“Goddammit!”
Colin threw up his hands as he stared at his computer screen.
The entire monitor had gone blue.
His eyes bulged.
“What the hell just happened?”
He had been in the middle of a chapter, just wrapping up what was to be his masterpiece, the one that would finally put him and his family in the black.
The one that would finally get Ryanne off his back.
And now this.
“What did you say, daddy?” Colby asked from the other room.
“Nothing,” Colin replied. “Just keep watching your cartoons.”
Colin tried jamming CTRL-ALT-DEL, but nothing happened. Eventually he held his finger down on the power button.
He counted to three in his head and then turned the computer back on. It took longer than usual to start up, and when an image finally appeared on screen, he was surprised when the Windows logo and the words “Welcome to your new computer” floated by.
“What the fuck?”
Colin jammed the “Next” button in the right-hand corner and the image flicked to another welcome screen, one that asked him to name his computer.
His heart was pounding in his chest now.
“This can’t be happening.”
He pressed ESC a half-dozen times, but an error message popped up, stating that he had to enter a time zone.
It can’t all be gone… it can’t… the hard drive couldn’t have been completely erased. That’s impossible.
He turned the computer off and on a second time, but was met again with the Welcome to Windows screen.
Colin could feel his chest tightening, his breath coming in bursts.
I was… I was nearly done with the series, let alone the book. It can’t be gone… it can’t! Not after all the work I’ve put into it!
Sweat started to bead on his forehead, and Colin felt his limbs go numb. He tried to stand, but feared that he might collapse to the Parquet floor and remained seated.
The front door suddenly opened, and Ryanne burst through. She too was sweating, despite the cold air that she brought in with her from outside.
Wearing a purple, low cut top and tight black workout pants, she stormed into the entrance, scowling at the girls’ shoes that were strewn across the floor. She kicked them to one side and then pulled the yoga mat from beneath an arm and then tossed that to the ground.
She looked up, the glower still etched on her lips.
“What’s your problem?”
Colin’s face, which he assumed was as white as the snow outside, went blank. He barely recognized the woman before him.
She looked the same—same long brown hair, pulled up into a ponytail, same striking eyes—but there was something different deep down. Ryanne had taken their money problems to a whole other level.
Colin felt bile rising in his throat as the image of the landlord, his back to him, the gray hair on his shoulders standing up like dryer lint, flooded his mind.
“M—m—my computer,” Colin stammered. “It just broke.”
Ryanne stormed over to him, and up close he realized that while she smelled strongly like sweat, there was something else underlying the funk. Something muskier.
“Did you try restarting it?” she asked.
“Of course I did.”
Ryanne leaned over and held down the power button anyway. When she pressed it a second, the Welcome screen appeared.
“See? It’s like a brand-new computer?”
Ryanne shrugged and leaned away from the table.
“You lose any work?”
Colin gaped.
“Did I lose any work? Seriously? I lost everything! Everything was on there. All of my books.”
Ryanne shrugged again, and Colin felt his blood pressure reaching dangerous levels.
“Should have backed it up. I told you to back it up.”
“Thanks, Ryanne. Thanks for the fucking tip. I should have backed things up, but I didn’t. And now it’s all gone.”
To make things worse, Colin would be damned if he didn’t detect a hint of pleasure in his wife’s voice.
Nonplussed, Ryanne turned her back to Colin and then made her way into the other room to where the girls were sitting watching TV.
“Turn this crap off. I want to watch the news.”
Neither girl looked up.
“Colby! Juliette! I said, turn this off!”
“Ryanne,” Colin said almost absently. “I need to get my files back. I have a book to publish.”
Ryanne’s posture stiffened, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she reached down and swatted Colby in the back of the head.
“Ow!” Colby cried. “Why’d you do that?”
“Answer me next time I speak to you!”
Colin’s legs finally felt strong enough to stand, and he did.
“Ryanne, leave them alone,” he ordered. “They haven’t eaten yet. I’ve been trying to get my computer to work.”
Ryanne spun around, eyes blazing.
“You want your computer fixed? Huh? You want me to get it fixed?”
Colin recoiled from the unexpected anger in his wife’s face and voice.
“Yeah, I want—”
She smiled.
“Oh, I can get it fixed; Gary can fix it. He’s good with computers.”
And there it was again, the image of the man who had just had sex with his wife, his back to him, pulling his white underwear up to his waist.
He thought he was going to be sick.
“Well? You want me to get him to fix it or what?” Ryanne demanded, her smile growing.
Colin hated her in that moment. He hated her, and he wanted to hurt her.
Badly.
Instead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that she had planned this whole thing.
Either way, he was trapped, and Ryanne knew it.
He opened his eyes, and realized that his wife looked watery.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Please get it fixed.”