This story's content rating is most probably equivalent to a PG-13, but with strong adult themes, and nonexplicit consensual heterosexual sex between adults. The uncut R-rated version will be made available elsewhere.

This story follows and refers to Jealous, but you don't have to have read that story to read this one. It will help, though.

I'm posting this to see if there is any interest in this story. If you want to see it continue, comment and let me know.

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Every time they made love, he went outside after and stood on the porch and smoked a cigarette.

She never said anything but she could always tell. His hair, his clothes smelled of it. She took him back into her arms, the faint texture of night air still traced on his skin, nestled into him and breathed in deep, missing it. She had snuck cigarettes during her pregnancy, although he never knew.

He brushed her red-gold hair back and pressed a kiss against her temple. Her blue eyes gleamed in the dark, but she didn't look up at his face.

He was going away again.

"When does your plane leave," she whispered into his chest.

"Early," he replied. "I'll take a cab. Don't worry about taking me."

She nodded. "All right."

"Love you."

She slid her folded arm under the pillow and closed her eyes. "Love you too."

--

The grocery store was two blocks away from their house. Her hair still faintly damp from her shower, Nancy bundled Sam into a jacket and the stroller. They passed dirty patches of old snow in the shadows on the sidewalk, smog-stained trees and dead winter grass. Sam burbled to herself and Nancy closed her eyes, felt the wind on her cheeks.

He was gone again.

She kept her right hand steering the stroller and turned her engagement ring around and around on her left, above the slender gold wedding band. Sam was chattering happily at something, and Nancy lifted her and put her in the baby seat on the shopping cart. She blinked crystal-blue eyes up at her mother.

"Hey little girl," she cooed at Sam, who clapped.

Nancy knew the shop like the back of her hand. Fresh flowers outside, a small but selective produce section. Sam's tastes were easy. Her husband's, less so, only because his trips and thus arrivals were unpredictable. Steaks and ground beef spoiled, potatoes rotted in paper bags under the sink while she waited for him to come home. So she picked things she liked and kept the freezer stocked and hoped for the best.

A woman with two toddlers and a baby in the shopping cart made her way slowly down the aisles. Nancy looked at her, watched her rough flat hands drag the children back in as they circled her, knocking into displays and bringing boxes of cereal and chocolate bars to their mother for her inevitable refusal. She looked tired, angry lines etched around her thin lips.

Nancy looked at Sam. "We're not gonna be like that, are we," she whispered, her cheek against her daughter's, and Sam's face lit up.

Nancy had been married for two years and five months. Sam was just over two years old. They'd moved to a small house on the edge of the city when she was eight months pregnant, for his work. She'd been so relieved when he'd married her that she hadn't argued with him or disagreed with him about anything. Not the size of the house or the city or his conviction that she would stay at home with their daughter. He said detective work was too dangerous for her, now that she was a mother.

He said it was only until Sam went to school.

She put a box of microwave popcorn in the cart, boxes of pasta and jars of canned sauce, bags of chicken nuggets and french fries and frozen pizza. At the checkout the bored cashier swiped everything and gave Nancy the total, but she paused, tapping her card against the machine instead of swiping it.

"And a pack of cigarettes," Nancy said, defeat in her voice.

The taxi pulled up just as Nancy headed out of the store, her groceries loaded into the stroller. A man in a long dark grey wool coat rushed out of the backseat.

He had dark hair like her husband. Her gaze lingered on him. She could dimly hear the edge of Sam's voice, but couldn't make out the words.

He hesitated and turned, and she took a breath, looking away before their eyes could meet. Her cheeks flushed with sudden color at being caught. She had never been one to stare, especially not in the city.

"Nancy?"

She looked back, her face already carefully composed into serene dismissal, and then her eyes went wide, her face pale.

"My God," she exhaled. "Ned, is that you?"