“They grounded me, Frankie. I can’t fly anymore.”
She heard the loss in his voice, knew what flying meant to him. “Oh, Rye…”
“One kiss,” he said. “A goodbye, then.”
She would never forget this moment, the way he looked at her, the love that came roaring back into her soul, suffusing her with all the bright emotions she’d lost in his absence: hope, love, passion, need. She whispered his name as he pulled her into his arms. At first, all she noticed were changes—he was so thin, it felt as if she could break his bones with her passion—and beneath the scent of his cologne, she smelled something almost like bleach. Even the way he hugged her was different, kind of one-sided, as if his left arm didn’t quite heel to his command.
In his eyes, she saw the same awakening in him, a reanimation of life. She saw, too, all that he’d been through in captivity, a red scar that cut across his temple in a jagged line, the bags beneath his eyes. The gray in his blond hair that underscored their lost years.
At the first touch of his lips to hers, she knew she was doomed, damned. Whatever it was called, she knew it and didn’t care, couldn’t make herself care.
She had already given up everything for this man, this feeling, and she knew she’d do it again, whatever the cost.
She loved him.
It was that simple, that terrifying.
When he whispered, “Where’s the bedroom?,” she knew she should say, Stop, tell him to come back when he was divorced, but she couldn’t.
He’d brought her back to life.
God help her.
Thirty-One
In love, Frankie learned to lie. It was one of two new constants in her life: lying and loving Rye throughout that long, lazy summer.
She didn’t tell anyone she’d been suspended from nursing, and so she had hours when no one expected to hear from her. She lived frugally, on her savings.
Her life alternated between two worlds—one of passion and the other of guilt. Day after day, she promised herself, No more. No more pills, no more Rye. He was as much a drug as the others.
She swore each day she’d tell him to go away and not come back until he was divorced, but when he showed up at her door, wearing a smile just for her, she was lost, and as good as it felt to lose herself in his arms, the pleasure turned cold when he left her bed. Each day she was reminded of her weakness, her dishonesty, her immorality, her obsession. Over and over and over. At night, when she was alone, she agonized that he was in bed with his wife and she imagined the pain this affair would cause the innocent Joey. But as much as she despised herself, she couldn’t deny him. She was like a starving person who was given two hours a day in a bakery, and in those hours, she came fully, gloriously alive, reveled in her appetite.
“Stay the night this time,” she pleaded at last, hating the plaintive edge to her voice. She meant, Choose me, but she knew he couldn’t do it. He and Melissa were talking to a lawyer; he was looking for his own place, but he couldn’t do anything to upset his custody of Joey. He loved his daughter with abandon.
“You know I can’t,” he said, stroking her bare arm as they lay together in bed.
She couldn’t help looking at the clock. Three P.M. She felt the incipient spark of panic, the sharp sting of regret. Regret that he was leaving, or that she’d let him stay?
“I can’t wait for you to meet Joey. She’ll love you,” he said.
Frankie let herself be soothed by that. “I hope so. And we’ll have children, too, right?”
“Of course. I want a daughter who looks just like you.” He smiled. “Joey wants a brother or sister. She says it constantly.”
“I love you,” she said, rolling toward him. She traced the scars on his shoulder with her lips. Puckered burns covered his chest, created white patches of skin amid the graying blond hair.
She stretched out against his thin body, pressing into him. “I wish I’d been the one writing you letters.”
“Me, too, babe. I care for Missy, but this … you … soon we can stop hiding.”
His hand moved down her bare skin. Need pulled at her, made her move against him, made her breathing speed up.
She rolled onto her back, gave him full access to her body. His kisses awakened the part of her that belonged only to him.
* * *
By summer’s end, Frankie was a knot of nerves; all of the waiting, the hoping, the hiding was tearing her to pieces. She was lying to everyone she knew and she hated it. She’d taken off her Saint Christopher medal and hidden it away, afraid it would burn her skin while she slept.