It’s not every day that kind of decision makes a woman like Scarlett Ford my wife. Puts her in my bed. My sheets will never smell the same. And I’m losing my mind. This is already too much. She is already too much.
My eyes throb from the pressure behind them. Is it emotion or exhaustion? I can’t tell. I’ve survived detox and withdrawal in a hospital gown and then in a cell that never felt warm enough.
I lived through the violence of my own body betraying me, punishing me until I begged for death.
But this? This slow, quiet unraveling? It’s a different kind of hell, and I’m not ready to want something this badly again.
I’m also not ready to turn it down.
The second her knees buckled from being sick, something inside me cracked. I don’t think I’d moved that fast since working in an emergency department. I gathered her hair, steadied her shoulders, and touchedher with a tenderness I thought was stripped out of me years ago.
I press a fist to my mouth and breathe through it. She’s too young to be touched by the ugliness I bring to the table in this fake relationship.
She had the nerve to stand naked under a towel like I was worthy of such an angel. All I saw was a promise of the exact same heat she delivered the night we slept together. And that mouth around my cock last week.
She was unafraid to ask for what she wanted. Even from me, a broken man. That’s a kind of sweet poison that nothing in the world prepares you for.
Christ. I can still smell her out here in the hall. Spicy shampoo and the sweet perfume that clings to her skin burrowed straight into the base of my spine.
I told her that there would beno intimacy, and she curled into my bed, pouting and disappointed. Fuck. What do I do with that?
I drag in a breath that feels like broken glass and head down the hall to the spare room that holds my biggest secret.
I don’t know how to tell her about James Patrick. Then I have to explain how he came into this world. That his mother, who’s married to my twin brother, currently has sole custody of my child because I was a pathetic addict who didn’t want him.
My thumb hesitates over the keypad, and then I type in the four-digit code, J.P.’s birthday. I wasn’t there that day, and that’s the part of the story I can’t get past.
The lock disengages with a muted click that guts me every time. I push open the door and step into the soft glow of a night-light shaped like a rocket ship. The room smells faintly of new furniture and fresh paint.
It sits silent and unused. And that feels like a slam against my skull.
In the dark, I stand perfectly still, gripping the edge of a gray lacquered dresser until my knuckles go pale.
This is the room I created for my son. This will be his space. And it’s waiting for him. Waiting for me to be ready to bring him here. Yesterday, that seemed easier. Now it will be with a wife in my bed who doesn’t know he exists yet.
And each day I wait to tell her, it gets harder.
I stare down at the crib against the far wall with its smooth white slats and a fitted navy sheet featuring gold constellations. Above it hangs a framed watercolor of a fox wearing a little crown.
In the top drawer, brand-new pajamas are folded neatly. In another, tiny socks are rolled into cute, soft, colorful balls. A lavender baby blanket sits in a basket on the shelf, waiting to smell like him one day.
My chest pulls tight, and my toes curl against the plush area rug shaped like a cloud. It feels so soft under my feet. A bookshelf is filled with the same books I remembered reading to Sophie in my Seattle apartment on her parents’ date nights—years before J.P. came into our lives. I said no to a lot of women so I could have my own little date night with a child who meant the world to me. Who was as part of me as J.P. is.
Yet, when it was my turn to be a dad, I fell apart.
A wooden train set arranged in a perfect circle sits in the corner. Stuffed animals line the top of the bookshelves, and I can’t wait for J.P. to be old enough to give them names.
A wolf, a lion cub, and a teddy bear are toys I bought online one night when I really wanted a whiskey. I reach for that bear now. The soft fur smells like my cologne because I sit in here and cling to it.
Tonight, I feel something in my throat go hot and unbearable. My legs give out, and I’m kneeling on thefloor.
Addiction lives in my bloodstream like a snake coiled under the surface waiting to strike. And wanting Scarlett,needingher, feels exactly the same because I know it can consume me.
Would it be terrible to be consumed by love? What if craving a person isn’t really the same thing, and I’ve just convinced myself that anything that feels good is bad?
Scarlett’s bare legs lie under a soft nightgown and can slide across my sheets and tangle with mine right now. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing to me. She doesn’t understand that one touch could trigger a side of me she’s not prepared for.
This condo used to be my escape. Now she’s my wife and living here with me, because I couldn’t bear to have her face insurmountable difficulties when I have the means to help.