Chill Factor

He urged her again to eat something, but she said she wasn’t hungry, and he said he wasn’t hungry either.

He’d offered her first use of the bathroom. While she was in there, he’d dragged the mattress off the bed and into the living room. She’d chided him for not waiting on her to help him, and he’d said she had no business struggling with a mattress when the exertion could bring on an asthma attack. She’d reminded him that he had a brain concussion and shouldn’t be exerting himself either. But it was done, so the argument ended there.

By the time he came out of the bathroom, she was huddled beneath her share of the blankets. He switched off the lights and stretched out on one of the sofas. He asked if she was warm enough and offered her one of his blankets, but she declined it, saying she was fine, thanks.

He was restless. It took him a while to settle. She asked him if his head was hurting, and he said it wasn’t too bad. She asked if he wanted her to check it for him, apply more antiseptic and new bandage strips, and he said no thanks, he had checked it while he was in the bathroom. She wondered how he’d managed to see the back of his head when there was only one mirror, but she didn’t pursue it.

He mentioned that although he was bruised as hell, he hadn’t noticed any signs of internal bleeding, and she’d responded with an inane understatement like “That’s good.” His unintelligible grunt of agreement had signaled an end to their dialogue.

It took her at least an hour to fall asleep, and she was fairly certain that he was still awake when she finally drifted off. During that time between lights out and when she’d fallen asleep, she’d lain stiff and silent and . . . what? Expectant?

After the kiss, the tension between them had been thick enough to cut with a knife. Their conversation became stilted. They avoided making eye contact. They were overly polite toward one another.

Ignoring the kiss had made it all the more meaningful. If they’d joked about it, said something like “Whew, at least that’s out of the way. Now that our curiosity has been satisfied, we can relax and get on with the business of surviving,” the kiss would have been more easily dismissed.

Instead, they’d pretended it hadn’t happened. Neither knew how the other felt about it. Consequently, because each was afraid of bungling, of doing or saying something that would upset a tenuous balance, it went unacknowledged.

And yet, after all their clumsy parrying and phony indifference to the kiss, she halfway expected him to mutter something like “This is bullshit,” leave the sofa, and join her on the mattress beneath the blankets. Because it hadn’t been a mere kiss. It had been a prelude.

“I’m not that nice,” he’d said.

A heartbeat later he was holding her face between his strong hands, which she had been admiring all evening, and pressing his mouth upon hers. He hadn’t hesitated or asked permission. Apologetic or tentative? Not in the least. From the moment their lips touched, his were hungry and demanding.

He flipped open her coat and reached inside. His arms went around her, and dipping his knees slightly, he drew her up and into him. He splayed his hand over the small of her back and held her flush against him in a way that said, without equivocation, I want you.

A warm, fluid tide of desire spread through her belly and thighs. It had felt great to experience again that rush of sensation that no potable or drug could replicate. There was no other buzz like it, nothing to compare with the intoxicating tingle of sexual excitement.

It had been years. Certainly not since Amy had died, when neither she nor Dutch had had the emotional resources to make good sex. They’d tried, but it became so difficult to pretend enthusiasm for it, she hadn’t even attempted to fake orgasms.

Her lack of response was a further blow to his self-esteem, which was already foundering. He’d sought to restore his ego by having a series of affairs. Those she could almost forgive. He’d gone to other women for what she was no longer able to give.

What she couldn’t forgive were the affairs he’d had before Amy was even conceived.

It had taken her a long time to understand why Dutch had slept with other women during those early years of the marriage, when their sex life was still so active and good. But she had come to realize that he required constant reassurance. In bed, certainly. Even more so out of it. She also came to realize how exhausting it was to provide that reassurance on a nonstop basis. No amount of bolstering was ever sufficient.

They had met at a black-tie fund-raising event for the Atlanta PD’s favorite charity. Riding a wave of recent publicity for solving a multiple homicide case, Dutch was the department’s poster boy and had been asked to speak at the banquet.

At the podium, he was handsome, charming, and eloquent. He was a dazzling package: former college football star turned crime-solving hero. His speech had prompted the glitterati in attendance to be generous with their contributions and also had prompted Lilly to approach him afterward and introduce herself. By the end of the evening, they’d made a dinner date.

Within six months they were married, and for a year life couldn’t have been better. They both worked hard in pursuit of their careers, but they also played hard and loved hard. They bought the cabin and retreated to it on weekends; sometimes they never left the bedroom.

During those times, he’d brought his self-confidence into their bed. It showed in the way he made love. He was a sensitive and generous partner, an ardent and considerate lover, a supportive husband.

Then the quarrels began, arising out of his resentment of her earning capacity, which far exceeded his. She argued that it didn’t matter who made the most money, that he’d chosen a public service career, where the toughest jobs went underpaid and mostly unappreciated.

She was speaking the truth. He heard only rationalizations for his perceived failure. He feared he would never reach the same level of achievement in the police department that she would at the magazine.

Over time his obsession with failure became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Simultaneously, Lilly’s star was rising. Her success continued to chip away at his pride. He sought to repair it with women who regarded him as the dashing hero he wanted desperately to be.

Each time Lilly confronted him with his cheating, he expressed deep remorse, claimed his affairs were nothing more than meaningless flings. But they weren’t meaningless to Lilly, who eventually threatened to leave him. Dutch declared that if she left him he would die, swore to her that he would remain faithful, told her he loved her, and begged her to forgive him. She did—because she was pregnant with Amy.

The promise of a child reinforced the marriage. But only until Amy was born. During Lilly’s postpartum months, Dutch began seeing a policewoman. When Lilly accused him of what she knew for fact, he denied it and blamed her suspicion on fatigue, depression, lactation, and unstable hormones. His ridicule had offended her more than his transparent lies.

In the midst of this marital battleground, Amy created a neutral zone in which they could coexist. She generated enough love to make things seem almost normal. Their shared joy over the child helped them forget past disagreements. They avoided the issues that caused friction. They weren’t exactly happy, but they were stable.

Then Amy died. The weakened underpinnings of the marriage rapidly crumpled under the weight of their grief. Their relationship became increasingly bad until Lilly didn’t think it could get any worse.

And then it did.