Page 10 of Perdition
Without thinking, Em blurted, “I changed the lock codes to the doors.” Doors that had only ever been open to the man who owned the house…and her heart.
Grass-green eyes narrowed as understanding clicked in Cheri’s brain.
Nostrils flaring, cheeks turning red, lips thinning, she growled, “What did that motherfucker do?”
Whathadn’the done?
“He….” Hell, she couldn’t force the words past her lips, they were too jagged.
Cheri cocked her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “Did that fucker cheat?”
Stunned that her friend, who knew Mads better than most people, jumped to that thought immediately, Em simply blinked at her, willing air into her suddenly constricted lungs.
No, Em had no proof that he’d fucked Sarah, but him taking the skank to their spot was almost as bad. Either way, he’d given a part of himself, something he’d only given to Em, to another woman.
Emotional cheating was still cheating, and it was potentially for more devastating than physical cheating. With physical cheating, the pain of the betrayal could fade away, along with whatever memory the cheater had of the physical pleasure and the desire for the other woman, as desire often did. Desire and lust without emotion, without connection, was empty, easilyreplaced, forgotten. But emotional cheating had roots, deep, gnarly, and hard to kill. Once it had entrenched itself in a person, completely removing that emotion—those intimate feelings for someone other than your partner—was nearly impossible…at least not without completely destroying everything around it.
“Did that asshole stick his pencil dick in one o’ those club bitches?” Cheri snarled, and Em sighed.
She answered honestly, agonizingly, “I…I don’t know, Cheri.”
Cheri growled low in her ample chest.
“I’m gonna rip off his dick and stick it in a hot tail pipe, then I’m gonna rip out his tongue and making him rim his own ass.”
Em gasped. “Cheryl Lynn Marks!”
Despite the murderous look in her eyes, Cheri snickered. “Don’t go usin’ my full name like that; the only people allowed to do that are the law and the man tying me down to the bed. Either way, I’ve been naughty.”
Em couldn’t help it, she gasped again, but it turned into a belly laugh, the first such deep, brilliant, unfettered laugh in a long, long time.
Too long.
She hadn’t felt the urge to laugh with such abandon since….
The night before the kids moved into their dorms.
That was the last night they’d all been together without the hoopla of a holiday celebration. That had been the last night she’d felt…whole. Complete. Like part of something good and beautiful and…unbroken.
Thingswerebroken, and if what she’d overheard Mads admitting in his office was true, they’d been broken for longer than she knew.
“…you are too young to be stuck—you have a full life ahead of you. You cannot let yourself be locked down with just one person….”
Word for word. That’s what he’d said. Those were the killing words that thrust the knife the deepest. He’d been speaking to Sarah, but he’d been gutting Emily, tearing out her heart, shredding her lungs, and drowning her soul. Those words had left Em bleeding, suffocating on the blood, and then fighting to surface against waves of agony.
“Cheri…I don’t know what to do….” She swallowed but couldn’t stop the ball of tears from rising into her eyes, spilling down her face to burn tracks of salt and despair along her cheeks. “Things haven’t been right for a while, and I’d stupidly hoped…I’d hoped that it was just growing pains, that we were just adjusting to our new life without Sorsha and War at home.”
Their twins, who’d turned ninteen that winter, were living the dream in college. They still called home often, visited when classes permitted, but mostly they were happily experiencing the life of college students—War more than Sorsha, since Sorsha was the shy one and Warwick was the life of any party. As fraternal twins, the two were closer than any typical brother and sister, but they were as different as night and day, which worked for them because they balanced each other out.
They weren’t going to be happy when they realized things weren’t so fabulous at home, and Em was terrified of that. She’d hidden her unhappiness well—at least she thought she had—so the discord between their parents would come as a blow to them.
God…when had things gotten so freaking messy?
And it’s going to get messier…isn’t it?
Cheri sighed then wrapped her arms around Em and pulled her into a rib-crushing hug. But damn, the woman was scary strong.
“Pack a bag for a few days; you’re comin’ home with me,” Cheri commanded. “I just bought a bottle of that wine you like, and we can get blasted, make bad decisions, and you can just letit be for a night. Tomorrow, we’re gonna talk about all the shit that’s been dimming the light in my Em’s eyes.”