Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

He needed to have one with his mother, something he’d just told his wife.

But the look on Wyn’s face screamed she wasn’t a fan of this idea.

“Baby,” he murmured.

“She’s not going to change, no matter what you say,” Wyn noted.

“She’s dying,” he stated, point blank.

Wyn’s lips stretched down before she caught herself in the grimace and wiped it clean.

“I can’t leave here without at least making an attempt with her at some kind of…something,” he asserted, not very clearly, but it was the best he had because he didn’t know what he was looking for from his mother, he just knew he had to try. “I also can’t leave here without making it perfectly clear that what occurred this weekend cannot carry on. She’s dying, he’s losing her, she has to get her head out of her ass and make the time they have left something not this.”

“You kind of made that clear earlier, honey,” Wyn noted.

“I did and I didn’t. I was over-emotional, ranting and had just thrown an ice pack. That isn’t going to penetrate. And it’s important that particular message penetrates.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that,” she mumbled.

“I—” he stopped talking when an alert sounded on his phone that he’d never heard before.

Puzzled, he pulled it out and stared in surprise at the notification.

It was from the app for the alarm on the house.

Not his house.

Their house.

The home he shared with Wyn, where she now lived.

He’d never deleted the app from his phone, and she’d clearly never updated the account to have him kicked off.

“What is it?” she asked when he opened the notification.

The back bedroom window sensor had been tripped.

The back bedroom being the master.

Her room.

Their room.

“Does the house alarm still go to the police?” he asked.

“Why?” she asked in return.

Shit, fuck.

They did not need something else to worry about.

He looked to her. “Apparently, I’m still an authorized user on the alarm, baby,” he said, turning the screen of his phone to her.

Her eyes dropped to it and widened just as his phone rang.

It was not a known number, but considering what was happening, he took the call.

“Is this Mr. Remy Gastineau?” the caller asked.

Yep, not only did she not change the account, he was still first point of contact.

“It is,” he confirmed.

“Can you please give me the verbal password for your home alarm?”

Fuck.

“Scrum.”

“Thank you. We have a sensor breach on a back window in your home, Mr. Gastineau, and the code has not been entered to stop the alarm. Is this you, or would you like us to dispatch police?”

“What does ‘sensor breach’ mean?” he asked.

“While the alarm is set, someone has either opened that window, or broken it,” the rep answered.

“We’re out of town. Send the police,” he ordered.

“We’ll see to that immediately, Mr. Gastineau. Please stay available for any calls.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and they rang off.

“Sensor breach?” Wyn asked, moving closer to him.

“She said either someone opened the window, or broke it,” he told her, debating calling his friend Bill on a college football Saturday for something that might be nothing.

“Fabulous,” Wyn mumbled.

“It’ll be okay, she’s sending the police,” he told her, then, thinking about her jewelry, much of which he’d given to her, and he wasn’t a man who skimped on presents for his wife, he said, “Please tell me you put a wall safe in that new closet of yours.”

“Of course I did.”

“And you didn’t leave it open.”

She didn’t stop her eye roll. “Of course I didn’t.”

“And you locked anything valuable in it.”

“Darling,” she drawled, and he knew she was losing patience with his questions, so he felt his lips quirk because she was cute when she got uppity, and Remy definitely could use a dose of her cute and her uppity right now. “I’m not an idiot, but I also have tens of thousands of dollars of purses and shoes on display in that closet, and no…none of those are locked away in a safe.”

His smile died.

“Locked behind a door?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Wyn,” he growled. “Seriously?”

“We have an alarm,” she retorted.

“And we’re out of town for four days, but even if you were at work, that closet should be shut and locked as another line of defense against intruders.”

“If I did that and I came home, as I invariably do, and I went to my fabulous bathroom, which I also do, switch on the light, something I further do, and all of its lush opulence is presented to me in its full glory as a stunning visual of the fruits of my various labors, which it always is, it wouldn’t be if I closed the door to the closet.”

“Do you need that visual more than you need the things that make that visual the visual?” he demanded.

Her face scrunched and she fired back, “What’s the point of having an alarm if it takes away my visual?”