Page 2 of Perdition
She easily recognized her husband’s grunt, which was an answer all on its own.
The other woman gave out a heavy sigh, like she had anything heavy other than those tits which were as fake as the diamond in the first engagement ring her husband gave her, back when all he could afford was the plastic ring he bought from the dispenser at Chuck E. Cheese for a quarter on his twenty-first birthday, and she was just shy of eighteen…and two months pregnant with their twins.
Their romance was somewhat controversial in that he was a legal adult when they’d first had sex, but they’d been careful to follow Pennsylvania’s Romeo & Juliet laws. People could curl their lips in disgust, but they weren’t doing anything wrong. So, when he was drinking age, and she was still in high school, he put a ring on it.
But that ring from the cheap machine meant more to her than the authentic diamond ring he bought her five years later, after his first deployment.
Emily dropped her gaze to the ring, still encircling her finger, a finger wrapped in a Band-Aid because she’d been distractedand had gotten her finger caught in the wire she was using to create a funeral wreath.
“Are things okay between you two—I only ask because I worry about you.” The wordssoundedgenuine, delivered with a soft cooing that made Em’s teeth grind, but Emily knew the utterances of manipulation when she heard them. And Mads should, too.
Right?
“Everyone wants what you have, Frost…even me,” that voice simpered, a pout obvious in her tone.
She wanted what Frost had, did she? Or did she simply want Frost?
Acrid saliva built in the back of Em’s throat, but she swallowed it back.
Forcing the sudden buzzing from her ears, she held her breath once more to listen through the sliver in the doorway.
“You don’t understand,” the voice of her husband, Madsen Flowers, her heart and soul, said softly, gently, pleadingly, “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.”
“Like you did?” that freaking voice asked, a little too interested, though it was skillfully hidden behind empathetic cooing.
Like you did?Sarah, the slinky clubbitch, was asking Frost if he was stuck—as in...with his wife? What the hell?
Em’s chest ached with the breath she was holding, but it released in a hiss.
Please, please say “no” that you aren’t talking about yourself—about us….
“Twenty years next month,” Madsen supplied, his tone deadpan as though he were reading an instruction manual rather than tearing his wife’s heart apart. “Started dating at twenty, but…I’d known her for years before that. Best friends.”There was a speaking silence, one that whispered “enduring” and “everlasting.” He sighed, the sound like a gunshot in an empty stadium. “Long time.”
Yes, a long time—from the time she turned sixteen and he was twenty, but they waited to have sex until she was seventeen, almost eighteen, because he wanted to make sure she was truly ready.
And she had been. They’d both been.
There was a shuffling, like feet moving across the industrial carpeting, and then the tell-tale sound of creaking leather as someone sat down.
The sliver in the door didn’t allow for her to see inside, so she had no idea what was happening. Did she want to know what was happening? Were they sitting together on that old leather couch? Were they sitting close? Were their arms touching, their legs? Were they leaning into each other, staring into each other’s eyes even now, in the silence?
God, she couldn’t get enough air.
He wouldn’t cheat…he isn’t a cheater…That wasn’t the man she fell in love with eighteen years ago, and married nineteen years ago; her husband was fiercely loyal, dedicated, loving, and honorable.
But then…he wasn’t exactly that same man she’d married; the man sitting in that office was the same man who’d ordered one of this trusted club brothers to target and seduce an innocent woman. Locust and Nadia were still healing from that treachery.
No…the man sitting in that office, the one who could order that…she didn’t know him.
And now uncertainty morphed into a slithering, slimy fear.
“I get it, Frost, I do,” the young woman’s voice filled with silence, the tone placating and a little‘see me, I’m right here, lean on me.’“I’m sorry your life has been like that, but…itdoesn’t have to be that way anymore. You’re sexy, amazing, and you’re still young. You have options.”
Mads gave a tight laugh, then offered, “Yeah…I do….” There was a flatness to his voice that made Em blink; she’d never heard him like that before. But it wasn’t the tone that had ripped out a piece of her soul, it was that he agreed with Sarah.
He hadoptions?
Like Sarah—the club skank with the perfect rack, peachy ass, long legs, flawless skin, and not a single ounce of fat? Sarah, who didn’t have that same pooch from nineteen years ago from carrying twins. Sarah, who hadn’t breastfed to babies for over a year. Sarah, who didn’t stress eat, then diet in a vicious cycle until her skin was a hormonal mess, complete with miles of stretch marks from all the yo-yoing. Sarah, who’s hair was soft and golden and didn’t have a single split end, because she had the time and effort to do whatever bullshit hair routine TikTok was raving about. Em’s hair was just there, blonde but the dull kind, the kind that was washed in Target brand shampoo and left to dry in a ponytail because Em had shit to do and didn’t have time to do more than that.