Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Fifty-Three

Fiona

Back in her apartment, bundled up together under the covers, their legs intertwined as she rested her cheek against his bare chest as both of them floated in a postcoital bliss, Fiona let herself pretend. This was their house. They weren’t on a six-date limit. That this was more. It left her with a honey-sweet warmth that made her eyelids heavy and her breathing steady as her lips turned up at the ends. Not even the fact that the fine dusting of hair on Dixon’s chest was tickling her nose could drag her out of that floaty-feeling happy place that felt so good and right and perfect.

Fiona traced a heart above his as he lay there with his eyes closed, his fingers wound in the ends of her hair, and built up her courage until she could ask the question she’d been holding on to since what felt like forever. “Tell me about your wife.”

He tensed beneath her, the breath hitching in his chest.

“It’s a boring story,” he said, his tone too neutral to be believable. “You don’t want to know.”

The sharp sting of his rejection, the way he blocked her out completely, made her flinch back and left a strip of unoccupied space between them as narrow as a sunbeam and as wide as the harbor. She rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling without really seeing it. She shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t her business. She was just a fuck buddy to him.

“Nicole was the kind of person you couldn’t help but notice,” Dixon said, reaching across the empty air to intertwine his fingers with hers. “She was smart, funny. When she walked into a room, everyone flocked to her. She was one of those people who when you talked to her, she acted as if you mattered, as if she was really listening and utterly fascinated.”

A better human would have been glad that the man she cared about had found a person like that to love—someone who checked off every one of the items on the totally awesome checklist. Fiona realized at that moment that she was not a better human. She was the shitty kind of human who was jealous of a dead woman. It curled its fingers around her lungs and squeezed tight until it was hard to breathe.

“She sounds amazing,” she said through gritted teeth.

Dixon laughed, a cold, angry sound that sent a shiver down Fiona’s spine. She rolled onto her side so she faced him. He was looking up at the ceiling, his jaw squared and body rigid in an obvious effort to keep his emotions in check. It made her heart ache for him. God, he must have loved Nicole to still be feeling this intense level of visceral ache for her loss two years later. All Fiona had been thinking about was her own self, and he’d still been drowning in sorrow.

Maybe all those jerks picked you for a reason. Maybe they chose you because you had so much in common.

“It was all a lie. Everything with her was a lie.” He released her hand, not moving away from her but seeming to fold into himself. “I didn’t find out just how much she’d lied about herself, our relationship, anything until after she’d died. It was all there in the police report, the witness statements, and the call records because she’d been on her phone texting her lover at the time of the accident.” He sucked in a ragged breath as he flexed and fisted his hands. “It happened when she was on the way home from seeing him. She’d been driving too fast for the rainy conditions and had lost control. Maybe she thought I was getting suspicious—I wasn’t; I had been too stupid to see the truth right in front of me.” He scoffed, shaking his head ruefully. “She’d been cheating on me since before we were married, according to the PI I then hired to get the full story after Nicole had died. By then, she was already sainted by everyone who said she was such a beautiful soul who’d tragically died too early. I never told my family. None of them knows the truth about what a gullible loser I was to have missed all the lies. Instead, I promised myself it would never let it happen again. Ever.”

Jesus.

He’d been bearing all of that on his own. The weight of it would have caused most men to crumble, but not Dixon. But she’d seen him with his cousins, heard about his relationship with his mom. He didn’t have to shoulder it on his own.

“Why didn’t you tell your family?” she asked as she closed the distance between them, needing to give him the physical sensation of not being alone.

“What would it change?” he asked, resigned. “Nothing.”

“I’m so sorry.” For finding out about the infidelity that way, for losing his wife, for the bone-deep hurt he still had, and for the way he’d internalized it until it had eaten away at him. God, she wanted to wrap him up and protect him—not because he couldn’t take care of himself but because it was all too clear he didn’t trust that other people would be willing to do it for him when it was needed. He expected the lies.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “No one will ever fool me like that again.”

Because there wasn’t anything she could say to that, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, drawing him into a full-body hug as they lay there under the covers. Heartbeat by heartbeat, the tension seeped out of him until it was gone and his breathing was steady and slow. She snuck a peek up at his face. His eyes were closed, and the tight lines around his mouth had smoothed out in sleep.

Guilt gnawed away at her insides, a low, persistent ache that was only going to get worse. She hadn’t set out to fool Dixon, just to maneuver things so her nana got her shot. That’s why she’d made him owing her a favor part of the agreement. She had to come clean, let him know that her favor was for Nana to get a meeting—one he definitely seemed to already want to take. He’d understand. The Dixon Beckett she knew, the one snoring softly in her bed right now, would understand she hadn’t mean’t to fall in love with him when she’d answered that ad, that this hadn’t all been some big plan to hurt him like Nicole had. She had to believe that. It had to be the truth because the consequences of it not being were too heartbreaking to consider. Because she’d fallen in love, and there was no point in denying it.

Not to herself.

Not to him.

She had to tell him everything.