was a sexy smile. “You have a choice. Eternal gratitude or blow job.”
His eyes ignited. “I think you already know the answer.”
I did. I stroked him, just the way he liked it, light squeeze, slow and measured. My man liked to be wined, dined, and seduced. Lowering my mouth, I took a lick at the answer.
From the intake of breath and grip on my hair, I knew I’d guessed correctly.
CHAPTER 6
Not My Kind of Movie—Kara
White jasmine, my favorite scent, filled the air. Candles, all white, from large, fat pillars to small, round tea lights covered the kitchen counters and living room table. The candles, no longer solid, were a waxy soup surrounding nearly extinguished wicks.
Date night. “Ahh!” I smacked my forehead. The heady fragrance weighed down my guilty conscience like solid gold bricks.
Yanking my phone from my purse, I tapped the screen to check the time, but the phone was off. It was off because I’d powered it off. The study group had a no cell phone rule, and as the new kid on the block, I had to follow the rules.
Claudia, Eduardo, and Martin had been studying together for months, and they only let me join because my mentor had asked. But I should’ve just silenced my phone. None of them were married and on their spouse’s shit list because they’d been neglectful. The other night, I’d woken up Darren as I muttered mountain ranges between Sonoma and Napa. Sad thing, I was sleeping when this happened. Darren shook me awake and told me to chill the hell out.
Sanity was slipping away, and I feared if I didn’t pass this the exam time around, I would turn into Gollum and wine would become “my precious.”
My mind wasn’t the only thing slipping away. Something had changed between me and Darren. He was no longer supportive and often complained when I went through my flash cards while in bed. This was the fifth or sixth time I’d flaked on him. For five months, I’d been working and studying, tasting and spitting nonstop. And in the process, I’d ignored Darren. There was a long, wide, tall invisible wall, and I was pretty sure if I kept at this, I’d never be able to scale it. This wasn’t about five months of regret; this was about three years. I had convinced him, and in the process, myself, that this time around would be different. I wouldn’t become this obsessed monster that didn’t have the time to talk.
I looked around downstairs. Darren wasn’t here.
No, he was here, either in our room or in the basement. His car was in the garage. Based on the sounds coming from upstairs, I made an educated guess. It was time to face the music. Dropping my heavy purse, leaden with notes and a half-empty bottle of wine that I needed to dissect—not now, obviously—I walked the green mile upstairs and took a sharp right to our room.
Darren sat in bed, his back against the headboard, Nintendo 3D-whatever in hand. The light was off, and he didn’t move when I opened the door. The light from the screen and from the computer monitor wedged in the corner of our room illuminated his face. The playful sounds from the Super Mario game didn’t detract from the heaviness in the atmosphere.
I turned on the light and leaned against the wall. He squinted his eyes a bit but still focused on the game. This was bad, really bad. Darren was a lot of things, but he was rarely frustrated or angry with me.
“Darren, I’m so sorry about tonight. I promise I—”
“Don’t promise,” he whispered. Finally, his brown eyes settled on me.
Licking my lips, I thought of something I could do to fix this mistake. Maybe I could cancel tomorrow’s study session and we could reschedule. “I can cancel tomorrow’s study group. We can do date night tomorrow?”
“No.”
“No?”
He paused the game. Silence flooded the room as his angry gaze burned my skin. “No. I hired a sushi chef to come over tonight. You didn’t answer, so I told him not to come. If you’re hungry, you can eat the rest of the pizza I warmed in the oven.”
I didn’t like this feeling. I was hot all over, like I was wearing a fur-trimmed jacket while drinking an enormous glass of Pinot Noir.
Tears pressed against my eyes, but I blinked them back. Tears wouldn’t help. I needed to fix this, fix us. But I didn’t know how. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll