One Week Three Hearts: (7 page)

What have I done?

Escape beckoned. Unbuckling the harness wasn't a difficult task; making an uninterrupted leap from the open door to the volcano below would be the real challenge. Air might push up her dress to block her face, and prevent her from absorbing the exhilarating view rushing past. She wondered if her bones would break before the heat melted her flesh.

A sacrifice of that magnitude would be a worthy end, but not a realistic escape from the truth. She strengthened her grip on the lightly padded seat edge. Her fingernails scraped against the smooth aluminum seatbelt buckle. The side hugging her stomach warmed to her touch, while the exposed side felt cool. Sunlight made the wedding band on her trembling hand glow as it limply slid off the seatbelt buckle to rest on her thigh.

The helicopter abruptly turned and changed the scene. Salty blue water transformed the glowing liquid to rising twisted columns of steam. Matt sat across from her, joking with the pilot via the microphone jetting from his headset while evaluating her reactions.

"And so the destructive force of the volcano eventually creates fertile ground for Hawaii's cattle ranches and coffee plantations," squawked the headset squeezing her head.
 

The helicopter door closed, and her skirt's hem stopped whipping against her ankles. Matt's knowing look locked with hers.

***

Not long afterwards, the whump whump music replaced the whine of the helicopter's rotors. Uninterrupted blacktop led them back to the villa. Unlike yesterday's initial trip, traffic lights and stop signs didn't evoke admonishments. Rose occasionally glanced at Matt's unwavering profile for some hidden clue to his silence. Like her own, his sunglasses blocked any deep inquiry into his thoughts.

Rose's thoughts braided into a tightly woven rope as she stomped past Matt's closed door to the patio. The emotional beating would commence in private. She mentally prepared herself for the onslaught.

Sure enough, Matt emerged a few minutes later carrying a beer bottle in one hand, and a glass containing something that resembled a watery orange juice in the other. Ice cubes clinked against the glass. The floating bright pink straw almost fell out when he handed it to her.

Rose sipped the drink through the straw, relieved to discover it was some variation of a tropical punch. The sweet acidic taste lacked alcohol. A glinting remain from her smashed cell phone's screen lay on the rock, the rest washed away by the tide.

There's a symbolic representation of my marriage. All I'm left with are broken pieces.

"You flew me all the way out here to tell me the truth about my husband," Rose said without looking at him. "So tell it."

"Rose, last night was the truth," Matt said. "You need to accept it. He likes watching you fuck other men. He gets off from it. He agreed to this."

The flat, emotionless statements could've been the weather forecast for the rest of the week. "There has to be more to it than that," she said.

A jagged edge to his laugh imitated the rocks that cut against the crashing waves. "Rose, you wanted the truth," Matt said. "As far as I can tell, I'm the only one out of the three of us who is actually honest. And you still don't trust me! The two of you use me as some sort of conduit for each other. I'm pretty sure it was that baby making business that really brought it on."

Matt paused to sip his beer, and Rose thought it was strange that the glass edge never touched his lips. Liquid cascaded from the bottle opening to his mouth. The bobbing of his Adam's apple transfixed her.

"Jason completely has you as a sex object in his mind," Matt continued. "You want him to cause you physical pain — something we both know he could never do — in order to get over the guilt and shame from not admitting who you were fantasizing about for years."

Matt took another short drink from the bottle and grimaced. "What a stalemate of a marriage."

Intimidation hung thick in the air between them, and her ribcage tightened around her lungs. "This is like being trapped in a house of horrors," Rose muttered.

"You're not trapped here, Rose," he said, pointing to the kitchen behind them. "Call a cab. Keys are on the counter…"

She jabbed at the ice cubes in her drained glass with the straw. "But I don't drive stick, so tough on me. You're a piece of work, Matt."
 

Sideways glances revealed Matt gauged the rate of her breath, any change in facial expression, and the way she nervously picked at loose skirt fiber. Like a lab rat caught in some grand experiment, leaving this maze wasn't an option.

"Do you still love him?"

Contract pages flashed in her mind. When confronted, Jason shrugged off Matt's strange clause and explained it away as some sort of pseudo-vow renewal. She willingly agreed to every step. She signed the contract, and Jason deposited the check months ago. Matt could repeatedly insist she wasn't trapped here, but without an obvious exit that lacked life-altering consequences, Rose had no other choice but to stay and deal with this.

More than a decade of loyalty, devotion, and self-sacrifice sat like boulders placed on both shoulders. Matt knew all the puzzle pieces long before she met him, and after everything they shared, he still let her live in ignorance.

"Of course I do," Rose said.

The lounge chair creaked as Matt turned towards her. He lifted his sunglasses. "Let's have it out so you stop using me as an excuse to ruin it. Why did you run off last night?"

"Because you tricked me to cheat on Jason," she admitted.

That infuriating laugh of his again. He doesn't understand what it is like to break a promise regardless of the circumstances. The emotional toll it takes to sever that bond… Jason said Matt never had a healthy relationship so he couldn't possibly comprehend what I was going through last night. The videos, the texts, the phone calls… none of it was so harsh as Matt shoving my head into Mikhel's lap. Told to open my mouth… to suck… a total stranger I wasn't even attracted to.

And I did it for Matt, not Jason. That scared me more than anything, and when I heard Mikhel groan, it snapped me back into the reality of what I was in the process of doing. Jason's sweet face flashed in my mind, I ignored Matt's fingers spreading me open, and I ran.

Matt shook his head in disapproval. "Let me get this straight… if you're with me, then it's not cheating. If you are with Jason and I, then it's not cheating. But if you're with Mikhel and I even after Jason specifically requests it, and you go willingly, then it's cheating. That makes no sense."

The logical appeal poked at her highly valued sense of reason. It threw her off. She grasped at bringing the focus back to Jason while the corner of his left eye turned almost black as his pupil acted like a scanning device.

"I'm talking about Jason, not myself." Such a weak attempt at deflection. She hardly convinced herself, let alone Matt.

Time for a bold move. "Did you sleep with Malani?"

"Not recently." Matt studied her reaction. "Are you jealous?"

A red framed image glossary sped through Rose's mind. She pictured Malani and Matt fucking everywhere. Matt's head between Malani's legs while she sat on the pool's edge. He bent Malani over and rammed his cock into her on the rocks. Even the lounge chair Rose occupied wasn't sacred: Malani's small breasts bobbed up and down as she rode him, squealing in ecstasy.

Rose shook her head.

Matt's sigh signaled he saw right through the lie. "Tell the truth."

Another failed test.

"Fine," Rose said. "Yes, I'm jealous."

"Now it's my turn: why did it take you two weeks to sign the known donor contract?" Matt asked. The pointed question demanded a strong answer. Rose admitted the paternity clause in the contract confused her.

"It took you two weeks to figure out if you wanted to stay married to Jason," Matt said. "Really, Rose? Two weeks?"

His eyebrows appeared above the top edge of his sunglasses. "Two weeks to sign a piece of paper that stated that," Matt continued, shaking his head. "I'm sure that clause terrified you more than admitting you were contemplating leaving him and running off with me after that night. Or admitting that you broke the norm by wanting two men. One of those thoughts surely ran through your head. Or both. Whatever, it took two weeks."

Matt raised his arms straight up, and tilted his head back to look at the sky. "Why?" he demanded of the sparse clouds reflected in his aviators.

How dare he judge her marriage! Matt didn't know anything about commitment or endurance. Rose faced him head on.

"You're so fucking cruel," Rose said. "I love Jason. I never stopped loving Jason. You'll never understand what we have." Her voice broke on the last few syllables as her shaking hand placed the empty glass on an end table.

Who am I trying to convince? Matt? Or myself?

The setting sun melted into the water. The effect created a dizzying brightness that penetrated her sunglasses. Maybe Matt's urgings to call for a cab were a subtle hint Rose should take. She could leave both of them, the past, her failures, and these new revelations about her husband behind.

The troubling thought line vanished as quickly as it formed.

Accustomed to grief dominating all other emotions, her mind played self-preservation tricks. Rose couldn't stop the flood of contradictory feelings, nor could she discern which ones were genuine. Cracks appeared in the numbing isolation fence she built around herself.
 

The accusations breached the hidden truth buried beneath all the layers, but she couldn't bring herself to admit it. Tears welled up in her red-rimmed eyes as the bonds deep within her heart shoved those dark thoughts out of her head.

Matt dramatically swung his legs over the lounge chair's edge. His sandals made a loud clap sound when they hit the patio pavers. "You're going to have to choose me to be in your life, and stop using our relationship as an excuse for whatever goes wrong."

A light wind kicked up from the ocean to rustle the low palm leaves. The knot in her stomach loosened as Rose's thumb moved her wedding ring from the base of its finger to the knuckle.

For better or worse.
 

"But before that, you need to embrace Jason's needs," Matt continued. "I'll give you a taste of the pain and humiliation you seek, but no more than that until you figure out what you want. Consider it a conscience cleansing purge or whatever you want, but you absolutely need to do it."

Rose mulled over his earlier statement about each of them using him as a channel. Matt essentially asked to transfer her infidelity burden to him using sexual methods. It sounded outlandish that something illicit would accomplish that. On the surface, what Matt alluded to made too much sense. The act would condone Jason's untraditional desires at the same time as her own.

"Are you ready?" Matt asked. "Fucking you isn't going to resolve your issues. Keep in mind that it will have to be a little different this time."

Embarrassment flushed Rose's cheeks, while imagining Matt stripping off the white linen shirt and pressing his naked chest against hers caused a tempting heat to simmer between her thighs. The uncomfortable ache didn't relent when Rose shifted her legs.

Matt knew how much she wanted him. He knew Rose wouldn't refuse him.

Clasped hands rested above the dress material separating the maze of stretch marks from restless fingernails picking at cuticles. Her shameful reactions to Matt's offer sickened and excited her at the same time.

Rose swallowed the lump in her throat.

"I think so," she said.

It was so hard to read him with those sunglasses hiding his eyes. Something resembling relief washed through Matt's face, quickly replaced by stern disappointment.

"You're going to have to do better than that," he said. "I don't want you crying in the shower again."

Fighting against him was useless. The text conversation between Jason and Matt illuminated brightly before her eyes. If that was truth and not somehow faked, then there wasn't a martyr medal awarded for resisting what all three of them ultimately wanted.

Matt completely brushed away the struggle Rose built up. The hardest part was admitting to herself that she was fine with sanctioning the physical end of it all, but the emotional cost would keep her up nights. Matt wouldn't be there to deal with that — Jason would.

Although Matt started it, I played my part to keep all of it in motion years ago. Just do what he wants. He'll just keep doing this every day until he gets what he wants.

"I'm the only one who can hurt you the way you like it," Matt dangled the ultimate treat in front of her to seal the deal. "I'm only going to do that if you act like a good girl this time, okay?"

Rose relented. "All right."

Matt got up from his chair and held out his hand to her in a rare offering of kindness. "Good. We're finally making progress in that trust department." Rose grabbed his hand and let him help her to stand up. As he led her to closed double doors serving as the entrance to his bedroom, she sucked in her breath in anticipation.

***

Rose didn't know what to think when Matt opened the doors to his bedroom; half of her expected some sort of dungeon type layout with whips and other torture devices hanging from the walls. She exhaled in relief. It was a tastefully decorated master suite found in any upscale hotel property.

Laptops cluttered a desk against the far wall. Each corner where the wall met the ceiling featured a small camera, and all the red indicator lights signaled recording in progress. Her eye caught the condom placed next a small bottle on the king sized bed's nearest corner.

"Take off that dress," Matt commanded. "No more clothes after today."

Naked? Everywhere?

The adventurous thought thrilled her, and Matt knew it. How many times did she confide how being in the parking lot that she'd get caught on the phone with him by an innocent co-worker headed for her car? Matt exploited that fear in their conversations. Rose grabbed the maxi dress' hem, pulled it over her head, and tossed it on the nearest chair with an almost defiant look. Matt could control her wardrobe after dictating packing lists and sleeping arrangements, but he couldn't do anything about her expressions. He told her to get on the bed and lie on her right side with her ass closest to the bed's edge, and then to pull her knees to her chest. Matt towered above her after she complied, and his stark jawline set as if he was deep in thought while he looked her over.