Leaving at Noon (12 page)

Theo’s stomach churned. Zoey had spent her
childhood years convincing herself her mother loved her, and the
rest of her life coming to terms with the fact the bitch didn’t and
never had.

The former years had battered her heart and
her sense of worth, the latter had almost destroyed her ability to
form lasting bonds with other people.

If not for Levi reaching out to her in her
darkest hour, when her faith in humankind had been at its very
lowest, Zoey may never have learned how to build healthy
relationships. Levi had plucked her from her loneliness and
isolation, taught her to love and introduced her to a group of
people who’d quickly learned to love her in return. Theo
included.

He clasped her hand in his. “You’re not like
her, Zo. Not in any way or form. That was a crap thing for me to
say. And a blatant lie.” Zoey’s capacity to love was infinite.

“
That’s not all you said.”
She pursed her lips.

Jesus. He’d thrown more at her? He clasped
her hand tighter, regret making his head pound.

“
A few days later you told
me you were relieved we hadn’t had kids yet.”

Motherfucker!

He’d said that?

It was complete and utter bullshit, from
start to finish. But if anything was going to strike deep, it was
that.

“
Babe—” How did he express
how profoundly sorry he was? “You… You’ve gotta know, more than
anything in the world, I want to be the father of your
children.”

She shook her head, negating his
declaration. “That day you didn’t.”

“
Then I’m a fucking idiot
and a complete bastard.” A dad to Zoey’s kids? He couldn’t think of
anything he wanted more—except maybe a happy marriage to the mother
of those kids.

Her hand lay limp in his. “You said it was a
good thing we didn’t have children because you’d hate for them to
be raised by the same kind of mother I was raised by.”

Theo winced. “I was an asshole, and you are
nothing like her.
Nothing!
” Comparing his wife to that woman
was reprehensible. “You’d make a brilliant mum, Zo. The best.”

“
You didn’t seem to think
that a month ago.”

He scrubbed his hand over his face, vague
recollections of their shouting match tapping at the edge of his
consciousness. “I don’t remember saying it.” The rage beating
through his veins at the time, however, was a lot clearer than the
words he’d shouted. “But I do recall being angry.”

The color drained from her face. “You
were.”

“
Why?” Funny how he could
recollect his fury but not the reason for it.

She gnawed her lower lip. “You don’t
remember?”

“
I know I was pissed off.
You were equally livid and saying things I didn’t like. Do I
remember what those things were? Not really.” Whatever she’d said
had been one of those heat-of-the-moment insults. He’d let it
go.

If possible, she paled further, and instinct
told Theo her comment had been as bad as his.

“
Why was I so angry, Zo?”
His stomach shifted. Maybe he didn’t want to know.

She withdrew her hand from his, but only to
take his arm and flip it over, exposing the underside of his wrist.
Theo stared at the red, uneven three-inch scar that ran the length
of it.

And just like that, his memories unraveled,
revealing themselves.

Disbelief, rage and pain stabbed at
him—almost as violently as they had that night.

She ran her fingers over the scar, the
tenderness in her touch at complete odds with the stark severity of
her words. “I told you I regretted saving you.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

That was a comment he’d have been happy to
forget—permanently.

The sheer maliciousness of her words had
stunned him. He and Zoey had said some fucked-up things to each
other. But that… That had been the worst.

Three years ago, during a dinner party at
their place, Theo had been walking to the kitchen, carrying a large
crystal salad bowl. He’d tripped. What he’d tripped over, he had no
idea, but he’d fallen, and knowing the bowl would break if he
dropped it, he’d clutched it against his chest.

The bowl shattered on impact anyway, and
because he’d been clutching it as he’d fallen, the jagged edge of
one of the broken pieces had sliced down the length of his inner
wrist. The cut was worsened by the weight of his body pushing down
on the crystal, ensuring it went deep. Deeper than he’d ever
dreamed possible.

The excruciating pain of glass severing
flesh, tendon, nerve and artery had registered immediately. The
gravity of his injury hadn’t. Lying on the floor, dazed, he’d
watched as blood pumped out of the wound. The startling redness had
fascinated him, as had the wet warmth as it pooled around his arm,
the remains of the bowl and the salad. Blood had even squelched
beneath his cheek.

He’d have yelled for Zoey, but strangely he
hadn’t had the energy.

If she hadn’t walked into the kitchen a few
minutes later, Theo would have bled out. It was only thanks to her
medical training and lightning-quick reflexes that he’d survived
the freak accident. The lengthy surgery that followed, the blood
transfusions, the days spent in hospital and the months of
rehabilitation to regain full use of his arm were good indicators
of the seriousness of his accident.

Zoey had saved his life that day.

And told him three years later she regretted
it.

He forced his teeth to unclench so he could
talk. “You said you should have let me bleed out.”

“
I didn’t mean it,” she
whispered roughly. Her eyes were enormous and filled with
regret.

“
Yeah, babe. You
did.”

“
No! I meant to push you
away. I wanted you to back off. But I never, ever regretted saving
you.”

“
In that moment, as you
said it, you meant it.”

“
I meant to hurt
you.”

“
Well done. You did.”
Jesus, no wonder he forgot this shit within minutes of it being
said. If he’d been forced to endlessly bandy her comments around in
his head, he’d have lost his motherfucking mind by now.

He sipped his beer, looking anywhere but at
his wife.

“
Theo.” Her voice was a
harsh whisper.

Reluctantly, he returned his gaze to her
harrowed face.

It was Zoey’s turn to grab his hand in both
of hers. “If… If I hadn’t gotten to you in time that day—” She
closed her eyes and shook her head as though horrified by the very
thought. “If you hadn’t made it, I wouldn’t have made it either.”
Her hands shook violently. “I wouldn’t have survived without you. I
wouldn’t have been able to live through a single day if you weren’t
a part of it. You have to believe that.”

He did believe it. Zoey had felt that
way…
then
. “And if I sliced my wrist now? Would you be in as
big a hurry to save me?”

“
Oh my God.” She gawked at
him. “How can you even ask such a question?”

He shrugged. “You don’t like me. You said it
yourself. You walked out because you couldn’t stand to be in my
company another day.”

“
I
wasn’t
liking
you very much, Theo.” Anguish filled her eyes. “But I’ve always
loved you.”

And just like that, the rage drained away.
Pointless holding grudges about statements made in anger. “Jesus,
this is fucking with my head.”

“
That’s what we’ve been
doing for months.” Her voice cracked. “Fucking with each other’s
heads. Using the issues that mean the most to us to cause the most
pain.”

“
How did we do it, Zo? How
did we go from you not being able to live without me to you not
being able to live with me?”

“
It’s not that I can’t
live with you. It’s that being together was destroying us. We
needed this time-out. We had to break the hideous pattern of
behavior we’d fallen into. Using our weaknesses to hurt each other
is a crap way of building a marriage.”

The fillet sat like a lead ball in his
stomach. “I abused your trust in me.” Over and over he’d taken the
information she’d told him in confidence and used it to hurt
her.

He hadn’t just insinuated she was like her
mother. He’d hurled abuse at her about her father too. And that
didn’t begin to cover the other shit he’d brought up in fights.
He’d used her weaknesses to stab her in the back.

“
I did the
same.”

Yeah, she had. And the same shame he felt
was reflected in her gaze.

“
Do you still want to hurt
me?”

“
No!”

He let the vehemence in her answer sit in
the air between them for a while.

She sighed heavily. “I’m tired of hurting
you. And of you hurting me. I’m tired of the animosity between
us.”

“
So am I.” But that begged
more questions. “Are you tired of us? Of our marriage?”

“
I’m tired of what we’ve
become.”

“
Too tired to make us work
again?”

She eyed him for long moments. “Is that what
you want? To make us work again?”

He took a moment to ponder her question. He
owed it to both of them to be honest—and realistic. After all the
fighting and the nastiness? After his wife walking out on him?
After his initial relief that she’d gone? Was it what he
wanted?

His answer was a no-brainer. “Yeah, Zo. It
is.” Three months of her working so hard they hardly spoke,
followed by two months of bitter fighting, couldn’t destroy a
lifetime of loving her. And he had loved her a lifetime—his whole
adult life.

Her eyes drifted shut, her long lashes
sweeping down, hiding her revealing gaze.

“
We’ve been acting like
shits, babe. But we had over eight perfect years before that. I
want to find that again. I want to find us again.”

When Zoey’s eyes opened, their green depths
shimmered with emotion and yearning. She placed a trembling hand
over her heart and finally, finally whispered the words he’d
hungered to hear. “I do too, Hughesy,” she whispered. “I want it so
bad, I ache.”

“
I need to hold you.”
Theo’s voice was a harsh whisper.

Zoey gulped in a breath at the fierceness in
his expression. He looked at her with such intense longing, her
heart skipped a full beat. “I need it too.” So much, her arms
itched with the impulse to throw them around him.

“
Not here. Somewhere
private. Somewhere where it’s just you and me.” Theo stood,
ignoring their half-empty plates. “I’ll pay the bill and meet you
outside?”

“
Hurry.” Zoey grabbed her
bag and was walking through the restaurant door by the time Theo
reached the cashier. Minutes later, he was outside beside her,
grabbing her hand, tugging her along.

His fingers weaved through hers, his grasp
firm. They didn’t speak as they walked briskly down Hastings
Street. Like Theo, Zoey needed privacy. Yeah, she needed to be held
by her husband, but she needed it to happen somewhere no one could
witness the intensity of her emotion and the longing with which
she’d clutch at him.

She didn’t ask where they were headed. She
knew. Fiona’s flat wouldn’t give them the necessary solitude.

Although they only had a few blocks to walk,
the French Quarter felt like it was miles away. So when they
finally rounded the corner and crossed the road, the relief of
being so close made Zoey tear up.

She swallowed down the tears. There was no
place for crying now. No time. It would only interfere with her
ability to get close to him.

Theo tugged her up the stairs, through the
entrance and down the path, winding his way through the complex.
Another flight of stairs, a corridor, and then he was opening a
door and slamming it behind them.

The bang of it shutting hadn’t fully
resounded before she was in Theo’s arms, being held close. So close
she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find space in her lungs to fill them
with air.

It wasn’t close enough. She wrapped her arms
around him, grabbed fistfuls of his T-shirt and hugged him tighter,
filling her senses with him.

His heart beat jaggedly beneath her ear, and
his body heat seared her through their clothing. He smelled like
Theo, like her husband, masculine and spicy and delicious. The
heady scent made her lightheaded. Or maybe it was the lack of
oxygen. She didn’t care.

For once, they were together and there were
no nasty words exchanged, no insults being slung and no pain
piercing her chest.

Wait. There was pain, but it wasn’t fresh.
It was the grief of having drifted so far from the most important
person in her life. It was the agony of having not known this
embrace for months and months. It was the misery of having
forgotten how safe she was in these arms, how loved.

And it was the guilt of knowing she’d tried
to destroy that love and safety—and come altogether too close to
succeeding.

“
Not enough, babe.” Theo’s
voice was rough. “I need more. Need to feel all of you. Skin on
skin.”

His fingers were already working on her zip,
pulling it down, freeing her of her dress.

Zoey didn’t complain. Clothes were a barrier
between them. She didn’t need them. Didn’t want them there. As Theo
kicked off his shoes, she toed off her sandals, then stepped back
to let her dress drop to the floor, taking the opportunity to
divest Theo of his shirt.

He removed his chinos and boxers a seconds
later, yanked down her g-string, and she was back in his arms.

Dear God, he felt good.