Filthy Vows - Alessandra Torre Page 0,16

was good for me too. It hid my acne scars from high school and the bump in the bridge of my nose. He was always better looking than me, and seemed to be getting even more so with age.

“I just can’t believe she’d cheat on him. She was always so…”

“Bitchy?”

I smiled. “So much of a prude. And so superior to everything.” Especially deviant behavior. When Aaron had passed out at his bachelor party and had to be carried home, she had flipped out and called us children, then fired Chelsea and me from bridesmaid duty.

“Well, people change. We’ve changed.”

Yeah, we certainly had. In seven years, how had I changed so much? When had I taken on so much stress? So much insecurity? I thought that I would become more secure as I grew older, but I felt as if I was untethered. Careerless. Childless. Useless. I felt, at rare and isolated moments, that I had made a mistake, in everything. And I saw the same fears in my husband. Maybe that’s why we held such a strong bond. Both of us continually afraid that we weren’t good enough for the other.

“To be honest, I never liked her anyway.” He ran the sponge over the big spoon in a careless motion that would require me to go behind him later.

“I just hate the idea that she’d do that to him.”

He didn’t respond, and my thoughts flitted back to my earlier hypothesis—that unless you experience cheating, it’s too fluid of a concept to really understand. My golden husband had never been cheated on, not by any of his college flings and certainly not by me. Despite my rampant imaginary scenarios, I would never cross that line, not when I knew the emotional pain it delivered. Prior to Jonah cheating on me, I’d been almost cocky. Emotionally indestructible. Fearless in my confidence with relationships and the opposite sex—like Easton still was.

“He’s having her followed, so he can see what happens when she goes out tonight.” He placed a short quick kiss on the back of my neck.

“Have you ever thought about cheating on me?” The question came out unexpectedly and surprised me as much as him.

He flipped off the faucet and turned me around to face him. “No. What made you ask that?”

“I don’t know.” I looped my hands around his neck and looked up at him. “Maybe you’ve had regrets that we got married. Or maybe you’re bored.”

“No.” He slid his wet hands under my shirt, ghosting his fingers over my breasts, bare under one of his baseball tees. “Definitely not bored.”

Was I? The internal question hit me as unexpectedly as the one before it, and I pushed it to the side. I wasn’t sure it was possible to be bored when constantly trying to keep up with everything.

“What’s the closest you ever came to cheating on me?” I moved aside and reached for the bottle of wine that still sat on the counter. Tugging on the cork, I refilled my glass.

He didn’t respond, and I plucked another glass from the cabinet and poured the rest of the bottle in it, then pushed it in front of him. “Come on. I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

That caught his attention, his gaze staying on me as he slowly circled the counter and settled on a stool. Pulling the glass toward him, he picked up the delicate stem and regarded it for a moment before tossing back the golden liquid. “The closest I ever came to cheating on you,” he said slowly.

“Yep.” I rested my elbows on the counter and leaned forward, meeting his eyes.

“You go first,” he said warily.

I wanted to laugh. He should know better than to think this was a trap. I’d never been a conniving sort and blunt honesty had been the bedrock that had built our relationship when I had been too gun-shy to trust another man.

Well, I considered. Blunt, but not complete honesty. After all, Easton had no idea of the fantasies I had, the hundreds of men who I’d envisioned above and in me. Some things, my mother once told me, were better off being kept from your husband. That had been her marriage advice, uttered over a spiked ice tea, right before she shot my father a look that was utterly devoid of affection. I’d always assumed my fantasies about other men fell in that ‘keep from your husband’ category. But maybe this conversation belonged there also.

I tilted back my own glass and took a