Making It Last - A Novella (Camelot Series) by Ruthie Knox Read Free Book Online

slide of worry.
    He unpacked the rosary of his fears, moving from one bead to the next and back around to the beginning in a pointless litany. Amber. Clark. Anthony. Jacob. Patrick. The mortgage. Thecompany. His argument with Janet.
    He wondered what his wife was doing. If she was asleep. If she’d had a good day.
    At lunchtime, he’d sent her an updated itinerary, and she’d texted him.
    Tx
.
    In the dark, by himself, he couldn’t pretend not to hate that reply, or to feel anything generous about the reprieve he’d offered her. Yes, she deserved a few days away from taking care of him and the children.
    He didn’t care. He wanted her home.
    He wanted her here, with him, where he could smell her and touch her, spoon around her and keep his mind on her, with her. He’d learned a long time ago that the key to sleep was to fill himself up with Amber, and in the empty bed he got hard thinking of all the things he wanted to do to her. How he would grip her hips if she were here, lick right up the middle of her pussy. Make her moan and push at his head.
Yes, Tony. Oh, don’t. Don’t stop. Don’t
.
    Cupping his dick in his palm, he thought,
Maybe I’ll sleep if I just …
but it only made him angry to hear his hand working himself over, and he gave it up, disgusted.
    He thought of the taste of his wife and tried to remember the last time they’d had sex. If she’d made any noise at all.
    He put a rerun of
Friday Night Lights
on. Turned it off and pressed his face into the pillow and wished he had a button so he could turn his head off.
    Eventually, he must have slept, because he woke suddenly to the knowledge of someone standing beside the bed. Clark.
    “You okay, buddy?”
    Clark didn’t answer.
    Tony remembered that he wasn’t speaking.
    He sat up and reached for his water glass. This could take some time. There had been nights when Clark was a toddler that he’d come to their room, padding on silent feet, and stand there until they figured out what he needed.
    Did your Pull-Ups leak? Did your blankets come off? Do you need a song? A story? Was it a bad dream? Tell us what you need, baby
.
    Clark didn’t like to do that. He liked for them to know.
    He punished them for not knowing by making them guess.
    Tony swung his legs over the side of the bed and checked the clock. Three-fifteen. Up for the day, then, and he’d only slept about an hour.
    This is what it will be like if she doesn’t come back
.
    Night after night like this
.
    This is what it will be like forever
.
    His throat hurt, so he drank the water.
    “You want to sit?”
    Clark sat.
    Tony tried to think what to ask his son, what to say. He wasn’t at the top of his game. That death-knell kept echoing in his head.
    This is what it will be like
.
    The dark was so
dark
without her.
    Clark whispered, “Are you and Mom getting a divorce?”
    The question landed in Tony’s lap, and he held the softness of it in his hands, trying to figure out how to shape the right answer.
    No
, he could say. The answer that would allow Clark, at least, to sleep.
    No, what gave you that idea? Of course not. Never
.
    But he tried not to make promises to his children that he couldn’t keep. He’d already promised Jake that Amber was coming home.
    She was. He knew she would.
    He just didn’t know if she would
stay
home.
    You don’t get it
, Janet had said.
    But he did. He
did
get it.
    Ten years of marriage, thirteen years together, three boys who needed them every day, every night—and it all came down to this decision he had to make.
    A decision that, now that he stared straight at it, wasn’t really a decision at all.
    Janet was right. He was losing Amber. And faced with his worst fear, it didn’t matter what he did. It only mattered that he do something different, because none of the things he was doing now were working.
    If the house was filling with water—if Amber was in it—well, it didn’t signify a thing how furiously he paced the deck, did it? It