Read Online At Their Own Game by Frank Zafiro - Free Book Online Page B

poorly, Jake. I should have never left without saying goodbye. I should have told you I was married before we got together. I should have told you who my husband was.”  
    I held the cold, wet bottle in my hand.  
    Stared at her.  
    She took another step. “The way I treated you was wrong. And most people, if they came through their front door to find me here after all we’ve been through, their first reaction would be to throw me out. To yell and scream. Some men in this world might even hit. But not you.”  
    “Why not me?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure if I was asking her or asking myself.  
    “It’s like I told you. Because you still love me.”  
    Another step toward me.  
    “I should have done things differently,” she said quietly. “I know that now. But you can’t blame me for us, Jake. You can’t blame me for what we had. You can only blame me for running away from it.”  
    I wanted to say that I could blame her for whatever I wanted, but the words stuck in my throat.  
    Then she was around the counter and standing in front of me again. Warmth radiated off her. Her light brown eyes sliced into me.  
    “This is us,” she whispered. “I know you can still feel it.”  
    “This is insane,” I croaked.  
    “This is life.”  
    Aw, Christ.  
    She wet her lips and leaned toward me.  
    I should have resisted. I should have thrown her out on her perfect ass the moment I saw her sitting on my couch.  
    But life is full of should have’s, isn’t it?  
     
    Afterward, we lay in my bed atop the blankets, silent. Her hip pressed into mine. Her head nestled under my chin. My nostrils were full of the musky scent of her skin and hair.  
    Christ, was I really lying here with her?  
    I opened my eyes and looked up at my ceiling in the dim light of my bedroom. The landscape of texture and cracks reminded me of the moon. For a while, I imagined hiking through the ravines and over the hills of that alien topography. It was easier than what was here on Earth.  
    Her fingers lightly traced a slow circle on my stomach. Goosebumps rose under her nails. Her breath caressed my chest.  
    I stopped thinking about the moon.  
    “Where did you go?” I asked, breaking the silence of the room.  
    “East,” she said.  
    “Where to?”  
    “I ended up in Minneapolis for a while.”  
    I swallowed thickly, and asked, “With who?”  
    “I went with the person who, in all the world, I most needed to get to know.” She shifted, turning and putting her chin on my chest and looking up at me.  
    “Who?” I repeated.  
    “Me, Jake. I had to get to know me.”  
    I frowned. “So you took off…what, to find yourself?”  
    “Pretty much.”  
    “That’s why the divorce, too?”  
    She returned my frown. “One thing I figured out, baby. I didn’t know who I was, but I was definitely not Mrs. Kyle Falkner.”  
    Not Mrs. Jacob Stankovic, either.  
    She stared at me a while, then shrugged. “I worked a couple of different jobs while I was in Minneapolis. And I took some classes.”  
    “Did you find yourself?”  
    She shrugged. “I think what I figured out is that we all know who we are. At our core, we know. A lot of the time, when people are trying to ‘find’ themselves, they’re really just running away from what they already know.”  
    “So who are you?”  
    “A greedy bitch.”  
    “Is that what you found in Minneapolis, or is that what you were running from?”  
    She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Both, I think.” Then she smiled. “But it took working on my own and taking some classes to see it.”  
    “You could have done all that here.”  
    “No, I couldn’t. Not with the great master detective lurking around every shadow during the divorce. And not…not with you here, either.”  
    “Why not?”  
    “God, Jake. I have to spell it out for you?”  
    I opened my mouth to say something, but she shut me up with her own mouth, and I was