Her head whipped from side to side. "I haven’t dated anyone since the night Rex came."
Mouth tight, I nodded. "You sure?"
I’d shore up her confidence any day of the fucking week, but I wanted to know who’d dented it too. Just so I could dent something of theirs.
"I’m sure." Keira reached up and slid her hand over my cheek. "We’ve both made mistakes. I’ve…" She swallowed. "This is hard to admit, but I need to grow up."
Now that had me rearing back. "Far as I’m aware, you’re definitely no kid."
"No. I’ve been acting like a baby. Immature as hell. I’m a mom, but, more importantly, I’m a wife.
"For years, you’ve been dealing with addiction and I didn’t know. You kept that from me, which makes you a jackass, but I should have seen that. I should have known. Why didn’t I? Because I didn’t look."
"Because you didn’t think to look," I rumbled, not happy about her words.
"I should have. You kept me at a distance because you think I’m pure. Well, maybe I don’t want to be pure anymore. Maybe I want to be dirty."
My nostrils flared at the same time as my dick twitched, showering my lower half with bittersweet pain.
What I wouldn’t give for her hand to cup me, for her to take that key I knew she wore around her neck—the slight bulge of it sometimes visible depending on which shirt she wore—and to release me from my fucking cage…
But I shoved thoughts like that away.
It was shit like that that’d gotten me into this position.
"You don’t know what you’re saying. I cheated on you, Keira."
"How many times? Can you count? And I don’t mean when we were separated. If we count those occasions, then I’ve cheated on you twice."
Nerve ticking in my jaw, I muttered, "I don’t want to talk about this."
"Tough. You talked about jacking off twenty-plus times a day." She gulped. "I need to know. Was it twenty-plus times a day with different clubwhores too?"
Everything in me told me to lie, but I didn’t. "Less than five times." I grimaced. "But I didn’t exactly count, Keira, and sometimes I wasn’t compos mentis."
A shaky breath escaped her. "Really? Five times or five women?"
"Different women." My relationship with my fist was another matter entirely. But I had to be honest… "There might have been other times."
Her eyes narrowed in on me. "‘Might?’ When you were high and you don’t remember?"
Shame hit me like a lightning bolt. "Yes."
Her head tilted to the side and something bloomed to life in her eyes. "Kendra told me you were in a years’ long relationship."
My jaw tensed as I processed that particular bullshit. "Kendra’s been chasing after me ever since she came to fucking West Orange. She’d say my dick was green if it meant you’d believe her bullshit."
Her hand clenched down on my shoulder. "Were you high every time you cheated?"
"That doesn’t excuse what I did."
"Not saying it does, but were you?"
I bowed my head. "Yes. Or coming down."
"What triggered you getting high?"
I swallowed, uncertain I wanted to answer that. "Each time?"
"Yeah. Each time."
"I‘ve gotten high throughout our marriage, Keira. It’s not like I can give you a reason for every occurrence," I rasped, shame filtering through each word.
"Why?"
"Because sometimes, I need to feel awake. And sometimes, I just need to sleep. They go hand in hand.
"There’s always a trigger, but it might not be something you consider as being one."
"Drugs always help you feel awake and always help you sleep?"
"Yes."
"Do you miss it?"
"Yes." My nostrils flared. "I could tell you that I want you and Cyan to be in my world more than I want the drugs, but some days, I don’t.
"Some days, I’m just trying not to feel like I’m falling asleep standing up. Some days, I’m just trying to be a little less fucking broken. The only thing that gets me through is you and Cy. That never changes."
"It didn’t work before."
"Never lost you before. You never locked me out of my house before. It was a wake-up call." My hands balled into fists. "I hit rock bottom. You destroyed me, sweetheart. It broke me, to the point where I was fucking crying for days on end like…" I released a breath. "Like someone had died. Like we’d died."
Her eyes grew round. "You cried?"
"You’re kidding me, right? Felt like I was drowning, Keira."
A whispery breath escaped her parted lips and there was something that looked a lot like awe in her eyes—except that didn’t make sense. Then, she shook her head. "I don’t understand how I never saw you were an addict."
"I worked hard to make sure you didn’t."
I’d hit rock bottom so many fucking times in my life, and on those days, I’d just wanted to end it all. Keira and Cy stopped me from taking a little too much marching powder, but shit had changed when she’d thrown me out for good.
I’d seen the writing on the wall.
I’d lost her, and like that, I realized exactly how much of an abyss I was in. Not just standing at the precipice, about to free fall into the blackness. But subsisting inside it.
Every day, I climbed farther out of that abyss, inches at a time. I made slow progress, but at the end of it, they were there—standing in the light. The only thing that stopped me from letting the darkness swallow me whole.
"Is that why you stayed at the clubhouse a lot? You were away too much for it to be runs, but I preferred to think it was that." She swallowed. "Dumb of me."
"Not dumb," I growled. "But yes. We’re not supposed to use heavy drugs there, but Rex turned a blind eye when I was—" I exhaled roughly through my nose. "It wasn’t so I could fuck anything in a G-string, Keira. I need you to know that. The drugs and the need for sex are two separate problems. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I’m not going to lie about this, not now."
Slowly, she nodded. "I wouldn’t have understood before, wouldn’t have believed you before, but I think I do now."
I reached for her hand, pressed it to my chest. "I don’t think I understand."
"You don’t have to. I have to. You’re not the one who wanted to break up. I am."
"Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?"
"I’m saying I’d like to work on getting to know you again." She bit her lip. "I’d like to work on becoming the woman you think I am, instead of some spineless brat who’s whining because she tossed her own damn rattle out of the crib."
"Keira, I don’t know where this is coming from, but you’re not spineless. You had the courage to toss me out, to live your life and make your own path. You reacted. Your mom wouldn’t have. She’d have lived with it. That’s why I was proud of you. You did the exact opposite of what you’d learned through example."