Provocative (Tempting Book 3) (15 page)

A
dele didn’t come
home that night. And I knew because I sat on the couch while the skies were cold and dark, until the sun peeked past the heavy gray clouds at dawn.

That was about when I cracked open the whiskey.

I was drunk by noon.

Passed out by five.

And when I woke up on the couch the next day before the sun had begun to rise— the house dark considering I hadn’t turned on a single light the day before— she still wasn’t home.

Even when she had walked out the door, I thought she was bluffing.

Because never once in all the tension and silence and awkward encounters through the last two months did I ever think that she’d leave me.

Adele left me.

Adele left me, I chanted over and over in my head while I stared down at the empty crystal glass in my hand.

“Adele left me,” I whispered, just to see if I could say the words out loud. Then I heaved the glass at the wall, feeling absolutely no satisfaction when the glass exploded. The framed picture on the wall right next to where I’d hurled the glass never moved an inch, which actually pissed me the hell off. It wasn’t enough destruction, just a small spot in the drywall where the glass had hit, and the millions of shards all over the floor.

But those could be swept up. Forgotten the instant they were dumped into the trash bin. Like they’d never been there. Exactly the way Adele had described her presence in the house.

“Fuck,” I said, dropping into a chair and gripping my head with my hands. There was this strange pinching around my heart, like someone was dragging the tip of a pin over the surface. It was causing enough pain that I wanted to rip out the offending organ, but not enough that I wasn’t able to function.

What I hated most of all though?

Adele was one hundred percent right. About everything.

After I’d started at Harvard, she was the sacrifice. Time with her was the sacrifice.

When we fought, I looked at her as a child. As someone who didn’t know as well as I did what was right and what was wrong.

The house that we lived in, together, bore no trace of her whatsoever.

After she lost the baby, it was the worst of all. My grief had superseded hers. Instead of just asking her what was in her head, I answered the question for myself, and left her to deal with the consequences.

Alone.

Digging my fingers into my temples, I attempted to regulate my breathing. Each realization, each bullet point of my failure stabbed me a thousand times over. And no matter where I looked, all I saw was Diana. The pictures, the paint colors, the rugs under my feet. The dining room chairs, the couches and the duvet covers on the bed.

They all carried Diana’s stamp.

When I walked through the kitchen, I crunched over the broken glass. But I didn’t stop to clean it up. Maybe that was my nod to Adele’s silent displays of ownership over the house, or maybe I just didn’t want to lose my nerve.

It took me three hours to fill six boxes.

When I taped the last one shut, I was fully sober, just the throbbing headache at the base of my skull reminding me that I’d drank way too much whiskey.

The walls of the upstairs hallway were empty. So were the walls leading up the staircase. The china set that had been given to us as a wedding present was carefully wrapped, leaving the two glass-paned cabinets on either side of the stove bare.

The attic was emptier by two boxes of clothes and keepsakes from college.

In fact, the only thing I’d kept was our wedding album, but I carefully folded that into the duvet from the master bed and tucked it into the shelves along the back wall of the attic.

In the quiet, musty room, I felt the weight of what I’d done. Purging my house of the most obvious pieces of Diana would’ve slayed me just a short year ago. But once Adele had barreled into my life, I barely noticed them anymore. They didn’t stay out of some statement of grief. They stayed because I didn’t have the motivation to get rid of them.

The pieces of my former life being plucked off walls wouldn’t erase my memories of Diana. But when Adele came back—
when
, not if— then I wanted her to see that I was listening.

By the time the last box was settled into the backseat of my car, I knew what I had to do.

So I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through the contacts until I found the number I hadn’t called in five years. Nerves pitched my stomach in a slow roll while the phone rang in my ear. They probably wouldn’t answer. Just as I was waiting for the machine to click on, I heard someone pick up, and then hesitate to say anything.

“Hello?” Diana’s mother said with obvious confusion in her voice.

I cleared my throat. “Hello, Elizabeth. It’s been a long time.”

“It has. Is there a reason for this phone call?”

Rolling my eyes felt natural, and I didn’t stifle it since she couldn’t see me. Her chilliness still shocked me, all these years later. But it’s all I’d ever felt from her.

“I was just wondering if you and Robert were home. I have some boxes of Diana’s things that I thought you might like, and I’d be happy to bring them over.”

Her silence was long and loaded with … something. Knowing her, she’d judge me for cleaning them out, but clutch them to her breast the instant I handed the boxes over.

“Yes,” she said in a clipped tone. “We’re home. You remember where we live?”

I slicked my tongue over the front of my teeth. “Yes, Elizabeth. I remember.”

And then she hung up.

If anything, her curt reception reminded me exactly why I was doing this.

The drive to Hartford took me longer than I remembered, close to two hours with the slick roads of winter. But each mile felt like I was purging something necessary from my soul.

Their house was beautiful, just like it always had been. One of the austere, brick front houses that bespoke old money and deep family roots that was so common in the northeast. The white of the snow in their front yard made the brick look blood red, and I stared at it from my car for about five minutes before getting out to unload the boxes onto the front porch.

Robert didn’t come out to help me, which didn’t surprise me too much. He had never liked me, especially when Diana moved two hours away to be with me after college. But when she died? I became the scapegoat for every bad thing in their life.

And I couldn’t exactly blame them.

When I stacked the last box onto the porch, the door swung open. I smiled at Elizabeth, but the way her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her face pinched in a frown made it go away pretty quickly.

“Come in,” she said quietly. “It’s cold out here.”

I nodded. “Do you want me to take these in first?”

She swallowed, turning to look over her shoulder, probably at her husband. “That’s fine.”

They watched in silence while I took the boxes from the cold outside into their cold house. The heat was roaring, but every inch of that house was frosted over. When the last box was set down, Robert finally spoke.

“What’s in there?”

Determined to keep this as civil as possible, I extended my hand before answering him. “It’s been a long time, Robert.”

After a beat, he gripped my outstretched hand with his own. “Thank you for driving out here.”

“May I sit?”

They looked at each other first, and Robert nodded his assent. They settled in the middle of the couch, and I took the high-backed wing chair opposite of them. During the whole drive down to their house, I thought about what I’d say to them. Diana’s funeral was the last time we’d been in the same room. They always unleashed Elias on me when they needed something.

“I know it’s not easy to have me here,” I started, smoothing my wind-chapped hands along the tops of my thighs. “And it’s not easy for me to
be
here. But I felt like we needed to make some peace with each other.” Elizabeth blinked rapidly and Robert watched me with a stoic expression. “I truly don’t blame you for hating me. She’d still be here with you if she’d never met me. But I
did
love her, and it took me a very long time to be able to learn how to respect that love and also be able to live my life.”

“You’ve done that now?” she asked, her voice wavering slightly at the end.

“I have. It took me almost four years to figure out how.”

“What’s her name?”

I blew out a breath, wishing this wasn’t so fucking hard. “Adele. And I love her very much.”

They didn’t need to know what had happened in the last thirty-six hours, simply that she was the catalyst for all of this.

“So you want to erase all traces of our daughter?” Robert asked, flint in his tone.

“No. It’s not about erasing Diana. I’d never be able to remove her from my mind. But it is about making a home with someone that’s not dominated by my dead wife.” They both flinched when I said it, but I didn’t apologize. Because they needed to hear it. “You don’t have to grant me your forgiveness, but I would like to know that I can walk out of here and feel that we’ve settled whatever it is that needed settling between us. That I can walk out of here and be left in peace.”

A tear fell down Elizabeth’s cheek, and I wondered if there was a number high enough to count how many of them she’d shed in the last five years.

“No matter what you thought about me,” I continued when they didn’t speak, “I loved her very much. But I’m not going to entomb myself with her memory to make you happy. Anything of hers that I want to keep, I’ve kept. This is the rest of anything of hers with sentimental value, and you’re free to do with it what you want.”

They still didn’t speak, so I stood and started walking to the door.

“Wait,” Robert said. Bracing myself for whatever he might hurl at me, I turned to them. He was standing, but Elizabeth was still crying silently on the couch. “The fact that we can’t move on isn’t your fault, Nathan. And I’m … we’re sorry if it felt like we were trying to chain you to her grave.” With a look back at his wife, he smiled sadly. “Good luck.”

He held his hand to me, and I shook it firmly, feeling like anvils had been unstrapped from my feet. “Thank you.”

When I opened the door to leave, he’d gone back by Elizabeth to wrap her in his arms. I shut with it a quiet click and walked back to my car with a relieved smile on my face.

O
ne week
later

It had taken him a week to text me. If I psychoanalyzed that, I’d probably be more hurt than I was when I saw his name flash across my screen.

Despite my determination to walk away from him, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t questioned my decision a hundred times. Regret and guilt battled in my head, long through the night. I wanted him to call—because as upset and sad as I was, I still wanted Nathan.

Good God, did I want him. It wasn’t natural, being apart from him like this. Hell, I fucking ached to pick up my phone and tell him the stupid shit about my day, the ins and outs that only Nathan would get. But I had to be strong and wait him out. See if he missed me. So the words he sent me broke me a little.

Was I okay? No. I was not fucking
okay.
I was like an alcoholic in recovery, needing the next hit more than I needed my next breath. I wanted to go back home to him, spread my legs wide open and pull him into me. I wanted to fill myself up with him, because being empty was worse than anything I’d ever felt.

I wanted to breathe fire into his throat, to damage him forever, so he couldn’t send me a simple text asking me if I was okay—I wanted him to burn right beside me, to breathe his fire into me, so that we scarred one another in a way that was permanent.

Instead, I replied.
I’m fine.

It was the biggest fucking cop-out. Everyone knew what a woman meant when she said she was fine. ‘Fine’ was not fucking fine, for anyone.

I thought that was the end of it. I thought I’d been granted a reprieve even though a darker part of me hoped he’d be relentless in calling me back to him. But one afternoon, as I’d tugged at the turtleneck Scarlet had given me to borrow, he’d sent another text.

I realized that my will was only marginally stronger than my feet, so I stayed firm—ass planted on the trundle bed in Scarlet’s room.

I replied,
Please, respect me enough to give me space. That’s all I need from you right now.

Oh, it hurt. And the only reason I didn’t dissolve into tears and snot was because my entire upper body was slowly being tortured by cashmere.

“How the hell do you handle this much cloth? I feel like I’m being suffocated,” I asked Scarlet as I stuck my fingers into the neck of the sweater and yanked it from my throat. “It’s like a fuzzy python.”

Scarlet was used to my attitude, as evidenced by the way she gave me her trademark Scarlet look: one eyebrow raised and lips pursed. “You’re welcome to wear your own clothes.”

I had to hand it to her. After the first twenty-four hours of staying at her place, whatever intimidation I’d held over her had disappeared. She no longer looked at me like I’d take her in one giant bite and now she gave it back as good as she got. I had to admire her, even if I still didn’t understand her fashion choices.

“Yeah, well, I’d wear my own clothes, but I’m kind of in short supply.” In my haste to leave Nathan’s, I’d packed my weekender bag with three pairs of pants, eight pairs of underwear, enough socks to last me through an apocalypse, and three tops. Two of those tops hadn’t been church-appropriate, which meant they were definitely not Preacher’s house appropriate. And considering that Leo had shipped me off to Scarlet’s doorstep the day he picked me up, I’d been trying my best not to appear like the harlot everyone thought I was.

“Don’t you have a key to his house? Go pick up your stuff.” Scarlet returned her attention to the textbook on her lap.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, sure because it’s just that easy.” My friendship with Scarlet was in its early stages, but we’d evolved to a lot of mutual respect. There was plenty of snark to go around, however. “He has an alarm that he changes the code to every week or so, so even if I could get in, the police would be up my ass a minute later.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Suck it up and wear my clothes or break into your boyfriend’s, or ex-boyfriend’s, house.” She shrugged and turned a few pages in her textbook as she sat properly straight and prim, cross-legged on her bed.

“Why are you even studying if you’re not in school?” I couldn’t help the curl of my upper lip as I took her in, flipping through a book on some kind of biology, not looking the littlest bit bored out of her mind.

‘’Just because I’ve taken the year off doesn’t mean my brain should too.” She shivered and then rolled off the bed to close the window I’d cracked open during the night. An idea suddenly came to me.

“Scarlet, you’re a mother fucking genius,” I said as I formulated how to get more of my stuff from Nathan’s house.

“I don’t fuck mothers, but I’ll accept the genius compliment.” She tilted her head. “What did I do?”

I shrugged as I stood and ripped off the almost-Amish sweater. “It was mostly me, but you gave me an idea,” I said as I tossed the sweater at her. “Honestly, Scarlet. We need to go shopping sometime. Think, less
old folk’s home
and more
I’m a twenty-something with a banging body
.”

“I’ll consider it,” Scarlet replied dryly. “Where are you going?”

“To borrow Leo’s truck,” I said as I tugged on my coat. “I’m going to get my stuff.”

* * *

T
he one good
thing about wearing heartache on my face was that it made Leo all the more willing to do anything he could to make me happy, like letting me borrow the keys to his brand new baby. He’d all but thrown them at me when I’d showed up at his house, and soon I was pulling into Nathan’s driveway.

Luckily, I knew Nathan’s schedule well enough to assume he’d be doing lesson planning at his office before coming home. I had about ten minutes of guaranteed safe time to get in and out and I’d use that time to get my most important shit: my clothes, some cosmetic stuff and my laptop.

One of the things I’d picked up from living with Nathan was that he often slept with the bedroom window open just a crack. I’d gotten so used to it that I’d started doing it too and I knew that he often forgot to close it before leaving the house in the morning. I was betting that he hadn’t remembered today, a Monday morning, so when I walked around the house and saw the master bedroom window partially open, I did a little cheer.

Navigating to the window proved a little trickier than I’d anticipated, but after climbing onto the pergola in the back, I was able to pull myself through the window without setting off any alarms.

There was no way in hell I’d be transporting my shit back out the window, however, so I made my way downstairs and opened the front door, waiting for the alarm to beep.

Surprisingly, nothing happened. I stared at the alarm box near the door and registered that it was disengaged. Nathan hadn’t set it. I wondered at that for a minute before realizing that Nathan hadn’t been the one setting it in recent months. I left after he did and came home before he did, so I was the one turning it on and off as I came and went.

It gave me a little pang, to realize that he hadn’t gotten used to setting it himself right away. But I didn’t indulge in that pang for too long because my ten minutes was ticking down, fast. I set my laptop in the truck and returned to the house.

Upstairs, I grabbed a couple of my toiletries from the bathroom, but my eyes landed on his bottle of cologne and I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the blue bottle and cradling it in my hands. I’d bought him this, on a whim, with the precious few dollars I’d had for spending money one week. I uncapped it and brought it to my nose, inhaling the crisp, clean scent. Part of me wanted to pack it and bring it with me. Maybe spray it on my pillow.

But then I remembered I wasn’t fucking twelve or a stalker, so I set it down and walked to the small backpack on the bed, stuffing my face wash and shampoo into it. I had just started packing a handful of shirts into the backpack when I heard a noise downstairs.

I opened my mouth to utter, “Fuck,” but the word died in my mouth as footsteps ascended the stairs.

I’d have to get the hell out of there, fast.

Without even bothering to zip up my pack, I slung it over my shoulder and quickly tiptoed to the window. I had one leg through the opening when a figure stepped into the bedroom.

“Shit,” I said, pressing a hand to my speeding heart. “What the fuck?”

“I was going to say the same thing to you,” Elias replied, looking very much out of place in Nathan’s bedroom.

“I could’ve fallen through the damn pergola,” I said, pulling my leg back into the house.

“I didn’t push you—you’re the one climbing out a window.”

“And you’re the one in a house that isn’t yours. I thought we talked once before about breaking and entering?”

Elias held up his empty hands. “I’m still unarmed. I thought Nathan was home—I called from the front door. Which you left open, by the way.”

“So you just waltz into open doors? Is that your thing?” I gestured for Elias to leave the bedroom because even though I wasn’t technically living in Nathan’s house at the moment, I felt protective of it and of him.

“Like I said, I assumed Nathan was home and couldn’t hear me calling for him.”

“Why are you even here?” I asked as we reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Nathan did something that pissed me off, and I need to have a little chat with him about it.”

“Huh.” I crossed my arms and took a subtle step back. Elias’ size and bearded-godness was making me wish Nathan actually was here, just because Elias was so very intimidating. “Well, Nathan’s not home, so you should probably come back when he is.” I nodded at the front door. “And I don’t feel comfortable having you in the house when he isn’t here.”

Elias narrowed his eyes, and they were so dark that, internally, I shriveled. “Weren’t you just climbing out of his window?” he asked. “Why was that?”

The last thing Elias needed to know was the status of me and Nathan and the last thing I needed to do was tell him. “I was testing,” I said on a whim.

“Testing what?”

“How long it’d take me to leave the house.” I tucked hair behind my ears, my tell when I was lying. “If there was a fire or something.”

“Right.” Elias tucked his hands in his pockets, his arms all rippley and scary strong looking. “I guess we’ll just both wait here for Nathan then.”

“Uh.” I looked at Leo’s truck and then the front door. “I have errands to run actually. So I’ll leave you here—outside,” I said pointedly. “To wait for Nathan.” My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I pulled it out. Leo had sent me a text.

As I scrunched up my eyebrows, another text from him came in.

A welcome smile spread my lips for a second and I nearly replied until I realized Elias was still standing in front of me. “Are you staying?”

Elias looked at the house and sighed before shaking his head. “No, I’ll come back.”

The silence between us stretched to a point where I did everything but look at him. “Okay … so … bye.” I waved a little and turned to the truck.

“Let’s go for a drink.”

“Wha—what?” I turned around and stared at him, dumbfounded.

“A drink. I think there’s a story here. I could tell you more about Nathan than you could possibly guess. And you could tell me why you’re in such a hurry to leave his house before he comes home.”

The only part of that which tempted me was learning more about Nathan, but considering the source I assumed it would be biased, and information I wouldn’t ultimately need.

I shook my head. “I’m fine, really.”

“Here.” He reached a hand forward—a very large hand—and took my phone from me. In the span of three seconds, he’d returned my phone. “I texted myself from your number. If you decide you ever need that drink, just call me.”

“I probably won’t,” I said, tucking my phone back into my pocket and avoiding looking into his eyes. “I’m okay.”

“If you change your mind, you have my number.”

It unsettled me, but not in an unwelcome way. I didn’t
need
attention from another man. In fact, it was the absolute last thing I needed right now. But I’d be a fucking liar if I said that getting that attention, unsolicited, didn’t give me a little warmth in the places I was the coldest.

I gave him a smile I didn’t feel and climbed into Leo’s truck, pulling down the road and away from Nathan’s home.