Page 66 of Red King

“Lucky you. We had a feminine “Lord of the Flies” thing going on in our house growing up. When you live with liars, you learn to spot a lie from a mile away. Even a seasoned liar. And you, sweet, sweet Paisley, arenota seasoned liar. Not by a looooooong shot. You are lying to me right now. Don’t even try to deny it because I won’t believe you. Now, tell me what really happened with Arctic.”

I sit down hard in my chair and push away the mac and cheese because I’m never going to eat it. “He wants sex. You were right.”

She squeals. “I knew it!” Then she fist-pumps the air a few times, shouting. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Did you do it already? Have you…?”

“No! God, no!” I shake my head. “He put a proposal on the table. He said we’re both broken and both celibate and that...”

“Wait, he’s what now?”

Shit!

“Please, Mags, you really can’t repeat this. He told me something that is extremely personal. The reason for his celibacy and it’s really bad.”

“About his wife being murdered,” she says, looking sad. “Everyone knows about it, hon’.”

“Yes, that.” I rub my lips together. “She died in his arms, and he took it really badly. Like really, really freaking badly.”

“I can well imagine. I didn’t know he was celibate, like he hasn’t had sex since…”

I’m shaking my head. “Nope, and no one can know. Please, Maggie.” I take her hand and squeeze. “It’s his personal business. It can never get out.”

“Holy shit! This is big. I swear I won’t say anything.” She squeezes back, and I let go.

“He said he can see a sadness in me. He knew how my marriage ending devastated me…which it did. He said that we’re both grieving for the loss of someone but in different ways. He said that we can heal through using each other for sex.”

“What did you tell him?” She looks skeptical.

“I told him I needed to think about it. I have to turn him down.”

She gives me a look. “Are you nuts?”

“I can’t go through with it. He’s my boss and a candidate.”

“So you keep saying. We spoke about this. Throw caution to the wind, Paisley. When in your life have you ever done that?” She looks at me head-on.

“When I came to this island.”

“Don’t stop now.” She gets this naughty grin. “I say go for it. Unless you’re afraid of falling for him.”

“Not going to happen,” I deadpan. “Jim really did a number on me. After ten years of marriage, he left me because I was defective.”

“You arenotdefective. I hope you didn’t listen to him.”

“Actually, Iamdefective, and it isn’t his opinion; it’s a fact. I can’t have children.” My voice wobbles and breaks. A tear runs down my face. After all this time, I thought I was done crying. Turns out I’m not, since another one slides down, hot and big. It plops on the table.

“Oh, hon’. I’m so sorry.” Maggie grabs my hand again and squeezes it, holding on this time.

“Once Jim had done two years of his residency, we started trying. We tried for over a year before seeking help. I was told I had endometriosis and a hormone imbalance. I had a surgical procedure and went on meds, but it didn’t resolve. We tried for another year, and I didn’t get pregnant. We were then told that I had PCOS and that we would need to go the IVF route; my chance of becoming pregnant naturally was nil. And so we went that route.”

“Oh, hon’, that couldn’t have been easy.” She shakes her head, her eyes filled with concern.

“It wasn’t. All the needles and drugs. I didn’t care. All we wanted was a baby. All I ever dreamed of was becoming a mother. Jim and I talked about it often after we got married. About how we would start trying as soon as he was well on his way to becoming a neurologist. Then he became fully qualified, we had the house, the picket fence; we just needed children to complete the picture and make our family complete.”

“I’m assuming the IVF didn’t work?” Maggie scrunches her nose up.

I shake my head. “We went through seven rounds. That’s when our fertility specialist advised us to seek donor eggs. At that point, I was diagnosed with diminishing egg syndrome, another issue to add to the long list. I was told that the chances of becoming pregnant were less than five percent if we tried another round of IVF. Jim left me two weeks later. He told me that he had always dreamed of being a father. He didn’t want to explore other options like adoption or surrogacy or an egg donor. It didn’t fit the perfect picture he had planned.”

“What a prick!” Maggie yells.

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