He reached across the seat and patted her leg. “You’re just…different. You’re coping the only way you can until you get your memories back.”
“If.”
“When,” he firmly insisted.
Bill sat at an adjoining table during breakfast, close enough to keep an eye on them, but giving Laura privacy with her friends. They took up a large corner booth, and Shayla and Leah had sandwiched her between them.
Clarisse wasn’t able to make it down that morning because the baby kept her awake half the night. But Tilly and Loren had joined them and were just as warm and welcoming as Leah and Shayla had been.
And yet…
There was still that underlying current running below everything, like she was missing some key thing that tied everything together. Something that might even give her an avalanche of answers if she could just figure it out.
She also knew on an instinctive level that it wasn’t a bad thing. It just…
Was.
Like they constantly censored themselves around her.
When a stray thought crossed her brain, she spit it out, hoping it would trigger something. “Tilly, I know you’re married to Landry, but who’s Cris?”
She didn’t imagine that all of the women paused, everyone looking to Shayla.
Shayla seemed to silently bounce the volley squarely back into Tilly’s lap.
Laura had also noticed that while Leah, Shayla, and Loren all wore beautiful necklaces, Tilly wore a simple gold chain with a plain fluorite crystal pendant.
Tilly took a deep breath. “Rob didn’t tell you about Cris?”
“I’ve heard his name mentioned before.” She frowned. “I think. I’m not sure now. So much is muddied up, I don’t know what is a memory or what I’ve heard.”
“Well, it’s complicated,” Tilly said. “Landry, Cris, and I are poly.”
As one, the other women’s heads swiveled to watch Laura.
She would have found it amusing had Tilly’s answer not confused her so much. “What? What does that mean?”
The other women looked to Tilly.
“Well, it means that I have a relationship with Landry and a relationship with Cris and they have a relationship with each other.” She took a sip of her iced tea and watched Laura’s reaction while the heads once again swiveled to focus on her.
I should know this. Something in her fractured memory pounded on a hidden door somewhere deep inside her brain and demanded release, but she couldn’t locate it.
“And they’re okay with it?” Laura asked.
Another swiveling of the heads back to Tilly.
Tilly kindly smiled. “Yeah. They were together before I met them. I got two for the price of one. And I wouldn’t trade either of the big lugs for anything.”
Laura sat back in her seat and considered things for a moment. The memories she thought she’d had when at the house with Bill returned to the forefront of her mind. “Landry and Cris came to help us work on the house, didn’t they?”
“Yep.”
She thought about it some more, then looked around. “So who’s Mac?”
This time, everyone focused on Shayla. Shayla apparently realized no one was going to do the dirty work for her. She cleared her throat before smiling at Laura. “Mac is Clarisse and Sully’s third. Sully and Mac were together before they met Clarisse.”
Laura blinked. “Is this common?”
“Among our group it is,” Tilly lightly snarked as she picked up her glass of water and took a sip.
Laura had a thought. “Am I and Rob…?” She couldn’t finish it.
Shayla shook her head. “No. Rob doesn’t share well with others. Neither do Tony or Ross.”
Laura didn’t miss what, or rather who, she’d left out. She looked at Leah.
Leah apparently knew it was her turn on the hot seat. “Kaden,” she softly said, “my husband, was best friends with Seth. Since they were babies. When he found out about his cancer, he went to Seth and…” She shrugged. “I got to live my dream for a little while,” she sadly said.
Suddenly, Laura didn’t want to be talking about this anymore. Not if it made her friend look so sad. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath and desperately wanted to change the subject. “So who wants to tell me what I’d planned for my wedding?”
After brunch the plan was to get their nails done, but Laura begged out. Her ribs were aching as she toughed out yet another day without the prescription pain pills, and her energy level had tanked.
She also wanted time alone to digest the poly relationship stuff. Was that the big secret Rob and everyone else had hidden from her so carefully? That they’d been worried she’d react badly?
After a round of hugs with all the women, Bill helped her into the truck.
“Are you all right, Laura?”
He hadn’t been able to hear what they talked about from his table. “Yeah. I’m just…thinking.”
“Any new memories?”
“No. Just a couple of answers.”
* * * *
Rob arrived home from work early Friday morning. Apparently he normally had more days off in a row, but he wanted to play catch-up covering for everyone who’d covered for him while Bill was still in town to help keep an eye on her.
She rolled over and draped her arm around him after he’d gotten a shower and climbed into bed with her.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Mac and Cris?”
She felt his body go rigid. “Who told you about Mac and Cris?”
“I had brunch with the girls yesterday morning. I had extra names running around in my head that I couldn’t reconcile.”
His body relaxed a little as he let out a breath he’d been holding. “They’re our friends. We love them. We don’t care what they do in their bedrooms.”
She sat up and snapped on a bedside lamp. “Exactly. So why didn’t you tell me about them?”
He looked exhausted. For a moment she felt guilty about slamming him with that right then, but she didn’t want to let it wait and fester inside her.
“Sweetheart, I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“Did I react badly when I knew them before?”
“No, of course not. You love them.”
“Then why did you think I’d react badly now? Am I really that different?”
His hesitation in answering was all she needed. She threw the sheet aside and started to get up but he caught her hand. “Laur, please. I’m sorry. I just was so happy to have you awake, and then when you didn’t have any memories, I was afraid to overwhelm you.”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe if you’d told me about them sooner, maybe it would have triggered more memories?”
From the look on his face, it was obvious he hadn’t.
“When Bill took me by the house, I had some vague memories about people coming to help us. Maybe if I’d known who all those people were, maybe it might have triggered something.”
She yanked her hand free and started for the bathroom.
He got up and rounded the bed faster than she could move and stopped her.
“Honey, I’m sorry.”
“What else haven’t you told me, huh?” She reached up to shove him out of her way but it was like trying to push granite. “What else are you hiding from me? How the hell am I supposed to trust you if I think you’re hiding stuff?”
His eyes widened in shock. She suspected she couldn’t have slapped him and elicited that kind of reaction.
He took a step back. “You don’t trust me?”
Part of her screamed yes, that she trusted him with her life and her heart.
But she was mad. Mad and frustrated at life, and at her stubborn memory, and the guy who’d done this to her, and that Rob hadn’t told her everything up front.
And he was, unfortunately, her target.
“How am I supposed t
o trust you when I have to find out something like that from people who are my friends? Something that the man I was supposed to marry should have told me!” She stepped around him and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it before she let the tears fall, hot and heavy.
He stood on the other side of the door, knocking. “Laur, please, sweetheart, you have to understand—”
“Go away, Rob. I’m too angry to talk to you right now.” All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry.
He tried a few more times to talk to her until she finally screamed at him to go away.
Silence.
She didn’t know how long she stayed in there, but she went ahead and took her shower once she got the tears out of her system. When she finally unlocked the door and came out, Rob wasn’t in the bedroom.
She walked out into the living room and found Bill sitting, bleary-eyed, at the table with a cup of coffee.
“Where’s Rob?”
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing since he asked me to make sure I didn’t let you go anywhere by yourself, and that he had his bag with him, and that he looked like shit warmed over, and that you were screaming at him loud enough to wake me up that he probably went to the house.”
She stared at him. “He…left?”
“Yeah. He left.” He looked up at her. “Want to tell me what the hell?”
She slumped down into a chair across from him and told him.
He let out a sound that clued her in before he even spoke that he wasn’t on her side on this one. “I can understand you being aggravated at him, but he didn’t deserve for you to treat him the way you did.”
“He lied to me!”
“No, he didn’t. He just didn’t tell you. Just like I didn’t tell you about all the times you flew off the handle about stupid shit when you were a teenager and acted like an idiot.” He arched an eyebrow at her.
Heat filled her face, but she didn’t answer.
“He didn’t tell you the same way I didn’t tell you that you and Dad used to have lots and lots of conversations about your temper over the years when you were growing up, and even past college. He didn’t tell you the same way I didn’t tell you that, up until you met Rob, you were a pretty miserable person. Like you had a huge chip on your shoulder.”
She slumped farther down in her chair. “I did?”
“Yeah. Like you were trying to prove yourself all the time.”
She studied her hands. “If I was so bad,” she muttered, “why do people even want to be friends with me?”
“Because people love you, Laura. As aggravating as you can be at times, you are ten times as generous and loving and fun to be around. You have your moments. We all do. In other words, you’re as human as the rest of us.”
She didn’t have a reply.
He eventually spoke again. “The reason I love Rob is because I could see how good he is for you. How for the first time in your life you seemed to be relaxed and able to actually enjoy all of life and not drive-drive-drive yourself off a friggin’ cliff. He’s good for you. He gives you a sense of stability, a calm I’ve never seen you have in your life. Before…this, you looked like you’d finally found peace with him.”
“I did?”
“Yeah. So I can forgive him for trying to not overwhelm you with stuff you might not be able to process. Especially a fact like that. I think you should, too.”
“What if there’s more he hasn’t told me?”
“Guess what? There’s probably a lot he hasn’t told you. We can’t regurgitate everything that’s happened in your life or between us and you.”
“I meant holding back deliberately.”
“Like how you can be a pushy, judgmental bitch when your feelings get hurt?”
She glared at him.
He let out a snort. “Oh, don’t give me that look, sis.” He picked up his empty mug and headed back to the kitchen. “If looks could kill, believe me, you would have put me in my grave before you were ten.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rob drove to the house, too tired to even think about the fight. He hated himself for not telling her sooner.
He also hated himself for not telling her about the BDSM.
Unfortunately, that was a very complex topic, and involved far more than simply explaining away friends’ unusual relationship dynamics.
What he hated most of all was that he’d lost her trust, something he’d prided himself in keeping and cherishing and protecting beyond all else.
That hurt more than anything. She no longer trusted him.
And he knew he only had himself to blame.
He shut his phone off and climbed into bed. It felt weird to sleep here now. Especially alone. But from the way she’d gone off on him, he knew she needed to calm down, as did he, before they talked.
He was too exhausted to talk. Too exhausted to try to fix the situation.
Not to mention his heart hurt too much.
Maybe she needs time away from me. Time alone to rediscover who she is.
He’d always told himself, ever since he’d taken her on as not just his submissive, but as his fiancée, that if she ever wanted to leave he’d let her go. That he would never stand in her way. That he loved her enough he would never be one of those abusive fucks who held women hostage emotionally.
Now faced with the real possibility of her leaving, he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to survive losing her.
* * * *
The crazy days working had taken a toll on Rob. When he finally awoke it was after three o’clock in the afternoon and he’d missed a call from Bill, who’d left a message telling Rob they were going grocery shopping and asking how he was.
Nothing from Laura. No texts, no calls.
He knew the shop would be busy but hoped he might be able to talk to Steve for a few minutes. Laura’s truck wasn’t parked out front when he drove up, so he stopped and went in.
Steve took one look at him and waved him outside onto the dock.
“What happened?”
They’d never gone into details about their friends’ private lives with Steve, Carol, and other vanilla friends. They’d met some of their friends before, but that was it.
Keeping BDSM out of the equation, he told Steve what happened, and what he’d done.
Steve rubbed a hand over his face and stared out at the water for awhile. Both boats were out on dive or fishing charters, and the slips sat empty. A cool breeze off the Gulf blew through the mangroves on the other side of the channel from the docks.
Finally, he focused on Rob again.
“I can’t say that I blame you for holding that back from her. In your shoes, I probably would have done the same thing.”
“So how do I make it right?”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Not yet.”
Steve looked out over the water again, slowly nodding. “She’s got a temper on her.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, one thing I haven’t seen much of since the two of you got together is that infamous temper of hers.” He met Rob’s gaze. “She’s been the happiest I’ve ever seen in her life. Carol said the same thing the other day. You’re good for her. Real good.”
The older man leaned forward and tapped the picnic table again with his finger, as he had the other day when they talked. “I’m not about to get involved in your personal relationship with her. I don’t know or care what the two of you do together. All I know is I really want to see her that happy again. So whatever it takes for you to make that happen, I’m all for it.”
Steve sat back with a nod. “I was going to ask if you think a cookout would be a good idea. My house,” he added. “Tomorrow. Invite all your friends, her friends. The closest ones.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.” He didn’t flinch away from Rob’s gaze. “Because maybe if we get them all in one spot together with her, it might help jiggle something loose.”
“You
don’t mind?”
“Are they all consenting adults?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay then. Not my cup of tea, but I’m not passing judgment on them. Especially since the past couple of years seem to have been the happiest of her life. They’re part of that every bit as much as you are. If I recall, she met Shayla and Tony and all of them right before she met you.”
“We…I met her through them.”
He nodded again. “All right then. Tomorrow, five o’clock, my house.” He stood and started to go inside.
“What do I tell everyone to bring?”
He turned. “Themselves and a side dish. I’ll make burgers and brats.” He snorted. “Maybe it’ll help your brat.” He headed inside.
It took every ounce of strength Rob had not to bust out laughing. Either Steve had just made one of the funniest unintentional jokes he’d ever heard…
Or maybe Steve knew more than he let on.
Just like he’d nearly busted a nut the other night over Laura’s comment about him being the only one to hurt her.
It was a common private joke they shared, and had given him a little hope that she might be close to a breakthrough.
Either way, it didn’t matter. He pulled out his phone and started making calls. Fortunately, he was off tomorrow night, because he had to work that night from six until six tomorrow morning.
* * * *
As the day wore on, Laura felt horrible about what she’d said to Rob. Bill was right, she didn’t have a right to be mean to Rob, no matter how aggravated she’d felt. She also didn’t feel up to going into the shop and facing Steve.
Somehow, she suspected he’d give her both barrels for yelling at Rob, too.
She also knew she deserved it.
Knowing Rob needed to sleep before another work shift that night, Laura wondered if he’d even come by the house before he left for work.
When she didn’t call him, Bill did, leaving a message for Rob before they went grocery shopping.
Finally, a little after five, Rob stopped by, dressed for work.
She got up and went to him and put her arms around him, buried her face against his chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really, really sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”