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each other hard and hungry like our first time might be our last. Lips, teeth, fingernails. Her body was firm and soft and wrapped around me like a velvet vine. She filled my wants before my body could scream them out. Rough, smooth. Prolonged, quick. When I caught Melody’s eyes, they were dark mirrors hiding their content even as her body convulsed. My eyes were more revealing. The mask the public, my friends, even my last lover saw, came off. I was vulnerable, exposed. At ease.
    When we were done, we were both spent. I’d had more than a few one-night stands over the years. Celebrity junkies who got off by having sex with anyone who’d been on TV. Adrenaline junkies who got off by having sex with someone dangerous. And lushes who thought I was cute and just wanted to get off. This was different. The sex was ravenous, yet intuitive, with a resonance underneath the physical attraction. Maybe it was the events of the night and the flush of raw sex, but I felt more alive than I’d felt in years. Eight years.
    I was splayed on my back, the sofa under me, Melody over me. Her naked body a warm blanket. We lay mute, content to loll in the syrupy afterglow of sex.
    Melody ran a finger along my ribs and finally broke the silence. “I don’t think you did it.”
    â€œDid what?”
    â€œKilled your wife.”
    My body clenched. The sight of Colleen’s pale body laid out on the cold steel of the coroner’s drawer assaulted me. The red indentationencircling her neck. Her eyes were closed, but her white-purple face still accusing me. The image was burned into my mind. An indelible stain that had marked me for who I was. The disgust and the shame slowly bled out and the image faded away.
    Melody’s finger continued its track along my ribs. I relaxed and exhaled from down deep within me. Melody knew the story everyone else knew and she had deemed me innocent. She saw the man I used to be. But like everyone else, she didn’t know the whole story. Only God and I knew the truth about my innocence or guilt. He’d make his judgment when the time came. I’d already made mine.
    â€œWhen did you decide I was innocent?”
    â€œWell, I remember thinking at the time that you might be.” She tilted her head up at me. “But tonight, after I spoke with you the first time, I was sure.”
    â€œThat’s all it took?”
    â€œI read men very quickly. Women are a bit trickier.”
    â€œYes. They are.”
    I hoped we were done with the subject and could move on to the weather, the Chargers, the Pythagorean theorem. Anything but Santa Barbara.
    â€œThat must have been a horrible thing to go through,” she said.
    No such luck.
    Melody laid her head back down on my chest and continued to unbury my past. “Your wife is murdered and you’re arrested by your own police department. Then
48 Hours
does a hit piece on you even after you’ve been exonerated. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
    â€œI wasn’t exonerated.” I didn’t deserve anyone’s sorrow or want anyone’s pity.
    â€œBut, the charges were dropped.”
    â€œNot the same.” SBPD made that very clear at the time in their statement to the press. Eight years later, I was still a “person of interest.”
    â€œOne thing always bothered me about that
48 Hours
.”
    â€œOnly one?”
    â€œWell, that’s just it.” She rose up on an elbow wedged between me and the rise of the couch. “You were innocent. Why didn’t you talk to them and give your side of the story? You came off looking guilty.”
    â€œI would have come off looking guilty either way. That’s how they spin it. I wasn’t going to be interviewed just to make for good television.” That was mostly true. But I also didn’t trust myself enough to sit in front of a camera and not look guilty.
    â€œI think maybe you should have.” Melody