She gaped at his obvious self-serving motive and playfully swatted him on the stomach. “Oh no, Mr. I Ate a Pie in Two Days. I’m not falling for that. Birthday’s over—”
“I don’t like pie anyway,” Sean added. “But for chocolate cake I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Still a choc-a-holic, I see,” Mason teased.
“Still obsessed with pie?”
There was a moment where no one spoke, a split second, perhaps a tad more. Sean was likely remembering the same moment in time that filled Mason’s mind. Soft echoes of laughter colored the memory sepia in his mind. Naked limbs tangled around one another bathed in sweet, sticky smears of chocolate, other confections forming a muddy paste, making their hard bodies slick and delicious. The vision snagged on one specific image of Sean’s gaze hooking his own as their laughter fell away like the weightless snow that had been coming down outside their apartment. He still remembered his exact thought in that moment when Sean stared at him. I will never stop wanting you.
He turned in Sean’s direction and sensed that he was there in his mind too. Thankfully, Libby broke the fleeting trance by cheering, “Finally, someone else who loves chocolate! Tomorrow night I’m going to make lava cakes then!”
Mason shook away the images of his broken past and scoffed. “You have some nerve commenting on my diet. Those lava things you make are way worse than an innocent apple pie!”
“A slice is innocent. An empty pie dish in the sink the morning after it was baked is a trace of a deviant.”
“I’ll show you deviant,” he teased as he leaned down and tickled her belly and quickly kissed her neck.
Liberty squealed and then, just as he turned away, mindful of their audience, her eyes met his and energy surged between them. So potent, he might as well have been punched in the gut. He caught his breath on a near gasp.
If he and Libby had been alone he would have kissed her right then and there and perhaps made love to her in the foyer. Memories of their morning still fresh in his mind. He turned back to Sean and saw the same longing in his eyes.
Sean cleared his throat and the spell was broken. “I’ll see you two in the a.m.”
“Goodnight, Sean,” Libby called as he already started walking away. The rush of guilt that cut through Mason in that moment was something new and not at all pleasant. Guilt was quickly replaced with defensiveness. He had no reason to feel guilty for kissing his wife in his own home. And if Sean was uncomfortable with the way Mason was living his life, well, that was his own damn fault.
* * * *
Liberty climbed into bed just as Mason entered their bedroom after locking up the house. When he began removing his clothing she sat up, a ripple disturbing her tranquil mood.
“What is it?”
“You didn’t hit the dimmer switch,” she reminded him, knowing Mason always turned on the timed dimmer after locking up the house and before coming into bed. It was their routine.
“What if we left the lights on for a while?”
“But…then they’ll be on when we fall asleep. We’ll have to get out of bed to turn them off and then…I just think you…I mean I think it would be best if we did things the way we always do.” She tried not to sound panicked, but why wasn’t he doing what he always did?
He sighed and sat down on the bed. “Talk to me about today, Libby.”
Heat rushed to her face and she looked away from him. “Why?”
“What happened when Sean came here?”
“I told him you couldn’t come to the door.”
“Good girl. Then what?”
“Well, he told me how far he had come and how you two used to be friends in college and that his dad had just passed away on Tuesday and I couldn’t just send him away. I thought, if he were telling me the truth, you would have wanted me to invite him in, but I wasn’t sure so I called you, but you weren’t there. I didn’t know what to do. I only wanted to do what you would have wanted. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“You didn’t disappoint me.” He looked at her with such an understanding about how hard that decision had been for her that her tension immediately eased. He gave her leg a squeeze through the blankets. “You have better instincts then you give yourself credit for, Lib. You would have known if Sean was a stranger lying to you. Try to trust yourself.”
She looked down at her hands and nodded. Mason always promoted her autonomy. It was she who chose to be dependent on his final decisions. It was laughable how much she remained a child. Sometimes she could be so pathetic.