Bait (Wake, #1)(107)

I wasn’t shown mercy.

I managed to fall asleep, but I woke up in Grant’s arms as he carried me to our bed.

Dread washed over me like it had before.

I felt it. My intuition knew that I was about to have sex with my husband and my soul knew it was about to be unfaithful to its mate.

Like time and like again, being with Grant made me think about Casey with another woman. Aly. That was a game my mind loved to play with me.

Grant’s lips on me. Her lips on him.

Grant removing my shirt. Her breast in Casey’s mouth.

My stomach lurched. My moaning, again, misinterpreted for desire.

Then, my thoughts of Casey saved me. He came to me through my senses. I was able to pretend it was his fingers caressing me, his body entering mine.

It was a fuzzy view, but I fought like hell to see it as my husband touched me in all of the ways he’d thought I’d loved.

My defenses knew what to do and propelled my body into action. I knew what he liked, too. I needed him to come for my thread-bare sanity to return.

“Call me, Betty,” I begged, needing that extra push to aid my show.

“Betty,” he panted in my ear on cue. “I missed you so much, Betty.”

It was erroneous. I was abysmal. In those moments I hated myself, but I’d decided to tell the truth. So I said the truth, but I wasn’t speaking it to Grant. I was talking to Casey, my words falling on the sheets of my husband’s bed.

“I missed you, too,” I said and I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I’m going to come,” he admitted like he always did.

“Yes, please,” I said, knowing it was almost over. I pinched my eyes tight and pictured Casey’s face giving me his best smile, I mentally held tight to it as Grant cried, “Betty!” into the pillow beside my head.

When I was sure that he was asleep, I got up and retrieved my phone and went outside to send a message to Casey. On my way, I grabbed my favorite mug, the one that originally said, “Lou likes trouble” and filled it with cold water from the tap in the door of the brand new stainless steel refrigerator.

I sat on the concrete stoop just outside the back door.

Me: Remember the mug you bought the morning after we met?

Casey: The yellow one or the striped one?

He replied almost immediately and oxygen reentered my bloodstream.

Me: The yellow one. I still have it.

I bit at my thumbnail waiting for him to reply.

Casey: It’s a good mug. Is it Monday yet?

Me: Almost.

Casey: I want you here. I can’t sleep.

Me: I can’t either.

A feeling in my gut knew that I had to stay in Seattle. The right thing for Casey was for me to stay and get this marriage ended as fast as possible.

I wanted him, but I wanted him in a permanent way. I didn’t want to go back for another two wonderful weeks and then have to leave him all over again. It wasn’t fair.

But I couldn’t tell him in a message. I pressed the call function and his line rang.

“Honeybee?” he said as an answer.

I could feel the agony for both of us and I hadn’t even said hi back yet. I sat there actively reminding myself to breathe in and out. Preparing my throat for the ugly words that were about to pass through it.

In the long run, this was the best way. The only way. This would cause the least amount of damage for us, if we really did have a future.

I was done with yanking him around.

“I don’t think I can comeback on Monday.”

“What?” he shouted on the other end. My eyes screwed shut. That one word brought home exactly what was coming and my heart broke hearing the distress in his voice. I wished it wasn’t me who’d always made him sound that way.

“Blake, don’t even start with this shit. You’re coming back,” he demanded.

“I want to, Casey, so bad, but I need to do this right. I can’t keep going back and forth. It’s not fair to anyone and it’s making me crazy. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I keep hurting us. I just don’t want to hurt any more people than I have to. I can’t come back to you until this is done.”

“So, fine! Make it done by Monday. Even better.” I heard something smash, it sounded like a bottle. “I knew you were going to do this.”

“Listen to me before you get mad. Please.” I felt my pulse everywhere. Was there ever a more shitty situation?

“Mad?! Is that what you think this is?” he asked.

There I was hurting him again. How could I even make this right, make this all up to everyone.

I rushed to add, “It will make me do this faster if I have to leave you alone. Does that make sense?”

Reminding him of how I felt about being without him had to work in my favor. It was all I had left.

“So what? You want to quit talking again?” He huffed a sardonic laugh. “No f*cking way, Blake. I shouldn’t have let you go.”

“It’s a means to an end. Don’t you see that?”

“So no talking again, until this is over?” his voice calmed, but not in a good way. “Damn you, Blake. God damn it!”

I begged, “Please, Casey. Please trust me.”

“Trust you?” he repeated, like hearing it back would make me grasp exactly how outrageous I sounded. Like I didn’t already know.