Squaring my shoulders, I take a deep breath and slowly turn the knob. I open the door, fully expecting to have Moira come at me with gloves off, but instead, I find her sleeping. She’s wearing one of my t-shirts, her normal preferred choice of sleepwear, and her face looks peaceful and relaxed. She even left my beside lamp on to welcome me home, and while that usually warms me, it makes me feel like utter shit that I’m slinking it at 10:30 PM.
Laying my briefcase on the chair by the door, I silently pad across the carpet to our walk-in closet. I quickly disrobe, keeping my boxers on, and then give a quick brush to my teeth. When I slide into bed, I turn on my side toward Moira and just watch her sleep for a bit.
No matter the ugly between us right now, no matter how angry either of us may be, it never, ever fails to amaze me how much my heart swells to absolute fullness just looking at her. I don’t think the way we feel about each other is normal; at least from what I can gather talking to and observing other couples. Moira and I have something undeniably deep and solid. It’s survived me coming to her as an untamed and wild man with a completely narrowed view of the world. She survived me leaving her—abandoning her for all the wrong reasons—and she never gave up, coming after me halfway around the world in the deep jungles of the Amazon.
In turn, I surrendered the only life I ever really knew and felt comfortable with, because Moira was a necessity to me. I stepped into and became a part of the modern world because I loved a modern woman. I truly cannot survive life without her, and I know without a doubt that we can work through this mess.
I consider waking her up.
To talk?
To argue?
To fuck?
Yes… fuck. It’s what we do best, second only to procreating the two most beautiful kids in the world, which involved fucking to do that.
I bring my hand to her chest, feeling the soft skin at the base of her throat just underneath my fingertips. Sliding my hand down, I gently curve over her breasts and graze along her cotton-covered stomach. I push outward, skim over a lace-clad hip, and then snake my fingertips under the edge of her panties.
Her brow furrows, her mouth parts slightly, and I start to get hard thinking about her rolling over so she’ll submit to me.
But she doesn’t.
Her hand comes up and she pushes my own away from her, barely opening her groggy eyes. “Not tonight,” she mutters as she turns over in the bed, giving me her back. She pulls her legs up and curls into herself tight… almost protectively. Against me? Against intimacy with me?
What the fuck?
A dark feeling of dread fills me up, and I wonder where my wife has gone. Moira has never pulled away from me like that. She’s certainly not been in the mood for sex on a few prior occasions and had no qualms with telling me that. I have no qualms with hearing that, because no matter her reasons for “not being in the mood,” she has never once not followed that denial up with a full-on cuddle session. She would always plow her body in tight against mine, wrap her arms around my waist for a good squeeze, and burrow her face into my neck. She’d whisper sweet nothings and then she’d get drowsy… fall asleep in my embrace.
We’ve always, always shared intimacy. Whether it’s me being balls deep inside of her, or me just holding her snugly in her slumber, Moira and I are at our best when we are touching.
Holding.
Bonding.
Cementing.
Fuck. This is the first time she’s ever turned away from me, and I’m not quite sure how to handle it. For the first time in our marriage, I feel unbalanced where my wife is concerned, and I’m not quite sure how to address it with her. We’ve always talked.
Always.
And yet, now… all I can think about is how thick that invisible wall just became the minute she turned her back on me, refusing to give me the courtesy of her attention.
Chapter 3
Moira
The minute I curl into myself after turning away from Zach, I suck my breath in deep and hold it to see what he does. Tonight was headed for a knockdown, drag-out fight, but the longer I sat in bed and watched the clock tick away the time, the more I realized the fight probably wasn’t going to happen.
Ten-thirty-fucking-PM and he’s just now getting home. I thought whatever the hell he was working on tonight was just going to make him late for dinner, not keep him hours on end, which means that he was avoiding coming home as much as I was avoiding his calls earlier tonight.
I wasn’t surprised he called not long after I relayed my message to Lila. I figured if she gave it back to him word for word, he would call and try to cajole me into going forward with dinner. He would use all of that Zach-charm he’s learned since moving into the modern world, and it would have worked too.
Damn him.
But by ten PM, my steam had started to fizzle, then I started getting tired, and I had decided to go to sleep, figuring the fight would be there when the sun rose. I had just started to doze off when I heard him come in. Heard him taking his clothes off, the sink running in the bathroom, felt the soft dip of the mattress when he climbed into bed.