Page 73 of Vengeful Seduction
David
My hand touched nothing but smooth, cool sheets when I rolled over the next morning. I expected to find Kaye, warm and fragrant and sleepy, but she wasn’t within the grasp of my groping hand.
I opened my eyes, expecting to see her lying just inches away from me in bed, out of reach of my hand, or to see her brushing her long, dark waves of hair.
But I saw nothing.
Frowning, I woke up completely. It was strange to not find her there. It was early yet and I knew she didn’t have to work. She would normally wait for me in the bedroom, because more often than not, we breakfasted together.
A sense of foreboding stole through my entire body, trailing icy fingers up my spine. Only, I was being ridiculous and I knew it. Kaye had probably gone to go start breakfast herself.
She probably didn’t want to be around me much, and I couldn’t even blame her. I was being ridiculous about this baby thing. I did want a child with her. More than one, if she was okay with it.
Any child she had any part in would be nothing but an utter delight. I had never had much interest in having a child before, but with her, I wanted kids.
So why was I waiting, anyway? I shook my head as I grabbed a pair of sweats and pulled them on. I had no idea. Probably for the same stubborn reason I’d kept insisting to myself, and to Brent, that I was only after Kaye’s money.
Long after I had known it wasn’t true, I had kept on with the charade. Maybe it was time to break this cycle before it got even more ridiculous than it already was. What was I trying to prove here, anyway?
Kaye and I were together. For life.
So maybe it was time for me to go prove it to her. To both of us.
With a huge smile on my face, I left the room. I probably looked like an idiot, but I didn’t even care. I would find Kaye and we could talk—maybe get started on the baby right away. Though she would probably have to stop taking her pills first.
I had no problem with practicing, though.
“Kaye?” I called out, walking down the stairs toward the living room. There was no smell of coffee and I shook my head. Kaye was, if anything, more addicted to caffeine than I was. It was the whole nurse thing, she’d told me.
Whenever she woke up, she put on a pot of coffee. Always.
“David?” Her voice was sleepy and it came from the living room. Remorse gripped me. She must have come downstairs to sleep on the couch, unable to handle being in the same bed with me after how cruel I had been to her.
And then I saw Brent.
My so-called best friend was lying on our couch, dead to the world and snoring softly. On the other couch, my wife was just sitting up, rubbing sleep from her lovely green eyes. She looked startled to see me.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, looking between the two of them. Brent was only slowly waking up, and as he opened his eyes, I felt my anger growing, bursting a dam deep in the pit of my stomach, and flooding me with white-hot fury and something close to hatred.
“What the fuck is going on right now?” My voice thundered through the room and it was enough to wake my best friend up. My former best friend, that is. Kaye looked at me, obviously startled, but she didn’t recoil back the same way Brent did. “Someone answer me immediately,” I hissed, approaching Kaye. To my stunned surprise, Brent got up off the couch and stood right in front of her.
Protecting her.
Protecting my wife. From me.
“I won’t let you hurt her anymore.” Brent stood firmly in front of Kaye, who poked her head around him so she could see me. There was a distance in her expression—one I wasn’t used to seeing. Not from her.
It was like she was already pulling away from me.
The anger I’d felt before was nothing. It paled in comparison to what raged through me when I realized what was going on. Brent was protecting Kaye, who was pulling away from me. “You fucked her, didn’t you? You son of a bitch, you fucked my wife,” I screamed, and my hands clenched into fists at my side, hard enough to leave little bloody marks. I had to keep myself under control. I knew that, at least on some level. Otherwise, I might just kill Brent.
And how badly I wanted to at that moment. I would gladly rot in hell before I saw him with the woman I loved. He was in for the fight of his life if he thought for one second I was going to let him have her.
“No, we didn’t,” Kaye whispered, and her face was very pale, other than two patches of color high on her cheekbones. For the very first time, I was seeing my wife furious.
“You did!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I knew what I was witnessing here in our living room. I knew she’d left our bed and come down here to meet him. Why else would they be down here? When had they concocted this little rendezvous?
Unlike me, she didn’t get loud. She didn’t scream. She got very quiet instead. Terrifyingly quiet. I had to listen very closely to be able to hear her at all when she spoke. “We didn’t. I would never have touched another man,” Kaye continued, her voice still so soft and quiet that I had to lean forward to listen. “I love you. I loved you.”
