Chapter Four

Tanner

Between discovering that Sabrina has moved her boyfriend into her house and knocking that beautiful woman to the floor, I wasn't exactly feeling myself by the time I got home.

I made it to Dawson's… but that's where I made my next mistake.

It might be convenient to have a best friend who owns a bar – especially one that's right next door – but the downside is that, from time to time, I drink too much.

And right from the moment I walked in the door, I knew it was going to be one of those times.

Whether that was because of Sabrina, or that beautiful woman, I wouldn't like to say, but I let Dawson believe my ex-wife was entirely responsible. I decided to keep quiet about the woman I met last night… although ‘met' might be overstating it, considering I don't know a single thing about her. Somehow, while I was falling over my own tongue, I forgot to take her number, or her address… or even ask her name.

Maybe that was why I drank so much… to drown my sorrows once I realized I had no way of contacting her.

It didn't take me long to work it out. I was letting myself into my apartment when it occurred to me. I felt such a fool, and rather than going upstairs to dwell on that, I closed the door again and went straight to Dawson's, ordering a large glass of red wine.

"What's she done now?" Dawson asked, bringing it back to me, along with a glass of what appeared to be sparkling water. That wasn't for me, but for him, and we clinked our glasses, raising them, before we both took a long drink. As usual, he was wearing jeans and a check shirt, along with the customary scowl which has adorned his otherwise handsome face, ever since his wife walked out on him.

"Who?"

He frowned. "Your ex. Who else?"

"How do you know she's done anything?" I asked, taking another long sip of wine, and then another, even longer one, as thoughts of Sabrina filtered back into my head.

"Experience," he said, rolling his eyes. "So, what is it this time?"

"She's moved another guy into her house," I said, and he frowned.

"When did this happen?"

"About a month ago."

"And Nash didn't mention it to you?"

"Sabrina swore him to secrecy. I don't think I'd know even now if Dean hadn't told me."

"Who's Dean?"

"Her boyfriend. He met us at the front door when I took Nash home and introduced himself."

"Jesus. What did Sabrina say?"

"Nothing pretty. But that's Sabrina for you. Evidently, it's none of my damn business what she does." I sipped some more wine.

"Well, I suppose she has a point," he said, and I put my glass down.

"Except where her decisions impact on Nash. If he wasn't involved, I wouldn't give a damn, although can you believe she accused me of being jealous?"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah." I finished my wine, and he poured me another. "She can do whatever she likes as far as I'm concerned. Let's face it, she did when we were married, so why would I care what she does now we're divorced? The point is, she moved this guy in without even talking to me about it first. I'd noticed Nash had been quiet, and now I know why."

"You think he doesn't like the guy?"

I shook my head. "It's not that. I think he just didn't like having to keep secrets from me. He seemed okay once it was out in the open. It's just I wish sometimes that Sabrina would remember he's our son, not hers."

"No. He's your son when it suits her, and hers when she wants to score points," he said, and I couldn't deny that. Instead, I drank some more wine and looked up at him, noting the sadness in his eyes. "I guess I should be grateful Stevie and I never had kids," he said. "She might be living with Peony's ex somewhere on the other side of Concord, but at least we don't have to communicate with each other anymore."

"Speaking of communicating, have you heard anything from Peony?"

He shook his head. "No. She's still giving me the silent treatment. Not that I've ever understood why. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not belittling what her ex did to her," he said, and I noticed he still couldn't say Luca's name, even after all this time. "But it wasn't the same, was it? They'd been together for a couple of years. I'd been with Stevie since we were sixteen."

"I know. I get that." Better than most.

"And in any case, Peony's moved on, hasn't she?"

"She certainly has. I take it you've heard she's had her baby?"

He nodded his head. "It was a boy, I gather."

"Yeah. They've called him Rory."

"I didn't know that," he said. "It's a nice name."

"It is. But do you think you could take this opportunity to break the ice with Peony, maybe ask her why she didn't want to talk to you after Stevie and Luca left?" I noticed him flinch then, and he took a deep breath.

"Why would I?"

"Don't you want to know?"

He looked confused, bordering on angry, which isn't hard for Dawson. It's an expression he wears almost constantly these days and is so different from how he used to be when he was married and thought he was happy. "It's not putting me off my food, no."

"You never wonder if maybe she blames you?"

"Blame me?" he said. "Why? I didn't do anything wrong."

"No, but neither did she."

"So? I'm not the one ignoring people."

"But maybe she's only doing that because she's embarrassed… or because you're so damn morose all the time."

"You don't think I have a right?"

"It's been two years, Dawson."

"So?"

"You don't think it's time you lightened up a little, instead of letting it get to you so much?"

He topped up my wine again, shaking his head. "Can you honestly say it doesn't get to you that Sabrina cheated?"

"Of course it does, but our situations are very different. They always were."

"Are you trying to say it was worse for you because Sabrina cheated more than once? Because cheating is cheating, in case you didn't know."

"I'm aware of that, and that wasn't what I was trying to say. My point was that Stevie left in the blink of an eye, with a lot of unanswered questions in her wake. Sabrina and I tried to make it work, and failed… and then fought for years. We're still fighting now, based on what happened this evening."

"You mean I got a clean break, and you didn't?"

"Cleaner, maybe. Not clean. Like I said, Stevie left you with a lot of unanswered questions. That can't be easy."

"It's not."

"Exactly. I'm not saying it was a walk in the park for you, Dawson. Far from it."

He took another deep breath, like he was thinking things through.

"We both married our high school sweethearts," he said after a moment or two. "And they turned into home breakers."

"In Sabrina's case, she was more like a hurricane sweeping through our marriage."

He nodded his head, pushing his fingers back through his dark hair.

"You know, the thing I can't get over is that neither of us saw it coming."

"We trusted them," I said. "More fool us."

"It's not something I'll ever be able to do again. But my point is, they'd both been cheating for a long time. How did we miss it?"

"Maybe we were complacent," I said, finishing yet another glass of wine. "Maybe we took them for granted."

"It didn't feel like that to me," Dawson said, topping me up for the fourth time. "Stevie never complained. Even when she was packing her things and leaving, she said it wasn't my fault."

"Did she tell you why she was going?"

"No." He shook his head. "I asked her, but she never gave me a reason, except to say she'd fallen in love."

"That had to hurt."

"It did. I thought she was in love with me."

"At least Sabrina didn't mention love. It was just about sex for her."

He leaned over the bar, resting on his elbows. "I've never asked you this before, but were you still having regular sex with her… when you found out what she was doing, I mean?"

"Not the second time, no. There was nothing regular about our relationship then. But the first time, yes, I was." Looking back, it was more than regular, it was frequent.

He nodded. "It was the same with me and Stevie," he said, leaning back again. "Thinking about it, though, I'm not sure it was quite the same. She didn't used to get into it so much…"

"Sabrina did," I said. "There was honestly no difference in her the first time around… except that she was fucking Mitch Bradshaw behind my back."

He frowned. "Do you think it was going on before she started remodeling his house?"

"I don't think so. Once she'd told me about the affair, I don't see why she'd have lied about the timing, and she was adamant that it had only started after she began working for him."

"What made you want to give it another try?" he asked. "I know I wouldn't have wanted to with Stevie, even if she'd given me the option. We were done as far as I was concerned. The thought of having her in my bed again was…" He stopped talking, shaking his head, and I nodded mine, because I knew how he felt.

"I get that," I said. "But I had to think about Nash. I might have felt belittled and humiliated, and more angry than I've ever been in my life, but Sabrina promised me it was over between her and Mitch. She gave me her word she wouldn't stray again, and that she'd put our marriage and our family first."

"And you believed her?"

"I wanted to, for Nash's sake, but it wasn't until Mitch married Laurel Williams that I started to think she might have been telling the truth."

"I felt sorry for Laurel when I heard about their marriage," he said, his brow furrowing. "Mitch might have been older than us, but we all knew what he was like."

"And he hadn't changed, if the timing of Addison's birth was anything to go by. You can't tell me Laurel wasn't pregnant when they got married."

"She was. Everyone knows that. But at least he behaved himself after their wedding."

"Or he got better at keeping it quiet," I said, and he tilted his head.

"You think?"

"Who knows? You can't expect me to think of the guy as husband of the year material after what he did."

"No, I guess not." He rested his elbows on the bar again and leaned on his upturned hand. "His marriage made you feel safer, though?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I still questioned every look, every word, every phone call, so the safety was limited by my own suspicions, and Sabrina's nature, I guess."

"It sounds like hell."

"It was… and as for our sex life…" I let my voice fade and he leaned in again.

"What was it like?" he asked. "Was it the same?"

"No. Aside from the fact that it took ages for me to even want to touch her again, nothing felt the same. She'd given herself to another man, and all I could think about was the two of them together. I think what made it worse was that I knew him. I knew Mitch, and had done all my life, so I could picture him doing all kinds of things with her."

"I can understand that," he said. "I felt the same. Obviously, I didn't know Peony's ex as well as we knew Mitch, but I'd still met the guy. I knew what he looked like, and even if I wasn't trying to rebuild a relationship with Stevie, I was still haunted by her and… and him… and what they did."

I finished my fourth glass of wine and called it a night.

Dawson might be my oldest friend, and we may have a lot in common, thanks to our ex-wives, but I'd reached my limit… not just of alcohol, but of the past.

By the time I got home, I was overshadowed by loneliness, and I came straight upstairs and got into bed, my head full of memories of those awful days, when I first realized my marriage wasn't what I'd thought… and my wife wasn't worthy of the name.

I knew it would be impossible to get to sleep with Sabrina in my head, so I banished all thoughts of her and the hell our marriage became, and focused instead on the memory of that beautiful woman I bumped into outside the bookstore.

That didn't help with the sleeping problem, because I was reminded of the fact that I have no way of contacting her… but it was better than thinking about Sabrina, and I drifted off eventually…

I wake with a start, turning onto my back, images of that woman still filtering through my head. Thoughts of kissing her, while my hands roam over her perfect body, mingle with the sound of her moans and sighs, and I suddenly realize something's different.

I'm hard.

Bone hard.

The tented cover is a testimony to that, and I throw it back, studying my erection. I haven't really given much thought to sex in the years since Sabrina and I split up. That's partly because I haven't had the time, but also because of the things she said about me. She didn't hold back in telling me how much better her other lovers had been, and that I could never hope to satisfy another woman, and while I get that most of it was said in the heat of arguments, it was hard to hear and harder to forget. At least for a while. Of course, the other problem is, I've had no-one to get aroused about… until now.

A quick glance at the clock tells me it's still only just after six. I don't usually get up until six-thirty, so I've got time. And in any case, it's been so long, this will probably be over and done with in a few moments. I reach down, letting my fingers rest around my cock. It feels strange and yet familiar, and I stroke up and down my length, closing my eyes and imagining the woman – the one I bumped into – picturing her lying beside me, her fingers around my shaft and a sexy smile touching at her lips. I move my hand a little faster as she shifts down the bed, gazing up into my eyes, then opens her mouth and wraps her lips around me.

"Fuck, yes," I whisper, feeling her tongue swirl around the head of my cock. It's so good, and I'm so close…

Just a little longer, though.

I sit up slightly, without opening my eyes, and now I picture her straddling me, my hands on her ass, her generous breasts crushed to my chest as she rides me, harder and harder.

"Yes… yes…"

My phone rings, and even though I'm on the verge of coming, the moment's lost.

"Fuck it." I swear loudly, my voice filling the apartment, and I snatch up my phone from the nightstand, swearing again when I see Sabrina's name on the screen. Does she have to spoil everything?

I answer, because she might be calling about Nash, but I don't feel the need to be polite.

"What is it?"

"Who got out of bed on the wrong side?" she says.

"Not me. I'm still in bed."

"If I'm supposed to be tempted by that prospect, you're about ten years too late."

"Only ten years? You mean you were faithful before that?"

"Fuck off, Tanner."

"I'd be happy to, but you called me."

There's a moment's silence and then she says. "Yeah. I need you to take Nash to school this morning."

"And you thought you'd insult me first? Was that supposed to win me over?"

"Stop being a child, will you? I'm busy."

"Busy? Is that with work, or your new boyfriend?"

She huffs out a laugh. "And you're the one who said you weren't jealous."

"I'm not."

"Yeah. I believe you. If you must know, one of my regular clients has asked for a breakfast meeting, so I can't take Nash to school. If you can't do it, I'll have to ask Dean."

"It's fine, I'll do it," I say. I would have done anyway, but the thought of Dean taking my son to school is enough to make me sit up and pay attention. "I'll have to call Katie and get her to come in early, but I'm sure she won't mind."

"So you'll come by and collect him?"

"Yes. You have remembered it's the first day of the new semester, haven't you?" I ask.

"Of course I have."

"And he's got everything he needs?"

"Jesus, Tanner. I don't need a lecture. I'm his mom… remember?"

"Yeah. I remember. It's just a shame you forgot that when you were fucking your way out of our marriage."

I hang up, instantly regretting my words. They sounded like sour grapes and regret… and I don't regret a thing about our divorce, other than the effect it might have had on Nash. I won't apologize, though. Neither of us does. Not anymore.

It's still not six-thirty yet, so it's too early to call Katie, which means I may as well take a shower. It seems like a wasted opportunity when I was so close to coming, but I'm not even hard anymore. Sabrina's voice is still ringing in my ears, so there's no chance of my erection returning anytime soon.

The shower is set at its usual temperature of just about lukewarm, and I stand beneath it for a moment, wondering how Katie's going to react to my request to come in early.

She's usually amenable to everything I ask of her, so like I said, I doubt it'll be a problem, but I guess I know in the back of my mind that one day I'll ask and she'll say ‘no'. I just have to hope that day isn't today.

Katie's worked for me since just after Sabrina left. Even if she and I had never worked together, I knew things were going to change. It was obvious I'd be absent from time to time, and I needed to hire someone who'd be reliable and willing to cover for me, should the need arise

I placed an ad in the Hart's Creek Courier, and had several responses, although Katie's stood out because she'd been my English teacher for a couple of years in high school. Back then, I knew her as Mrs. Foster, and I remembered her giving up teaching and being replaced by Mr. Long, who wasn't anywhere near as engaging. I hadn't known the reason behind Mrs. Foster's departure, despite the gossip that flies around the town, but when she came for her interview, she explained her husband had been diagnosed with cancer, and she'd given up work to care for him.

"It was a long road back after the surgery," she said, "but eventually he was given the all-clear, and I was thinking of returning to teaching when I noticed he was becoming forgetful. To begin with, we both put it down to stress."

"Can I assume it was more than that?" I asked, and she nodded.

"It was dementia."

"I'm so sorry."

"I lost him inch by inch," she said, swallowing hard and making me wonder if she was going to cry. I wasn't sure what I'd do if she did. My emotions were still fairly raw, and it seemed likely I might join her. Fortunately for both of us, she held it together. "He faded and changed, but he clung on a lot longer than anyone thought he would."

"When did he die?" I asked, sensing it might be easier for her to cut to the chase.

"Just under two years ago." She sucked in a breath. "It's taken me all this time to even think about returning to work."

"You don't want to go back to teaching?" I asked, and she shook her head.

"No. I've been out of the classroom for too long now. I want something simpler." She blushed then. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you, or your business."

"That's okay. I'm not insulted. I like the simplicity of working here and, to be honest, you know more about books than I could hope to learn."

She smiled, and I hired her on the spot.

We've worked together ever since, and although I've had to call on her to step in at the last minute on more than one occasion, I hate doing it. She never seems to bat an eyelid, but I always feel guilty about imposing, and worried that I might go too far.

I wash quickly, aware that I'm whiling away the time, and get out of the shower, wandering back up to the bedroom, where I sit on the edge of the bed, my towel wrapped low around my hips, as I place a call to Katie.

She answers promptly, with a polite, "Hello."

"Hi, Katie. Sorry to bother you so early."

"Can I assume this is something to do with your ex?"

"You can. Sabrina just called and asked if I can take Nash to school this morning."

"Even though it's the first day of the semester?"

"Yeah."

"She doesn't want to be there with him?"

"She's got a last-minute breakfast meeting, which is more important."

I hear a huff and have to smile. "What time do you need me to come in?" she asks.

"If you could open up at eight-thirty, that would be great. I don't want to cut and run on Nash's first day."

"That's no problem."

"I should be back before nine."

"Don't worry. I'll be fine."

With that weight off of my mind, we end our call and I get dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt before making the bed and going downstairs to fix myself a coffee, keeping an eye on the time, so I won't be late for Nash.