“We can talk whenever you want. I’ll be here at my brother’s for another hour or so, and then I’ll be home.”
“I’m sorry for calling you like this and being so emotional.”
“Don’t ever be sorry for calling me. If you need to talk, I want you talking to me,” he states. “And it’s okay that you’re feeling emotional—you’re human.”
“Thanks for listening to me.”
After we hang up, I run inside and pick up dinner before heading back home. The weight I felt earlier is no longer there. I got my Alec fix, and when I return home, Landon and I sit down at the dining table and eat our dinner. We speak briefly about our day and then resume our meal in silence. I begin to think that if it were Alec sitting across from me, our food would probably go cold because we wouldn’t be able to stop talking. Landon and I used to be that way. We could talk for hours on end, but somewhere along the way, we’ve stopped talking.
“Remember when we used to stay up all night talking on the phone?” I ask between bites.
“Mmm hmm.” He nods as he chews his food.
“I miss talking to you.” My words catch his attention, and after he takes a swallow, he says, “What do you mean? We talk all the time.”
“I mean talk about something other than kids and work.”
“Tor, that’s our life right now. If we aren’t consumed with the kids, then we’re consumed with our jobs. There’s very little time left in between.”
I set my fork down and look over to all the buckets of apples that are sitting on the large kitchen island. I know Landon is going to wash them and create a whole menu on how he plans on using them, but I take this as an opportunity.
“Can I help you with whatever you’re planning on doing with the apples?”
“Really?” His eyes light in surprise because this is the first year I’ve offered to help him. “But you hate to cook.”
“Well, it’s about time I try something new then. And maybe it will give us something to talk about,” I tell him with a wink, but it feels like a farce.
As we sit here and eat the rest of our dinner in silence, my mind drifts back to the early years and how it used to be. I blindly thought we’d never change, that we’d never lose the spark, that we’d never run out of things to say, and that we’d never be able to keep our hands off each other. I miss the newness and the excitement that comes along with it, and I wish I knew how to get it back.
I smile nervously as I look into his dark blue eyes, but his lips don’t resemble mine because his nerves don’t taunt him like mine do. He’s spent the past ten minutes or so trying to convince me to move the computer back so he can see all of me, which is now completely naked, but I’m much too modest to expose my body to him—a body that wears the marks of bearing two children.
“Let me see you, Victoria,” he says as he looks intently at me through the screen of my laptop.
Biting my lip, I shake my head with a coy, “No.”
“Why are you afraid to show me your body?”
I cover my face with my hands and laugh nervously.
“Look at me.”
Dropping my hands, I tilt my head over to my laptop, which sits on the bed next to my face. Alec picks up his computer and sets it on a desk or nightstand, angling it to focus on the bed. I can’t look away as my skin prickles in excitement when I see his fully naked body walk over and sit down on his bed with his back reclining against the leather headboard.
Every inch of his body is mine to look at now that we are video chatting. His lightly tanned skin is smooth over his long athletic cuts of muscle. He doesn’t look into the camera when he takes his one hand and grips it firmly around the base of his erection. He stares at himself as he pulls his hand up around the tip and slides it down. Heavy breaths roll through my body as I slide my hands over my breasts while I take in the images of him pleasuring himself.
His head turns toward me and looks at me straight on. “You like watching me touch