Page 37 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Audrey

Hawthorne Lane

B uzz.

Audrey hears her phone vibrating, facedown on her desk, and the sound makes her jump.

This has to stop. She’s been so on edge since Colin’s unexpected appearance at her front door that every little thing startles her these days.

She hates that he has this type of control over her life, that one unannounced visit from him has sent her into a tailspin.

After all, Audrey recognizes that this was exactly what he’d intended.

Colin holds all the cards right now and he knows it.

But as much as Audrey doesn’t want to play into his hand, she can’t help but feel like she’s unraveling.

Things have been quiet since she slammed her door in his sneering, arrogant face.

Of course it helps that she’d blocked his number, but she knows that she hasn’t heard the last of him yet.

A man like Colin Pembrook won’t let her have the last word.

She flips over her phone, bracing herself for whatever might be waiting for her.

Still planning to be home on time tonight?

Audrey’s initial reaction is frustration.

Seth is constantly checking on her whenever she’s out of the house these days.

Her phone has become like a leash that he tugs on whenever she strays even slightly out of his sight.

She already told him she’d be home at her regular time tonight, and this text is simply a reminder of how little he trusts her.

But the frustration is quickly replaced by guilt and then resignation.

She brought this on herself. She brought it on both of them.

Audrey pictures what Seth probably looks like right now: slouched on the couch, his unshaven face a ghostly white from the glare of the phone in his hands as he sits in their darkened living room, curtains drawn, his T-shirt rumpled, the collar loose and misshapen.

His gloom seems to fill the house lately, seeping through the walls, curling under doorways like a dense fog. It’s suffocating them both.

Seth has had setbacks in his career before—every writer has—but Audrey has never seen him like this.

He’s not writing, he barely leaves the house, and he’s angry all the time.

So angry. At Audrey, at his publisher, at his fans, who he feels betrayed him.

She doesn’t know how long he can go on like this.

She’s afraid that he’s going to snap, that he’ll do something he won’t be able to take back.

He’d shown some signs of improvement when he was asked to give that lecture at the University of Rhode Island, but after he got back, he seemed worse. What’s most concerning to Audrey is his refusal to talk about what happened there.

She’d suggested that he see a therapist, that he talk to someone if he wasn’t going to talk to her, but he rejected that idea as well.

“What’s the point?” he’d said, his eyes narrowing on Audrey. “It’s not like sitting in a room and talking about my feelings is going to bring back what I lost.”

Audrey wasn’t sure if they were talking about his career or their marriage. The two things have blended and merged for Seth, the collective loss of the life he once had, the whole of it greater than the sum of its parts.

She picks up her phone; her plum-colored nails tap at the screen.

Yes, I’ll be home at my regular time. And I’ll pick up the pasta dish you like from Gino’s on my way.

She pauses, and then she sends another message.

Love you.

It’s how they’ve always ended their conversations. Even after the words started to lose their meaning. Seth seems to be typing a response, three little dots appearing on the screen, but then they disappear.

Audrey hadn’t expected him to say it back.

He hasn’t since the day Colin’s roses landed unceremoniously on their doorstep.

Seth is hurting, she knows that. And if he were to find out about her affair with Colin now, it would only make things worse.

It’s Colin Pembrook. Colin, with his high-powered career and enviable good looks.

Colin, whom Seth already thought of as insufferably arrogant.

For some reason (it feels inexplicable to her now), Audrey had chosen that man.

And that might be enough to push Seth over the edge.

Audrey collects her things and drops her phone into her bag before looping it over her shoulder.

She’s going to have to hurry if she wants to make her usual train back to Sterling Valley.

If she misses it, it’s going to raise Seth’s suspicions.

She wonders how long it’s going to be like this, how many days in a row she’s going to have to prove herself, to show up exactly when and where she says she will, before Seth will start to trust her again.

It’s amazing, she thinks, how easily trust can be broken but how difficult it is to mend the shattered pieces.

She steps into the elevator, directs it to the lobby.

A part of her suspects that she and Seth won’t survive this, that even if Seth never finds out the truth about Colin, that the suggestion of infidelity, that whisper of distrust, is enough to break them beyond repair.

But maybe they’d been broken long before that.

So much so that there was room for Colin to squeeze himself between them.

Audrey never planned on having an affair.

In fact, all she’d planned to do the night it all began was work.

She’d been in a martini bar in Manhattan wearing her favorite fitted sheath dress, a notepad on the table in front of her, waiting to meet with an artist, a flighty musician who’d given her junior staff the slip, for an interview.

When her phone buzzed with a text, she knew, without even looking at the screen, that he was standing her up.

Audrey was gathering her things to leave, already calculating when she might be able to reschedule, when the waiter brought her a drink, courtesy of the gentleman at the bar.

She looked up to see Colin, her undeniably attractive neighbor, his own glass raised to her in a toast. Audrey slipped her notebook into her bag, pulled up a stool beside Colin. It was only polite, after all.

Several martinis later, they’d stumbled out onto the city street, the sidewalk lit by streetlights and jewel-toned neon signs. Colin raised one hand in the air in an attempt to hail a cab, but none stopped.

“I usually have better luck than this,” he’d joked as the fourth taxi whizzed by them.

Audrey smiled and shivered in her sleeveless dress, the night air prickling her skin. “It’s fine.”

“You’re freezing.” Colin immediately took off his suit jacket and draped it gently over Audrey’s shoulders. “Better?”

She looked up at him, surrounded by the smell of his cologne, the warmth of his body enveloping her. They stood so close that she could feel the electric charge running between them, and she saw something in his eyes: a burning desire she hadn’t seen from her own husband in so very long.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, one hand running the length of her hair.

Audrey felt a warm glow pulsing inside her, pieces of herself that had long lain dormant waking. When was the last time Seth had wanted her this way? When was the last time he’d really seen her?

Colin’s hand grazed her cheek and came to rest under her chin. He tilted her face up toward his.

She knew he was going to kiss her then and that once he did, there would be no turning back. But Audrey didn’t pull away; she allowed herself to be carried away in the rush of it, in the feeling of being wanted, desired, as Colin’s warm lips closed over hers. It was the beginning of the end.

The elevator doors slide open, and Audrey steps out. She glides through the airy lobby of Top Cast, pushes open the heavy glass doors, and steps out onto the city sidewalk.

Suddenly, a figure dressed in all black jumps out and knocks her backward.

Audrey gasps in alarm, her body going rigid with fear.

It takes her a moment to realize what it is: a teenage boy in a Ghostface mask, the eyes wells of black, the mouth pulled into a demented, elongated scream.

The boy laughs and tears down the street, his black robes twisting in the breeze behind him.

Audrey swallows hard before she starts walking again, willing her heart to stop jackhammering against her ribs.

She forgot that it’s nearly Halloween. Soon her street will be overrun with families, children skittering through the cul-de-sac, sugary treats plunking in their orange plastic buckets.

She reminds herself to pick up more candy.

They ran out early last year, which was considered a cardinal sin on Hawthorne Lane.

Audrey turns around the corner of her building, picking up her pace as she heads toward Forty-Second Street and Grand Central Station.

That’s when she sees him, leaning against the building, her building, as if he belongs here.

Colin, in a charcoal-gray suit, his shoulder resting comfortably against the glass facade, his arms folded, his legs crossed casually at the ankles.

He smiles at her, that dazzling smile that had once lured her in like a mariner following a Siren’s song to a watery grave.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says as he saunters toward her.

“I work here,” she grumbles. “As I’m sure you know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch.”

She breezes past him, her chin held high, though inside she’s trembling.

Colin matches her pace, easily striding beside her on his long legs. “Can’t even spare a moment then for an old friend ?”

He sounds so smug, so tauntingly infuriating, that Audrey’s hands curl into fists at her side. She feels her nails digging into the soft pads of her palms.

“We’re not friends, ” she spits. “We were never friends. And whatever this is that you think you’re doing, it needs to stop. Now. You have no right to show up here and—”

He grabs her arm before she even realizes what’s happening and yanks her into a narrow alleyway between two buildings.

Audrey feels her feet go out from under her, smells the heavy-sweet stench of the nearby dumpsters, sees the butts of discarded cigarettes littering the pavement, and something snaps inside her.

Suddenly she’s thrashing, desperate to get away, but Colin’s grip only tightens as he digs deeper into the muscles of her upper arm.

She knows it’s going to bruise, leaving her with a branding in the shape of his fingers that she won’t be able to scrub away.

“That’s enough,” he says, a booming command.

Audrey stops, her breath a rapid staccato. She feels like an animal in a snare, desperate to run but aware that struggling will only make it worse.

She’s never seen this side of Colin before.

She’d caught a passing glimpse of it at her front door, but not like this.

It’s like she’s finally seeing him, the real him, standing before her, exposed for the first time.

She can’t believe she’d ever been taken in by it, that the shine of his handsome appearance had been enough to hide the dark rot beneath it.

“That’s my girl,” he says as one hand slides up her body and cups her face. He trails his thumb along Audrey’s lower lip, and she feels her stomach turn over.

She should fight, she thinks. She should be doing something, anything except standing here and letting this happen. But her body isn’t moving. Why isn’t she moving?

He runs the back of his hand along the length of her hair now, slowly, as if memorizing the feel of it against his skin. “Isn’t it much easier when you do as you’re told?”

Audrey opens her mouth, her lips trembling, but no sound comes out. She feels as though she’s paralyzed.

Colin’s hand comes to rest beneath her chin; he tips her face up toward his, forcing her to look at him. “I asked you a question,” he says, gently now, almost tenderly, unfazed in the face of her terror. “Aren’t things easier when you do as you’re told?”

“I—” Audrey’s voice comes to her in a small squeak as she forces the sound past the hard lump that’s formed in her throat. “Yes.”

Colin smiles, a twisted grin of satisfaction at her response. “Good girl,” he says as he brings his mouth to meet hers, his fingers circling her throat.

Audrey wants to shove him away. She wants to cry, she wants to break, she wants to shatter into one million pieces at his feet.

But a small voice in the back of her head hisses a reminder of the truth she isn’t ready to face: She brought this on herself.

Maybe this is what she deserves, her penance for the pain she’d caused Seth.

Colin kisses her deeply, his tongue forcing its way past her teeth, and she feels her body softening, her survival instincts kicking in.

I just need to get through this, she thinks.

I need to give him what he wants so that he’ll let me go.

She doesn’t know this man in the alley, the one who has her back pressed against the rough brick of a filthy wall.

This isn’t the same man who’d made love to her, who’d explored her body, who’d relished in discovering all the little ways that he could bring her pleasure. This man is dangerous, unpredictable.

“Go on, then,” Colin says as his lips leave hers. “Go and make your train. We don’t want to keep Seth waiting, now, do we?”

Audrey shakes her head, her hair a wild tangle against the brick wall.

“And next time I call, you’ll pick up the phone. Understood?”

Audrey finds herself nodding, and she hates herself for it. But she needs to buy some time. She needs to figure a way out of this mess, because she’s realizing now that one of them might not make it out of this affair alive.