sakura
I turned in the bed, pulled the blankets over my head, and whimpered, my eyes still heavy despite the sun flooding in through the sheer curtains. Cozying into a hard chest, I bent my knees and curled into Callan’s body.
Breathing in his scent, I relaxed further into the blankets. I had never woken up in a man’s bed with his arms wrapped tightly around me, with my head on his steady chest, feeling so … content with my life.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“Shh,” I mumbled. “Still sleeping.”
“I wanted to make you breakfast,” he murmured, brushing some hair off my forehead and smiling down at me. I blinked my eyes open. The sunlight glinted against his eyes, making them a sea of hazels and browns. “But I didn’t want to wake you. You looked too peaceful and relaxed.”
“Are you saying that I don’t look peaceful and relaxed anytime else?” I giggled.
“Not at Redwood. You study too much.”
“That’s because you”—I playfully poked him in his chest—“give too much homework.”
“Too much homework?” He chuckled, his chest rising and falling unsteadily. “I barely give you anything, Sakura. Literature is the least of your worries for the semester. You’re already top of the class.”
I curled into the crook of his arm and gazed at his chest, thinking about … this.
About … us.
Whenever we had sex, everything went so quickly. I couldn’t hold myself back, but now … I actually had time to appreciate him. The way his shoulders shook slightly when he chuckled, the dark and graying hairs on his chest, the sound of his voice in the morning.
“Hey,” I said, smiling to myself. “Just because I’m in your bed doesn’t mean you get to go easy on me. I earn all my grades and not because you like the way I ride your dick, Mr. Callan Avery. So, don’t think it’s the other way around.”
Another deep chuckle escaped my lips. Then, suddenly, Callan’s phone buzzed on his bedside table. Instead of answering it, he continued to brush his fingers through my hair and sighed softly to himself.
Buzz after buzz after buzz cut through the room from his phone.
“You should answer that,” I whispered. “Or shut it off.”
He grumbled to himself and reached for his phone, his delicious muscles rippling as he moved. He took one look at his phone and growled. I glanced over his shoulder and spotted her name on the screen, followed by about a hundred messages.
After lying back down, he scrolled through his settings and turned off notifications for her.
But when he jumped back to the messages, I froze at the vile comments. They were vicious.
Unable to stop myself and completely out of line, I snatched the phone from him and sat up in bed. Fury surged through me as I quickly scrolled through the messages from his wife, the insults, the images and videos of her sleeping with other men.
Tears welled up in my eyes, my chest tightening.
Georgina: I hope I get pregnant here. <3
Georgina: Give you someone else’s baby. The baby you always wanted.
Georgina: Fucking prick.
“Callan,” I whispered, voice cracking.
Was this really his wife? The woman who he had been married to for over a decade?
How can … how can he live like this? How can someone be so cruel?
“Why haven’t you … left her?” I whispered, staring at these messages in horror. I tightened my grip around his iPhone until my fingertips turned white. I shook my head and hoped that my angry tears wouldn’t fall. “Callan?”
“It’s complicated,” he said, reaching for his phone.
I scrolled up.
Georgina: You’re fucking terrible.
Georgina: I hate you.
Georgina: You’re the worst husband ever.
Georgina: You can’t even come on a simple vacation with me. This is what you get.
These messages … pictures … videos?!
“Sakura,” he said, taking my phone. “Please, stop reading.”
I released the phone from my death grip and let him take it away from me. As he turned it off and tucked it away in the bedside drawer, I stared at him with tears wavering in my eyes.
Has this been going on for years? Does he … Does he want children at one point, but his wife …
When he turned back to me, he grimaced. “Don’t pity me, Sakura.”
“How can you let her talk to you like that?” I whispered.
I would … never talk to anyone like that. I could never even imagine anyone saying that kind of stuff in real life to another human being. Sure, sometimes, Mom got too high off drugs, but Dad didn’t talk to her like that. He tried to get her help.
When Callan didn’t respond, I sat up.
“That’s not fair,” I said, crawling into his lap and straddling his waist. I pushed some dark hair off his forehead and took his face in my hands, fingers grazing against his stubble. “You deserve better than that. Why haven’t you left her?”
“I already told you that it’s complicated,” he said. “I can’t just leave her.”
“Why … why not?” I whispered, a tear slipping down my cheek. “She’s abusing you.”
“It’s complicated,” he repeated. “But I’m taking care of it. For you.”
While his voice was soft, he ended with an edge. I tensed in his arms and shook my head, knowing that what he meant and what I hoped he meant were two different things altogether. He was taking care of her in ways that I wanted to know nothing of.
So, I didn’t ask.
I couldn’t.
Instead, I gripped on to him tighter and hoped that he wouldn’t get in trouble, that he didn’t get thrown in jail for whatever he planned on doing to her. But deep down inside me, I knew that I wouldn’t feel bad for it even if he was doing this for me.
I just couldn’t lose him.
Callan swiped my tear away with his thumb. “Don’t cry for me.”
While I wanted to stop crying—because I wasn’t even the one being abused—I couldn’t wrap my head around how someone could be so rude, so cruel to their husband. How could someone berate and insult the man she had vowed to love and support forever?
Wanting to stop crying, to be strong for him, I stared into his hazel eyes and asked a question I shouldn’t. Because I couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut around him … at freaking all, it seemed.
“Did you want kids with her?” I whispered.
He stiffened and sat up against the headboard, staring past me and frowning.
My chest tightened, and I curled my fingers into his shoulder. “Do you want kids?”
“I wanted to have children,” he said, looking away from me. “But after spending a couple of years with her—the real her—I’d never have a kid with that bitch. She’d be a terrible mother. Besides, I’m too old for that now.”
A frown tugged at the corner of my lips. He stared at me through eyes that held so much pain. All I wanted to do was take it all away, show him that he … he couldn’t stay with her, that this wasn’t right, that he deserved to be truly happy.
Callan was wrong. It was never too late for anything.