Strangers with Benefits (Siren Publishing Classic) (39 page)

“Oh, it was a joke, but entirely on me. He didn’t want a woman, never had. He used me, Den, and in the worst way a woman can be used. He used me as a beard to hide behind until he got the balls to live the life he wanted. And I was left to hold all of our lives together. I was the one to raise our twins alone while he got the chance to be with the love of his life.

“I was left to try and sell a house in a upside down market and start over, while he got to have a fresh start with the man of his dreams. I never ever thought when we made those vows that I would be left to doubt every decision I’d ever make afterward.

“Alone and doubting myself, doubting my value. I thought for a long while that it was me. What had I done that was so repulsive that my husband would turn to men?

“I won’t live like that ever again. I don’t want to be a convenient shield to hide behind. A woman to give a man children and a happy home while he makes his real life somewhere else. With someone else.”

“Do you think I only want sex, Sidonie? Is that all you think this is?”

“I know you don’t need me for sex. You’re attractive enough to get what you want from women with little effort. Even if that was how we started this, it’s become so much more than that now.

“But for a woman in her twenties with stars in her eyes, being married and having children young didn’t give me much for myself. I never got the chance to discover myself as a single woman in the world, to understand the difference between what I had and what I wanted.

“Can you imagine being dissatisfied with your life and not being able to figure out why?”

At first, he felt the question was a test, as if he was about to step on a live land mine, but responded anyway. “No, can’t say that I have.”

“Of course not. You got the chance to figure out who Den was. You got the chance to know that you preferred blondes to brunettes, or that you liked eggs over easy. You got the chance to start your life and build something for yourself before you had to account for another person. I have never had that chance in my life. To just be Sidonie. To just be able to be… still.”

Bingo.

He finally understood what she meant, but that didn’t mean that he agreed with her thinking. “Sidonie, I know that you didn’t get to have a raging twenties. But let me tell you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. As children, we all have an idea of what we want to be when we grow older. But that doesn’t mean that when the time came that I didn’t make mistakes on the way. I’ve made plenty in my life. And in all honesty, everything I did was to bring me to this moment. The moment when I could meet my equal.”

“Yeah, but your mistakes didn’t leave you with a set of twins and a lesbian wife, did it?”

“No. But all of our paths are supposed to be different. I wouldn’t have a clue how to take care of more than myself. But I would hope that you could teach me and I can promise that I would stick around long enough to learn.”

“Have you even thought about any other conclusion to our relationship, Den? The odds are against us. I know that you are a good man, but I have children that I have to think of before anything else.”

“I would never hurt your children, Sidonie.”

She sighed. “Not deliberately, I don’t think that of you.”

“I would cut my arm off before I would harm a hair on their heads. And you know it.”

“You don’t have to be so graphic,” she muttered.

“You seem to need graphic, otherwise you would have taken the hints I’ve dropped left and right.”

She shook her head and chuckled. “Oh, I caught them, believe you me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “If that was the case, then why did you make me chase you so damn hard?”

“Because I didn’t think you would stay. I thought eventually you’d get bored and race off into the sunset with flowers in your hair or something.” She shook her head and chuckled.

He laughed. “Flowers in my hair?”

“Yeah. Like a cheesy commercial with Fabio.”

“You work damn hard at stealing my manhood, lady, and I’m sick of it. Stuffed fucking octopuses and flowers.”

She shrugged as much as possible at their position would allow for. “If you think about it, it’s pretty damn poetic.”

Yeah right, poetic. Until one of his coworkers found out, and then he’d never live it down. Heck, half of the stuff they had done together would be enough to have him laughed right out of roll call.

“You have some cockamamie ideas lady, but I’ll let it go because the only man you have to compare me to is your ex. But let me tell you, men do not wear flowers in their hair. We do not wear your clothes. We don’t talk about how we feel.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’d rather you wear the clothes and the flowers. And the only damn reason we’re having this conversation in the first place is because I want to know at the end of it that you’ll consider me the man in your life.”

She sighed and looked over at him. “Are you sure about this? With me… us… I mean?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t bother to show you that I’m willing if I weren’t.” He watched her so closely that he knew every fleck of color in her irises and his heart fell out of his lips yet again. “Sidonie, I feel, so damn much when you’re around. When you’re gone, it hurts.” His right hand fisted over his heart, the place that burned when she wasn’t with him.

Her eyes widened and he saw how she fought back the mist that threatened to escape the lids.

He thought about it for a moment. “As a matter of fact, I owe you a bare naked ass whipping for assuming things about me. We’ve had that conversation before.”

She shuddered underneath him and he took that to mean she thought about their lunch date for Spanking 101.

He would never forget that day himself. “So do you like me? Yes or no?” He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it.

Sidonie giggled and made a little checkmark in the air. “Yes, I like you.”

His next question was what he truly wanted to know and nervousness made his palms sweat and his heart race. “Do you love me? Yes or no?”

She looked at him and he wondered if she would make him cave.

This was hard enough, without being the one to say it first.

She gave him a peck on the cheek and her face turned from mirthful to solemn in a split second. Den took a deep breath and prepared himself for the worst.

She licked the tip of her finger and made a second checkmark in the air. “Yes. I love you.”

He sent a silent thank you to the universe as his heart grew too big to be contained by his body.

Damn, it took her long enough.

Stand on a Soapbox

Sidonie sat at the table with Den for dinner. They conversed in a matter of fact way, chatted about nonsensical topics that were of little import. The fluffy chat was in odd pockets, a snippet here or there that allowed her too much time to think about their situation. At the end of the day, she was a woman with obligations. She had children that were not the cute toothless variety, but more than halfway grown with opinions.

She had been really blessed, but they were her children and loved to bend the rules as far as they could, which was usually somewhere right before the breaking point. She was a woman with baggage and more than her fair share. It wasn’t as if she wanted to air dirty laundry in his face, but he needed to take a quick whiff of her life and get real.

Was he really ready for that?

Heck, was she ready for it?

In all honesty, she had grown too accustomed to being alone. Too accustomed to making all the decisions, even when she was married. She had to. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else to decide and Charles really cared less what happened so long as he came home to a clean place and his favorite foods were available to eat when he sat down at the dinner table.

And she had grown accustomed to being a wife with no real say in when she got to see her husband. There was no passion lost between them, but she had thought that men didn’t care whether women felt passion or not in most cases. She had thought the women that enjoyed the sexual act had something special that she didn’t. Maybe a chemical or hormone, but either way, sex wasn’t anything to write home about.

Until Den. Being beneath him taught her quickly why women liked sex so much. She had watched porn before in an effort to arouse her ex-husband. While she didn’t like sex, per se, before, she did want to ensure that Charles’ needs were met.

Her mother told her when she got married that a man had needs and her mother knew her business. Before her father died, her mother was always waiting for him after a hard day’s work with a hot meal and there were always giggles in the middle of the night that Sidonie had learned to ignore.

She had taken her mother’s advice to heart and tried to make sure that anything she could anticipate was met.

But none of the advice worked, namely because Sidonie and Charles had never been “in love” to begin with, plus they were both attracted to men.

She wanted the chance to experience passion.

She wanted to know what it was like to make love.

Soon enough, she might just find out.

Sidonie had been hard on him and the fight they had was mainly her fault. It was easier to fight him than it was to keep falling. She had to stop herself somehow and the split she proposed was to give her time to come off of the slippery slope.

She had been so certain that Den would give up eventually. But he hadn’t. The time she had taken was only a waste as he had inserted himself into her life so neatly that even the twins realized he was around to stay.

They had their share of things to say.

Every night, they asked about Den, asked about his parents, and all she could do was listen to the same conversation, night after night as they regaled one another with his obnoxious cheering. Most people gave him a wide berth at the matches, eschewing seats that were near him due to how loud he could get.

The kids loved it. They adored him almost as much as they did their own father. They loved Charles, but he was hours away and not able to be there for them at most milestones, like the match that sent the St. Andrews boys team to the regionals.

Charles wouldn’t be there for Katie’s first date or the twins’ first school dance. He wasn’t physically there, but he did his best to make certain that he was present when he could be.

Den had shown her what it could be like to have someone with her for all of those milestones, when she got the chance to see her hard work pay off with the children.

The doubts were all hers. But in the same token, how could she go from fuck buddy to falling in love with no defining line between the two?

After her children had summarily ditched her at the end of the track meet, Sidonie knew one thing.

It wouldn’t be too much longer before she looked up and they were ditching her for real. Soon enough, they would want to start their own lives and shunt their mother into a neat little box while they nourished their own dreams, and that was how it was supposed to be.

Even though she accepted it as her due for a job done well, when that day showed up, she would be alone.

What would she do then?

She had come to two conclusions as they finished up their meal. One, she wasn’t going to deny herself the luxury of being with him while she had it.

Two, he really, really cared about her.

She knew it logically, but for some reason, this last week together had cemented the idea that they might actually be able to do it. Make it work, despite their differences in lifestyle, circumstances, money, or race.

But he wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t ever totally understand her reservations at the idea. For him, he was a man that went for what he wanted and nothing would stand in his way. Not even her.

At the end of the day, she wanted him to break down her hesitations and make her feel as if she was the only thing that mattered. Despite the fact that she knew that she wasn’t giving him a real chance.

What kind of woman could be free with her body and selfish with her heart?

Even if she knew the thoughts were selfish, she wanted something for herself and herself alone. Sidonie knew that logically, she would have to share him with her children, but he didn’t even seem to mind the idea of the readymade family that she had been taking care of on her own for so long.

She would have loved to ask him for forgiveness, but the words stuck in her throat and on the drive home she battled to open her mouth.

Just say it.

I’m sorry…

Just… say it.

The two words were harder to speak than she imagined. But when they arrived at his house, she did the only thing she could and offered herself to him at the front door.

He tried to stop and have the conversation that they needed so badly to clear the air, but she didn’t want to try and talk to him about the jumble of thoughts that plagued her over and over again.

But he let her use the diversionary tactic, the one that always seemed to be their default. Their issues had nothing to do with the chemistry between them, that little extra something that made certain that she was always sexually ready for him, convenient timing or not.