“And here.” His thumb swiped under her breasts even as he maintained the steps of the dance. He leaned down, his cheek alongside her face as his fingers moved across her breast, tightening on the mound. “And I sank into you.” The heated words along her neck tickled her ear, sending prickles along her spine.
Her eyes closed, her body sinking toward him, into his hand on her breast. “It was perfect. That one night. It’s what makes me sad.”
His head stayed next to hers, his words low and soft. “Then why did you betray me? How could you do that to me, Laney? You swore you’d never tell another soul.”
He spun them slightly, not letting her escape the dance as his cheek brushed against hers.
She had to fight for balance, the ground shifting beneath her feet. “I don’t have an answer, Wes. Morty handed me one glass of port. He could see something was bothering me. Then he handed me another. And another. And then I lost track.”
“You’ve never been a silly drunk with loose lips, Laney.”
She pulled her head back so she could see his face. “No. But I was still reeling with what you had told me. It was all I could think about, hour after hour—so it was on the tip of my mind. The tip of my tongue.”
“And telling Morton was the easiest thing to do?” Even though his voice stayed soft, his right eyebrow lifted.
He’d never asked her any of these questions.
Never let her explain.
She’d wanted—needed to tell him this for the last seven years. Yet now her mouth was dry, the words rough, jumbled from her mouth. “Morty asked, again and again that night what had me so anxious. He knew where I had been the night before, with you, and he kept asking what was amiss. And I kept my mouth shut the entire evening, but then it was beyond late and I was swaying and he was still asking.”
She closed her eyes, a sigh drifting up from her chest. “I should have just gone to bed. Gone to sleep. But I needed someone to tell me everything was going to be fine. Right. That what you told me wouldn’t ruin all the dreams we had for the rest of our lives together.”
Her head angled back, her eyes opening to look at him. “I just needed reassurance and you weren’t there. Morty was. So it slipped out. That’s all I wanted. Reassurance.”
The music from above halted and it snapped her into the harsh reality about her. She fumbled a step backward and out of Wes’s grip.
His arms dropped to his sides, his eyes narrowing at her. “Was it worth it, Laney? The reassurance Morty gave you?”
Her arms flipped up at her sides, her words choking out. “Was it worth it? I don’t even remember. I told him, he said all would be well, and then I went to sleep. When I awoke the next day, everything had changed. Everything.”
She stared at him for a long moment, at the flare in his nostrils belying the calm he had attempted to set before her.
She had to remember where that line was between them. Remember that hatred had drawn it. It wouldn’t do to blur that line.
But she still needed to tell him. No matter what it cost her.
Her arms fell to her sides, her voice deflated. “So, no. No, of course it wasn’t worth it. All I wanted was you. All I wanted was our future. And in one night, in one stupid moment, I ruined everything.”
“You did.”
Her eyes closed, her head shaking. “I know you think to crush me, Wes. To see me in pain. But believe me, there is nothing that you could do to me now that would surpass the pain I felt when I awoke that next morning and realized what I had done. I set everything ablaze and burned it to ashes. And the fact that I did it to us, to myself, wasn’t the cruelest part of it all. The fact that I did it to you, hurt you far more than I could even imagine—that was the cruelest part. The thought of you suffering. That is the part that still burns in my soul.”
For as still as he had been, for his stare that hadn’t veered off of her since she started talking, his right hand finally twitched alongside his thigh. Fingers curling almost into a fist before they stretched straight.
His lips parted, a sigh mixing with the one word he managed. “Laney—”
“No. You don’t have to say anything, Wes. You never did. Your hatred is just and this momentary truce is just that. A fleeting lapse in all the malice you have every right to.” Her shoulders lifted, a frown deepening on her face. “This is what I live with. This is why I’m alone. I deserve it. I deserve every moment my heart hurts, beating hollow for the emptiness. I deserve the silence surrounding me at night. The darkness that swallows me every evening that I lie in bed with my eyes wide open, praying for sleep. I deserve those moments when I read something funny and I look up smiling, and there is no one around to share it with and my smile fades and my throat clenches so tight I cannot breathe. I deserve it. I deserve all of it.”
Silence.
Silence until the music across the way started again, wafting through the air down to them, filling the silence.
Her head dipped, unable to take his stare any longer.
She took one trembling step toward him, then another. By the third step, her feet had found balance and she stepped around him, picking up the box and moving toward the rear door of his townhouse.
The truce wasn’t going to change the reality around her, as much as she had fallen under its spell the previous night.