truly wanted to be. Karma was his own personal guardian angel, and
his only wish now was to make her happy. To make her feel good.

“Harder.” She gasped as he gave her what she
asked for. “Yes, yes!”

How beautiful. To see her unraveling so
quickly was almost spiritual.

She held her breath, her mouth opened in a
silent plea, and then…

“MARK!” She cried out, throwing her head back
on the pillow, thrashing as her body fell into stunning spasms that
made her breasts jiggle.