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remembering the way Alex had taken her on the mats and then led her into this shower, his hands skimming over her body with so much attention and deliberate care. It had felt completely amazing, being with him. There was a wall between them now, and she understood why, but it hurt all the same. It was hard not to indulge in thoughts of how she would handle the grief differently, or how she would reach out to him rather than shutting him away outside of the bedroom. None of that was appropriate. Boundaries , she whispered to herself. It was his job to handle his grief; it was her job to handle her reaction to him. She couldn’t manage his grief, and if he withdrew more than she was comfortable with, she would talk to him about it. The fact that he was open to her in the bedroom — well, it was something. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave her something to cling to, to hope that his sudden withdrawal had more to do with his grief than what they’d found out.
     
    Because the worry she wasn’t able to let go — she was the woman who had shown him what his mother might be involved in. And if someone had shown her things like that about her own parents? She didn’t know how she would have reacted. She was fairly sure it wouldn’t have been good.
     
    After her shower, she twisted her hair up with a clip, and put on loose pants and a clean blouse. She pulled out her laptop and started to wander through her email. Focusing on the work in front of her gave her something to do and helped her push the negative thoughts out of her mind for now. It was something.
     
    She drafted a series of pitches for her editor, things to work on over the next few days. She emailed Helen to let her know that they were back in the States and to make plans to get coffee. She called her parents and talked with them for a while. She mentioned Alex in passing, but didn’t go into too much detail. She deleted all of the messages from the press about the accident. If they continued to pour in, she’d let a PR person from AEGIS handle the drama. Until then? It was easier to just delete all the voice mail messages in one big batch.
     
    When Alex came home, his expression was dark and angry. Zoey brushed a hand over his cheek, and he spun her around in the entry way, yanking her pants down, ripping her panties, and giving her one quick moment to object before he plundered her body as thoroughly as he ever had. She came twice in rapid succession as he fucked her, her hands splayed against the wall, fingers violently clenching, looking for something to grip, to hold onto. But he didn’t seem able to find what he needed to release there. He withdrew from her and went to turn away in anger and frustration, but she dropped to her knees and took him into her mouth.
     
    He came in moments, his hands tangled in her hair, his salty taste bitter on her tongue.
     
    And then he walked away, zipping up as he went, closing his office door behind him.
     
    She stayed on the floor for just a little while, struggling with the shame and anger and hurt that was almost overwhelming. She avoided him the rest of the evening, until Sophia let them know that dinner was ready. There, he clung to the table, trying to ignore how the chairs had been rearranged to make two places instead of three. The food tasted like sawdust. When they’d gone to bed, he cried and apologized for being so cold in the hallway and ignoring her the rest of the day. She’d fucked him again, like she had the previous morning, tying him down and giving him a place to let go of the howling cyclone of misery that was trying to devour him from the inside out.
     
    And then they slept. And repeated the day, all over again.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    The funeral was its own special kind of hell. Religion was one of the many things that Zoey hadn’t found a reason to bring up to the man she’d moved in with, and while he was planning his sister’s funeral hardly seemed the right moment to start asking