Page 21 of Fault Lines
It was all in my head: images of him on top of some woman whose face I couldn’t see, her perfect body pressed up against him. His lips on hers. Did she make him feel better than I ever could? Did he like how she looked, the way her skin felt, the taste of her mouth?
“Stop, baby.” He knelt next to me, wrapping both arms around my shaking body, pulling me close. “Just cry, go ahead. Take it out on me. I’m sorry. I never should have hurt you.”
We stayed that way for a long time. I had the strangest sense of letting the person who’d hurt me be my comfort, but there was nothing left in me to stop it. Eventually, when the tears were gone and even rage felt empty, he lifted me gently off the floor and carried me to the bed, settling in behind me, my back pulled flush against his chest.
I didn’t resist. I was empty. There was nothing else I could do but lie there and wait for sleep to find me, no matter how long it took.
It was a long time before sleep came.
Chapter Seven
I woke to a headache brutal as the aftermath of a three-day bender, though I hadn't touched a drop. The world tilted when I rolled from the bedsheets and stood—the floorboard pressing cold against my toes, last night's clothes thrown in a careless heap, a towel slumped like defeat over the chair arm. I blinked thickly, disoriented and raw, every throb in my skull echoing the previous night. First things first: coffee, a desperate caffeine lifeline.
Thoughts tried to storm in. I refused them, focusing instead on what was physically there. One step in front of the other. The hollow of my back, the ache in my temples, the sticky warmth on my skin. That's when I noticed: I was naked. Just my own skin and this unfinished fight. Somewhere across the room Cam's shower pounded the pipes, walls faintly trembling under the surge. I had no intention of walking in there, not yet, not with all that hung unspoken between us.
Instead, I pawed through a drawer for underwear, tugged on a breezy summer dress, left my bra draped where it was—I couldn't muster the extra layer—and slipped on a pair of flats. I padded to the kitchen. The water I found in the fridge was arctic, relieving, and I let the bottle empty almost in one breath as I started the coffee.
I didn't bother turning when his footsteps crossed tile behind me.
“Morning, babe,” he called, buoyant, as if nothing ached at the edges.
The memory—the humiliation of it, the heartbreak sharp as glass in my chest—all of it rushed back and I clenched every muscle not to weep right there over the coffee grounds. But I must've still had tears left in me; I could feel them pressing behind my eyes.
“Good morning, Cam,” he drawled in a parody of my own voice, mocking where I was silent. “Hope you slept well.”
I stared straight ahead and measured out the beans. Kept my hands steady.
He dragged a bar stool over the tile, the scrape rough and final. I could picture exactly how he looked, elbows braced, gaze fixed on my back.
“I’m sorry, Livi. I don’t know how else to say it.” His voice was lower now, thick with the same old apology.
When I finally turned, I put the counter between us, arms folded high and hard across my chest. “You can say it was a mistake. You can say it won’t happen again. You can say you’ve realized that you only need your wife to be happy, not a bunch of other women.”
The air held a beat of silence, taut as a wire.
“It’s not a bunch of other women,” he said finally, like that made a difference.
“Oh please, Cam. Just tell me it was a one-off. That you’re done now.”
He didn’t answer. The answer, I realized, was in the hush itself.
I turned away from him and finished the coffee, my hands moving by rote. Whatever words existed had long since dried up between us.
I set his mug on the countertop, refusing to lift my eyes to his. When his fingers brushed mine taking the cup, I shivered, every nerve tuned to the memory of last night.
“I love you, Livi.” He kept his tone gentle, setting the words down before me like offerings. “You’ll come to terms with this, I promise. Just give it time.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I muttered. At the threshold, mug in hand, I didn’t look back. I just left the room. Couldn’t be near him, not with all this panic and anger and fear ricocheting inside me.
The living room was dim and cool, and I folded myself into the corner of the couch, knees pressed to chest, cradling the coffee like some kind of shield. My mind spun. Behind me, silent in the doorway, I felt Cam watching, measuring, but he didn’t speak. Neither did I. Pointless, really. He’d go on breaking my heart and I’d go on letting him do it, at least until there was nothing left. Or until one of us just... left.
He crossed the room eventually, bent to press a kiss to my forehead, rested his own against mine for a long and private moment.
“I know I keep saying this,” he murmured, “but I really am sorry. I hate seeing you like this. It hurts me to see you hurting.”
“Then stop hurting me.” I looked up and caught his gaze, letting every ounce of heartbreak fill my voice. “Only you can make this go away.”
He held my stare as if he might finally yield, and for one second hope cracked through me, fierce and bright. But the moment shuttered closed.
