So much for chaste. 

I rubbed our lips together, tongue darting to lick hers tentatively, and then deeper, stroking into her mouth, my hands going to cup her face. 

She moaned, deep in her chest, a sound of abject need, and started sucking on my tongue.

I pulled back with a gasp.

Her face was stunned for a moment but it quickly turned into a glare.  

I almost smiled.  "See you tonight." 

"Bastard."    

*****

She got home late, and I was waiting up for her.  Even if I could have put it off another day, I wasn't sure I wanted to, at this point.  I was ready to come clean, to get it all out in the open, at last. 

God, it was a long time coming.   

Scarlett didn't draw it out.  We'd barely cleared the bedroom door when she said, "What does she have on you?  Tell me." 

I stopped mid-stride, turning to her.  She'd gone by her apartment before she'd come over and packed an overnight bag.  I'd carried it upstairs for her and still had it clutched in my right hand.

I dropped it on the floor, just staring at her for a minute.

Where to even begin?

I felt my head shake.  A slow, precise movement.  A little to the right, a little to the left.

It was enough.  So simple but so telling.   

Her face froze.  "That," she said dully.  "Of course.  For how long?" 

"You know," I said.   

I watched as comprehension struck.  It was a terrible thing.   

The look in her eyes would haunt me.  To the end of my days.  Haunted. 

Like everything with us, the hurt cut both ways.   

"She made you break up with me."  She said it like she didn't quite believe it. 

You'd think the truth would be less harmful than the lies I'd told her.  But sometimes the truth is the hardest thing to stomach, especially if you knew that some part of you should have seen it all along. 

"Of course."  Two words.  Straightforward.  Brutal in their simplicity.

She jerked like she'd been struck, her blinking eyes searching the room frantically, looking anywhere but at me. 

"When you made that phone call," she paused, "both of those phone calls," she corrected herself.  "She was with you, wasn't she?" Her voice broke on the question, her tone so raw it made my chest ache and my eyes sting. 

But I answered her.  "Of course." 

And there it was.

She staggered where she stood.  I was over in a beat, going to her, but I was a second too late.  She had collapsed to the floor. 

I'd only ever seen her once like this, bowed in on herself.  Broken, bent, boneless in her pain.  A pile on the floor.   

Completely defeated.  Destroyed.  

Even with the way I'd known, because I had absolutely known, that I'd broken her heart, the pain of it had never made her shoulders less straight.  Her pride, which was both the bane of my existence and one of the things that'd saved us both, had only ever left her one time before. 

And now.

I scooped her up in my arms and carried her to bed.  She was shaking and crying.  The sobs quiet but powerful, rocking her entire body in waves until she was convulsing against me.     

I'd hurt her, and myself more.  I'd had to lie, had to, but I wished I could make her believe one truth: Her pain was always worse for me than my own.

She was inconsolable, sobbing in my arms like her heart was breaking all over again. 

Eventually she spoke, haltingly and in near incoherent fragments.  "The things we've done to each other. . . . The things we've done to ourselves . . . You don't know . . ."

"It's all in the past," I murmured into her forehead.  I was running my hand over her head, over and over, petting her.  It was an old familiar gesture, the way I always used to comfort her before our lives had gone to shit.  "We can put it in the past and leave it there.  We can move on.  We will find a way to move on," I told her, the words ringing desperate because I was trying to convince myself, as well.

"You don't know," she sobbed brokenly.  "You don't know." 

I shut my eyes, old, familiar pain washing over me.  My voice was thick with emotion when finally I said, "I do know.  We both do now.  All that's left is to move forward."  

She started shaking her head and didn't stop.  "No.  No.  You don't know.  You don't know." 

"What don't I know, angel?  Tell me.  I'll try to fix it, whatever it is."

But she wouldn't say.  She was done talking and back to weeping.   She was so upset she'd bitten her lips bloody.  She didn't seem to notice, her eyes shut tight, but I did. 

It was another thing I'd only seen her do one time before.

Quietly and firmly, with my fingers, I made her stop. 

"Shh.  Shh.  It's okay," I soothed her, blotting at her lips with my shirt. 

All the while, my heart was breaking all over again.   

She didn't ask me any more questions that night, and I was relieved. 

We'd both reached our threshold on suffering for the moment. 

I hoped that the worst was past us, but I've never had much luck with hope.     

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

"Life is hard.  After all, it kills you."