Cityscape Affair Series: The Complete Box Set by Hawkins Jessica

Author:Hawkins, Jessica
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

22

As I arrived home to a dark apartment, I switched on the kitchen light and nearly jumped out of my skin. Bill leaned against a counter littered with empty beer bottles. “Bill?”

“Yeah.”

I hung my purse on a dining table chair and removed my coat, staring at him as I tried to gauge his mood. I waited for him to speak.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked without looking at me.

“At Gretchen’s.”

“How do I know that?”

It was a fair question, but it made me feel like a criminal nonetheless. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess you have no choice but to believe me.”

With red-rimmed eyes, he held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

“What? Bill—”

“Give it to me.”

I dug into my purse and handed it over. I had nothing to hide. I’d deleted my text to David and had erased any presence of him from my phone. But even if Bill found e-mails or forgotten evidence as he scrolled, I didn’t imagine things could become much worse than they were about to get.

“If you were with Gretchen, why’d you call her half an hour ago?” he asked, holding up the screen to show me my call history.

“She couldn’t find her phone, so I called it.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “It fell between the couch cushions. Ask her if you like.”

He set the phone down. “Who was it?”

I swallowed dryly and stared at my hands. I’d known this question was coming. What was the right response? What was fair? To hurt him with the truth or spare him with a lie?

I didn’t know. But I’d had enough lying—it was too hard and exhausting.

“Who?” he yelled.

I looked up. “David Dylan.”

He snapped his gaze to mine. “David . . . who? Who is that?” He paused, and I could practically see his brain piecing it together. “Andrew’s friend?” His voice faltered. “The architect?”

“Yes.”

Bill turned away from me and paced to the other side of the kitchen. Stopping at the fridge, he took out a Coors and twisted off the bottle cap. “That could have been our future home.”

Oak Park. “I know,” I said.

He tossed the bottle cap on the counter, then leaned back against the sink, as far as he could get from me. “What if we’d bought it, Olivia? He would have been in our home, where our children live, where we have dinner every night. Where we make love,” he said through gritted teeth. “For God’s sake, what the hell were you thinking?”

For once, I’d been feeling, not thinking. But it would be a cop-out to say I’d been swept away in the heat of the moment. I had made the decision to let David into my life. To let him catch me. To let my feelings develop—and to fuck him. “You’re right. You are absolutely right.”

“So everyone knows then?”

I frowned. “No. Lucy and Andrew knew nothing about this.”

“But Gretchen does.” He shook his head in reproach. “I always knew she was a bad influence on you. I should’ve put a stop to that.

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