Page 57 of Perdition

“My ex did that…like when I was complaining to him about how his secretary, that slut, shouldn’t be calling him at home on the weekends,” Vicki offered without an ounce of bitterness, which Em envied.

“Did he give full answers at all?” Cilla asked Em, her head cocked in curiosity.

Again, Em thought back to the conversation between her husband and his barnacle bitch.

“He told her not to settle so young because she’d regret it, then she brought up how long he and I had been together, and he responded by telling her how many years that was.”

All the women nodded sagely, Vicki, the oldest of them—older than Em’s thirty-six by two years—had a thoughtful look on her face.

“I know that sounds bad,” she said, then paused.

“But?” Em prodded, ready for more wine and less talking.

Vicki’s gaze peered into Em’s soul, glanced over her heart, and then seemed to read her thoughts, too. Damn, but the woman was all sorts of mental and emotional sorcery.

“I think you need to talk to him. Get every single detail—leaving nothing out. You only heard that one bit of that one conversation, so you can’t know the full story. I know it sounded bad, and it was, but you will never know if what was said and done is worth walking away from twenty years of marriage.”

“But what about taking her to our spot, and telling me that the red maple is just a fucking tree?” Em was desperately holding on to her anger with the bloody tips of her fingers, knowing that if she gave an inch to reason and logic, she’d find only hurt on the other side. She’d be opening herself up to being flayed, sliced and diced and probably burned to ashes by the truth she uncovered.

“Men are shit with things like that, Em,” Stephie protested. “They are only slightly more emotionally intelligent than animals, so their capacity to know and express their own feelings is about as good as a dog’s. Tail wagging, licking, and ass sniffing are their most sophisticated repertoire of personal expression.”

Em couldn’t help it, she laughed. God, it felt good to do that.

“I think you should meet with him, at least hear him out, and tell him about the shit Sarah said. Then, tell him how you feel about all the bullshit he’s been putting you through.” Ugh, Nadia made sense…and Sorsha had said pretty much the same thing.

“Give Dad a chance to explain.”

So, without giving herself a moment to think herself out of it, she pulled her cell from her pocket, unblocked him, and called her maybe-probably-soon-to-be-ex-husband.

He answered on the first ring.

His words were raw, ragged, deep with wounds and terror. “Em, baby. Please let me?—”

“I’ll be home tomorrow, after seven,” she informed him, not giving him a moment longer to speak for fear of breaking. “We can talk then.”

His breath caught, and she could hear the relief and disbelief in that single sound.

“No matter what, baby, I’ll be there,” Frost proclaimed, a tightness to his voice she hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Not since he’d gotten his first orders to report to Fort Drum for his first deployment.

Well, that was fair, since he was knowingly entering a warzone, and the chances of his survival weren’t all that high.

SEVENTEEN

His heart in his throat,his balls drawn up tight to his body, his lungs burning from shallow breaths, Frost pulled up to the house that used to be his home before he went and fucked that all up.

It was almost seven, and he knew Em usually got home from the shop by then, usually leaving the closing to her assistant manager, Maria. Before all the bullshit had tainted his life—the troubled patch over, Sarah’s insidious attentions, and his unspoken fears and dissatisfaction compounding on one another—he would be home just before her, having left the business of the club to his, then, single VP, so that he could be at home with this wife and kids.

His family.

Now, not even eighteen months later, he was locked out of his house, on the outs with his kids, and probably headed toward castration by his own wife.

She cut down their tree, something that had been special and sacred between them; he didn’t think she’d have a problem cutting off his dick if she got riled enough.

And she had every reason to be riled; he’d really fucked up in every way possible. No, he hadn’t actually crossed that line withSarah, but he was emotionally intelligent enough to know what limerence was, and he’d been there, done that, and was now wearing the tattered t-shirt.

After the club officers staged their intervention with him about inappropriate and increasingly dangerous relationship with Sarah and his carelessness with Em, he’d been arrogant, angry, stubborn, refusing to believe he’d done anything wrong.

And after Was had called him, concerned about what he was seeing on the doorbell camera, his son had called him out on it. War was taking psychology courses, and he’d used that word—“limerence,” explaining to him that he was infatuated with Sarah. That his thoughts were focused on her because she fulfilled a perceived need for something he felt he was missing. In other words, he was so caught up in how young and carefree and strong he felt when he was around her, that he began to need her, to be around her in order to feel that satisfaction. That momentary euphoria that felt good in the moment but then would wear off, requiring him to see her again to get that high once more.