I’d spent the entire weekend trying do it already. The thoughts and feelings that were doing their best to invade my brain were pushed away by any means necessary. I spent a lot of time working out, hiking, doing whatever I could to keep her off my mind no matter how often she popped up. Each time brought up a mixture of excitement, frustration, and guilt. I didn’t know how to handle any of it.

Hundreds of jumping jacks and push-ups and attempts to drown out my thoughts with heavy metal were for nothing. All it did was make me tired, sweaty, and still thinking too much. Her face would pop up when I stared into the distance, and I would shake it off like someone falling asleep at the wheel. The memory of her body wrapped around mine would rear itself in my mind when I was sitting idle, and my cock would harden in my shorts. I would have to adjust my seated position without touching it, lest I let myself fall into that memory.

I worked around the house some, but all that did was bring the guilt on. Guilt and shame of what I had done and what it meant. Or what I thought it could mean. How could I possibly have done something like that with a woman who clearly thought I was awful? And how could I have done it when I was so clearly still not over Monica? I had to find a way to calm myself rather than get more active. Something where I could just let the thoughts flow and come to some kind of conclusion about what I should do about them.

The woods were a good solace for me most of the time. I could take a stroll and think through just about anything. Behind my house were acres and acres of land that was mine, and beyond that, even more acres of unincorporated land that the county owned. There were a few trails through it, and I wandered on a few of them, making sure to avoid the ones Monica and I used to explore all the time. But even miles into a walk, everything that happened with Ally was still bothering me. It finally got to a point where I realized I only had one thing to do: I had to go see Monica.

I went home and packed a lunch. Bringing it with me, I took the short drive to the cemetery and made my way to her plot. It was a gorgeous area, overlooking a hill and with a large black walnut tree between her and the other plots. It was a peaceful place and somewhere I knew she would have loved when she was alive.

Sitting there at her grave, I asked her what to do for over an hour. I explained everything that happened, knowing how she would have chided me for being so silly. We had often talked about how if one of us went before the other, we would want the other to find someone, to be happy again. I often thought about that when I thought of her, but the guilt of being with another woman overrode what I thought were her wishes.

It was no different now that it had happened. I had been with another woman, and the guilt was intense. As much as she might have wanted me to move on, I wasn’t ready yet. I wanted her guidance, even if she couldn’t speak anymore. She couldn’t tell me what she thought. So I waited for a sign of some sort.

The roses I brought for her every month sat propped against her stone, but no answers came. I knew they wouldn’t. There was no answer that would just magically make things better. All I had was a half-baked plan to ignore Ally. Still, at least it was something.

So, when I pulled into the vineyard, I was feeling pretty good about the plan. I was in good spirits when I walked in, nodding at Duncan in the kitchen and making my way further into the building.

I was done with the kitchen, which would make avoiding any awkward situations much easier. My crew could finish up the few odds and ends that needed to be done there and I could focus on the wine room and the tasting room. They were much simpler jobs and ones I was looking forward to, if nothing other than because I genuinely liked the design we were going with.

As I walked into the room, Alex was sitting at a table, his laptop up, a tablet beside it on a stand and his nose buried in his phone. This was not unusual. Alex had always been technologically gifted, and his traveling setup almost always involved more than one screen. For years we made fun of him for it, about how he couldn’t interact with the rest of the real world because he stayed behind a screen. But as he grew up and made a very successful career out of it, the jokes stopped.

Tags: Natasha L. Black Romance
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