Escalation Clause (12 page)

She put her feet on the cool hardwood floor and let the reality of the day wash over her, nearly suffocating from sadness once she figured out why she’d woken up so suddenly. Blake had been in her dream again, his dancing green eyes and impish grin as real to her as if he stood in the room. If only he could. The past four weeks had been something well beyond her worst nightmare. The memories pummeled her, of the agony displayed by them all, but most especially Rob. And of course, there was the new-baby-in-the-house thing and the low-grade buzz of complete exhaustion that came with it.

“Jack?” She called out. She gritted her teeth, determined not to need him as badly as she did, recalling their fight the night before over his slow detachment from her. Or, as he put it, “her perception” of his distance,.

“God dammit, Sara, this is not about you, okay? I’m…busy. I’m preoccupied. I’m sorry you don’t get the full force of my attention.”

She had zero understanding of him anymore. In the midst of her personal hell on earth, she did need him. There was no denying it. And he’d been edging away from her, from them all, emotionally. All of the preparation for the loss of one of his closest friends, Blake’s lover, Rob, annihilated by the sadistic hand fate had dealt them—it had seemingly affected Jack in a way she couldn’t comprehend. And that was making him withdraw from their family—because he was holding her at arm’s length, denying he was doing it, all the while his blue eyes snapping with an unfamiliar combination of anger and regret. She bit her lip, determined to keep the tears in check as she walked down the long hall to the kitchen.

Her own mental state was fragile at best, but she had held it together. People needed her—her baby, her daughter, her parents, her friends. She’d rallied into something she would swear Blake would’ve been proud of, only to look up about a week after the accident to find Jack staring at her, his gaze flat. “Are you ever going to really mourn Sara?”

She’d risen from the couch with a finally sleeping Brandis and left the room. How could he possibly not realize that the only thing holding the edges of her sanity together was the forward motion, organization and non-thinking? They hadn’t really talked since that day, when she’d walked away from his unanswered question.

Granted, he maintained a good front for their friends and family and was ever the devoted daddy to Katie. He was even a bit of a baby whisperer with Brandis, taking him at night, giving her the blessed relief of more than three hours of uninterrupted sleep, just enough to keep her from flying apart at the seams. Just barely enough.

She stopped in the door of his study, watching him pore over his latest project. Obtaining, of all things, an expansion major league soccer team for Detroit and building a state of the art facility for them downtown. It had become an obsession. One she didn’t care for at all. He ran his long fingers through his hair, making it stand on end as he turned pages of the latest book on stadium facilities. The computer had the official professional soccer league website pulled up and sat blinking in the otherwise dark room.

His broad shoulders, so loved and familiar, were clad in a soft white tee shirt. Sara bit her lip, held back tears of frustration as his eyes flickered from the computer screen to the book to the legal pad he kept scribbling on. That stupid god damned soccer team project. He’d grabbed hold of the concept when it was suggested to him at a party they’d attended with a bunch of wealthy investors, Michigan State Alumni and Detroit based entrepreneurs. Sara wished she had never heard the words “expansion” or “stadium” or “project” in the same sentence.

Fighting her urge to leave him, let him wallow in the stupid thing until he looked up one day and she no longer cared, she gulped at all the memories of their drama. Their stupid dancing around each other for years had alienated their friends and family and nearly ruined them both. They loved each other. This was simply ridiculous. Her hands itched to touch, to caress, to hold.

She walked to him, put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to do something to reconnect. More than the physical, she needed him to grasp how she was dealing with this, to see that she was handling it in her own way. Mostly, though, she just needed him to talk to her, really truly talk—like they used to.

He startled, looked up, then grabbed her hand. His deep blue eyes were wild. The touch of his lips to her skin made her tingle, and gasp with anticipation. He turned his chair around, took her other hand and yanked her down to his lap, slanting his mouth over hers, thrusting his tongue between her lips. Her body acted of its own accord, using well-worn scripts to find release.

She stood and slipped out of the shorts she’d been sleeping in, as tears crowded the space behind her eyes. She bit them back, leaned in to unzip his jeans. They stared at each other as he stood, let her shove them down to the floor. There were so many words between them, so many things left unsaid. But the physical urge that crackled in the room would not be denied. He sat back down and she straddled him, taking him inside her immediately, her body already wet and eager.

“Sara,” He exhaled into her hair his voice taking an edge of need she had forgotten, then threaded his fingers in it, yanked hard bringing a familiar sweet edge of pain to her pleasure. He shoved her T-shirt up to get at her breasts. She rose and fell back onto his shaft, taking what she needed as he sucked her nipple, biting down and making her groan and her entire being contract and pulse around him. She’d stopped breastfeeding as everything in that department had seemingly shut down after the tragedy, her body betraying her by no longer producing milk—one more thing that made her feel inadequate. But, she was never more grateful that she could have this moment with her husband. She cradled his head, fisted his thick hair, wanting to feel him all over her.

“Harder, Jack. Please. I need this.”

He picked her up, still kissing her, never breaking their connection, grunting as they dropped onto the couch. The glorious sensation of his thickness filling and spreading her walls, the perfect way they fit together finally released the tears that had been lurking. She gripped his shoulders, wrapped her legs around him as he pounded into her.

“Sara,” He whispered again, just as her own orgasm flashed through her, making her cry out and hold him tight. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her so hard she frowned.

“What? Jack…. Please talk to me.”

 He gave her one of the longest, slowest, most intimate kisses she could remember, his lips and tongue moving and possessing her, owning her just as she liked. His hips moved in time with the thrusts of his tongue, dragging her from one orgasm straight into the next.

“Yes,” she hissed against his lips, digging her fingers into his ass, finally feeling reconnected to the man she loved.

All the shit that had gone down—the abject horror of a memorial service, the mind-numbing exhaustion of the baby, Katie’s near constant tears over Blake, her scary anger at Rob—everything disappeared as Jack stroked in and out of her. His whispered commands to come sent her right over the edge.

“God,” He groaned deep in his throat, lowering his face to her neck as he tensed in the way she knew well. She put her hand alongside his rough face.

“I love you, Jack, so much, please…oh, yes.” He kissed her then, connecting with her as he came in a now time-worn way she loved. He broke from her lips, slowed, stopped, and slipped out of her. Then he sat, breathing heavy, one hand on her leg. “Thanks.” His voice had dropped back into that noncommittal tone she’d come to dread. Her heart stuttered when she realized he was still tucked into a place not even she could reach. She turned his face to hers and kissed him. Hoping like hell she could bring him back. They’d been through so damned much to get to where they were. Having Jack fade on her was beyond alarming. It was terrifying. He turned his head away, avoiding her lips. “Sorry, I’m the fifteen-second man it seems.”

He stood before she could say anything and walked out of the room just as Brandis, named for Jack’s oldest friend and brother-in-law, started wailing in earnest. Sara let the tears fall. She honestly wondered how she could get through the next twenty-four hour cycle, and then the next one, and the one after that. Her over-tired brain ached. Images, tasks and all the shit they were behind on at work shot through her consciousness. She wandered over to his desk, flicked through the book, slid it aside to look at his meticulously even, architectural handwriting on the yellow paper. A small bit of white stuck out from one side of the notebook. Frowning she pulled it out and stared at it until it registered that it was a phone number with an Oakland County area code, with a familiar name next to it—Heather.

Her face flamed. She shoved the paper back into the notebook when she heard him come back in the room with the squalling infant. The look on his face was blank, as if he were holding someone else’s child. He handed Brandis to her. The automatic, knee-jerk, natural thought that she couldn’t wait to call Blake, to get his take on Jack’s sudden recalcitrance made her gulp. Her tears dropped onto the baby’s face as she tried to get him to take the bottle Jack had handed over before dropping back into his chair, his face a mask of exhaustion.

But she was not going to start this shit again. No way. She took a vow to be with him the rest of her life, and she was not going to be the sort of wife her mother had been once. “Heather?” She nodded towards the stack on his desk. “Really?”

The baby felt so heavy in her arms. Her heart pounded up into her throat. He frowned, and then nodded. “Yeah, uh, that’s the woman who’s assistant to Zeller. You know, the pizza company, Tiger’s baseball guy. I met her um….shit I don’t even remember.” He sat, staring at the computer screen again.

Sara cleared her throat, embarrassed, relieved, letting the awkward silence encompass them.

“I’m not that guy anymore Sara. I thought you realized that.” His voice was flat, but she heard the anger in it. She kept her eyes on their son, smiling when his little fist flailed up and bopped her on the nose. His eyes were giant pools of wicked blue, exactly like his father’s. A shocking amount of hair graced his tiny head, every strand silky coal black. “You can’t suspect every God damn woman I talk to, every phone number that’s handed to me.”

“I don’t actually,” she whispered, still staring at their son as gas bubbles made him grin up at her.

The gaping hole in her life where her brother once lived had never seemed so huge. It echoed with the sound of his voice—she could hear him every day, even though he’d been dead for over a month. She’d managed to move on, or was trying. There was no other option really, with a needy, colicky infant, a demanding job, and her parents who were having a hell of a time coming to terms with Blake’s death. She talked to her mother daily and was getting worried about her breathiness, and the fact that her father said she’d lost a lot of weight.

All that, plus no matter how hard she tried to talk to him, to get his advice, to seek reassurance that she was holding together pretty well, her husband was either focused on Katie, or soccer, sometimes the baby, the house and its myriad projects, or work. But never on her.

“Shit,” she laid the sleeping infant in his bed, turned away from the light at the bottom of his office door to their bedroom where she fell back into an exhausted, fitful slumber for a few hours, only to be woken by the sound of the baby crying again. She groaned, crawled out of bed and heard Jack and Katie making breakfast. His voice was strong and full of humor. She smiled. Maybe she was imagining things after all. She gathered Brandis in her arms and walked down the hall towards the brightly lit kitchen.

“Hi, Mommy!” The girl said brightly, spoon in hand. “Daddy made eggs. Want some?”

She looked at Jack. He raised an eyebrow, then glanced away from her making her quiver with frustration. “Um, no thanks, sweetie.” She made a bottle and sat in the rocking chair, watching their son consume it greedily, his blue eyes locked in on her.

“Sara,” Jack spoke, jarring her from her reverie. “I’ve got to go out of town. Tomorrow. I’ll be gone at least a week.”

She stared at him. The same blank look met her gaze. The pall of the conversation they might have shared, the partnership they could have had over this soccer thing was a thin veil of un-rippable fabric between them. “Fine.” She said, looking back down at the baby who had finished the bottle in record time and now was about to gear up for more crying. When she looked up again, Jack had left the room.

A thunderstorm rolled in from the west. Sara watched the clouds gather from her seat in one of the huge leather chairs facing the wall of windows. She had a clear view of the impending violence. Trees lining the perimeter of their well-kept lawn waved as a sheet of rain hit the house so hard it sounded like hail. A blue flash of lightning imprinted on her retinas, and she smiled at the ensuing loud thunder. She loved storms. The sound of feet in the hall made her turn to accept the trembling form of her daughter in her lap. She ran a hand down Katie’s hair, calmed her, and kept an eye on the yard, loving the pure power in every shaft of light, every clap of sound.