The Hate Vow by Nicole French

Twenty-Eight

Sometime later, after a quick nap, a solid meal of chicken curry and larb gai, plus a second round of “Mr. de Vries Returns to the Upper West Side” (this time involving scarves instead of his tie, plus a riding crop he’d apparently been saving), I found myself lying in bed, watching the flickering lights of the city outside the big bay window as sleep closed in.

I was sated. Worn out. Completely and utterly blissed out on this man’s chest.

Well, not completely. Something was still bothering me.

“Eric?”

The hand toying with my hair paused, then twirled another strand. “Mmm?”

“What was all that about?”

His hand stopped moving. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I loved it. Needed it. More, please and thank you.”

Eric’s chest rumbled with pleasure, and he smiled sleepily up at the ceiling. “I needed that too.” Then he kissed the top of my head. “I think I need you, Jane.”

He traced a finger down the line of my stomach and up between my breasts, cupping one lazily under his palm. I was glad he seemed to like them as they were. There wasn’t much to enjoy, but he appeared to be happy with them.

“What happened tonight?” I asked quietly.

Maybe now that he had gotten his frustration out of his system, he’d actually talk to me. That was the one major issue with Eric. He never talked.

He sighed. “It’s nothing.”

I bit back a sharp retort, propping myself up on his chest to look straight at him. “It’s not nothing. When you left this morning, you were basically a Wham! song. You were walking sunshine. You returned a storm cloud. Something happened.”

His mouth quirked again. “You sound like an A.A. Milne story.”

“I do not.” I whacked him with a pillow, which he parried easily to the side, laughing. The sound warmed the entire room.

“You do. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too, right?”

“Shut up!” I grabbed another pillow and smacked him again with it, but he tossed it away and rolled on top of me.

“Okay,” he said as his mouth found mine. “I will.”

I let him kiss us both breathless once more, but when he started to grind into me in that familiar way again, I pressed a hand on his chest. This wasn’t sex as catharsis anymore. It was sex as evasion. And I wasn’t okay with that.

“Eric,” I said as gently as I could. “Seriously. What happened?”

He sighed, dropped his head onto my shoulder. “It really doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. It matters to me.”

He didn’t reply for a while, and for an infuriating second I thought he might ignore me. But finally, he spoke against my neck: “Do you trust me?”

My hands wove into the short hair at the base of his neck. For some reason, the question sent a weird vibration down my spine.

Love, we seemed to have. We didn’t say it all that much—neither Eric nor I were particularly ooey gooey people. It wasn’t one of those words I wanted to throw around all the time, like when you walked out the door or said good night. No better than a common greeting. I did love him—and that was hard enough to wrap my head around. But trust…I wondered if that part took a little longer to build than a few short months. Especially considering we had both sort of mutually agreed to sweep the past under the rug.

“I’m…getting there,” I said honestly, wincing as I caught the hurt look on his face.

“Really?” he asked. “After all this time?”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to say everything was fine. That the past was in the past, and there was nothing to do about it. But he knew, just as I did, that eventually the bloom would fall off the rose here. Would he still be this devoted, this focused on us then?

Would I?

“I worry,” I forced myself to say.

“About what?”

“About…you. Me. Us. Trying to do this whole ‘for life’ thing. What if…what if it’s not enough? What if a secretary at your office starts to look better than the crazy chick you have at home? What if you pass one of the thousands of models who roam the streets of New York like antelope and realize you could do so much better? What if one day you want another red thong in your bed instead of plain cotton underwear?”

I gestured at the underwear now lying on his floor. Again, Eric jerked, like I’d just hit him in the gut. But he didn’t deny the possibility.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, looking away so he wouldn’t see how much his reticence hurt. “But it’s the truth. It’s what I wonder sometimes.”

He pondered that for a bit, but didn’t stop touching me. I took it as a good sign.

“Okay, how’s this for truth?” He kept his hand clasped in mine while he played with my engagement ring. The black diamond shone bright under the lamplight, an unlikely beacon. “I’m not exactly excited about the idea of your bachelorette party this weekend myself.”

I frowned. “My bachelorette party? Why?”

“Because.” His fingers tiptoed up my arm and started drifting over my lips again—they were, he’d told me, both his favorite part of my body and what aggravated him the most. “You and I used to be cut from the same cloth, weren’t we? What were you doing in Marleigh’s the night we got engaged?”

I avoided his gaze. We both knew what the other was doing that night. Eric had asked me to marry him—a fake proposal, but still a proposal—and not a week later, both of us were cruising for a hookup. Cut from the same cloth indeed.

“Did you…the past five years…” He worried his lips, trying to pick his words carefully. “Was it still like law school?”

We both knew what he meant. The two of us enjoyed reputations for being the most “fun” members of our little crew. Together, yes, but mostly apart. I had a different date almost every weekend. I don’t know how Skylar put up with the merry-go-round of men that traveled through our apartment for those three years. She was a good sport. Half the time she helped me shovel them out the door.

Meanwhile, if I had a dollar for every girl I saw Eric leave with…well, maybe I wouldn’t have had to get married for money. He had a reputation then and now as a genuine lothario. There probably wasn’t a woman under the age of forty in Boston who didn’t know his skills in the bedroom.

And yet, I wasn’t going to apologize for my life or make him apologize either. Men have plenty of sexual partners, and they’re praised for their virility. Women just get called sluts, and that I was not. I was single, young, healthy, and more interested in school than in a relationship. Why couldn’t I have fun on my terms? Just like him?

Eric lay there without a shred of judgment on his face. I waited for it. It never came.

I swallowed. “Well, I mean, I was mostly single. And focused on work. So…yeah. Yeah, it pretty much was the same as back then. Mostly casual. A few short-term relationships, but nothing major. And nothing at all after my dad died.”

“Nothing?”

I swallowed. “Wow, I guess we’re really going down the truth rabbit hole, huh?”

He squeezed my hand. “Tell me.”

I squirmed uneasily, but he wouldn’t let me sneak away. “Well, after he died, the lights kind of went out, if you know what I mean.”

Eric nodded with understanding. “Yeah. Grief can really fuck you up.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Yeah. It can.” Some people want to embrace life when they are close to death, but I just wanted everything to fade away.

If you look for the clouds, pumpkin, they’ll usually show up.

I blinked. I wasn’t hearing Dad’s voice as often these days. It was almost like he was leaving me be, knowing I was finally in a good place.

“And after that…” Eric prodded.

I sighed, finally looking at him again. “Well, that was about the time you showed up at the salon, stalker. And then you were at the bar…it had been almost a year when we…at your apartment.”

That crooked smile emerged. “Really?”

I hid my own grin. Unsuccessfully. “Don’t be too proud of yourself. It would have happened sooner or later. You just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

But Eric just lay back, folding his hands behind his head looked very smug. “I brought you back to life, didn’t I?”

“Stop.”

He turned, eyes flashing with mischief. “You were a ghost until you met me, weren’t you?”

“Shut up!”

Now he full-on laughed, then rolled over to cage me against the bed, framing my face between his forearms.

“I love it,” he said gently. “You brought me back to life too, Jane. When I started at Harvard, I was so fucking angry at this world. But you…shit…I don’t think I would have made it if I hadn’t known you.”

He delivered a sweet kiss and then rolled back to his side of the pillow, as if he knew I had reached my maximum capacity for mushiness.

“And what about since?” I asked, not wanting to be the only one humiliated here.

He blinked as his indiscernible mask resumed its place as he started playing with my hand again. “About the same as you, I guess. Without the nine-month grieving period.”

This was uncomfortable. I had yet to meet a single man who could stand to hear about his girlfriend or significant other’s sexual or romantic past. It was kind of sad, really. Here I was, lying next to a man with whom I was about to share a life. And I wanted it to be a whole life, I realized. I wanted him to know everything there was about me.

“What’s your number?” I asked suddenly.

Eric’s fingers froze over my knuckles. “Ah…”

“I’m serious,” I said, wiggling my hand away. Eric took a firmer hold of my wrist.

“Jane,” he said, looking uneasy. “You don’t really want to know that.”

I scowled. “Don’t tell me what I don’t want to know, Petri dish. Come on, now. I’m curious. How many, ah, specimens have you collected in your lab?”

“Jane.”

His reticence, of course, only made me push harder.

“Thirty?” I asked. “Forty?”

His face remained blank.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” I offered.

At that, the mask cracked. One eyebrow rose. “Really?”

I nodded. “Promise.”

He examined me for a moment, like he wasn’t sure where this was going to go. Then, with a regretful expression, he leaned down and whispered the number in my ear. My eyes popped open.

“That’s it?” I yelled.

He fell onto his back looking embarrassed. “What do you mean, ‘that’s it?’” he asked. “I’ve been told by plenty of people that’s quite a lot.”

“Oh, do you go crowing your number out everywhere, Petri? Should I buy you a jersey so you can show it off around town?”

He just rolled his eyes. “Come on, Jane. You promised. Your number for mine. What is it, hot pants?”

“Hot pants?” I practically screeched. “That’s what Hooters waitresses wear! What kind of nickname is that?”

He looked way too pleased with himself. “If you’re calling me a fucking lab experiment, the least I can do is make fun of your underwear. You like those little underwear shorts—I’m pretty partial to them myself, by the way. I’ll have to replace those ones I tore off you. But now that I know it bugs you, the name’s here to stay, I’m afraid. So, come on, hot pants. Fess up.”

I bit my lip. Now I really didn’t want to tell him. But a deal was a deal, and I wouldn’t back out now.

I bent down and whispered it.

Eric blinked, surprised. “No shit. You almost had me. Down by one, Lefferts. Nice.”

I backed away. “Are you appalled?”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Why would I be appalled? Sort of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But you can’t be ignorant. There’s this little thing called a double-standard in the world, and it’s pretty fucking obvious when you compare men and women’s sex lives.”

Again, he just shrugged, in his fantastically privileged yet beautiful way of disregarding things he didn’t personally find important. “We might have our insecurities, Jane, but I know one thing. I’m the best lay you’ve ever had.”

Eric de Vries.

Cocky bastard.

Body for days.

Best I ever had?

I looked him up and down. Oh hell, yes.

His cocky smirk told me he could see my thoughts plainly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The feeling is definitely mutual, pretty girl.”

I punched him in the shoulder. He just laughed and pulled me close.

“And the bottomfeeder in his Calvins?” he asked, recalling the visitor from that terrible day at my cousin’s apartment in Chicago. “Where is he in your lineup?”

I swallowed. “Eric…”

“Out in the open, Jane. Like you said.”

I stopped wriggling. “Fine. Um…about two-thirds of the way through, I’d guess.”

“You don’t know?”

I elbowed him in the gut. “Would you?”

He chuckled, then pulled me onto his chest, so he could stroke my back meditatively. I thought everything was all right until he spoke again. “You wouldn’t…tomorrow night…you wouldn’t want to get out there again, would you? See what other dirty jeans are left in the city?”

He was trying to sound light-hearted, but fear laced his words. The same fear that often struck mine. Was that what was driving all this delicious possession tonight?

I pushed up so I could look down at him directly. “Eric, you can’t possibly think I would do anything like that now. Do you?”

Of course he does. Just like there is still a part of you that wonders what he’ll be up to this weekend too.

“I didn’t say it was a rational fear.” With one hand, he toyed with a loose black wave that spiraled over my shoulder. “Any more than your fear of a red thong is rational.”

“It is rational—” I started to interrupt, but he just shook his head.

“Jane, it’s irrational because it’s not going to happen, not because I don’t get it. I saw your face when you found that shit. Just like I’m sure you saw mine when I found that jackass in your apartment.” His expression stilled. “I’ll never fucking forget hurting you like that, Jane. Never.”

I swallowed. I remembered his face too. The gut-wrenching combination of surprise, fear, anger, and sorrow when he heard the voice behind me. And then the way he had processed it. Taken it in stride. Stayed, let me explain. And wanted me anyway, in spite of what I’d done.

Eric did always have more grace between the two of us.

“I’m sorry,” I said honestly. I wondered now if I had ever said it. I was ashamed it was even a question.

He pulled me over him so I covered his beautiful body, splayed on his chest, nose to nose. “Me too,” he said. There was no threat, no authority in his voice. Just plain adoration. Love.

That, maybe, I could begin to trust.

“You weren’t my first,” I said quietly as I lay back down on his chest. “But, Eric…I do hope you’ll be my last.”

His broad hands traveled up my spine, spinning locks of hair around his fingers and off again. “Me too, pretty girl. Me too.”