Sin and Redemption

by Cora Reilly

Sometimes I wished we were more than just married on paper. Sometimes I wondered how it would be to fall asleep beside him a...

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t thank me for that.” His harsh voice made me flinch. “Let’s hope we won’t have to do it again.”

I pressed my lips together and began to cry. So many emotions flooded me that it was hard to ...

Relief, sadness, hurt, hope. Maybe this was a new beginning for m...

got up, grabbed my car keys, and walked past Primo without a word. I felt on the brink of something really bad.

“I’ll give Amo a call. Don’t go out like this alone, Max.”

I faced my problems head-on. But this problem… Fuck, what was I doing?

My memories were chasing me. Sara’s soft sobs, the look in her eyes before I’d turned off the lights.

I’d always loved sex—the smell, the taste, the sounds, the sensations, the orgasms. Tonight had been a nightmare, almost as bad as last time.

“Maximus!” someone shouted. My eyes flew open,

spotted Amo over on my right, watching me in concern.

“I called your name twice before you reacted. Your survival s...

I didn’t smile, turned back around, and kept running. Running helped a little bit, but it wasn’t enough. What I real...

“Primo called me, but he didn’t know what was wrong with you.”

“One look at your face tells me all I need to know. Now spill.”

“That’s not completely unexpected, right? She’s someone I always saw as a mom.”

“The problem is that she doesn’t want to use a fertility clinic. She wants to do it the old-fashioned way.”

“And if you have trouble getting it up after the shit show of the past, then nobody would blame you. Pop a pill or two. It’ll get better. Sara’s an attractive woman.”

He held up his hands. “And my cousin.”

“Maybe I should ask her for a divorce. That way, she could start new with a guy who doesn’t remind her of one of the worst days of her life. But I can’t. I just can’t. Even if our marriage is far from good, even if things are hard, I don’t want to give her up.”

“She’s your wife. Of course, you don’t want anyone else to be with her. You’re not a saint. None of us are.”

“Let’s just go kill someone. I need to vent. I need blood.” “I’m sure we can find someone.”

I felt like he resented me for wanting a child. I didn’t like to recall our last sexual encounter. Maybe that was why he was so angry too.

I knew I needed to talk to him and salvage our marriage somehow, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me to take on this battle right now.

His gaze was far away even though he stared straight at the fridge. He wore jeans and a tight T-shirt, his usual work outfit.

“No, it’s nothing.” He froze in his tracks. “Are you pregnant?”

His screen saver was an image of Bacon as a puppy sitting in the snow. Only his black nose and dark eyes stood out.

“Sara, I understand you long for a child, and I want nothing more than for you to be happy, but there’s still so much trauma in your and Maximus’s life. Maybe it would be good if you tried to work on that first. A child won’t make everything better. Raising a child requires strength.

If you and Maximus don’t work on your problems, how will you work together as parents?”

“Maybe next time.” Maximus’s expression remained perfectly controlled, no sign of approval or disapproval.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the situation.”

“Because it means we’ll have to be intimate again.”

“Because I don’t want a repeat performance...

I wished she were pregnant and we could move on.

“You make it sound as if I had a problem with touching you. I have a problem with how things are going, not you.”

“You couldn’t even look at me afterward,” she whispered

“I couldn’t look at you because I felt fucking guilty. Because I felt like a fucking rapist. Fuck, because I was one.”

“You didn’t want to do it.”

“What kind of difference does it make?” I roared, pushing to my feet because ...

“It makes a world of difference, Maximus!”

“We were both victims.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same event. I had to force myself on you.”

“You had to. And I gave you the okay because I knew you didn’t have a choice, just like I didn’t.”

I’d avoided the oak tree for that very reason, to avoid being faced with memories. Like a coward. I hated being one, so I had begun the process of having the tree tattooed into my back. That way, I’d never be able to escape again.

“That because I was so caught up in my trauma, I couldn’t show it that I still wanted it. That I didn’t love it enough because of what happened and that it just left because of that.”

“Nobody would have blamed you if you’d not chosen to keep this pregnancy.”

I’d make Sara a baby even if it cost me the last shreds of my sanity.

I’d make my wife happy, and if a baby was the only way to do it, then she’d get her baby.

Two weeks later, Sara and I shared another sexual encounter that was hardly any better.