Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Once.
We were once that way, and then…we were what we became in the end. Stiff. Cold. Silent.
Mark steps closer, white teeth gleaming in the warm light of the porch. He twines his fingers with hers, and my hand clenches into a fist. Why don’t I just go? This is intrusive. She deserves privacy, but I can’t stop watching what could be their first kiss. He pulls her closer, touching the small of her back with his free hand, drawing her to him until their bodies are flush.
My teeth hurt, and I realize I’m biting down hard, a low growl rumbling at the back of my throat. Otis’s ears twitch, his senses attuned to the animalistic sound. Mark is touching her in a way that, for years, only I could, and it feels wrong. It feels like I still have every right to charge out to the porch and break his hand if he doesn’t move it from the rounded sweep of her hip, the lush curve of her ass.
But I stay where I am, knowing I should leave, but unable to.
The smile they share fades in the same moment, and he dips his head to kiss her, teasing her lips open. And I know what he’ll find there. So sweet. I remember her tasting so sweet. Like berries and mint and lust. He dips, deepens the kiss, his hand wandering down to palm her ass, and I think I may lose my mind. Some switch in my head turns over, and it takes all my restraint not to go slam him into the wall. It takes everything not to push him off my porch and away from my wife.
Except she isn’t anymore.
None of this life is mine. Sure, I have proximity to her, to this home, but none of it belongs to me and I no longer belong to it. To her.
She decided that, and not for the first time, the frustration, the helplessness of all I’ve lost, burns in my gut. The chaos of life and how you can calculate and project and plan and save…and then the ones you love die. There can be hope growing inside of the woman you love more than life itself, and in a moment, that hope can be lost. That future, snuffed out. That woman, kissing someone else on the front porch of the house that used to be yours.
And you have no control over any of it.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, so I tear my gaze away from the kissing couple to check the message.
Vashti: Hey, babe.
Me: Hey. You done?
Vashti: Yup. Just finished. I miss you. I’d love to come over. Spend the night?
I glance back to the monitor on the wall. They’ve separated now, first kiss behind them. I can’t see her face, but his eyes are passion-glazed, his hand wandering up and down her back then gripping her waist.
I should take Vashti up on her offer. Lose myself in another woman, and not think of the first time I kissed Yasmen. We ended with me inside her ghetto-ass apartment. I pressed her to the wall, our tongues fucking, our hands frantic. My fingers slipped into her panties and she moaned, pulling her mouth from mine and dropping her head back to the wall, watching me finger her. We didn’t look away until she came all over my hand. I watched her fall apart, eyes smoky, that pretty, full bottom lip trapped between her teeth. Big, beautiful breasts straining, heaving with the passion, with the violent churning of how our bodies craved each other.
Of how our souls seemed to lock in a bond that not even time could break.
My dick pokes against my zipper, and I dig one hand into the counter and press the other palm to my erection. Even the memory of that night gets me hard. How, never dropping her eyes, she grabbed me through my pants, pulling gently at first and then, at my urging, harder with tugs that made me groan. That made me come in my jeans like a teenager, and I didn’t give a damn. It was messy and hot and it felt like the movies, when the two people who belong together find each other and collide. They combust. They stare at one another in awe because what are the odds that you find this ever in a lifetime?
That was us.
And now she’s on the front porch kissing some guy named Mark and I should be on my way home to wait in bed for another woman.
Only I can’t. Feeling this and then being with Vashti? It feels wrong. Disrespectful. Selfish. I can hear Byrd’s voice in my ear.
Boy, I raised you better than that.
“Yeah, you did,” I mutter ruefully, resigning myself to a night with me and my hand.
Me: Hey, maybe tomorrow? It’s been a long day. Early start.