Temptation Read Online Free Page B

time?’
    ‘Because I was hoping you might come to your senses . . . ’ She broke off again, clearly trying to keep her emotions in check. This time I didn’t reach for her.
    ‘I even gave you a deadline,’ she said. ‘Six months. Which, like a fool, I extended to seven, then to eight. Then, around a week ago, I could see you had decided to leave . . . ’
    ‘I hadn’t reached that decision,’ I lied.
    ‘Bullshit. It was written all over you . . . in neon lights. Well, I decided to make the decision for you. So, get out. Now.’
    She stood up. So did I.
    ‘Lucy, please. Let’s try to . . . ’
    ‘What? Pretend the last eight months didn’t happen?’
    ‘How about Caitlin?’
    ‘My, my, you’re finally thinking about your daughter . . . ’
    ‘I want to talk to her.’
    ‘Fine – you can come back tomorrow . . . ’
    I was going to argue my case for staying the night on the sofa, and trying to discuss everything in the saner light of day. But I knew she wouldn’t listen. Anyway, this was what I wanted. Well, wasn’t it?
    I picked up my suitcase. I said, ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘I don’t accept apologies from shits,’ Lucy said and stormed upstairs.
    I sat in the car for ten minutes, immobile, wondering what I should do next. Suddenly, I found myself on my feet, racing back to my front door, and pounding my fist against it, yelling my wife’s name. After a moment, I heard her voice behind the door.
    ‘Go away, David.’
    ‘Give me a chance to –’
    ‘What? Tell me more lies?’
    ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake . . . ’
    ‘Too bad. You should have thought about that months ago.’
    ‘I’m just asking for the opportunity –’
    ‘There is nothing more to say.’
    ‘Lucy . . . ’
    ‘We’re done here.’
    I dug out my house keys. But as I tried putting the first one into the lock, I heard Lucy throw the inside bolt.
    ‘Don’t think about trying to get back in here, David. It’s over. Just leave. Now.’
    I must have spent the next five minutes thumping the door again, pleading my case, begging her to take me back. But I knew that she was no longer interested in hearing what I had to say. Part of me was absolutely terrified at this realization – my little family, destroyed by my own vanity, my new-found success. Yet another part of me understood why I had travelled down this destructive path. I also knew what would happen if the door suddenly opened now and Lucy beckoned me inside: I would be returning to a life without edge. And I remembered something a writer friend told me after he left his wife for another woman. ‘Of course the marriage had a few problems – but none that were so overwhelming. Of course there was a bit of ennui – but that’s also par for the course after twelve years of togetherness. Fundamentally, there was nothing that wrong between us. So why did I go? Because a little voice inside my head kept asking me one simple question:
is this everything life is going to be?
’
    But this recollection was superseded by a voice bellowing inside my head:
I can’t do this
. More than that, I thought: you’re so conforming to male cliché. And you’re also upending everything that is important in your life for a headlong dash into the unknown. So I fished out my cellphone and desperately punched in my home number. When Lucy answered, I said, ‘Darling, I’ll do anything . . . ’
    ‘Anything?’
    ‘Yes, anything you ask.’
    ‘Then fuck off and die.’
    The line went dead. I glanced back at the house. All thelights downstairs were off. I took a deep steadying breath, then walked to my car and got inside. I dug out my cellphone and stared at it, knowing if I made the call I was about to make I would be crossing the frontier marked ‘No Way Back’.
    I made the call. Sally answered. I told her that I had finally done what she’d been asking me to do: I had told my wife it was over. Though she asked all the touchy-feely questions about how