Lips of an Angel

And the sight of that... fuck.

Wisps of reddish-brown hair framed her face, loose from the ponytail she'd put her hair in. The corners of lips were turned down, but as she looked at me, she curled her bottom lip between her teeth. And her eyes were blue, so fucking blue, and when they were filled with tears they were so clear, and so deep, and so vulnerable. Those tears escaped, snaking down her cheeks, dripping onto her collarbone and glistening like diamonds on her skin.

She wasn't the same woman I'd married. Of course she wasn't. I wasn't the same man she'd married. We'd grown together, changed together, and I'd done this to her because... why?

Once upon a time, she'd been worth upending my entire life. She'd been worth leaving another woman I loved. She'd been worth pissing off my dad and risking my future. She'd been worth everything to me, and now I was ready to throw her aside, and for what?

For Monica Halliday? For a married woman who was nothing more than a good fuck?

Losing Liz meant losing everything, and I couldn't think of anything worse in the entire fucking world because the second I looked her into her eyes, I fell in love with her all over again.

"I don't want a divorce," I said.

Her face crumpled. "You don't want a divorce. You want to fuck Monica Halliday but you don't want a divorce."

I didn't.

I didn't want it to be over.

I didn't want another marriage to end this way.

I begged. I pleaded. I promised. I swore up and down I'd do whatever it took, whatever she wanted, whatever I could to keep her as my wife.

She told me she needed some time to think about it, which was the best I could really hope for, all things considered.

I packed a suitcase and rented a motel room outside of town where there was less chance of someone we knew seeing me. That was as much for myself as it was for Liz; she'd be mortified if someone caught sight of her shell-shocked husband booking a room for one at a cheap motel.

I wasn't there for long. I expected it to be a few days or maybe weeks; I didn't expect her to call me the next morning just after she sent Ramona to school.

"Liz," I answered, trying to cover the desperate hope in my voice.

She didn't say hello. "If I take you back, I need three things."

No more cheating. Obviously. I promised without a second thought.

Marriage counselling. Thankfully. I didn't even hesitate before making that promise.

"And I want another baby," she said.

The world froze. I sat in that motel room, my mouth open, my arms numb from the sudden shock of her statement.

"Anything," I forced myself to croak. "I'll do anything, Liz."

Anything.

Even if giving her that anything was no different than signing her fucking death warrant.

**

Liz had no idea she was my second wife.

She'd never known. I'd never told her. My parents had begrudgingly agreed to never mention my first wife, and I told all my friends that hearing about Kristina would upset Liz, so not to bring her up when she was around.

Never marry the other woman, my dad had said.

He had no problem with me fucking her, but God forbid I fuck her because I loved her.

Liz had no idea she'd been the other woman, once upon a time, and that was one of two secrets I'd ever kept from her.

Well, three, technically. I hadn't told her about Monica so I guess that was a secret, too.

But that night, during that thunderstorm, after I'd walked away from a woman who wanted me and proceeded to nearly kill my wife, there were only two secrets Liz didn't know.

And that was about to change.

I was shaken as I left Mallory's. Part of me--specifically, the part of me that was my cock--was screaming at me to go back, to let that ethereal woman with red hair and big eyes and perky breasts comfort me as I comforted her. The rest of me was shakily proud that I'd resisted, was certain I'd done the right thing, was sure it had been worth giving up that perfect body to return home to my wife. That part of me was lecturing my cock sternly as I drove, telling it to calm the fuck down and reminding it that Mallory was years younger than me, even if it didn't seem that way, and more importantly, that I needed to focus on the road since I was driving through my second torrential downpour of the day.

And then, from the cupholder of my car, my phone screen lit up.

I glanced down at it, then grabbed it when I saw the screen. The metaphorical weight of a thousand missed calls from my wife began to bear down on my chest. Gritting my teeth, I glanced at the most recent message, which was the only onenot from Liz.

I'm sorry I misread the situation, the text read. No name saved in my phone, but it could only be one person.Please forgive me. And please... if you could find a way to not mention it to Jeremy... I'm sorry to ask. I know I'm horrible. I won't argue that I was wrong to do what I did. But you were right about what he does. Please, Scott.

My anger flared, not at her but at him. Her fucking jackass husband was hitting her and I'd left her there.

With Mallory's message still in front of me, I had one eye on the road and one hand on the steering wheel, which is why when I noticed Ramona's car parked at the end of the driveway instead of in her usual spot, I was too distracted to question why the garage door that had definitely been closed when I left was now open. No, instead, I let muscle memory guide me forward without question, and it wasn't until Liz's body slammed against her car that I realized she'd been standing in the darkened garage.

A thousand pictures rushed through my mind, each one more disturbing than the last. Liz with a crushed leg. Liz flattened beneath my truck. Liz with blood dripping down her face. Liz unconscious with a crack in her skull. I couldn't stop the onslaught of images, couldn't stop the crash of panic and concern and terror as I bolted out of my truck and around to where she was.

"Liz!" I exclaimed.

She looked up at me, her eyes wide and her face pale. I stopped in my tracks when I realized she was standing, and she was conscious, and that there wasn't a scratch on her.

I hadn't hit her.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I gasped without thinking.

She recoiled slightly, almost insultingly, and her voice shook as she spoke. "I... I was going to look for Ramona."

For Ramona.

For our daughter, who had moved her car to the end of the driveway so she didn't have to have her mother peering over her shoulder while she charged her Nintendo.

I shook my head slowly, my mind catching up with me as my heartbeat began to return to normal. I'd almost run over my wife because she was so fucking neurotic about our daughter that she'd pried the overhead door open so she could go out in a thunderstorm to find her.

That wasn't fucking normal, was it?

"So you freaked out about where our adult daughter was." I took a steadying breath, trying to keep calm. "If you would've just waited--"

"Waited?" she snapped, her face twisting as she glared at me. "I tried calling you multiple times."

"I was out helping half the town warm up their bottles and run their sump pumps and open their fucking garage doors," I said evenly. "Like you wanted me to, remember?"

"I asked you to help Mallory," she said coldly. "You chose to stay out and help everyone else."

If it wasn't for Mallory, things might have ended there.

I might have dropped it.

I might have shut my mouth, and gone inside, and gone to bed so I could start another day in my miserable little life.

But it wasn't fair, was it? It wasn't fair for my wife to give me shit for doing the thing she asked me to do. It wasn't fair for her to lose her fucking mind because our daughter moved her car. It wasn't fucking fair that I did a nice thing, a good thing, that I helped half the town out and took care of Mallory and her baby when they needed help, only to have Liz get on my case about it.

After she fucking told me to do it.

If it wasn't for Mallory reminding me that I was still a decent person, that even though I fucked things up, I didn't deserve to be treated like that, we might not have fought that night.

"I can't win with you, can I?" I said bluntly. "You want me to go out and help people. Then when I do, it takes too long and--

"Don't put words in my mouth," she spat. "You didn't answer your phone, so I did the next best thing I could. I never said--"

"You were thinking it and you know it," I replied.

"I was worried!" Her voice was shrill enough that I winced, the anger and paranoia on her face making it seem painfully warped. "You and Ramona were both out and it was storming and neither of you even bothered answering your phones. All I knew was you were going to make one more stop at Mallory St. John's and that it apparently takes three times as long as any of your other stops to heat a bottle for her baby to go to bed."

I stared at her, my lips parted as the weight of her insinuations filled the garage. Outside, the rain pounded on the cement driveway, thunder roaring and rumbling as we stood facing each other in the center of our garage.

Despite the chaos outside, something almost like peace washed over me. Something almost inevitable, something I should have seen coming, something that flowed from the part of me that had just snapped.

How long was I going to pay for what I'd done to her?

How long was she going to promise to forgive me, only to never, ever fucking do it?

How long was I going to be her goddamn servant, dutifully obeying her every word, doing everything she asked until I resented the fact that she'd taken me back in the first place?

It was never going to be enough.

"What are you trying to say, Liz?" I asked, my voice low.

"Nothing," she said, glaring at me.

"Doesn't sound like nothing."

"I don't want to fight with you."

I almost laughed. "Little late for that, isn't it?"

She folded her arms, her eyes glimmering dangerously. "What do you want me to say?"

"What you're thinking," I said. "Ask me the question I know you're dying to ask. Just fucking say it, Liz."

The words hung there, unspoken but almost corporeal in the air between us. She stared at me defiantly, her bottom lip jutted out in a caricature of a pout and a mockery of the lips I'd loved for so long.

That woman wasn't my angel anymore.

"Why were you with Mallory so long, Scott?" she finally said.

Lightning flashed and the tension in the air split as something broke inside me.

"For fuck's sake!" I slammed a fist against my truck as I turned away from her. "How many times are you going to throw this in my face? It's been ten fucking years, Liz. Ten years and I haven't so much as put a goddamn toe out of line, and yet any time I don't pick up the phone as soon as you call or get stuck in traffic or spend a little too long taking a goddamn shit, you lose your mind."

"You cheated on me! It's hard not to wonder if you'd do it again."

"I fucking told you I wouldn't." I turned back to her, anger surging through my body with every beat of my heart. "I fucking said I'd do anything and I have. I've done everything you've ever asked me to do. But you never intended to forgive me, did you?"

"How dare you?" she spat. "I have forgiven you! You know that! But it takes time to--"

"--to what?" I threw my hands up. "To give up having someone who will bend to your every whim?"

"To learn how to live with someone who hurt you like that," she replied. "You'll never know what it's like because I'd never--"

"Of course," I said. "Because you're better than me, right? That's what this is all about?"

"Will you let me speak, or is that too much to ask from you?"

I glared at her, but kept my mouth shut as she launched into the same fucking story for the thousandth time.

"I watched you fuck a woman who was different from me in every way," she said. "Everything about her made me question why you were with me. We looked nothing alike; was it because she was prettier? Did she do things in bed that I wouldn't do? I don't know what that would have been because you know damn well I would have done almost anything with you but--"

"--but you wouldn't." I couldn't keep quiet any longer. "You changed, Liz."

She rolled her eyes. "I grew up, you mean? I acted like a goddamn adult?"

"That's not what I mean and you know it." I looked at her, sure she could see the pain on my face. "You stopped being yourself. You turned into this... this..." I gestured at her. "And you refuse to even acknowledge it, let alone get help."

"Get help?" She frowned. "Help for what?"

"You're gonna make me say it?" I asked.

"Say what?"

I almost cried with frustration. "Liz, you're not well. You... I'm not a fucking doctor, I don't know if it's depression or anxiety or fucking OCD or what but you... y-you've needed help for a long time. Everyone can see it. You act like... like, how do you not see how you act? And every goddamn time I try to bring it up you... you..."

I trailed off as she stared at me, her jaw hanging open.

"I'm not crazy," she finally said.

"I didn't say--"

"No, you didn't." She started to laugh. "Just apparently you think I've got a mental illness because I... because why? Because of how I act? How the fuck do I act, Scott?"

"Paranoid," I said bluntly. "Obsessively worried. You barely even smile anymore and when you do, it's so fake I don't even know why you bother. But you have this inherent need to be perfect and when things don't go your way, you lose your mind. I mean, it's so bad that you're trying to fucking gaslight me into thinking you're--"

"I'm trying to gaslight you?" she said incredulously. "You're trying to tell me you think I'm mentally ill! When have I ever--"

"You know damn well that the way you act is beyond--"

"This is how you're going to derail the conversation this time, is it? Instead of finally telling me why you felt the need to fuck Monica in our bed--"

"Because she wasn't you!" I roared, and she froze with the words still falling from her lips. "Because she was different from you in every fucking way. Because you weren't--you aren't--the same person I married, Liz. I fucked her because she reminded me of how you used to be."

I probably couldn't have said anything more hurtful.

I mean, I recognize that.

There wasn't much I could say to come back from a statement like that. Liz might have watched me fuck another woman, but I watched every haunting thought she'd ever had crash down on her as I finally told her why I'd wanted Monica.

I'd never come out and said it during counselling. I'd said what I was supposed to, all the things that would show Liz I was trying and I was dedicated to her and I wanted to do better. But I'd never told her why it was Monica, of all people, that I'd wanted.

The fight was vicious. It didn't matter that I'd done everything she asked for. It didn't matter that it had been her choice to take me back. It didn't matter that I'd done everything I could to care for her and support her and be the perfect husband she demanded. I was never, ever going to be able to make up for what I'd done, and she'd known that from the moment she'd walked in on me with my dick in Monica Halliday.

And I could have handled it better. I could have been gracious. I could have told her I was done trying to gain her forgiveness and her trust. I could have left then, left without her knowing just how much of a piece of shit I was, left without hurting her as badly as I did.

But I was pissed. And I wasn't thinking. And I'd already shown her what a fucking monster I was, so what was one more thing?

So before she screamed at me to get out and go fuck Mallory St. John like she was sure I wanted to, I told her that I'd promised her another baby and then had a vasectomy so I didn't have to go through with it.

**

She would tell anyone who listened that she had a fairytale pregnancy.

"Not a single day of morning sickness!" she would say. "And I just felt so good all the time. I just loved being pregnant!"

Which was true. She didn't have morning sickness, she had puking-her-guts-out-round-the-clock sickness. She felt great all the time because I would work long hours at the office and then come home to wait on her hand and foot. She loved being pregnant because she was the center of attention.

But it was okay, because I loved her, and it made her smile, and that was better than angels smiling down on me.

Then she gave birth.

She was so excited to be a mom. And I was excited to be a dad. I just didn't get to enjoy it.

She refused to get help. At first, we thought it was just normal. Having a baby takes a lot out of someone and then you're both immediately sleep-deprived and her life is a never-ending cycle of eating, sleeping, breastfeeding, and diaper changing. So for the first couple of weeks, we thought she was just adjusting to having a new little life in her hands.

But when a month went by and she was still missing her smile, I knew something was wrong.

"I love how concerned you are," she'd say at first.

"I'm fine. Being a new mom is hard. It'll get better once I have some sleep."

"What do you mean, you think I need help? You think I can't do it by myself?"

"There isn't anything WRONG with me, Scott!"

"I am PERFECTLY fine."

I begged her to talk to someone. I pleaded with her. I told her that sometimes it just happened, that some women just felt that way and that there was help. But she twisted all of that. To her, asking for help was admitting failure, and the fact that I'd even suggest she was failing as a mom... well. It didn't matter how much I tried to explain, she was devastated. No matter how many times I tried to explain how scared I was, how certain I was that I'd wake up one day and she would have plummeted over the edge of reason, she wouldn't get help.

The never-ending cycle started to include urging her to breastfeed and making sure she ate properly and holding her as she sobbed into my chest uncontrollably for no discernable reason except that she needed help that I couldn't give and she wouldn't take.

I'd never felt more alone in my life.

But we got through it, and I woke up one day to see her casually breastfeeding in the kitchen, sunlight streaming through the windows as coffee brewed and bacon sat covered in the pan to keep warm. There was a glass of orange juice in front of her as she held our daughter, and as I entered the room, she looked up.

"Morning, Scott," she said, and then she smiled, and like an absolute fucking fool, I thought the clouds had parted.

Slowly, things got better. They didn't go back to normal, but they got better. Sort of. She never got the help I thought she needed, so I never knew for certain, but I had a feeling the way she hovered over Ramona like the personification of an overprotective bubble was because of her guilt. She didn't bond with Ramona the way she wanted to in those early days, so she tried to make up for it. And the more she tried to make up for it, the more neurotic she got.

But it was manageable. It was okay. And it wasn't until Ramona was nearly a year old that she brought it up again.

"Maybe we should try for another."

We were in the front hall of our house. She was sitting on the table we had there, her legs spread, her pussy glistening. It was just before Ramona's first birthday party; the party was starting not even an hour later, and Ramona had been napping, and Liz's ass looked so fucking good in the sundress she was wearing that I couldn't help myself.