Page 43 of Caleb's Salvation
“I think now would probably be a good time to tell me about her,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.” Because if I was going to do this thing. If I was going to break seven years of abstinence for a young woman I had no business wanting but did anyway, then she was probably entitled to that story.
Also, she needed understand when I did finally fuck her, it was going to be rough, hot and fast that first time.
She settled her cheek on my chest, her hand still resting over my heart, her thigh wedged between mine. My dick was still rock hard but telling this story would take care of that.
“I’m listening,” she whispered.
“I met Sarah when I was getting my graduate degree in chemical engineering at Stanford. She was just finishing law school there. We were set up on a blind date and I could tell the first moment she looked at me, she wasn’t sure what she was getting into. I grew up on a dairy farm in Oregon, all rough edges and blunt talking. And she was your typical California girl. Blond, beautiful and smart as hell. So damn vibrant. She was definitely too good for me, but that didn’t stop me from going after her and, somehow, I managed to win her over. Got married in our twenties, waited a few years to have Emily. I was working for an oil company in L.A. Sarah was working as a junior prosecutor…”
“You were happy,” Vivienne concluded.
“Ridiculously. We had it all. Good jobs, sweet kid. We were still hot for each other seven years into our marriage. Then I got a promotion, but it meant being away for weeks at a time on an offshore rig. We fought about it, but I couldn’t walk away from the opportunity. Something that would put me on the fast track to senior management. It put a strain on our relationship, but I had no worries we were strong enough to overcome that. But one trip got extended. I was going to be gone for six weeks. She flipped out and said that was too long for Emily to go without seeing me. I got so angry at what I thought was a guilt trip, I told her to come down and fucking see me if it was so damn important.”
I could feel Vivienne get tense around me, but I suppose she needed to know that about me, too. I hadn’t lied about that. I was still rough edges and blunt talking.
“I said exactly that.Come down and fucking see me. And she did. Packed bags for her and Emily. Put her in the car and drove from L.A. to San Diego to surprise me with a visit. Halfway down a tractor trailer blew out a tire and sideswiped into oncoming traffic. Sarah and Emily were killed instantly.”
This time it wasn’t tension. Vivienne was trying to squeeze me to give me comfort.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and I could feel the tears leaking out of her eyes and onto my chest.
“Me, too. Every day. Only I never got to tell her.”
That was the reason for my self-punishment. My exile from society. In an angry fit, I told my wife it was her responsibility to see me, her responsibility for my kid to see me. I’d had this precious, precious thing. This perfect family. These lives that weremyresponsibility and I fucked it up.
“You have to forgive yourself, Caleb.”
“Don’t ask me to do that. Because I won’t. Ever.”
Hubris. That was my sin. Thinking I could have more thaneverything.And that sin cost me all of it. No, I didn’t have any intention of forgiving myself.
But I was going to give in to something I hadn’t thought I ever would.
I wanted to fuck Vivienne, so I was going to fuck her. I wanted to kiss her and sleep in this bed, so I was going to do that, too. If I felt guilty, that was my guilt to suffer. If I felt dirty for betraying Sarah, then again, that was my pain to suffer.
None of that, however, could touch Vivienne.
She’d done nothing other than unknowingly seduce me. Nothing other than make me care when I hadn’t thought I had any care left.
But seven years was a long time.
Vivienne didn’t say anything. She just wrapped herself more firmly around me as if she were a blanket. Or possibly a shield.
It was sweet.
And when the kid woke up in the middle of the night, I got out of bed to settle him before he could wake her.
12
Bud’s
Vivienne
I buzzed around the tables, dropping off beers and picking up tips. I was grateful for the work, not just because I needed to start making money again after missing so many days, but because it gave me something to think about other than Caleb.
Caleb, with his broken heart that, after all this time, he wouldn’t let himself heal.
