Chapter 8

The colour rose up his neck and into his cheeks. “We aren’t in a relationship.” She was not sure if he meant he was not in a relationship with Cordelia… or her.

She recoiled against the black and white of it. Owen had slept with Cordelia. She had suspected, of course she had suspected, but it was one thing to have the doubt drilling into her mind, burrowing into her thoughts, without it being substantiated, and another to have it there, undeniably, in front of her. Oh god, she thought: “Have you used protection with her?”

“Yes. Of course. Em,” he sighed out a breath, almost irritably. This was a conversation he did not want to have. It was one he had been avoiding, and he resented having to have it, now. “Look, I am sorry. We have been separated a couple of weeks now. Cordelia was there. She is not a relationship sort of person, and I was… curious, I guess. It was… well it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to explain it to you. You and I,” he stood and reached for his jacket, leaving her as he left the conversation. “I hope you and I can work it out, someway. I don’t want to lose you as a friend. And I know I confused things tonight, and I am sorry about that. But I am simply not interested in being monogamous with anyone, right now.”

He shrugged into the jacket. “Message me when the money comes through.” He didn’t say goodbye, but closed the door firmly behind him, and she saw his shadow pass across the window as he crossed the lawn, returning to his house.

She stared into the space he left behind him, and slowly crumpled into tears. Owen had slept with Cordelia, and she was alone again, with two barely touched pizzas and half a bottle of wine. The hope that had been slowly building in her, the dream that perhaps somehow this was transitory, that they could work it, and come back stronger, more passionate, more everything, crumbled away like sand in the tide.

The rings were gone. He had taken them with him.

Emily took the pizzas out to the garbage bin and threw them away, and then returned to the lounge room and drank the rest of the wine, before drunkenly falling asleep on the couch.

In the morning, nursing a hangover to accompany her broken heart, she called the real estate agent, and put the other house on the market, as Megan had told her to do from the beginning. She was starting to think that she should have followed Megan’s advice. She eyed up her hair speculatively in the reflection of the laptop. Well, maybe not all her advice, she decided.

“What the f–k are you doing, Em?” Owen demanded the following evening, catching her as she returned from work and made her way down the garden path, his blue eyes blazing with anger and his cheeks flushed with it as he strode across the lawn.

“What do you mean, what am I doing?” She was taken aback by his aggressive approach, snapped out of thoughts of the latest book she was reviewing with surprise. She backed up a step, suddenly wary. When had he become such a stranger that he frightened her in his rage? It was Owen, she told herself. Owen. Owen would never hurt her.

“Selling your house?” He was furious.

She frowned, stung out of her momentary fear by the injustice of his anger. “You can sell your house, but I can’t sell mine?” Fear slid into embarrassment. They were now having a fight on the front lawn of her house, for every garden watering, mailbox checking, dog walking busy-body neighbour to watch. “I don’t want to talk about it out here,” she decided.

He blew out a breath, annoyed and giving no ground. “Neither house will sell as well if both are up for sale at the same time. Plus, where are we to live if both sell?”

“We bought them when they were both up for sale at the same time, so why not? And I thought you were going on tour with your band,” she edged around him so that she could head towards her front porch. He followed her as if pulled by string.

“Yes, but before then, or after then…” He stopped, baffled. “Em,” he changed tact. “You don’t have to sell just because I am.”

“Owen,” she drew in a deep breath, the pain was raw, and she was on the verge of tears again. She had not been sleeping well in a bed that was empty of him, and a house that seemed foreign and isolated in the nights without his presence. She had never lived alone before, had gone straight from her parents’ house to sharing with him. She did not like it. “I don’t want to keep the house. Do you think I want to live here in the house we were meant to share together?”

“Em…” He softened visibly, the anger seeping out of him and a gentleness creeping into his eyes instead.

“I am going to sell the house,” she told him firmly, pushing the pain back. “And I am going to find something that is more me.”

“More… you?” He was puzzled.

“Do you think that you were the only person in the relationship to make compromises?” She demanded, anger and hurt behind her words. “That is what a relationship is, Owen. Compromise after compromise, so that together you find something you can both live with, that makes you both happy. I don’t want to be an editor in a big city firm. I want to write quiet little romances, somewhere in the country, where I open my windows and cannot hear cars. You are not the only person that can make changes, you know.”

Maybe in the country she would feel safe again. She would get a dog. A big one. And let it sleep on her bed. Maybe, in the dark, its big body would be a little like having him back again and she would not lie awake scrutinizing every creak and groan, starting at imagined monsters and robbers.

“Em.”

“I am selling the house,” she told him. “I can buy a country property for what I will make from it, and live mortgage free. Which means I can freelance, and work just enough to pay the bills, whilst I work on my own stuff.”

“I had… no idea,” he was blindsided. In his grand scheme to not marry her, he had not considered that she might decide to make her own plans.

“No. I didn’t know about your craving to be in a rock band, and you didn’t know about my desire to earn a living from my writing. I think maybe, somewhere along the line, we became so comfortable with each other, we forgot to actually talk to each other,” she said darkly.

“We are talking now,” he said. “And I knew about your writing, Em. I have read some of it…”

“No, we are not talking, we are yelling at each other. On the front lawn. In front of all the neighbours.” She used the remote to close the garage door and found her keys for the front door in her bag. She wanted to get into her house before the tears that threatened won over her self-control. “I am not staying here. I am not living in that house, where you have probably f-ked Cordelia on one of your band meetings, surrounded by things we did and plans we made together.”

“Em,” a muscle in his jaw worked as he looked away, and then back to her. Shame was written over his face, plain as day. “I haven’t f-ked Cordelia in the house. It was only the one time, and - ”

“It doesn’t matter,” she cut him off as she managed to unlock the door. “Do you want any photos?”

“What?” He was taken off topic and confused.

“Any of the photos of us in the last twenty years? I am not taking them with me when I leave. And I am selling the furniture.”

“Em. This is all… rather drastic, don’t you think?”

She arched her eyebrows. “Really, Owen? More drastic than calling off a relationship of twenty-two years and a wedding that was scheduled to take place in six months, going on unpaid leave and selling a house in order to pursue a future in music with a band that is still only booking in pubs probably for less money than the fuel costs to get there?”

“Em, that is just…” He paused as she opened the door and followed her into the hallway. Her bag slipped from her hand as he caged her up against the wall, the heat in his eyes vastly different to the fury with which he had accosted her on the lawn, his mouth meeting hers with demand and passion, anger having shifted to desire. She gripped his shoulders and lifted onto her toes to meet his lips with hers, their teeth striking in the fury of the kiss.

His hands gathered her skirt up to her waist and tore through the pantyhose beneath it. “God, those shoes,” he groaned, and she was not sure if it was a complaint or appreciation of the stiletto heels as he lifted her so that her legs crossed behind his hips. He drove into her, and she cried out, the blatant barbarism of it a thrill, f-king against a wall, with his jeans sliding down his legs and her tidy office clothes dishevelled under his lust.

The front door, she noted, was not closed, swaying slightly in the breeze, threatening to blow wider at any moment and reveal them, and that added another edge to the experience, her heart pounding as she realized that he wanted her enough not to care that any dog-walking neighbour could walk by and see his bare arse as he f-ked her and that she didn’t care if they saw her wrapped around him wantonly.

His teeth grazed her neck, and his mouth closed there, sucking. She would struggle to hide the mark he left there in the morning, she knew, but that she would wear a mark, that he had deliberately left it there, marking her with his passion… It drove her mad, and she dragged her nails down his back making him exclaim, his thrusts becoming more forceful, banging her back against the drywall.

His fingers clenched, and his mouth sought hers again, the heat of his kiss lingering, gentling, and he stepped closer, changing the pattern of the sex, the rhythm of it, so that he stayed deeper, making it less physical and more intimate. The shift in position sent spirals of pleasure through her and she moaned, throwing her head back and clinging to his shoulders as her body took control.

“There, Owen,” she pleaded. “Don’t stop.”

“Oh, no,” he said hoarsely. “I am not going to stop until you come, Em. Kiss me. Look at me.”

She brought her lips back to his, and met his gaze with effort, her eyelids wanting to close as he pushed her body closer to breaking point. “Owen.”

“Yes, Em,” his lips were against her cheek. “Give it to me.”

She came, crying out and her nails digging into his arms, and he cried out, part pain, part pleasure, his head coming to rest against her shoulder as he jerked within her. “F-k,” he said, breathily. “F-k.”

It was not a word she used often, not one she had heard him speak more than a dozen times over the course of their relationship, but she thought it expressed the situation rather well. It was f-ked that they had just discovered this amazing sex between them, whilst he was on some wild self-discovery journey involving God knew how many other women, or men for that matter, and twice now he had not used protection with her.

Which either meant he was lazy with all his partners, or that he was confident that she, at least, was not sleeping with anyone else. And the latter, whilst true, was also… so arrogant of him.

“I am selling the house, Owen,” she told him, exhausted by the ups and downs of it all. “And we are moving, you and I, because I want the furniture in it, to make the best money I can. You will help me move, this weekend, before the first open.”

“F-k,” he said eloquently, and sighed. “Fine. We will swap houses. But the difference between the house prices we will split.”

“Fine,” she agreed. “Then you will take on half the credit card bill.”

He groaned, a different type of groan, although he was still within her, and still holding her up against the wall. “When did you become such a hard arse?” He wondered his face still buried in the curve of her neck so that she could not read the expression on his face.

“Perhaps when I returned from blissfully shopping for my dream wedding gown, to a groom who didn’t want to marry me,” she replied tartly.

She felt the shudder pass through him.

“Alright,” he murmured. “I guess that is fair enough.”

“This weekend, then?”

“This weekend, then.”