“I know … I’m pretty amazing.”
“You are. Let’s talk about your amazingness and why you didn’t tell your husband about that night in Vancouver.”
“Because it never came up. I’m not intentionally hiding it from him. I just haven’t told him about every thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. Remember when we went horseback riding in sixth grade and I fell and broke my arm?”
“Yeah.”
“Well…” I shrugged “…I don’t think I’ve ever told Ronin about it. If we got on the subject of broken limbs or horseback riding, I’m sure I’d tell him the story. But … we haven’t.”
“Maybe I should bring up that night in Vancouver sometime when we’re all together. I’d love to see the look on his face.”
“Why?”
“Because I think he would find it pretty hot.”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
“How can you say that?” she asked in disbelief.
“Because I’m his wife, the mother of his children. Maybe … just maybe he might have found humor in it or found it … slightly erotic before we got married. But not now. Graham is his friend. I think it would change their relationship.”
“You mean he doesn’t know that you slept with my husband in college?”
Again, I shot her a glare, giving her an incredulous look. “That just sounds horrible, Lila. Like Graham was your husband and I slept with him.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. But if you said those words to anyone else, they would not know what you meant.”
“Do you think …” Her words faded.
“Do I think what?” I moved to her other hand, scrubbing off the polish.
“Do you think Graham will be attracted to me again?”
I stopped, unable to look up at her because I didn’t think I heard her correctly. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“How long do you think it will take for him to want to have sex with me again?”
“Well,” I resumed, “I think he shouldn’t expect that until you’re healed, and that could take a while.”
“What do you think he’ll do in the meantime?”
“Jerk off more.”
Lila snorted. “I’m serious.”
I shrugged. “So am I.”
“Do you think he’ll … wander?”
I snapped my head up. “What?”
Her lips twisted for a few seconds. “He has needs.”
“Lila Rae Porter … you had better be joking or dealing with some sort of PTSD. Why would you think for one second that Graham would cheat on you?”
Her gaze dropped to her lap. “I don’t know. I just … I don’t know,” she murmured.
“When he saw you in the ICU right after your surgery, he broke down. I had never seen that side of Graham. He sobbed over your broken body. Sobbed! It shattered my heart to see him like that, but it also erased any doubt, I mean any doubt I might have had about his love for you. So even if I think it’s a little douchey of him to not have brought you home from the hospital, I don’t let it dissuade me from trusting his love for you.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’m right.”
God … I hoped I was right. If I wasn’t right, Graham was a dead man.
“So … how’s Ronin feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Is he back to work?”
I nodded.
“Did they figure out why he went into cardiac arrest?”
“No.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
I shook the bottle of nail polish, contemplating telling Lila about Ronin’s theory … his past. We hadn’t discussed it since that day in my shop. Lila continued to get better and so did Ronin. He wasn’t back to himself, singing in the shower yet, but he was working and helping out around the house. It was hard to determine if his residual issues were really related to Lila’s accident.
“Of course, it bothers me. But I hit this point, you know? No solid answers, but also there was nothing else I could do. He’s supposed to be wearing a monitor still, but half of the time I find it tossed aside on the nightstand. He doesn’t think it’s his heart.”
“Then what does he think it is?”
Forever. That was how long Lila and I had been friends, or at least as long as I could remember. We didn’t keep secrets. All the things Ronin had yet to learn about me … Lila already knew.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about Ronin’s near-death experience. I felt protective of him. As much as I loved and trusted Lila to keep an open mind and not judge him for what he believed, I found myself struggling with it. So if I still couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Ronin had this highly sensitive empathic power with people whom he tried to save, then how could I possibly expect her to understand?
“He thinks it was a fluke. A strange, unexplainable incident that probably won’t ever happen again.”
“I hope not, for both of your sakes. How about your mom? Is she doing better since the seizure?”