Spiral of Bliss 03 Awaken (18 page)

I stop halfway to the sofa. Dean pulls his shirt over his shoulders. Against reason, my pulse kicks into gear again at the sight of him all disheveled and sweaty, his white shirt open to reveal his gorgeous chest.

I pick up my discarded dress and toss it over a chair. Dean watches me. A shutter descends over his features.

I sit down on the sofa, twisting the little ring Dean sent me from Italy around on my finger. I can’t think of a way to stop whatever it is he’s going to say.

“What?” I whisper.

“I need to talk to you about the meeting.”

“Okay. What… what happened?”

He sighs and drags a hand through his hair. “When I started teaching at King’s, Maggie Hamilton told me she wanted to write about Trotula of Salerno and women’s history. Since Trotula was a physician, the research included stuff about women’s sexuality. Now Maggie is saying I was the one who suggested it, that she wasn’t comfortable with the subject… that kind of shit.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah.” His jaw clenches. “And when I was gone, Ben Stafford looked into my past jobs and positions. He found out that you and I started dating when we were at the UW. So now he’s questioning the ethics of our relationship.”

Shock bolts through me. I sink back onto the sofa. “The
ethics
of it?”

“Professor and student, right?”

“But I wasn’t your student! We didn’t do anything against the rules.”

“Doesn’t seem to matter. You were a student, and I was a professor. Considering a student is making this claim… it doesn’t look good.”

A sick feeling rises into my throat. My early relationship with Dean is one of tangled, intense beauty. The idea that strangers could make it obscene because of a vindictive girl’s lies…

I press my hands to my eyes.

“What’s Stafford going to do?” I ask.

“I don’t know. But Edward Hamilton knows about it too, and he’s accusing me of having a history of getting involved with students. If he finds a way to use that against me, he will.”

My stomach tightens. No one knows about our early relationship, the secrets we told, the games we played, the talks we had, the desire we explored. No one except us. That’s the very reason it was both beautiful and dangerous, like a secret island where we were uncertain of rescue… until we saved each other.

Our island. Our love. Our marriage.

I hate the thought of strangers dissecting it all, probing for something immoral and wrong, with Dean and I forced to defend the very foundation of our relationship.

“Oh, Dean.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Twenty-four hours ago, I was so happy I would have whistled a merry tune, if I knew how to whistle. Now I’m all knotted up and blistering again.

We look at each other. We both feel it, the sharp invasion of the rest of the world into our space. He shoves his hands into his pockets. His shirt is still unbuttoned, his hair sticking damply to his forehead. Silence stretches taut between us. I search for and find a measure of courage.

“What if I went to Ben Stafford and told him the truth?” I push off the sofa and pace to the windows. “Before either Maggie or Edward Hamilton can spread more lies?”

“No.” His refusal is fast and hard, tension stiffening his shoulders. “No way. You’re not getting anywhere near this.”

“But I could—”

“No, Liv. You stay out of it.”

I struggle with conflicting emotions of relief and irritation. No, I don’t
want
to talk to Ben Stafford about my relationship with Dean, but at the same time I would do anything to end this slander.

“Maybe it would help,” I persist. “I could tell Stafford how careful you were about ensuring you didn’t break any regulations, that you’ve always been completely professional with students and colleagues. Everything I’d say would vouch for your character, right? And no one knows you better than I do.”

“You know me as your husband. You don’t know me as a professor.”

I blink in surprise. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t know how I interact with my students.” Dean turns away, dragging a hand through his messy hair. “You don’t know if I could’ve said or done something wrong.”

“Of course you haven’t done anything wrong!”

“What was the subject of my last research paper?”

“What?”

“The last paper I submitted to the
Journal of Medieval Architecture.
What was the subject?”

“I—”

“You don’t know,” he says. “And you don’t know because it’s not important to you.”

Shame and irritation twist inside me. “You think your work isn’t important to me?”

“What was the subject of my last paper?” Dean repeats.

My heart does a strange descent into my stomach. He turns to face me, his expression unreadable.

“Look, I don’t care, all right?” he says. “It doesn’t matter to me that you don’t know I wrote about the chapels of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. There’s no reason it should be important to you. But that also means you don’t know what goes on in my lecture hall, in my office, during meetings…”

“I know how good you are at what you do. Isn’t that enough?”

“Liv,
I
don’t even know if I did something wrong! Maggie Hamilton is right, goddammit. I did suggest books on sexuality and female anatomy. That was her thesis topic. God knows I could’ve said a dozen things that anyone could interpret as harassment. I said things to her about views of sexuality, prostitution, and contraception in the Middle Ages. She probably still has emails from me. And if Stafford asks me that in a deposition, I have no defense.”

“You do have a defense. Your career and reputation are your defense. Everything I’d tell Stafford would just reiterate the fact that you’re honorable to the core.” I pause, aware of the rising shame again. “Even if I don’t know your theories on the Notre-Dame cathedral.”

“Liv, I don’t care about the damn cathedral.” Dean rubs his hands over his face. “I’m warning you it could all get so much worse. And you’re not going anywhere near Stafford because he could ask you questions you don’t have an answer for.”

“Dean, love of my life, he’s investigating us now, right? I’ll always have an answer about
us.
”

Dean gazes at me for a minute before approaching and settling his hands on my shoulders. I lean my forehead against his chest, feeling his tension.

“Please let me do this for you,” I tell him. “For us. I want to prove that I can.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Liv. You never have.”

“But I want to prove it to myself.”

I ease back to look at him and hold up my left hand. He places his palm against mine, and our wedding bands click together before we entwine our fingers. We both hold on tight.

“Pie love you, professor,” I whisper. “Have faith in me, okay?”

“Ah, Liv.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “I don’t have faith in anyone but you.”

When I return to the apartment, my mother is in the living room, her head bent as she files her nails. A news program is on the TV, and the scent of coffee lingers in the air. She glances up when I enter.

“Where’ve you been?” she asks.

“With Dean. We had to talk.”

“Talk?” Her gaze sweeps over me in one movement, and my breath shortens. If anyone knows the signs of post-sex, it’s Crystal Winter.

I fight back the urge to blush. I had sex with my husband, not some random man I picked up at a grocery store while my daughter waited in the car.

Shit.
A wave of old apprehension floods me. I drop my purse on a chair and head into the bathroom. I slam the door and get into the shower, hating the sense that I’m trying to wash the scent of Dean off my skin.

When I go back into the bedroom, Crystal is sitting on the bed cross-legged, one elbow resting on her knee.

“It’s okay, Liv,” she says. “Plenty of people have problems in their marriage. I did.”

“I’m not having problems in my marriage, not that it would be your business if I were,” I tell her. “I’m tired. I need some sleep.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“He’s not
gone.
” I grab a brush and drag it through my wet hair. “He left in February to work on an archeological dig in Italy. He’s back for a few days to take care of some stuff and is staying in a hotel for personal reasons. He’s leaving again on Monday. That’s all there is to it.”

“Well, I’m sorry he’s leaving again,” Crystal says, “but you can leave too, you know.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I was thinking I should go to Phoenix soon, see about my mother’s house and whatnot,” she says. “You should come with me. A road trip, like old times.”

God in heaven.
Just the suggestion has my heart sinking and my brain flashing with images of hot, vinyl car seats, crumpled fast-food containers, the sun glinting off the windshield. A black strip of highway behind us. A strip of highway before us.

This is exactly the same thing Crystal wanted from me years ago. I’d been a senior in high school, still living with Aunt Stella in Castleford, when Crystal came to visit and asked me to go on the road with her again. I’d had a perfect excuse to decline—I needed to stay in Castleford and graduate because I was going to Fieldbrook College on a full merit scholarship the following fall.

And though that accomplishment had ended up shattering like glass around me, I know my answer to my mother will never change.

“I… I can’t go with you.”
Not to Phoenix. Not anywhere.
“I have work here.”

“You’re also separated from your husband.”

“Dean and I are not separated.”

She rolls her eyes. “This is why I never got married, Liv. Too much trouble. I refuse to let a man control me or my life. And maybe if you were on your own again, you’d figure that out too.”

“Crystal.” I take a breath and try to control the anger scorching my chest. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

“Is it because he won’t let you?”

“No! This has nothing to do with Dean. I won’t go with you because I don’t want to. I hated being on the road with you, Crystal. That’s why I left. Why would I ever want to go back?”

“You will,” she replies tartly. “When you realize you’re delusional to think that marriage is better than freedom.”

Crystal gets off the bed, her footsteps soundless across the carpet as she returns to the living room. I close the bedroom door and crawl under the covers, pushing her words out of my mind. I sink into a shallow and restless sleep before waking at dawn.

Crystal is still asleep when I get up to make coffee and start to put breakfast things out. For an hour, it’s peaceful and quiet as I think about what we need to accomplish at the café today.

I hear Crystal rustling around as she wakes and goes into the bathroom. I pour a cup of coffee and put it on the table along with a pitcher of milk.

“Morning.”

I turn to glance at my mother and stop. She’s holding a pink box that makes my heart twist.

“Where… where did you get that?” I stammer.

“Bathroom cabinet. I was looking for tampons.” She examines the pregnancy testing kit. “Are you pregnant?”

“No.” A wave of dizziness hits me as I remember the reason Dean and I needed a test kit in the first place. “No… I… I just had a pregnancy scare a few months ago. Nothing happened.”

“You’re sure?” An odd stillness surrounds her.

“Of course I’m sure.” I can feel her looking at my waistline. I think of the two newborn hats, soft as a cloud, one pink and one blue, both wrapped in a yellow-striped box beneath our bed. My throat constricts.

“Are you trying to have a baby?” Crystal asks.

I concentrate on unwrapping a loaf of bread. I don’t know how to answer her question.

“I… maybe one day,” I say.

She’s still watching me. She knows. I can feel it, as if she has some maternal instinct about me now that she never had when I was younger.

“It was more than a scare, wasn’t it?” she asks. “How far along were you?”

How does she know? How can she tell?

I can’t lie, not about this. Not even to her. And what would be the point, anyway?

“Ten weeks,” I tell her.

“When did it happen?”

“End of January.”

“And your husband left right afterward?” Crystal asks.

“No, he did not leave right afterward.” I crack an egg into a hot pan and watch it sizzle. “I really don’t want to talk about this, Crystal.”

She pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down. We’re both silent as I bring my plate to the table. The air between us feels as fragile as a soap bubble.

With the overhead light on, Crystal’s eyelashes make half-moon shadows on her cheekbones. She still has a sprinkle of freckles across her nose, which has always added to her youthful, wholesome beauty. I realize that my eyes are shaped like hers, just brown instead of blue. She meets my gaze.

The invisible soap bubble seems to pop, the current between us breaking.

“I know she left you a lot of money,” Crystal says.

I poke at my toast. I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do.

“How did you find out?” I ask.

“I asked the lawyer for a copy of her will,” she says. “My mother left me nothing, and she left you thousands of dollars. I’m sure she had a good laugh over that.”