Kona loved me and I knew that. I knew it as he was pounding so deep inside of me, and I knew it a few moments later, in the satisfied, slowing breaths that moved across my damp skin when he kissed me, when he rolled onto his back satiated by the pleasure I had given him, gratified by the pleasure he’d given me.
Ah, but we are never more vulnerable than we are naked, because then there is nowhere left to hide.
As I lay there, with Kona at my side, as my heart slowed and my breath returned to normal, a dark shadow fell over me. One that had been lurking, temporarily pushed aside by Kona’s caresses, his heat, his hunger, but now flowed over me as I lay there naked, exposed, vulnerable. My heart that had been full just a moment before was pierced with a sudden, sharp pain, and I curled to my side with the sudden awareness that I had almost destroyed us.
I honestly had thought that Cass Colson was going to be the artist who would help launch my new label. He was talented, handsome, charismatic. He was gritty and real, but he was also an opportunist who schemed and meddled his way into my life until he’d become a fixture in our home. Like an idiot, I didn't see how he’d manipulated everyone, how he’d lied to me. I’d almost let him convince me that Kona had betrayed me and because of the whispers Cass spoke when I was scared, when I was isolated, I didn’t believe my husband when he swore he’d never been unfaithful. I’d believed a grifter over the man who had done nothing but love me more than life itself.
So much could have gone wrong, because of me, because of my stupidity, my negligence, my gullibility. If not for Kona, I could have lost everything—my marriage, my family, my business. Everything.
Next to me on the bed, Kona shifted, exhausted, languidly relaxed after so long apart from me, from us. The musky scent of his body surrounded me; it was an earthy, masculine aroma I’d always loved. Now it brought a wave of guilt spilling straight into my chest, weighing me down until I could only close my eyes against the grip of it, until only nothingness could keep me from drowning.
The dark cloud wrapped itself around me, erasing that frantic celebration of our hot, naked bodies coming together. It filled my mind with doubts, worries, and chilled my heart. It whispered low, telling me that I was not worthy of the love Kona gave me. That I’d invited the devil into our home and he’d nearly burned it to the ground.
How could Kona forgive me? How could he forget? Now that the gleam of our reunion had dimmed, how would I ever make amends for what I’d let wedge between us? How could I be sure, fool that I was, that it would never happen again?
I tried to dispel the dark thoughts, to banish them as mere doubt, but they remained stubbornly hooked into my heart, as if a testament to my failing, to my worthlessness.
2
Five hundred-four hours.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one days.
It’s the longest I’ve gone in thirteen years without touching my wife. I’d only been gone a week, but it had been three damn weeks that she hadn’t let me touch her. It felt like a lifetime. My own purgatory—the not touching. The penance I paid for non-disclosures, for thinking I could do without her help, for thinking that she needed protection as if she was weak.
She had been my first, my greatest love. My college sweetheart. The only woman to ever steal my heart and keep it without much resistance from me. Then, sixteen years I went without her. Sixteen years I’d gone without knowing my Wildcat was raising my son, a part of me that she had first harbored inside of her, and then had held next to her. I’d sent her away as a boy, not realizing that she retained a precious, vital part of me, one that would bring her joy but never fill the void she left behind. Until we found each other again, sixteen years later.
We were closing in on time—nearing to when the years together would overtake the years apart. Then came those five-hundred-four hours. I thought those long hours of separation had ended in the heat and the hunger of our lovemaking.
Now, naked and quiet, I thought Kiera was happy, was satisfied. Cass was gone, his lies had been exposed, I had been vindicated. I thought we were ready to pick up where we had left off, five hundred and four hours ago. Her body certainly seemed to have been willing.
But when Keira shifted, she turned away from me, curling up on her side. I’d been inside her minutes before. My heart had only just begun to slow and now I felt my wife stiffen next to me. “Kiera?” I said softly, wanting to lean into her, run my fingers up her arm, but not sure if I should. “Nani what’s wrong?”
She cleared her throat as though she couldn’t quite decide what she wanted to tell me. “I…” Fear flared inside of me. Maybe it would be a repeat of the anger I’d felt from her for weeks, even months, if I was honest with myself. Maybe Keira wanted to remind me how I’d almost lost her, lost all of them, how my own boneheadedness had almost cost me everything. I waited, seconds, a lifetime, I wasn’t sure which it was before she tried again and with each sound, I held my breath, waiting for her to tell me I was not forgiven, that maybe I never would be.
She turned back, but not all the way towards me. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was small, lost.
In front of me, her profile was contrasted against the late moonlight. There were lines and slopes in that profile I’d committed to memory; every feature that kept me warm, safe, lonesome when I’d holed up in my university office, each night praying for a way out of the mess I’d made. Those features were seared into my mind, burned as deep as the ache I felt every time I kissed her.
But suddenly, she wasn’t like the woman I’d loved for half my life. Not now. Not when she curled her arms around herself, as though I hadn’t just touched her, filled her, loved her with a desperation that rattled me. Keira whetted her lips and gazed on the ceiling above us, her words breathy, weak. “I’m…sorry about…about Cass.”
“Wildcat…”
She closed her eyes, stopping me from saying anything else. I knew those expressions, what each tremor across her lips, each twitch beneath her eyelids meant. She didn’t want me soothing her, forgiving her without a fight. It was a struggle to keep from touching her, especially when she rubbed a palm over those closed eyes, breathing out like she was defeated.
“If I hadn’t brought him around, he wouldn’t have started any of this mess. We wouldn’t have almost…”
She stiffened when I hugged her back against my chest. The distance was hard, but I didn’t push. It didn’t matter to me that Cass had made a pathetic attempt to divide us. It was his manipulation that had almost brought disaster down onto this house. But I didn’t blame my wife. She’d always been a little blind when it came to judging character, and clueless when men paid attention to her, especially men that weren’t me.
“Baby, I don’t blame you…”
She’d never been this way before—awkward, uncomfortable, almost flinching away from my touch. It felt like a weight had slammed between us, kept us within in inches of touching. That space expanded and filled the air in the room, drowned out the world outside our bedroom door. I wanted that weight gone. Minutes before nothing had been between us but desire and hunger. Now…it felt as though the last few minutes hadn’t even happened.
“It doesn’t matter if you blame me, Kona.” She turned, curling against her pillow as she looked out of the large window next to our bed. From there I could make out the still, black lake that ran along our property and the small pool house where our son Ransom and his girlfriend Aly were watching over our two youngest, who were now sleeping soundly after a day spent with their cousin in Biloxi. Their low voices had gone silent as the night darkened around us. Now there was no sound at all expect for the constant slap of the waves against the dock and the small exhales Keira made as she tightened her arms closer across her chest. I wanted to touch her, so badly, but sensed that, for some reason, she needed some space.
“I…I brought him here, in this house.” Her voice was so soft I could only guess at what she meant to say. My fingers ached with the desire to touch her, but she was so closed off just then, seemed so…vulnerable, I didn’t want to push. She grabbed her nightshirt from the dresser and I followed suit, tugging on my boxers without taking my gaze from her. Her eyes never left the lake, even as she climbed back in bed, her back still to me.
“It doesn’t matter how he got here,” I told her when I sat behind her, inching closer but just keeping from touching her. “He’s gone now.”
That seemed to satisfy her somewhat, the affirmation that Cass’s drama was over, but not enough to bring her comfort. She reached over, not for me, but to pull a pillow to her lap, and she lay there clutching it to her, dipping her face into the billowing fabric as if she were trying to hide. I let her be. It was my only real choice. The week had been long, the day longer and we’d worn ourselves out first with the tension fighting around us and then with the frantic way we’d loved each other, trying to make up for the time we’d spent apart. I’d allow her little melodrama to play out, give it time to dissipate. I could give her that.
Before long, Keira fell off into a soundless sleep, her shoulders and arms loosening from their rigid strain. Only then, when she was dead asleep, she relaxed against me, rolling over to curl against my chest. Just as she had every night for thirteen years. Like there was nothing holding her back from me, nothing to come between us.