I am now a mirror image of the woman I used to be when I was with Hollis. I even feel like her, clad in clothes I bought this morning from Target and changed into in my car in the parking lot. My legs are bare in cut off jean shorts and my shoulders exposed in a hot pink tank top with spaghetti straps. I even bought gigantic chunky earrings just for the hell of it. The kind that are supposed to look artsy and glamorous but, when you get up close and personal, just…don’t.
I feel giddy in this getup, like Halloween has come early and I’m pretending to be someone else, someone noteworthy enough to have a costume designed after her. Like a character from a best-selling novel or TV show. Or maybe the undercover attire of a superhero’s alter ego, like Clark Kent and his ridiculous glasses.
But instead of imitating someone else, I’m just being…me. The real me, the one who finally ditched the costume I’ve been wearing all these years.
I am Becca Cabot, aka Beautiful Savage.
This nickname of Ford’s makes me smile, makes me feel like a fucking warrior queen out to right the world’s wrongs. I’m a goddamn powerhouse, a woman of steel, confident enough in my abilities that I can handle anything the cold, cold world throws my way. Righteousness fills me to the brim and victory is guaranteed without even a sliver of doubt.
So when I look over and see Hollis’s wife sitting at a picnic table, sharing an ice cream sundae with their daughter, I don’t even hate her. I’m so high right now, so far up the emotional scale from hate, that the only feeling I can muster when I look at her is sympathy. The poor woman doesn’t have a clue about the shitstorm that’s coming her way.
From what I’ve learned about her – and I’ve learned a lot – she’s comfortably naïve. Or gullible. Or just plain stupid.
While Hollis does everything he can to guard his life from creepers, Mrs. Thatcher – otherwise known as Marla – does the exact opposite. She was easy to find; a simple inquiry into a Minnesota legal site gave me the name of Hollis’s wife along with the date they tied the knot. I searched Duluth’s online newspaper and discovered their daughter’s birthdate (she’s almost four), and that Marla is a special education teacher. I even drudged up an old interview she did with the paper regarding the public school’s special education program and the ways it can be improved. Her answers to the interviewer’s questions regarding the system’s lack of funds were so naïve, so damn Pollyanna, that I literally felt the gin I had for lunch rise in my throat.
A few clicks on the keyboard later, I found her Facebook and Instagram profiles (neither of which are private) along with her Linked-In account, which I really have no interest in. Her Facebook is pretty boring, full of motivational quotes and cute-but-annoying baby videos. But her Instagram account…now that’s been a help.
My phone buzzes, a soft tingle against my hip, and before I even fish it out of my pocket, I know who it is. The only people I associate with are the wives of Nicholas’s associates, and as I’m the boss’s wife, the duchess to the head honcho, intimidation alone causes them to steer clear of one-on-one gatherings. They would never call me, and I gave strict instructions to my executive assistant, Bernadette, not contact me unless it was an absolute emergency. And since the home staging business is pretty much trauma as well as drama free, I don’t expect to hear from her at all. The place runs just fine without me, which is how I prefer it.
I swipe my finger across the screen and find, as expected, a message from my husband, letting me know in clipped text-speak that an emergency arose with their newest project and he needs to get to the site ASAP. He’ll be in Toronto, he assumes, for at least three weeks, maybe longer, though he can try to fly back for a quick weekend getaway if I really need him to.
I don’t, and tell him so, writing back that I’d rather he focus on the job, get done what needs to be done, and that I’ll be completely fine at home without him. It’s not true, but it’s not a lie; it’s more of an apathic response, really. I used to care when Nicholas’s job took him away from home for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Used to pace the floors of our renovated, mid-century modern home that felt more palatial than any place I’d ever lived before it. I practically climbed the walls waiting for him to return, even once flying the coup altogether and surprising him in Houston, where he’d already been for six weeks. But when I arrived, eager to spend the weekend with him, he showed more irritation than elation, and I ended up spending most of my time in the hotel’s pool…alone. It always annoyed him, the way I desired his attention, and eventually I stopped craving it.
I haven’t missed him in years.
I smile as I hit send. Tucking my phone back in my pocket, I glance over to Marla and the kid, watching as she types something into her phone. Perhaps, like me, she’s responding to a text from her husband. One that’s filled with love, with adoration, and possibly with all the ways he wants to enter her tonight in bed.
She smiles, and a soft giggle slips past her lips, the sound floating to me on a breeze.
Fuck it.
I pluck my phone from my pocket again and scroll through the numbers, my thumb landing on the one Ford programmed into it a few nights ago at the bar.
When the cat’s away, the mouse might as well play.
Okay, I’ll admit it.
It’s kind of cute, the way Ford’s trying to date me.
When I rang him earlier today, it was strictly for a booty call. Just the thought of Hollis writing dirty love notes to his wife was enough to make my skin crawl. And, strangely enough, the thought also made me horny as hell. I’ve been deprived of a lover’s touch for so long that my own just isn’t cutting it anymore. So, filled with ridiculous desperation, I reached out to the only man I could think of. At that moment, sitting there on that park bench and feeling the chill of my husband’s cold indifference, I craved heat. I needed to feel the warmth of someone’s skin as it slid against my own. Needed to feel his hardness, his hunger, and know that I not only inspired it but was also the only one who could satisfy it. And for one night, for one goddamn night, I didn’t want to be in charge of my own fucking orgasm.
I was certain that I could get him into bed this time, could dull his inhibitions with a chilled bottle of wine and a form-fitting outfit that left just enough to the imagination to make him want to rip it right off. But when I arrived at his apartment—my dress clinging to my tits and a bottle of red tucked in the crook of my arm—and smelled the most delicious aroma bleeding out into the hallway from the crack beneath his door, I immediately knew he’d put more into this night than what I was willing to deal with.
I didn’t want dinner. I wanted a quickie, and then a longer quickie, and then another again in the morning. I wanted to witness those kind eyes of his give way to his darkest demons as he slid into me, wanted to feel the scorch of the Devil’s stare sear my flesh.
I wanted to see Ford go dark.
And if that wasn’t going to happen, then I had no use for him.
But when he answered the door in his usual getup, looking all domestic with a towel slung over his shoulder and his feet bare, and I saw the candlelight glow coming from the room behind him, my resolve wavered, and my urge to walk away evaporated entirely.