“Thanks for keeping your cool,” I said. He’d obviously made up an excuse to get us out of there as, clearly, he was having trouble keeping it cool.
“Fuckin’ guy,” he was getting louder and even more livid and it showed in the erratic way he drove the car, “Tries to get my fucking wife to leave with him with me in the room and after saying he knows who I am. Does he have a death wish?”
“Tommy, please.” I massaged my temples, “Slow down. You’re driving crazy. And shh, I have a wicked migraine. That was seriously awful. I wanted to puke that whole time.”
He reached across the console and gave my leg a loving squeeze and said, “Loved hearing you defend me, baby girl. Every single time you said ‘my husband’ I felt so much pride.” He gave my leg another squeeze and then turned the radio on low.
I slouched in my seat but glanced over and gave him a half a smile.
It’d been too long being out of touch since I’d sent that goodbye letter and although I thought about them often I had been self-absorbed and hadn’t thought about what they’d be thinking all this time. They were the only family I had and I abandoned them, leaving them to worry about me. I had told myself it was better to cut ties and keep them safe from the truth but bottom line, I hurt them. I felt like crap.
“What could you have done differently?” Tommy said to me later on that night when he saw I was still feeling low, “We had to be careful. You didn’t mean to hurt anyone. You didn’t vanish without a trace; you did what you had to do. Your safety is way more important than their feelings, Tia. Don’t let them guilt you. If they care about you they’ll get over it. I told your foster dad we were going, told him a lot about what we were dealing with, more than I’d generally care to reveal, but I did that because you care about them. It was up to him and his wife to smooth things out with the girls and all this happened because of how they chose to handle things. That’s on them, not you.”
That night it took me a long time to fall asleep despite the fact that my husband had worn me out with a fast hard fucking that was definitely about him being pissed at Nick and needing to show me that I was his. Three times during the sex he demanded that I tell him who I belonged to and was supremely pleased with my response of “You, baby. Only you. Forever you.” as illustrated by his “Fuckin’ right!” But it felt like as soon as I did finally fall asleep I was woken up. Tommy was thrashing in bed beside me, having a bad dream.
I backed out of the bed and started to call his name, seeing it was a bad one and knowing from recent experiences, particularly the one where he grabbed my throat and squeezed until I started to turn blue, that keeping my distance until he was fully awake was important.
He rocketed upright and after a split second he seemed lucid and then apologized for waking me.
“It’s okay. You okay?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Wanna tell me?”
“Nope, it’s okay; go to sleep.” He got out of bed and left the room.
** ** **
He woke me up at dawn with sweet kisses on my earlobe and warm minty breath whispering my name in a husky voice, “Wake up, wife. We have plans today.”
I stretched, “What plans?”
“We need to see a man about a hog,” he said.
I smiled big, “Are we going to the loft?”
He wiggled his eyebrows, “Even better than that.”
I got up and excitedly dashed for the shower. What could be better than that?
Chapter 9
Dare
Angel and me were taking a walk after going out for lunch near my building and we were holding hands. She was smiling at me, laughing at a story I was telling her about one of my Viking cousins and how I’d gone over a year ago to be in his wedding and we lost the guy during his bachelor party and wound up finding him only 2 hours before the wedding, still drunk as a skunk, wandering outside in his underwear. Her laughter was gorgeous. Her eyes were lit up and she had a huge smile on her face. She looked carefree.
“Is it beautiful there? I’d love to go. I’ve always wanted to do loads of traveling.”
“It is. We should go,” I smiled and squeezed her hand. Suddenly she paled. We were walking by a crowded restaurant patio and she froze in her tracks.
“What’s the matter?” I frowned.
She shook it off and then resumed walking.
“You okay?”
“Uh huh,” she replied but she clearly was not. I was hoping this wasn’t another panic attack coming on in the middle of the street.