Page 100 of Sacrifice the Knight (Checkmate 6)

27

Eric

Ihaven’t looked straight into Katrina Blair’s beautiful eyes in thirty-four days, seven hours, fuck knows how many minutes, and far too many seconds. Our separation has been like a permanent stretch of suffocation. I can’t breathe without her, but losing her because she knew me would be too much to bear. I wouldn’t be able to survive that. Katrina was my drug of choice for almost two years straight, a dependency that raced past tipping point the night her ex came to the diner and wanted a little of her attention. She was the hit I craved when I was jittery, but I’ve been without for so long, you wouldassumeI’d detoxed.

I can’t. I tried. I cannot detox from her.

I can’t get over her.

It’s almost as though time has sharpened my senses. I see her now, sitting on my couch with puffy eyes and a bouncing knee. Her chest expands and drops, and fat tears sit on her swollen lips.

Tears that I caused.

This was never supposed to bring her pain.

She wears those sinful blue jeans, white sneakers, and a tight top that displays her perfect shape. Her scarf is missing today, her hair tied up high. She wears mascara that runs with her tears, but her lips are bare and pale, her cheeks warm. Her eyes are both cutting and hurt, straight, but insecure.

My secrets have hurt her. My truths are making her bleed.

“Katrina.” I take a step forward, loathing the way her name on my tongue makes her tense up. I hate that her shoulders tighten, that her hands shake, and her lips firm. I hate that my taking a step forward forces her to sit back, as though to maintain the space between us. “I’m so sorry.”

“You need to explain this to me.” She turns the framed photograph and pushes home exactly what I lost. I lost them. I lost her. “Explain to me your little love story, Eric. Because there’s no way I can spin this in my head and still come out thinking what we did was okay.”

“I was married.”

“No fucking shit!” she snaps. “Gemma and Callie. The names on your body, so fucking obvious and right there for me to see, but I was the dirty whore who pretended they weren’t inked on for all eternity. I saw their names, but I was too cowardly to ask. But here we are, at the end of a fucking affair, asecretaffair, mind you, a secret I somehow suggested. Did you laugh at how stupid I am? When you went back to your buddies at Checkmate, when they knew you had a wife and kid at home, but you were fucking the waitress in your spare time, did you joke about how you didn’t have to convince me to keep us quiet, but I suggested it?”

“No, of course no–”

She stands as fury burns in her eyes. “I must look so stupid to you. I encouraged the secrecy. I demanded it! I came to you. I was the idiot coming to you in the middle of the night like a desperate loser. It was the easiest affair you ever had! And it was all initiated by me.”

“No, Katrina.” I take another step forward, but when she brings her hands up as though to beat on me, I lift mine in surrender. “I swear it wasn’t like that. I’m not married anymore. I didn’t cheat on my wife.”

“So what then? Explain it to me! You’ve been here for years, but I haveneverseen this little girl around.” She thrusts the photograph forward. “You’re a deadbeat too? Make a baby, leave it with the mother and continue on with your life like it doesn’t bother you to miss out on the best thing you ever created. How dare you invite Mac and me into your life when you can’t even take care of the child you already have! How dare you do that to us!”

“Katrina…” My voice cracks, and my arm smarts when I catch her hands before she beats me with the photo frame. “Katrina! Stop.” I snatch the frame away and toss it to the couch so it lands with a soft plop. “Stop! I didn’t cheat on my wife, okay? And I was as involved with my daughter’s upbringing as I could be.”

“This sounds like a cunning prelude to abut.Buther mother kept her from me.Buther mother is a bitch.Buther mother remarried and moved to Australia. You’re speaking to the wrong woman, Eric. Deadbeat dads are my specialty.”

“Gem and Callie died.” I pull her against my chest when my callously dropped words turn her ghostly white. “I’m so sorry, baby. I swear I didn’t desert them. Not in the way you think I did.”

“Oh God,” she whimpers. “This is so much worse. Somehow, this is way worse.”

“Yes.” I breathe in the scent of her hair, if only to strengthen myself against what’s coming. “This is way worse. An affair is a choice, a shitty choice that I could make and own and maybe one day earn forgiveness. But this isn’t that, and it hurts so much worse. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It wasn’t a dirty secret I was trying to keep, but more of something I was trying to protect you against. It was selfish of me,” I rush out when she tries to pull back. “I get that now. I made the selfish choice to keep my secrets, but in my mind, I was doing the right thing.”

“What happened to them?” She leans into me for a moment, dries her eyes on my shirt, then pulls back, tearing the air from my lungs as she goes. “What happened to them, Eric? When?” She swipes a hand beneath her eyes. “Why? You need to explain it to me.”

I made a point of never having Katrina here in the daylight, but even though the sun is almost all gone outside, she’s already switched the lights on. She sees what I see. I swallow the painful lump in my throat, then extend a hand as though in invitation to look around at the dozen or so pictures I still have on display. Her eyes flicker from my wedding portrait, to prom, to candids while on vacation, to others while I wear a uniform and I’m presented with medals.

I step away, hating the way she stumbles back and drops to the edge of the couch. She’s wounded, winded, and it’s all my fault as she picks up the photo I tossed on the cushions a minute ago. I move back to give her a moment to look, go to the kitchen and pour two glasses of water, then I silently set the glasses on the coffee table in front of her.

Stepping to my television cabinet, I take my wedding photo and hold it out so Katrina can take it in her shaking hands. She does nothing but stare. She doesn’t even look away when I sit down and our thighs touch.

“She’s so beautiful,” she whimpers. “I wanted to find her flaws, to lay some of my homewrecking ways on her shoulders, as though her looks could be a reason for your wandering eye. But that’s dumb, and she’s so beautiful.”

I sit forward on the couch and stare into my glass of water. I don’t have to look at the pictures anymore. I know every minute detail. I’ve done nothing but stare for a decade. “You’re not a homewrecker, Katrina. I swear you’re not, just as confidently as I can swear Gemma was neither horrible nor ugly. She was kinda perfect in her own way. She was my high school sweetheart, so we were together for years, and we married just as soon as they handed over our diplomas. We wanted it all, and we were willing to dive in head first.”

“You have her name on your chest.”

---