The Good Widow(15)

James planted a wet kiss on Dylan’s thin lips and smiled. “You really held your own out there, for a white girl.”

Perhaps sensing it bothered her, James liked to tease Dylan about her lack of culture. He was Costa Rican and had rich olive skin and green eyes that looked like a beautiful piece of sea glass. Even though he’d grown up in Irvine, California, and had visited Central America only once, when he was twelve years old, he wore his heritage like a medal of honor and talked about it and his mother constantly. She couldn’t connect with how James felt about his heritage, feeling no real roots of her own. But now she could see his intense pride in the way he danced, in his body language as he talked to the bartender, in the smile that hadn’t left his lips since they’d arrived.

She smiled. “I’m good like that.” She leaned in and kissed him, relieved she didn’t have to look over her shoulder here. The couple they had been dancing with earlier had assumed they were just like them—out on a date night. “Let’s get out of here—we’re getting a hotel tonight, right?”

James’s eyes flickered, and Dylan’s heart sank. She knew that look. “I thought we were spending the night together.” She tried to keep the pout out of her voice. He hadn’t spent the night with her the last time either. And it wasn’t like she saw him very often. It was only one, maybe two times a month. They had it down. James would tell his wife he was going to be traveling one night longer than he actually was. Then she’d pick him up at the airport and they’d stay at a hotel James would book—always making sure it coincided with one of Nick’s seventy-two-hour shifts at the station. The next morning, James would go home as if he’d just arrived back in town. Dylan marked her mental calendar each time they planned an overnight date and then counted down like a child to Christmas. And now he was going home again. To his real life. The one where she didn’t belong.

“Babe, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Dylan stood up. She didn’t know many things for sure, but she knew when a man was becoming bored. So she played the only card she had, the ace she held close. “Good night, James,” she said with a tight smile, and started to fight her way through the crowd to the door.

“Dylan! Wait!” She ignored his calls and continued swiftly toward the exit. She’d made it outside and was searching her phone for the Uber app when he grabbed her arm. “Stop being childish. You can’t just walk out like that.”

“Watch me,” she shot back. In general she was a calm person, but James always made her feel out of control.

“What do you want from me? I’m sorry, but I have to go home. I wish things were different, but they’re not. I thought we were on the same page about all this.”

All this?

“Maybe I don’t like that page anymore.” Dylan sighed. She hated feeling like an afterthought. They had to mean something. Because if they didn’t—then what did that say about her? She wanted, no, she needed him to care enough that the risks they were both taking seemed worth it. All this was the fabric of their lives, and if it was stripped away, they might both end up with nothing.

“I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.” She bit her lip. Losing James would crush her. She wasn’t ready to let him go. And she was taking a gamble by threatening it. But she knew there was one thing James could not handle: losing on someone else’s terms.

His eyes darkened. “Come on. Don’t say that.” He looked at his phone and shook his head. “I really can’t stay, boo.”

A smile crept to Dylan’s lips. “It’s shameful that a thirty-five-year-old man would use that word.”

“Okay, then I’ll use my special name for you,” he said, pushing the hair away from her eyes. “I promise you, belleza, I would stay if I could. What if I took you away somewhere? Just the two of us? We’d have to wait a few months, but I could swing maybe four or five days.” James kissed the top of her head softly. And she felt all the anger disappear from her body. She loved when he called her beautiful in Spanish, the one time she truly felt like she was the only woman in his life. And now he was offering to give himself to her for multiple days.

Dylan nodded into his chest. They’d never been together for more than eighteen hours straight. She was desperate to find out what happened in hour nineteen. A small tear escaped from her eye onto his black shirt, which was hot and slightly damp from sweating inside the bar. She wanted to know more. About him. About herself. About all this that they did together.

Her heart rose and fell as she waited for him to speak.

“I’m going to take you to Maui.”





CHAPTER ELEVEN


DYLAN—BEFORE

Dylan pushed her front door open and flipped on the lights as she walked inside.

“Where have you been?”

Dylan jumped at the sound of Nick’s voice. “You scared the shit out of me! What are you doing here?” She put her purse on the kitchen counter and poured herself a glass of water. She needed to buy some time, calm down. She’d worried about this moment for so long, him finding out about the affair. That had to be why he was here. He knew.

“I texted you and called. I was worried. Briana let me in and said I could wait.” He pointed to her roommate’s closed bedroom door.