Being with them was anything but boring. While she was glad they’d told her the story about how they’d come together, she knew it wasn’t something she’d ever bring up again. The visible change in them, the obvious pain in their expressions as they recounted what happened, that was something that didn’t belong in their relationship.
Just like she needed to exorcise the ghost of Shane from her mind for good.
She decided to clear some e-mails when she noticed she had a notification from FetLife that she’d received a private message.
Checking it, she saw it was someone she’d never heard of, with a subject line reading FYI.
Her finger hovered over the touch pad. Something, hell, every gut instinct in her told her not to click that button.
She clicked.
Just thought you should know the kind of men you hooked up with. My friend was with them. She helped them build their little hobby business, tried to motivate them, provided all sorts of money and help. Even came up with the name. What’d she get in return? Kicked out without a thank-you. Ask around. So be warned, once they get what they want, they’ll toss you, too.
Make sure you have a little nest egg to land on when they do, because they’ll take everything.
A deep, cold chill washed through her. She clicked on the username and saw they had no friends, no pictures, nothing. The site didn’t give a date a user created a profile, but just looking at it, if Cali had to guess, it was created for the sole purpose of the contact.
It’s nothing. It’s probably some whacked-out idiot.
Her mind immediately went to Lydia, what she’d said to Cali that night in the club.
She sent a brief reply.
Can we talk?
Apparently the mystery person was online, because they replied almost immediately.
I can meet you at Shroders on Fruitville in an hour. Do you know where that is?
This was stupid, but she couldn’t stop herself, old pain now controlling her actions.
Yes. How will I know who you are?
Another reply.
I know who you are. I’ll introduce myself.
* * * *
Cali grabbed clothes, freshened up in the guest bath by her old room, and left the men a brief note that she had to run out and would be back in a couple of hours.
Heart racing, she pulled into the crowded parking lot and finally found a spot toward the front. She didn’t want to have to park in the back…
Just in case.
Eying the people waiting at the front of the restaurant, she slowed her steps as she approached the door. No one she recognized.
When she walked into the lobby, still looking around, a woman stood up.
Lydia.
How did I know that.
Lydia smiled. It looked sweet and genuine, but Cali wasn’t sure she trusted the woman.
“Hi, Cali.” Lydia extended her hand and Cali shook with her more out of habit than out of a serious desire to have any contact with her. “Thanks for meeting with me. I apologize for being so short with you at the club that time. But they were there, and, frankly, it’s painful for me. I don’t want to see them do something to someone else, treat them the way they treated me.”
She looked completely different in daylight, with tasteful and conservative makeup, and regular clothes, nothing like the woman she’d seen at Venture.
This woman also sounded nothing like the sharp-tongued shrew she’d encountered. No icy, murderous glares.
Cali remembered Shayla once complaining about Lydia, that she’d given Tony a hard time the first time he took Shayla to Venture after thinking Tony was supposed to be there with some other woman. Supposedly Lydia had been screwed over big time, or…something.
Conflicted, Cali hugged her purse a little closer. “How long until we get a seat?”
Lydia’s smile looked warm, but felt…off, somehow. “They said less than twenty minutes. Since it’s only two of us, we can have a small booth.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me who you were in the message?”
“Because I didn’t know if they monitored your account. I didn’t want them coming down on you for me contacting you.” She laid a hand on Cali’s arm, meeting her gaze with large, muddy-brown eyes. “They have two sides. Once they get their hooks into someone, they don’t let go until they’re done. And they’re very persuasive, especially at first.”
An uncomfortable tingle started at the bottom of her spine and slowly oozed its way north.
The men had been persuasive in trying to keep her living with them. Almost…
Crazy.
“But now you’re here,” Lydia continued, “and I can tell you everything without worrying about them interrupting before I’ve had my say.”
It hit her like mental chords struck slightly off-key, but with her heart now racing, and Shane’s betrayal fresh in her heart, she couldn’t not listen.
When they were seated and had placed their orders, Lydia dropped her voice and started her story. Of being charmed by the two men. Of being friends with them, hitting hard times, and sweet-talked into moving in with them.
Back then, their business was nothing more than a cute hobby. Recognizing the quality of their creations, she talked them into trying to produce and sell more of them. That she even came up with their website’s name, encouraging them to try to turn it into a side business. That she gave them her time, her energy, her sweat equity, and, lastly, her money.
Then, after months of hard work, she developed health problems and couldn’t help out the way she had before, even though she still had a full-time job. She also couldn’t give them the physical attention she once had. She came home one day to them having packed her stuff and moved her out. The locks had been changed, and they’d dumped her stuff in a shitty little motel in North Sarasota, and that was that.
She dabbed at her eyes with her napkin. “What hurt is they wouldn’t face me. They wouldn’t talk to me. They used and dumped me once they had no use for me. When we first got together, the age difference didn’t matter. But once I wasn’t woman enough for them, they moved on to others.”
Cali could relate. She’d been there, done that. Not exactly the same way Lydia had, but…
Wait a minute.
Her guys hadn’t asked for money from her. In fact, they’d told her they didn’t want her money.
But she had revamped their website.
Confusion and heartache swirled through her. “I don’t understand why they would do that to you,” she said, genuinely unsure what to think or feel at that point.
“If you haven’t noticed, they have some pretty dark fantasies,” she said. “It was okay, at first, when I could still keep up with them. But once I couldn’t, well…” She snapped her fingers.
Before Cali realized what she was doing, her whole story spilled out and she sat there, tears rolling down her face.
Lydia leaned in. “Isn’t that just like men?” she hissed. “They want something new, they don’t even have the fucking balls to be men and handle it respectfully. They run from their responsibilities after getting us hooked and dependent upon them.”
Cali grabbed a napkin and held it to her face, wishing she could melt into the restaurant’s tacky 70’s wood paneling and fade away into nothing. That was exactly what Shane had done, run from her, from what he’d done to her, without a look back or a word of apology.
Not a single one.
And now, maybe she’d stupidly dropped herself back into the middle of something even worse.
Worse because now she was in love with the two assholes.
After picking up the check for both of them, figuring she owed the woman that much, they said good-bye out in the parking lot. Cali sat in her car, AC blasting, and cried some more, ignoring her phone when Max called her.
What’s the truth?
She wasn’t so stupid to think there wasn’t at least a little more to the story than Lydia had said. But…
It had soun
ded sooo damn familiar. It wasn’t like she couldn’t envision it happened.
It had happened—to her.
Still, something deep inside Cali didn’t want to admit she’d been so wrong about the men she already loved so hard and deeply, despite them never having said it. Nothing in their actions had contradicted anything they’d done.
Then again, she hadn’t seen Shane’s faults until she looked back with a cold, appraising eye.
Was she so blinded to Max and Sean? They hadn’t wanted to tell them about their ex before, the woman who’d forced them together. They hadn’t mentioned Lydia at all.
What else hadn’t they told her about?
That made her feel a little sick to her stomach as well as stupid. What if they’d lied to her about other things?
She didn’t know, but she needed to find out.
After pulling herself together, she returned home, dreading this confrontation but wanting it out of the way now. The sooner she had the full truth out of them, the better.
Max heard her return and met her in the entry, leaning in to kiss her but then hesitating when he saw her face. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk.” She wouldn’t let them distract her or put her off or delay.
She suspected she knew what would happen after, regardless, that it would be the end of what she thought she had with them, but better now than after she got more invested in them.
Better a clean break of her own doing.
Dreading this and feeling dead inside, she gathered Sean and Max in the living room.
“I had an interesting talk this morning with someone and I need to hear your side of it.”
They frowned and glanced at each other. “What?”
The men remained silent, their expressions growing darker as she talked, not interrupting her.
She didn’t know if that was a sign of their guilt of not, but at least it meant she could get the whole story out without bursting into tears.
* * * *
Sean felt rage building inside him. He wanted to set the record straight.
Then he wanted to hunt that cunt Lydia down and kill her.
With Cali’s story no secret around the club, it likely hadn’t been difficult for Lydia to pick up scuttlebutt about her and then play to her sweet, trusting nature.
Telling a story that was mostly lies, yet Cali would swallow hook, line, and sinker.
Why wouldn’t she? She’d just been through it herself. He didn’t blame her for giving Lydia’s lies weight under the circumstances.
Fucking psycho goddamned bitch.
Lydia, not Cali.
When he started to speak, Max reached out and grabbed his wrist, silencing him. He couldn’t even read Max’s expression, and that scared him.
Max spoke, sounding quiet, heartbroken. “That’s not how it happened, but you’ve apparently made up your mind. I thought we’d made our intentions clear with you. If you can’t trust us, nothing we say will change your mind. If you want the truth, you’re going to need to hear it from someone besides us, and besides Lydia. Because anything we say to you at this point, you’ll still doubt. When you figure it out, please let us know.”
Cali’s look of shock probably mirrored his own. “Dude,” Sean said. “What the—”
“Stop,” Max said. “This is a case where I’m going to put my foot down.”
Cali had drawn her legs up under her on the couch. She looked broken, vulnerable.
Scared.
All Sean wanted to do was pull her into his arms and beg her to listen to them. They’d told her about Lydia. What she’d done to them.
Then he realized Max had never told Cali Lydia’s name. Maybe she didn’t realize—
“Sean,” Max said as he stood. “Let’s go.”
“What?”
“She needs to work this out. Come on.”
It was obvious he wasn’t going to leave Sean alone there with her.
“But—”
“Now.” Baxter jumped up on the couch, pawing at Max, wanting attention from him.
Max reached out and petted the cat for a moment, letting the animal head butt his hand, before finally walking toward the hall, headed for their bedroom, no doubt.
With a last look back at Cali, Sean followed.
Chapter Sixteen
Max had no sooner closed their bedroom door behind them than Sean spoke up. “I want to go hunt that fucking cunt down and rip out every last one of her goddamned pubes by the roots.”
Max pulled his shirt off. “I’m guessing you’re talking about…her, not about Cali?” Even with this in front of them, Max still didn’t want to speak Lydia’s name out loud.
“Who the fuck else?”
“Just checking.”
“Ten goddamned years later, she’s still causing trouble for us. Why the fuck can’t that bitch move on?”
“Because she’s miserable, and we were the first people to ever turn the tables on her and beat her at her own game,” Max said. “Had she felt she got the better of us, had she walked away from us, she wouldn’t give a shit.”
“Why are you not more upset about this?”
“I am upset. Extremely upset. But I won’t get pissed off at Cali for it, and I refuse to give…her any energy from my life. I already gave her too much.”
“Why wouldn’t you let me tell her?”
“Because she would still doubt you, and me. If she’s ever going to trust us again, it needs to be on her terms. That means she’s going to have to seek out people she trusts and talk to them and then come to her senses on her own.”
“Lydia is fucking winning if we lose her!”
“If we lose Cali, then we fucked up by not doing a better job at winning her trust in the first place.”
“Why are you letting Lydia win?”
“Why are you letting her live rent-free in your head?”
Sean froze, deflated. He took a deep breath before letting it out again. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.” He sat on the bed. “I have faith in Cali. But after what she’s been through, the harder we try to convince her that Lydia lied to her, the more she’s going to believe Lydia instead of us. Cali knows our friends. She knows the same people we know. She will figure it out. When she does, we’re not going to rub her face in it. We’re not going to gloat. We’re not going to go all ragey. We’re going to love her and hope she never loses faith in us again.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Me, too.”
“Isn’t this awfully important to leave to chance?”
“Life is chance. I trust her. I trust her to make the right choice.”
* * * *
Cali hugged her legs to her as she stared at Baxter. He’d followed the men down the hall when they’d left, and she heard his plaintive maow as he’d demanded entrance to the bedroom and had been denied.
Now he was back, staring at her, accusations on his feline face.
What did you do, woman?
She didn’t know what else to do. She walked down to Essie’s, hoping they were awake and not…busy.
They were, and they weren’t. They were actually out in the backyard doing yard work. Essie sat up from where she’d been pulling weeds and took one look at Cali before a frown filled her face.
“What happened?”
Tearfully, the story spilled out of her.
Essie looked up at her men. “Well?”
Easygoing Ted looked murderous. “That fucking bitch.”
Fear crept into Cali’s heart. How badly had she just fucked up her life? “What happened? Did she tell me the truth?”
“She did…and she didn’t.”
“What?”
“She twisted the events around.” Ted pulled a chair over and sat. “Max and Sean aren’t ones to air their dirty laundry in public. When it happened, we didn’t even know the full story at first, until I confronted them and made them tell me. And since then, I’ve heard from o
thers who saw stuff we didn’t that confirm Max and Sean’s story. Not to mention, Lydia is a lying bitch. And she has a pattern of destructive relationship patterns. The only common denominator is Lydia. Either she has the worst fucking luck choosing men, or she’s a toxic shrew.”
“My bet,” Josh said, “is on Lydia being a toxic shrew. She’s a user. Total narcissist.”
Horror began to fill Cali. Maybe she’d just fucked things up with her men.
Mark took over the story. “I helped Max and Sean move Lydia’s stuff while she was at work. She’d been living with them for months, mostly without a job, without doing jack shit around the house, treating them as her personal slaves. She was living off her unemployment. Then that ran out and they still let her stay even though we told them she was taking advantage of them.
“I don’t know the full story of what happened behind closed doors. The guys didn’t tell that. She had picked up a part-time job that paid less than a hundred a week. But they packed all of her stuff, neatly, not just tossed into garbage bags. We moved her into an extended-stay suite hotel and they paid, in advance, for four weeks. Out of their own pocket. They figured that would give her time to get at least a second part-time job, or a full-time job, and receive her first paycheck. It wasn’t some cheap-ass roach motel, either. It was over off University, near I-75. Just a couple of years old. Nice place.”
“She said she had health problems.”
The men laughed. “Yeah, mental health problems,” Essie said.
“I think the clinical term,” Ted added, “is allergic toworkitis. She didn’t even get another job after the guys moved her out. She ended up moving in with and mooching off some other poor submissive male until she bled him dry, and then moved on to another.”
The horror deepened inside her. “What about her helping them with their business?”
Mark nodded. “She did tell them she thought they should make paddles. But I was there helping them at a large con one weekend up at Tampa, manning the booth. Lydia spent more time boozing and shmoozing than she did actually working. And she was skimming cash off the till. If you call that work, then sure. I saw that with my own eyes. That was the last straw, and when they decided to move her out. They did it the way they did to have the least amount of drama. If they’d tried to evict her any other way, they knew she’d try to play the law against them to force them into court and out of their house. They knew if they moved her out lock, stock, and barrel into someplace else, without giving her a chance to fight them, she wouldn’t fight them. Hell, she wouldn’t be able to afford to fight them.”