Free Her Loving Protector by Michaela Strong

Her Loving Protector
    If Dana closed her eyes, she was right back at that moment, struck with the realization her now ex-boyfriend had been sleeping with another woman.
    Instead of her.
    Their sex life had been decidedly absent and she had become increasingly inventive. She chalked the turn of events in their relationship up to "every couple goes through this" and regarded it as an interesting challenge. This called for wigs and heels, she thought. And dialogue. They talked about it.
    "It's that I don't have a job, sweetheart. I don't feel like a man to you," he told her and she assured him. She held his hand. She brainstormed for jobs. They were even having a great moment, over Sunday brunch at a favorite restaurant. They had stopped going out at all, even though Dana made a good enough living for both of them, because he said just like sex, he didn't feel like it anymore. Blamed it on depression, played on her compassion and sympathy
    So there they were, Dana and Sean, laughing over cappuccino, foam mustaches and all, when he did it. Called her Kayla. Kayla . She absolutely hated that name.
    People made slips all the time, she told herself. Dana once called her Biology teacher dad. But this mistake instantly put a different spin on the problem they had been having. Colored everything he had been saying as bullshit, because Sean Logan had to be scolded more than once about, "Just be honest with me honey."
    He tried to back pedal making it about her being an overbearing wife. It was true she suspected he didn't want to work and to do whatever else he wanted. He made such an issue when she had to say what he wanted was beyond her limit. But then after a half-hearted attempt of saying the name slip didn't mean anything, he just said, "Fine. I'll move in with her. Makes no difference to me." And then he leaned across the table to slice her, "And she's a few years younger than you, too. Mm, mm, mm."
    Dana stood up from that table and told the waiter, "Give the bill to him."
    "Come on Dana, how am I supposed to cover this?"
    "Mm mm mm, that's your problem. Figured it out."
    Those were the last words she spoke to her beloved boyfriend of two years. People would say to her, "You're lucky it was just two years." She didn't feel lucky. She felt stupid. Just like she did now. Sitting in front of the man she dove right into a full blown, hot and heavy, sex-a-thon for the past few days, giving everything she had to him, as intimate in some ways as she had ever been. With whom she had just had awesome sex by the roaring fire.
    And he called her Suzy which was not even remotely close to Dana.
    It wasn't his fault. His was an honest accident. It was a mix of bourbon and grief. He'd just told her about losing his wife, and they were in the house he'd shared with her, and had just stripped the dead woman's clothes off of her. But the slip destroyed Dana. It wasn't his fault that his mistake triggered the utter hostility she felt for her husband that Dana realized she had been too numb up to this point to feel.
    "Listen to me," he ordered as she scrunched up her eyes to try to escape the full weight of the utter degradation of the "just two year" relationship that had scarred her forever.
    "I don't want to and please let me go."
    If Dana had her druthers though, Rory would never let her go. Throughout all the lonely time she spent before, during and after her breakup, Rory was iconic of what Dana wished for in a man. That made him a dream come true. And though it was completely unrealistic because after all, people don't fall into life-long love after jumping into bed, a lot, after first meeting. Let alone love at all. Though it felt like she had indeed fell in love with Rory, Dana reminded herself, it was just the amazing chemistry talking.
    Apparently it wasn't saying the same thing to Rory. And Dana got that. That didn't make him a bad guy. It made him a stable, reasonable guy. The opposite of her thieving, cheating ex. But while her