Chapter 3. Author's note - after an interesting discussion with one of my fellow Wattpadians, I''ve got a question: what do Jack, Aaron, and Anne look like to you? I know I've provided descriptions for them, but I was wondering how you guys see them! Oh, and dedicated to Parogar. For no reason other than the fact that he's amazing. Go check out his work!

Jack wondered what was keeping Anne. She'd been gone too long for a simple grocery run, and his concern, moving from the delicate state of curiosity to the panicked state of worry, began to nag at him like a persistent ache.

"Come on, Anne, what's taking you so long?" he muttered to himself, getting up and beginning to pace.

He was nervous for some reason. Perhaps it was because her fifteen-minute grocery trip had now taken two hours? He tried to think that was the reason, although some sixth sense of his was tingling. A nasty, premonitory feeling was slowly knotting his stomach and making him nauseous with concern.

Rationally, he knew it was foolish to be worried - Anne, at twenty-eight, was most definitely an adult and could take care of herself. But he was still concerned. He could not help it. He adored that woman with a passion close to madness.

That love was the thing that had driven him to pursue her in the first place. She'd been his patient, his married patient, his married patient who was nearly half his age. She had been a woman off limits and out of bounds to him entirely.

And yet he had loved her. He had known it from the moment he saw her. She had walked into his office and into his life that day three years ago, with her tall and brutish husband, that pathetic, neglectful Aaron. The moment he'd seen her, it was over.

He had fallen in love with her at first sight, an idea that, until that moment, had seemed completely preposterous.

It started seeming less preposterous the moment it happened to him. And it, continued to seem more and more reasonable the longer he loved her. With a gentle smile, he sat back down. He could wait for her. He could wait for her forever.

As it turned out, Jack did not have to wait forever for Anne. After only a few minutes, he heard the front door open. Making his way to the front door, he saw his wife breeze in, bringing with her the scent of cool, winter air and an aura of stately beauty.

But no groceries, he noticed. He frowned. What had she been doing, if not shopping?

"Anne," he said, taking a step forward. He opened his mouth to ask her about the absence of the groceries, but had no time as she sprang forward, still dressed in her coat and scarf, wrapped her arms tightly about his neck  - as though she wanted to throttle him, not embrace him - and kissed him hard on the mouth.

As perturbed as he was by how long she'd been and why she didn't have an groceries with her, Jack was never one to deny a beautiful woman, particularly this beautiful woman, the love of his life, a kiss. And so he drew her close and kissed her back, tracing his hands over her spine.

When she drew back, she took his face in her hands and held it to hers, sighing gently. "I love you so much," she whispered, giving him another kiss, this one briefer but with equal fervour.

"What's gotten into you, sweetheart?" chuckled Jack, nudging his nose against hers.

"I...don't be angry with me," she said in a small voice. "You have to promise me that you won't be angry with me when I tell you."

Jack didn't let his imagination run wild the way it wanted to. He didn't let himself imagine all the possible things that Anne could have done that he would have been angry at her for. He didn't imagine that, for example, she'd just run over Chris, his nephew, or that she'd robbed several banks, or that she'd-

"Jack," she said, using her most persuasive, most charming, most delightfully seductive voice when he said nothing. "Jack, promise me you won't be angry with me."

Jack smiled at her peacefully. This was Anne, after all. He could never be angry with her. "I won't."

"I was at the grocery store," she said. As she said it, she bit her lip in the adorable way she did when she was nervous or agitated.

"Okay," pressed Jack.

"And I ran into an old friend there," she said. She looked directly into his eyes as she said it. And he knew which old friend she had reencountered by the look in her eyes. It was a flighty one, one of nervous volatility.

"Aaron," he said. He meant his tone to be gentle, but the name slipped out from between his clenched teeth like a hiss. 

She nodded. However, the worried crease between her brows told him that that was not the end of the tale. So he pulled her by the hand into the living room and sat her down on the sofa.

"You promised you wouldn't be angry with me," she said, her lovely voice weak with worry.

Jack gave a sound that was closer to the growl of a wolf than anything else. "I'm not angry with you, sweetheart," he said, and the way he stressed the last word gave his tone a menacing air. "Now, spare me no details."

Jack listened, not entirely in surprise, as Anne revealed that she had seen Aaron at the store. According to her, he had looked as though he had been possessed by any number of sadistic demons, the way his mood swung about wildly, and the haunted, crazed look in his eyes.

When Anne recounted, flinching as though afraid her words would hurt Jack, how Aaron had grabbed her by the jaw, Jack was aware of his mouth curving into a snarl. But Anne assured him, her winsome eyes wide, that he had not hurt her.

"At any rate," she said. "It's not as bad as what's happened to him."

"You mean you leaving him?" snapped Jack.

"I guess," she said. Her eyes tightened with pain, and her hands, which had been twisting themselves into knots, now went white-knuckled. "You didn't see what I've done to him, Jack."

Jack sighed and sat down next to Anne. Aaron's pain and anguish concerned him only insofar as they affected Anne. It made him ache to see her pained. "What have you done?" he asked gently, taking her hand.

"It was...astounding. When I went in, everything was exactly the same. Except for all the bottles," she said. She bowed her head, as though ashamed.

"Bottles?" said Jack, his eyebrows raised.

"They were everywhere. I think he's an alcoholic," said Anne meekly. But in those meek little words, he heard enough self-loathing to set his blood boiling with anger at Aaron.

But he made his voice soft for Anne - it would do her no good to hear how jealous he was of Aaron. "And? What do you mean, everything was the same?"

"It was exactly as I left it three years ago," she said. As sorrowful as her voice was, Jack heard strains of a perverse wonder mixed in with the melody of sorrow. "Everything. He still has our wedding pictures up. The furniture is still in the same places. There are still exactly three pieces of kindling in the bucket in front of the fire, as I always used to keep it."

Jack stroked Anne's hands soothingly. "That must have been difficult for you," he said.

"Difficult for me?" she cried. "Who cares about me, Jack? I'm not the heartbroken alcoholic! I have a wonderful life now, a wonderful husband!"

It did Jack's ego good to hear her praise him, as much as he would have been ashamed to admit it. He simply sighed and waited for her to continue, arranging his features into what he hoped was a sympathetic expression as she continued her story.

Apparently, she had taken Aaron up to bed - Jack was torn between a vicious adoration for Anne's gentle caring for a man she was no longer married to and an awful jealousy of Aaron - and tucked him in, and, just before he fell asleep, he-

"He did what?" snarled Jack, leaping to his feet.

Anne's eyes widened even further with pleading. "I'm sorry, Jack, I shouldn't have let him do it, but he was drunk and half-asleep and I think he didn't know what he was doing," she said desperately. "Please don't be angry with m-"

"Like I said," he snapped. "I'm not angry with you. It's Aaron who is going to suffer. I am going to take that man by the throat-"

"No," said Anne, standing. "Jack, there's something else."

Jack stopped. As much as he trusted Anne, as much as he loved her, he felt suspicion roar to life in his chest like some kind of vicious, bloodthirsty monster. What else could Anne have to say about her ex-husband?

"As soon as he'd gone to sleep, I left him a note. I gave him my number," she said, confessing to the act like a murderer on the scaffold confessing his crime. "And I told him to call me if he...needed me."

Jack gave a shout. "Call you? What do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is that if he ever needs help, ever needs to talk to someone, I'll be there for him," she said. "Not as a wife, not as a lover, but as a friend. Someone he knows, someone he can trust."

Anne's naivety did little to soothe Jack's indignant anger. He knew that Aaron still loved Anne, still loved her as much as Jack did - if that were even possible - and that the man was probably prepared to do anything to get her to love him again.

"Anne, he's taking advantage of your-" he began, but Anne cut him off.

"Of my guilt? Maybe he is. But with all I've done to him, don't you think he deserves to do that?"

Jack sighed, a sound that was more like a snarl than a sigh. Anne smiled and, approaching him, she cradled his face in her hands. "Jack, you trust me, right?"

"With my life," he vowed.

"Then trust me now," she said, her smile growing sweeter. "I love you. I don't love him. As much as my track record of fidelity in marriage isn't stellar, you know I won't cheat on you for him. Why would I betray the love of my life?"

Jack couldn't help it; all the misgivings he'd had about Anne's intentions melted away with her words. He was still mistrustful of Aaron, but he knew, looking into Anne's lovely face, that her desires were innocent.

"I know," he said, and he put one arm around her waist and hugged her to him. He saw desire cause her eyes to flash and her cheeks to flush and he smiled at her. He kissed her forehead, and then one of her prettily pink cheeks. "I know. I love you, Anne."

"Mmm," was all she said as she pressed her lips to his.

Feeling her hands rest on her shoulders, Jack allowed her to sit him down on the sofa. For a moment, she tantalized him by pressing her lovely form to his, but then she indulged him in his desires and sat down on his lap.

"Do you know how handsome you are?" she said, her voice honeyed and doting.

"I don't think you've ever told me," said Jack, his teasing sarcasm making Anne's face light up with joy. "Do tell me now."

"I love your every feature," she proclaimed. Jack smiled as dazzlingly as he could. He knew that he was not the most handsome man in the world, as Anne often proclaimed (her love for him made her think that), but he was aware that he possessed a disarming charm and grace. It was why he'd been a ladykiller in his youth and why, up until he met Anne, could still seduce nearly any woman he met.

"Don Juan," she'd accused him when she'd heard him boast about it.

"What?" he'd said. First she'd called him Iago - which she still did occasionally and he could guess why - and now that?

"Don Juan," she'd repeated, and stroked his face. "The libertine. Were you like him? Did you seduce women by the hundreds but love none of them?"

He'd laughed it off, but it had been true in a sense. He had been charming, persuasive, seductive, even, and had had the ability to beguile most women. However, he had rarely used that ability, preferring to love women instead of take advantage of them.

He remembered his talents as he felt Anne's fingers, so delicate and elegant, tracing his features. His voice husky with equal parts love and lust, he leaned forward and growled in her ear:

"Then show me how much you love me."

And she did, slamming his shoulders back into the sofa and kissing him with a ferocity that suggested her passion was equal to his. Their boundless infatuation with each other never ceased to amaze Jack; he wondered nearly every day at how it was possible to love someone so absolutely and with such an undying fervour.

But he didn't care what made that wonderful, miraculous thing possible. He didn't wonder why Anne loved him as much as she did. He simply grasped her by the hips and allowed her to remove his clothing.