Bare Devotion. Geri Krotow

to me.” Another chink in the armor she’d invisibly knit over her heart. She waved her hand under his gaze. “This isn’t the issue. The issue remains what it was a month ago.”

      “Twenty-three days.”

      “Fine. Twenty-three days ago you hadn’t told me that your former fiancée had not been just a bad breakup. That you had a restraining order against her, that she’d stalked you and the women you’d dated, and she may have had her sights on me!”

      “But she didn’t. I mean, yes she broke her restraining order, but that’s not the issue, Sonja. The issue is that you and I aren’t, haven’t been in forever, communicating. Talking.”

      Sonja’s gut twisted at that one. “The main reason we should never have considered marriage is that you never, ever were completely honest with me. You’ve only told me what you had to in order to keep me pacified, Henry.” And she’d let him pacify her, an issue she was doing her best to dissect.

      You weren’t honest with him, either. She hated her conscience in this moment.

      He didn’t answer and dropped his gaze after several seconds.

      Sonja opened the linen closet and pulled out two towels. “Ugh!” Covered in what looked like a black powder, the once pristine white cotton gave off a telltale stench of post-storm mildew. She dropped the towels into the master bath.

      “Stop, Sonja. We’re going to have to throw it all out, whatever we can’t clean. By the way? The homeowner’s doesn’t begin to cover most of the damage.”

      “Do you think I honestly give a flying fuck about material damages?” As if to agree with her, the baby chose that time to make her hormones jump and her nausea swell.

      “What?” Henry must have seen it in her face.

      She felt hot and sweaty and had about five seconds to make it to the toilet. Sonja slammed the door to the tiny commode room behind her and let the dry heaves come. She’d already tossed her breakfast in the crepe myrtle. And now Henry was witness to her “illness.” Shit.

      * * * *

      Henry heard Sonja throwing up and guilt sucker-punched him. He’d made her so upset that she was puking, for fuck’s sake. Her stomach was strong as an iron drum when it came to spicy Louisiana food, but get Sonja emotionally riled up and it went to her gut.

      He stared at the empty bathroom counter, save for her large cosmetic bag that she’d stuffed to the gills with her beauty stuff. How had what he’d thought was a rock-solid relationship blown to smithereens in one act of poor judgment on his part?

      Henry sank onto the floor, his back against the brass claw-foot tub. Deidre had shown signs of stalking him again, or rather, stalking Sonja, for the past six months. He’d meant to tell Sonja several different times, but he didn’t want to rock the smooth sailing they’d had since they’d moved in together three years ago.

      Even that was a lie. There’d been rough patches that he’d maneuvered by going over-the-top in his adoration of Sonja. Told himself he was distracting her with his charm.

      All he’d been doing was avoiding his own discomfort at how gullible and blind he’d been to Deidre’s manipulative actions. He destroyed Sonja’s trust along with the incredible bond they’d shared from the moment they’d met. While his hopes of a future with her were gone—he’d never trust her again, either, not after the spectacular way she’d dumped him—he didn’t want to leave things so acrimonious between them.

      The door swung open, and Sonja didn’t spare him a glance. At the sink, she threw cold water on her face.

      “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.”

      Her eyes were bright and fierce as she glared at him in the mirror. “I feel fine.”

      “Liar.”

      She ignored him as she looked around the room for a clean towel. Of course there were none. “Hell.”

      “There’s a roll of paper towels under the sink.”

      “They’ll be moldy, too.” She wiped her hands on her skirt and lifted up her makeup bag. “See you at the office.”

      He got to his feet, feeling awkward and unkempt next to her polished finesse. Even in what he knew she considered her worst-fitting suit, Sonja was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.

      “Wait—we aren’t done here, Sonja.”

      The look she threw him was a potent combination of certainty, hate, and sadness. Definitely no regret.

      “I’d say we are, Henry.”

      He watched her take her larger suitcase off the bed and pull it through the door and into the hallway. As the thump thump thump of her dragging it down the steps echoed in the hot, damp house, he couldn’t ignore the weight that pummeled his chest. Desperate for a distraction, he walked back into the bathroom, pacing, opening and closing the vanity drawers. She’d taken all of her stuff. Every last bit.

      Except for the bottle of perfume he gave her last Christmas. Her favorite scent. He couldn’t stop himself from grabbing it and pulling off the cap, holding the sprayer to his nose. As he inhaled, memories flashed across his mind. Sheer torment. Sonja the day he met her in law school, Sonja taking on the most hostile client and winning, Sonja standing up to his racist parents. Sonja turning to him as the sun rose, her hands finding his cock as easily as her mouth. Sonja groaning with pleasure as he feasted on her pussy. Sonja laughing with him as they dragged a Christmas tree into the river house. This house, the house that represented their commitment to each other. Sonja in her wedding dress, bringing tears to his eyes.

      Sonja telling him in the cathedral garden that they’d made a mistake, that marriage to him wasn’t possible for her, not when he’d not been completely honest with her. She hadn’t given him a fucking chance to explain.

      There was nothing to explain. She’d been right—they’d made a mistake.

      Henry lifted the fancy bottle as if it were a grenade and aimed for the large bathtub. Before he let go of it, his arm dropped and he hung his head. If he smashed the bottle, the entire house would smell like Sonja, even after the storm repair and cleanup. He’d never survive if he didn’t start erasing every last memory.

      He carefully placed the bottle in one of the matching hardwood bathroom cupboards and shut the door.

      Chapter 3

      An hour later, Sonja moved slow and easy down Charles Street, her pace matching the weight of the humidity that wrapped around her as only New Orleans in late spring knew how. Jasmine scented her path as the long vines climbed up the storefront buildings, and she caught a whiff of fresh ground coffee from her favorite café. A scent that had called to her like pollen to a bee only weeks earlier. Before different scents affected her stomach, before nausea tainted the edges of every morning. Every afternoon and evening, too, depending on how her hormones wanted to behave.

      The local NOLA scenery soothed her as nothing else could after seeing Henry in their home two hours ago. Their house. Her former home.

      And Deidre, that sorry excuse for a bitch. Sonja wanted to blame her for everything related to the failed wedding. It would be too easy to focus her sorrow and disappointment on a single person. But Deidre was a whole lot of the uglier side of Southern tradition and not a little bit narcissistic, wrapped up into a hot sticky praline. Sonja couldn’t muster anything but disgust toward Deidre, but more at herself. No one else had forced her to run out on her groom. Sure, Deidre had shown up at their wedding ready to win Henry back, and it was as clear as a September sky over Lake Pontchartrain that in Deidre’s universe Henry would drop everything and return to her. People like Deidre didn’t see that they were borderline delusional—it was always all about them. The way Deidre had “popped in” to their—the river house. Stalking Henry, feeling it out to see what she needed to do to convince Henry it had been her all along. Pushing aside Sonja like overgrown Spanish moss. But Deidre probably didn’t even know