Nathan vacated our sleeping quarters early. The train arrived in Denver at 7:00 a.m., and he banged around the tiny cabin like a grumpy teenager before finally leaving. Frankly, I was relieved to have avoided a physical confrontation with him last night. I knew he cared deeply for Savannah, and despite the rage that bled from his pores, I felt less retaliatory and more ashamed of myself for hurting her.
Hurting her wasn’t my intention. None of this was. I stepped out of the shower in my mid-grade hotel room and ran my hands through my hair, thankful my hangover was subsiding. When I’d started drinking in the lounge car, I didn’t expect to leave there asking the woman I loved to engage in a relationship with me for the remainder of our tour.
I didn’t regret asking her. If that was the only way I’d ever have happiness, then so be it. What bothered me was ... I’d put her in a position where she had to make the decision. It was that I’d put my desires and needs onto her. The way her eyes widened as she swallowed when I asked. She went silent.
She’s rarely silent.
She sat stoically and listened to my slurred reasoning. I meant every word. We needed to seize this time. We’d been given an opportunity to be together, even for a short time. It would be risky, and a lot of people could get hurt.
I didn’t want her to get hurt. That was my bottom line. I would sacrifice just about anything to never again see the look she had on her face before bailing from the cab and walking down the busy road in Lincoln. Away from me.
It was approaching noon and I was anxious. I hadn’t seen or heard from Savannah since our talk. It occurred to me that watching her stand and nimbly leave our table could have been the last time I saw her in any context other than the stage. I had to tell her, though. I had to tell her my feelings. My desires. I had nothing to lose, but her to gain.
Shit. What could she possibly think of me, a married man, asking her to willingly carry on with me this summer as if we were the only two people in our lives? As I paced back and forth, there was a weak knock at my door.
“Gregory, it’s Savannah …”
I rushed to the door, swinging it open to find her standing with her arms loose at her sides, eyes cast down and looking swollen, as if she’d been crying. I wanted to take her into my arms in that instant, but I didn’t know if she wanted me touching her anymore. She was wearing a short black skirt and a grey tank top. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a wild nest of curls. Still, she took my breath away. She always had.
“Come in.” Instinctively, I looked down the hall before closing the door behind her.
“No one’s out there. I waited for them to clear out before I knocked.” Her voice was flat as she sat on the edge of the bed.
Pulling my eyebrows together, I walked toward her and sat down next to her.
“That’s how it’ll be, you know,” she said to the floor.
“That’s how what will be?”
“Looking over our shoulders for the rest of the summer. Making sure no one sees you with your mistress.” She stopped and looked at me as I gasped at her use of the word mistress. She started again, still not looking at me. “That’s what this is, you know. I’d be your mistress.”
I knew that’s what it looked like. It was an affair in the sense that I was married, but Savannah was so much more to me than my mistress. I couldn’t figure out how to say that to her, though, especially when she seemed to refuse to look at me.
I swallowed hard and tentatively placed my hand on her thigh. She didn’t move it. “Savannah …”
“What? That’s what you’re asking of me, isn’t it? To be your mistress?”
I clicked my tongue against my teeth and winced at the word. I wanted her to stop saying it. That’s not what she was … who she was.
“You mean more to me than that, Savannah. You know that,” I managed. Slowly.
“Then why …” She shook her head, looking at her manicured toes.
“Why what?” I asked, stroking my thumb back and forth across the top of her thigh.
She shrugged. “If I mean so much to you … I’m not saying leave your wife for me. But if I mean that much to you then why not wrap things up in your marriage and then come to me? Why an affair? Why now?”
I lifted my hand from her leg and ran it over my face. “My marriage … while it hasn’t been a long one, has felt like it. There’s … not a lot of love there, if any. I think it was convenient for both of us. Jesus, I don’t want to sound like a bastard here—”
“You don’t.” She grinned slightly. “Trust me, I get it. I think.”
I counted myself lucky that Savannah hadn’t run from the room yet. That she was still sitting there listening to me, and asking questions, gave me some hope that she wouldn’t disappear through that door forever.
I paused a moment before continuing, trying to consider how to talk about my wife with the woman I loved. “I was looking forward to this tour to have some space, some time to think. Honestly, some time to figure out how to make a clean break and not lose everything. Including my dignity. But something is going on with Karin right now. I don’t have all the details. It’s incredibly complicated, and I don’t feel right talking to anyone about it right now.”
“It’s okay. I don’t need to know.” Since she’d sat on the edge of my bed she hadn’t lifted her eyes once. They volleyed between her knotted fingers and her feet the entire time.
“Savannah,” I sighed, “why won’t you look at me?”
She hesitated before opening her mouth then tucked her lip behind her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut as several tears fell at once.
“Because if I look at you, I’ll say yes.” She lost it right then, taking a ragged breath as her head fell into her hands and she sobbed.