Falling for Her Read online

  Falling For Her

  Margaux Fox

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  1

  If I had known in the beginning what I know now, would I have made the same choices?

  I’m a police officer standing in the woods under cover of darkness, burying a body, hoping that this damp earthy smell will hide everything, all the crimes, all the lies. Mud on my hands. Blood on my hands. Hoping that in this case, justice will not be done.

  I always would have listed honesty and integrity as my two top qualities, top scoring on my police interviews, quickly promoted to Detective Sergeant. Always a morally driven officer, fiercely loyal to the job.

  A devoted, steadfast wife always trying to do good.

  I am Detective Sergeant Jen Towers.

  DS Jen Towers. Nottinghamshire Police Officer.

  In Sherwood Forest burying a body.

  Honesty and integrity.

  Where are they now?

  2

  Being a police officer was everything I had ever wanted. Doing the right thing was important to me. Helping people was important to me. I had this dumb fantasy that being a police officer would mean catching the bad guys, getting them off the street, making the world a safer place. But it doesn’t. Not really.

  I was naive and fresh faced when I joined at eighteen. Now, twelve years in, I often wonder what the point is. Long hours, little appreciation and the satisfaction of actual ‘justice’ is rare. Just having moved from Rape to Drug Squad, I was so used to criminals serving little or no time, then getting out and getting straight back into it.

  The police force is supposed to be equal opportunities now, but it still isn’t. I’ve seen male officers of questionable intelligence and ability promoted before outstanding female officers and I kept ending up having to work on operations run by these idiots.

  I was busy on Operation Phoenix in August 2018. Operation Phoenix was an investigation into the huge drug problem in the city and the criminal at the centre of it all- Daniel Lorenzo. Lorenzo was suspected of numerous crimes but he had a huge team around him and he was as slippery as he was charming. We had known for years his huge illegal substances business in the city had enabled him to fund organised crime but nobody had managed to get the evidence we needed to convict him of anything significant. Lorenzo always said the police were useless. And we were, we were impotent. He was doing exactly as he wanted regardless of the law and getting away with it. Daniel Lorenzo was laughing at us.

  I was thirty years old and I had become numb to everything in my world but hadn’t even realised it. My husband Simon was someone I was growing more and more distant from. He was an accountant at a big firm in the city. He used to run every morning before work. He has always been good looking and financially stable and years ago these were qualities I thought would make a good husband. I used to think having a husband was important, a measure of success. I thought being a police officer and being married were what I wanted in life. Weren’t they?

  We had been together 5 years and no longer had anything to say to one another. Many a long evening spent existing in the same house. Sometimes he felt like a stranger to me. Sharing a bed, his hot body and lean muscles next to me, the void between us getting gradually bigger. We had a lovely house on the outskirts of the city. A desirable area close to a couple of nice bars that we had once thought we might go to, but never did.

  We didn’t have children, which I was glad of in the end. I’m not sure I’m a maternal person really, and I never really wanted to push that upon my hypothetical children the way my un-maternal mother did to me. There was a time that we tried, perhaps half heartedly, to create new life. That’s what you do when you get married right? But it never happened for us.

  I didn’t realise what was missing. I’m not sure I realised anything was missing. That’s just the average person’s life at thirty right? Hating your job, beginning to hate your spouse? I looked at Simon sometimes across the sofa, typing fervently on his laptop, concentration across his handsome features and I wondered what I was doing there. It took a complete stranger to breathe life back into me and little did I know that she was to start a ball rolling that would rock the very foundations that my life was built upon.

  Her name was Lyra.

  I went to the gym after a long day on Operation Phoenix as usual and that was the first time I saw her. Lifting weights. She was the kind of woman that people look at. Men thinking they are looking discreetly at the beautiful lines of her body but I could see the hunger in their eyes. Women looking with envy, knowing that however many hours they spend training they will never look like her. Tall, dark ponytail swinging, athletic, with her bronzed muscles working hard. A fire burned in her blue eyes and it was that intensity that dazzled me. People see women like her. They don’t see me.

  Which is why I was so surprised when she saw me. She looked at me as though looking into my soul and I had to look away to escape. Our gym work clashing as we continued an awkward dance through the weights section as the only two women in there. I loaded the bar for bench press and re-tied my messy bun higher so it wouldn’t press on the the bench when I lay down. I looked in the big mirrors as I did this, I saw myself and I saw her. I wished in that moment that I just wasn’t so ordinary. Sweaty. Red. I go red when I train. I don’t know why I cared. I was straight wasn’t I? Mostly. Perhaps curious. Perhaps there had been moments in my life where I had been curious, where I might have tried sex with a woman if it had been on offer. But it never had. So there I was, straight, married and thirty years old and intensely attracted to this woman.

  The rough iron of the bar in my hands was a reassuring normality. A deep breath in and out as I pushed its weight up away from my body, repeating the action, getting stronger.

  I finished my set and sat up. And there she was, long lean muscles in all their shimmering glory.

  “Hi,” she said, her smile lighting the room. “I’m Lyra. Do you want a hand?”

  If it was possible to go redder and stutter, I did.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I wanted something. I was still unsure what it was. But she seemed somehow magical to me, even then, and I wanted to be around her.

  We finished our session together. I watched her body move and her effort as she lifted. People look at Lyra. I looked at Lyra. We put weights away, we wiped down benches. We went to the changing rooms to shower and I had such a weird feeling thinking about her naked in the neighbouring cubicle.

  Jesus.

  What was I doing?

  I sighed and tipped my head back allowing the steaming water to rush over my face and down my body in a futile attempt to drown my derailed thoughts.

  “Jen, can I borrow your shampoo?” Lyra asked.

  I passed the shampoo bottle blindly under the thin cubicle wall separating us and as our soapy hands touched electricity ran through me. I got out of the shower and dried and dressed quickly. I felt so uncomfortable with these unfamiliar feelings.

  We hadn’t really spoken much but she was so familiar straight away. So friendly and warm. I sat on the changing room bench gazing vacantly anywhere except at her and mindlessly running a brush through my tangled mousey mane.

  She came up behind me wearing a black bra and tight jeans left unbuttoned at the top, her taut stomach and full breasts madly seductive.

  “Do you want to go for a drink with me sometime?” Lyra asked so casually.

  No.

  No.<
br />
  No. Absolutely not. I’m straight and I’m married.

  The word yes spilled from my lips. Yes Lyra.

  Was it a date? Did she just want to be friends? Who was she?

  I had a million questions I kept to myself as I gave her my number.

  Yes Lyra.

  3

  Back at home the whole situation felt surreal. Simon was home and had made dinner. I felt otherly. Which isn’t even a word. I felt like I had secrets that I couldn’t tell him and I knew he would never ask. I felt different. Like a lesbian perhaps? I had no idea. We sat across the kitchen table from one another, cutting, chewing, swallowing. Fork to plate and then to mouth. The sound of the cutlery against crockery loud amongst the silences. Conversation polite and safe in its brevity.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I responded. “I had another surveillance shift on Daniel Lorenzo. He went to a couple of meetings but only with contacts we already know about. We are running this surveillance really covertly, I don’t think he knows we are tailing him yet. So fingers crossed we will actually see something useful soon. A new contact or a new location. Anything to tell us where the drugs are coming in from or where they are being stored.”

  Oh and darling, I think I might be a lesbian. I’m not totally sure but I met a really hot woman and she asked me out and I can’t stop thinking about her. (Obviously I didn’t actually say this bit.)

  He responded with a story about his own day. Some office drama that I just didn’t care about. And I looked at him as he spoke and ate, his handsome face looking plain to me now, and I thought what on earth am I doing here? How did my life end up like this? People live in marriages like this for 60 years sometimes. Live. Or survive. They get through one day, and then the next. They keep on breathing. Somehow they are still alive. But they aren’t truly living. I am not truly living.

  But I felt guilty for this man who promised to love me forever. In sickness and in health. For richer, for poorer. For better, for worse. Until death us do part. And I made the same promises myself. Foolishly perhaps. Forever is a long time. How can we possibly know that we will love someone forever. What we really mean is, I love you now. And that should be enough.

  Guilty for what? Something I had done? Agreeing to meet a woman for a drink? Or guilty perhaps for the thoughts running through my head? My sexuality that was suddenly in turmoil. My desires that had taken a life of their own.

  We slept in our bed together as usual. Our regular marriage in a regular bed in a regular house on a regular street. I lay awake, my head racing with thoughts in the darkness. Tomorrow night was Friday. I would meet her then.

  Lies.

  I would tell lies to Simon and he would believe me.

  I was nervous as I went to meet her.

  I thought a hundred times of cancelling but my fingers couldn’t compose the text.

  I was a lamb walking willingly into the lion’s den.

  There she was at the bar, radiant in the warm light. She didn’t ask what I wanted to drink, she had chosen for me. An act I would have found presumptuous and misogynistic in a male date, I found disarmingly seductive in a female. I sipped a cocktail that was sharp, sweet and potent on my tongue and it wouldn’t have surprised me if the cocktail was named after Lyra.

  We chatted lightly, easily. Words flowing as if I had known her my whole life. I wasn’t nearly as awkward as I felt. She told me she was an IT specialist who travels extensively fixing complex computer issues. She told me of the countries she had visited and the beautiful hotel rooms her clients had put her up in. She was exotic, fascinating, enigmatic. She asked me about my life and was unendingly interested in my stories from the job. She didn’t shy away from the darkness of human nature as some do when I speak about the criminals I have encountered. My stories intrigued her. My world intrigued her. Could it be that I intrigued her?

  I didn’t mention my husband but I watched her eyes drift to the wedding band on my left hand. I had thought about taking it off but there’s this indentation in my finger now where it has been. The skin and flesh dented as if branded by his ring. My body changed by him. Somehow making me his. He doesn’t wear one. Again the double standard. It was me expected to take his ring and wear it always. I never took his name. Giving up my own identity was always one step too far.

  Her eyes seemed darker tonight. A deep, dark blue. As dangerously inviting as the ocean in the moonlight. Her dark hair long and loose and her athletes body in tight jeans and a leather jacket. Everything about her enchanted me. I had never wanted anybody more.

  Lyra wasn’t like me. I couldn’t nail what it was but there was something different about her. Something other. And it wasn’t the lesbian thing. In the toilets I gazed into the mirror at my own reflection. I look significantly better with mascara on and my hair in almost golden waves. My eyes looked different as I examined them. A little affected by the cocktail perhaps but they looked alive. For the first time in years, I was excited about something.

  The pub we were in was out of town because I didn’t want to risk seeing anyone I knew. There’s always a risk in bars in town of seeing other police officers or even people I have arrested. Not that I wouldn’t be able to explain away my new ‘friend’ but I didn’t want to have to. I wanted to be alone with her. In the country pub we were in our own impenetrable bubble.

  It was dark when we walked out to the car park. The moon and stars doing their best to throw us light. She suggested a walk in the woods to walk off the alcohol before driving. Two strong cocktails down and it seemed like a really good idea. But dangerous somehow. Walking in the woods in the middle of the night. Who does that? But there I was, a bold heat running through my veins from the alcohol and enchanted and excited by her. We walked together into the night. Still talking. Laughing about the rapists and murderers that probably lay in wait for us amongst the trees. The trees closed in around us and their branches stole the light. We were in another world of tall trees and twigs and earth crunching underfoot on a warmish late summer night. She said she used to play there as a child. She knew those woods so well. I imagined little Lyra, running, playing, climbing trees, her dark mane wild around her face. Lyra the adventurer.

  “Race you to the clearing.” she said.

  Before I could respond, she was running. For a second I was alone and scared of the dark. Then I was running too. Panting. Chasing her. I finally caught up with her as she stopped in the clearing and she pulled my body straight into hers and kissed me with an intensity I had never known. My heart beating a million times a minute. I have never wanted anyone more.

  Lyra.

  Who are you?

  What are you doing to me?

  “Do you want to come home with me?” Lyra asked.

  4

  At any point I could have gone home. Home to my loyal husband. Home to my suburban house and my ordinary life. I could have stopped all this at any point.

  I didn’t.

  The potential consequences of my actions were swiftly cast aside as I lived in the moment. I thought it could just be once, just something I need to try. To get out of my system.

  What defines cheating anyway? Illicit thoughts about her? Meeting up with her? Kissing her? Fucking her? Where is the line?

  I went home with her.

  Lyra.

  In the elevator together, not knowing where to look. The mirrors and harsh lighting reflecting the intensity between us.

  Her apartment was on the top floor of the Loxley building, a renovated old lace factory and it was contemporary minimalist beauty inside. I felt heady on lust and cocktails and the adrenaline buzz that came from living for now. She took my hand in hers and led me out onto her roof terrace, the cool night air fresh in my face, the lights of the city stretching far below us. She didn’t speak. I felt frozen like a deer in the headlights, waiting for the inevitable impact.

  Without speaking she undressed me slowly and carefully. My top pulled over my head. I flinched
as her cool fingers touched my flesh as she unbuttoned my jeans and rolled them down and off. Then her arms around my body as she unhooked my bra. I quivered. I was exposed and so vulnerable to her. Then she removed the last of my underwear and I stood naked and afraid, the night air felt cold against my skin. So far out of my comfort zone, no idea what would happen next.

  She guided me forward against the railings so I looked out across the city, the metal cold on my stomach and she pressed herself into my back. Taller than me. Stronger than me. Fully clothed against my nudity. She ran her hands over me, her every touch electric. Her fingers all over my body and inside. Making me feel things I had never imagined were possible. Emotion. Thrills. Passion. So much passion. Making me wonder why sex had never felt like this before. Her fingers brought me to the highest of highs and I rode a wave I never wanted to end.

  I finally collapsed shaking and emotional into her strong arms and she took me to her bed. She undressed and I looked at her naked body in the moonlight. She is made to be looked at and I wondered if she knew the power her face and body gave her? She got in next to me and her heat and smooth skin against my own was intoxicating. Her scent immediately overpowering and seductive and we kissed. Arms and legs tangled. I wanted to bury myself in her, I couldn’t get enough. And I didn’t have to. We had hours. We lost ourselves in each other’s magic.

  She got up to get us drinks and came back with my work phone.

  “Your phone has been flashing. Maybe it is important?”

  I was dazed from all the sex and the bright light of my screen was an unwelcome intrusion. But unfortunately detective life isn’t 9-5. The criminals work all hours.