Page 12 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

For a moment, Veronica considered it, but then she imagined how they’d react if she asked to google their friends. “No. I’m an adult and perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” She stood, hands on the table. “Now, if you want to discuss actual logistics of staying in touch and all that, I’m happy to do so, but otherwise, I need to get back to packing.”

Veronica had just made her second cup of coffee the next morning when a knock sounded at her door. She glanced around automatically to see if one of the kids had forgotten something, but she didn’t see anything out of place. It was too early for solicitors.Maybe a neighbor,she thought.

She opened the door a crack. It was Spence standing there, looking as smooth and handsome as always; honestly, he was almost a caricature of a handsome professor—his blond hair going gray but still wavy, the high cheekbones her children had inherited, the full-cut mouth. He wore a tweed jacket over jeans without an ounce of irony.

He turned when she swung the door wide. “Veronica! Good morning!”

She kept her hand on the doorknob. “What’s up, Spence?” But she knew. It wasn’t the first time.

“Can we chat for a few minutes?”

She folded her arms. “About?”

“The kids told me you’re going on a long trip.”

“Mmm. I was going to text you today.”

“Can’t we just sit down for a few minutes? Talk?”

“I’m not changing my mind about the alimony,” she said.

He raised his hands, palms facing her. “I know. The kids wanted me to talk to you about India.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Seriously?”

“I just have to say I did,” he said with a half grin. That disarming boyish expression that had always worked.

Nor did it fail now. She knew what she should do—send him away and get back to her morning. “I’d rather not,” she said. “There’s not really anything to talk about.”

“We are still coparents,” he said. “We should discuss anything that impacts the kids.”

He ran a hand through his hair, touched his chin. An answering rustle of awareness moved over her shoulders. “Fine, come in.” She left the door open and walked into the kitchen, reaching to get a cup out of the cupboard, automatically pouring coffee for him. Black coffee, stringent and bitter.

Before she could turn, he came up behind her. Veronica did not move as he swept the hair off her neck and bent in to press a kissto her nape, his lips brushing the small hair there in a way he knew aroused her.

“Spence,” she protested. But weakly. She missed sex. Missed his body, even if the man himself had lost appeal.

That body pressed against her lightly, invitation rather than aggression. His mouth moved to her ear, and she softened backward, opening to his hands pushing under her top.

It had started only a couple of months into the separation, not long after she moved out. He came to her in the dark cold one night, weeping and sorrowful, and she’d been moved to open her arms. Her legs.

And then he came back, sporadically. Not every week, but often—sometimes during the day, sometimes late.

She thought the episodes meant that they would get back together.

And then there’d been the mess of Veronica’s arrest. The sex stopped.

For a while.

Now Spence moved against her, sparking desire, his hands familiar with every inch of her. When he lifted his hands to her breasts, she knew she should stop him, a married man with a pregnant wife.

But she didn’t. In some way, it felt like he still belonged to her. When he tugged the hem of her top, she lifted her arms and let him take it off. He unbuttoned his jeans, and she shimmied out of her pj bottoms, and they had sex right there on the counter, the same sudden, intense sex that had overtaken them thousands of times since the first night of their meeting, when they’d had sex in a rose garden off-campus beneath a full moon.

When they were clinging to each other, sweaty, she said quietly, “I’m still not going to sign anything.”

“That’s not what this is,” he said in his coaxing voice, low and persuasive. “I just thought about you leaving, and it made me ... hot.”

“Mmm.” She lingered a few more seconds, then decoupled and picked up her pajamas from the floor, aware that the sun was striking her still-naked body in ways that were probably unflattering. “I have a lot to do. You need to go.”