“I need to lay down,” she whispered as tears streamed down her cheeks, grateful she couldn’t smell the perfume on his bare skin. At least his clothes had been on today. She pulled herself out of his embrace, hating herself for hating him. Could it be bathroom spray? She knew his habits better than anyone and knew he used the men’s room at work every morning after his second cup of coffee. Yet her gut told her it wasn’t what he claimed it to be.
She wanted to scream at Phineas for doing this to her.
She crawled onto the bed aware her husband was following her. When he climbed up behind her to hold her she pushed him away. “I just want to be alone.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone. Not when you’re like this. Something is wrong and you’re not talking to me.”
“Please, Kyst. I just want to lay down and make this sick feeling go away.”
“I’ll go put dinner away and maybe you’ll want it later when you’re feeling better.” He kissed her cheek softly, “I love you Juni. More than anything in the world, I love you. I don’t like you’re this stressed out.”
He left the room with a worried sigh, and she closed her eyes and let the tears fall.
Later when she let Adil into the apartment while Kyst put the garbage out, she looked at him, “he was with her today, wasn’t he?” When Adil hesitated while positioning a camera quickly over their door in an inconspicuous place, she pushed him, “didn’t he? I could smell her. He did!”
“He did. They met at the same coffee shop they always do, two blocks from his office.”
She watched him put the other two cameras up and then leave her apartment to disappear into the stairwell seconds before Kyst came out of the elevator. She was standing in the open door, strangely wanting to run after Adil and ask him to take her out of there. If she raced to it, she could catch up to him. Where would she go? She had nowhere to go. Her mother lived in an apartment on the grounds of the family she worked for. Her best friend was currently in Europe meeting the man she’d been dating long-distance for the first time and she’d be gone a full month or more.
Kyst’s footsteps made her look up warily and the urge to slam the door in his face and lock him out was overwhelming.
“Hey, you’re up again. What are you doing out here?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, “I thought maybe you left.” Lies. Lies, lies and more lies were falling from her lips, and she’d never lied to him a single time in their entire lives.
“Where would I go, sweetheart, I wouldn’t bring you with? You go where I go. You’re my entire world.” He swung her up in his arms before she could stop him and carried her into the apartment. “You’re still very pale. I don’t like it. We need to make sure my beautiful wife is feeling better. I’m sorry you’re feeling so crummy tonight. Come on, let’s snuggle on the sofa and watch some tv before bed.”
He kissed her forehead softly and gently placed her on the sofa. He grabbed a throw blanket and tucked it around her legs. He sighed staring down at her when she wouldn’t meet his gaze. He squatted in front of her and tilted her chin with his hand, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“Baby, I love you. You are my entire world. There is nothing I want more than for us to start our family and have a baby but, not at the risk of your health, mental, emotional, physical. If this pressure is getting too much, then we need to rethink this. I feel horrible I missed our appointment on Friday. It clearly as made you feel you I’m not as invested in this as you are and it’s not the truth. I fucked up. I should’ve told my boss I needed to
I should have prioritized you and our future, and I am sorry. It’s unfair to you. I won’t miss any more dates. I promise but I also mean it when I say, as much as I want this, if you’re finding this too much pressure, we can stop. We were incredibly happy before the possibility of kids. I don’t need anything but you in my life, Juni. A life we created is great, but I love you enough I’m good if it’s just us.
She stared into his eyes wondering how the hell she was supposed to reconcile this, loving sweet man with a cheater. For the rest of the night, she couldn’t stop wondering how the hell it all went so wrong.
She knocked once on Phineas’ office door after he’d called her to get upstairs. She felt like death warmed over. She was pale, feeling nauseated and confused. Her stomach was rolling, and her lower abdomen was giving her telltale cramping she didn’t want to acknowledge yet.
Kyst knew there was something wrong. She ducked his kiss when he tried to kiss her goodbye. The night before she’d fallen asleep on the sofa grateful she’d managed to avoid being awake while he cuddled her. However, when she woke up in the morning with his arms around her tight, his palm over her breast and his leg over her thigh, she’d felt the urge to vomit, and she’d barely made it to the bathroom. She’d scrubbed herself raw for him touching her as she considered the perfume on his shirt. At breakfast she’d been quiet and sullen and was anxious to get out of the apartment.
He’d suggested she stay home today. He’d even gone so far as to argue with her that she was ill and needed to rest and she was pushing herself needlessly. Why would he do this if he was intending to bring a woman into their apartment? It went against what she expected was his plan and yet he had made a great show about her staying home.
Instead, she’d come to work saying there was a project she needed to help Maxine complete, and she’d left him standing in the doorway, seemingly confused about her refusal to kiss him. He’d texted her twice since she left and she’d left him on read.
She looked up in a daze as Phineas himself pulled the door open. She brushed past him, her face unable to hide her distaste for what they were about to do. All three men were in his office again and she felt a flicker of irritation. It felt like a viewing party to her humiliation.
“She left the house twenty minutes ago, right on time.” Adil commented seriously as he looked down at his computer.
“You’re tracking her?”
“I am.” Adil shrugged. “It’s my job. I’ve been an investigator forever.”
“When we were kids, he used to make us do the most asinine scavenger hunts.” Benicio was rising up from the sofa to collect some papers from a printer. “I hated them then. I hate this now.”
“And we’re live in the Kennedy household.” Adil exclaimed as the black screen came to life.
“Nice place,” Phineas nodded, “it’s got a homey feel to it.”
“Don’t be condescending.” She growled angrily.
“I’m not!” he defended himself. “I do like it. I like the warm colors. I bet that throw blanket on the back of your sofa was made by your grandmother. I like little touches like that. I have a quilt in my room my grandmother made me when I was a boy. I still use it to watch television.”
“He means to jerk off to porn under,” Adil adjusted something on his screen, “and now we have sound.”
The screen was bigger than a computer monitor but not nearly as big as the television at their house. Juniper felt a hundred percent guilty as she saw Kyst walking into the screen, rubbing his hands together nervously. She knew him better than he knew himself and his posture was nervous. He looked like he was about to do something he was not comfortable doing.
“What the fuck are you doing, Kyst?” he questioned himself and it carried into the office from where he was being observed. “You’re a fucking fool, risking everything for nothing.”
“Amen brother,” Phineas said dryly.
“I don’t like this,” she turned her back to the camera. “I don’t know if I can do this, Phineas.” She was done calling him Mr. Perez. They were about to watch their spouses have sex. She was quite sure this removed her from the employer, employee relationship, at least temporarily.
“You don’t have to watch. You can go back down to your office, and I can tell you yay or nay, but something tells me you’re not the kind of girl who believes just anyone and you’ll want to see it for yourself.” Phineas spoke bluntly.
Juniper hated he was right and grunted. She turned back to watch as Kyst puttered around the living room, tidying up. “Does she have some kind of thing against clutter or what? He’s never this tidy.” She watched him adjust a knickknack.
“Who knows? I’ve not held a conversation with her long enough to find out.” Phineas griped.
“Maybe if you were a better husband, your wife wouldn’t be out sleeping with other women’s husbands.”
The shot was a fire and a miss as Phineas gave a snort. “Yeah, I’d have to actually care about what you’re saying for it to hurt my feelings, Juniper, but if it makes you feel better to shoot the messenger, my skin is thick.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.