It wasn't often that Heidi was dumbstruck, but it happened. Her brain came to an abrupt, screeching, brake-snapping, heart-stalling, mouth-drying, stomach-turning halt.
She'd shaken the hand of the woman who'd slept with her husband. The faceless--when she wasn't conjuring up one, be it painfully pretty or unrealistically repulsive--Hotel Harlot was faceless no longer. Nor was she bodiless, voiceless, or disconnected from her life. There was no denying what Niki was--attractive. Tall, blonde, and attractive. The kind of woman men picked out of magazines. And up in hotels. Making sure to keep her movements slow and controlled, though she sped them up when she realized 'slow' wasn't keeping up with 'controlled', and found her arms shaking, Heidi picked her way out of Nathan's locked arms.
Humiliation. Humiliation followed by disgust, anger, and jealousy; and continued with a chaser of self-loathing. If she had started physical therapy earlier. If she had called him first that night. If she had given Nathan's campaign managers the piece of her mind she should have the moment they said she would make him look weak. If she had been paying attention in that lobby, maybe she--Maybe she could have what? Smelled him on her still? Thrown a punch at a complete stranger--and a member of Monica's family, besides? She wasn't that stupid, or dramatic.
Well, normally.
She rolled to the edge of the bed, and leg her legs dangle off the side. She glared at them, and shoved a hand through her sleep-mussed hair.