My heart told me yes. My heart told me that Savannah and I were meant to be together. But in the back of my mind, doubts screamed at me that I’d doomed our love from the start.
I jerked when Karin opened the door and stepped out of the restroom. She’d dispensed with her long t-shirt nightgown, instead wearing some sheer silky thing. Crap. I felt my mouth dry, instantly. There was no doubt what she had in mind as she walked toward me in her bare feet, eyes meeting mine.
I coughed and then muttered something about going to brush my teeth. Then I slipped by her, into the bathroom and closed the door. I turned on the water, all the way, and leaned on the counter. What the fuck was I doing? How did I end up in this place? In a hotel room with a woman I was married to, while the woman I loved was one floor, a thousand feet and a million miles away from me?
I closed my eyes, because I didn’t like who I saw in the mirror. I didn’t like it at all. Then, finally, I slipped out of my outer clothes, brushed my teeth, and slid on a heavy bathrobe.
When I opened the bathroom door, the lights in the room were off. I could hear her breathing. I walked toward the bed. She would be on the side closest to the window, so I slid off the bathrobe and got under the blanket.
Karin was three inches away from me and I wanted to flee.
As soon as I was under the cover, she slid over toward me.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
Another stab of guilt. Because the truth was, I hadn’t missed her at all. Then I froze, because she put her lips to my neck and a hand on my stomach.
“Gregory, why won’t you touch me? You’re my husband. I’m so sorry ... I’m sorry I lied. Forgive me.”
Jesus. Forgive her? If she only knew what she was saying.
“Kiss me,” she said, and then her lips came into contact with mine. I responded because what the fuck else was I supposed to do? But it was the most uncomfortable kiss of my life. She moved closer, and her right hand worked its way down my stomach until she was touching my penis, and God help me, but of course it responded instantly, even though the rest of my body was rigid, uncomfortable.
Her kisses became almost frantic, and the next thing I knew, she’d brought her lips to my neck again, as she raised to her knees, her fingernails raking lines in my ribs.
“I want you, Gregory. Please.”
Her pleading made me want to run away and hide. To sneak under the bed. My stomach was in knots as she frantically pulled at my underwear. I winced and closed my eyes, because she touched me again, but I’d collapsed, flaccid, completely impotent.
My body had revolted, announcing in no uncertain terms what my confused mind hadn’t made clear. No. Fucking. Way.
She froze. Then turned away, flinging herself to the far edge of the bed with her back to me.
I stared at the ceiling. Humiliated. Nauseous.
She shook with the beginning of a sob then whispered, “Do you really hate me that much?”
I couldn’t answer. Instead, I lay there, silently, alone, as my wife cried herself to sleep.
Savannah
“Savannah, that’s an A-flat.”
“Huh?” I whispered, turning to Nathan.
“It’s an A-flat.” He took his pencil and helpfully circled the offending note for me. “You’ve missed it like every other time we’ve gone over that line. There’s a key change in measure thirty-six.”
Sighing, I grabbed his pencil from his hand and put a star over the key change. “Well, what the hell? This is a march for Christ’s sake, who writes this many key changes into a march?”
Tim elbowed me from the other side.
“What?” I snapped. He just nodded toward Joseph McIntosh, staring down at me from his conductor’s stand expectantly.
“I said, Ms. Marshall, that I want the flutes to ease up on the staccato on that run of eight notes starting at thirty-six. The way he’s written them is too choppy. Still accent them, just not so forcefully. And, in the correct key, please.”
My cheeks heated as my eyes drifted over toward Gregory. I rarely messed up, and I was waiting for him to shoot me a condescending gaze, as if my messing up was somehow a billboard that the two of us were having sex in our private time. He just nodded and mouthed: you’re fine.
The past few weeks had been a whirlwind. Gregory and I were granted the gift of privacy a few hours a week due to practicing our duet. We’d played the Assobio piece a few times and worked a few other pieces into the rotation. I savored the hours we spent practicing. Playing. Immersing ourselves in the craft that initially attracted us to each other.
It was a turn on to watch him practice. To work note runs over and over, studying them behind his furrowed brow. When he stopped, satisfied that he’d worked over the measures enough, he’d look in my eyes, and I could never stop myself from setting my flute down and grabbing him into a kiss. He always kissed me back with greater intensity than I’d seen him use to study the notes on the page. So much so that one time in Houston, we got so carried away in the practice room that we’d taken each other’s clothes off before taking stock of our surroundings. Thankfully, no one caught us.
Caught.
I hated that what we were doing was something that someone could “catch.” There would be no release from that.