Beware Falling Rocks Read online

  It meant walking away from someone he loved, but Sarah had, long ago, drained his emotional well dry. To the point it likely never would recover.

  Staying would only turn him resentful, and she’d hit a plateau in her recovery work.

  In fact, she’d started going backward.

  Finding she’d moved his stuff out of their bedroom had also been telling. When he refused to play the game by her rules any longer, and didn’t beg her to open up to him, she’d turned up the chill between them.

  He was done trying to meet her more than halfway when she was doing everything in her power to push him away.

  Had he simply walked away from her earlier and chosen Lynn from the start, he suspected now that Sarah wouldn’t have killed herself regardless of what she’d said. She likely would have gone through a brief mourning period before latching onto someone else, the way she had latched onto him when her ex moved out of their house and told her he wanted a divorce.

  She’d delayed filing for a divorce from her ex until after Paul had met her and they’d been dating. He’d even met her ex, who was honest with Paul that he had already moved on. That they’d grown apart and he had no interest in reconciling with Sarah. Went so far as to wish them well.

  In retrospect, Paul wondered if the man had breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Sarah would now be Paul’s problem.

  Paul had been terrified at first when everything broke open that Sarah would kill herself. He’d believed her, wholeheartedly.

  It was only later, as her progress slowed, stalled, and then slid backward, that he saw it as part of the larger pattern.

  A pattern he’d stubbornly refused to admit, at first, that had been predicted not just by Lynn but by Tilly, Ted Collins—who was a mental health counselor—and several others who had experience in the field.

  Friends he’d tuned out because he’d stubbornly insisted that he knew better because he’d known Sarah better and longer than all of them.

  Because he’d loved her.

  Because he thought he could save her.

  Bam, codependency.

  He hadn’t wanted to lose the life they’d spent years building together. Okay, money was part of it. He’d grown up poor, and it was great finally having a nice house, decent cars, the ability to go on vacation when they wanted—all of that.

  They’d lacked for nothing.

  Making that decision to finally draw the hard, final line, one everyone had told him he must do early on, had been the second most difficult decision of his life after cutting ties with Lynn.

  But because he’d let Sarah run the show for so long, she’d basically laughed at his demands, thinking he’d give in the way he had kept giving in.

  It’d made him literally sick to his stomach to sit there in the counselor’s office that day and hear Sarah basically react the way that everyone had predicted she would two years earlier.

  Friends he’d turned his back on because he’d loved Sarah.

  Some fucking Dom I am.

  Worse, she’d known that about him, his own fears and insecurities about finances. She’d used that against him in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that he’d never even realized until he’d started the process of untangling them from each other.

  It’d been so damn hard to stay strong and not give in.

  To follow through with what he’d told her he would do if she didn’t stick to her word. But she’d been the one to move his stuff out of their bedroom.

  He’d warned her he would walk beside her, but he wouldn’t chase her.

  And he was out of energy to even try.

  Adding to that heartsickness had been knowing he’d put Lynn through agony.

  Right this moment, he wanted to shove all those thoughts out of his brain.

  Lynn was here, in his arms. Her body pressed against his, a dream made real.

  Something he’d never thought he’d ever experience again and something he’d always felt when with her.

  Peace.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lynn awoke snuggled comfortably against Paul, her arm draped across his chest.

  He even smelled the same.

  “Hey.” His voice sounded sleep, thick.

  Familiar.

  “Hey.” She didn’t dare look up and meet his gaze yet.

  He reached over, and she felt him play with her hair. “I think we need to talk.”

  “Yeah.”

  A soft escape of air from him. “Please tell me what you meant earlier. When I asked how long it’d been.”

  She refused to open her eyes. “I couldn’t come, all right? I tried a few times and realized I couldn’t. Not without you. So I gave up trying. Okay?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she mumbled, although she had thought it was his fault. Not deliberately, but indirectly.

  “There’s something I need from you,” he said, sounding more awake.

  “What?”

  “Don’t hold back. Please, look at me.”

  She finally did, his hazel gaze boring into hers.

  “I know you feel it’s my fault, and rightfully so. I could tell, just then, from the way your whole body tensed. Don’t hold back from me, please.”

  “Fine.” She sat up. “I did blame you, okay? I know you didn’t do it deliberately, and it wasn’t intentional. But you trained me and rewired my brain the way you always joked you would, and then you left me. Okay? And I was too broken at that point to even try to figure it out. It was less painful to wall myself up inside my own head and sit there and rot from the inside out.”

  He reached up and gently brushed the tears from her cheeks with his thumb. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You’re right that it’s my fault. And I take responsibility for that.”

  This wasn’t who she wanted. She wanted her Sir back. The man who could slam her down onto the bed, hard, and tame her.

  The Beast. His dark side.

  That’s who she wanted, wanted back.

  “How do I know I’m not going to get fucked over again?”

  He sat up and folded his fingers around her hands, holding them against his chest. “I know I don’t deserve your trust, that I’m going to have to earn it all over again. But I swear I’m not going anywhere. Whatever I need to do to regain your trust, I’ll do it.”

  She stared at him, trying to silence the agonized part of her soul screaming for her to just take him back without question so she could pretend the last two years had never happened.

  Then there was her brain, fighting and screaming to run far and fast the other way.

  “Neither of us play with anyone else,” she said. “As a top or a bottom. No poly. You want me? You get only me. Period. I was fine being second before, but not this time. I won’t be second again. Ever.”

  “Agreed.”

  She didn’t want to be a raging bitch, but she also knew she couldn’t move on until she’d satisfied her brain that she wasn’t about to get fucked over again.

  “I don’t want you seeing Sarah alone,” she said. “I get that you still have some feelings for her. I’d worry if you didn’t. But if she wants to talk to you, she can do it in front of me. Or at least in public. Not alone.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” He squeezed her hands. “This is me, groveling. I don’t grovel, you know that. But I am now.”

  “What if she tells you she’s going to kill herself?”

  A sick look crossed his face. “I hope she doesn’t, and I’m going to feel badly if she does, but I can’t live the rest of my life held hostage by her threats. Not when I’ve seen the other side of things. She has all the tools available to her to face her recovery. Unfortunately, I did as much as I could, more than I should have, even, and it wasn’t enough. It never would have been enough for her.”

  “And it only took two years for you to figure that out.” She hated the acidity in her tone but knew she couldn’t censor herself. Hell, he�
�d asked her not to hold back.

  “You were all right,” he said. “But I had to try.”

  “If she leaves you voice mails or texts, I want to hear and see them before you delete them.”

  He released her hands, reached for his phone, tapped his code into it, then handed it to her.

  There was another new one from Sarah.

  You can’t just leave without telling me where you’re going.

  Lynn wanted to hurl the phone against the wall.

  “I don’t want her in my home,” Lynn said. “Ever. She doesn’t cross the threshold. You understand me?”

  “Completely.”

  “And I don’t want her in your apartment, either.”

  “Understood.”

  “And agreed?”

  “Understood and agreed.”

  She returned the phone to him. “What’d your family say about the divorce?”

  “My sister said it was a shame, but she understood. My brother said it was about time. But he’s on divorce number four.”

  There was so much she wanted to say to him. Two years of anger and agony and loneliness and betrayal locked inside her. Part of her wanted to say it to Sarah’s face.

  Part of her wanted Sarah to just drop off the face of the planet.

  And she hated herself for feeling like that. Logic told her the woman was sick and needed help.

  Emotion wanted to drop-kick the woman into the Gulf of Mexico.

  Paul reached out and stroked her cheek. “Let me have it,” he softly said. “I came here prepared to take whatever you need to dish out, as long as you need to do it. I accept that.”

  Closing her eyes, she tried to breathe her way through it, but her tears flowed again, hot and ragged. Then she was in his arms, sobbing against him as he slowly, gently rocked her, his face pressed against the top of her head and his breath warm against her scalp.

  * * * *

  Paul knew this was only the beginning. There would be a lot of tears, likely a lot of angry raging on her part, and all he could do was let her do it and get it out of her system. The only way they would last for life was if he patiently rode it out with her.

  Frankly, Sarah’s rages were a thousand times worse than this. This he could deal with, physically.

  Emotionally, it felt like someone was shredding his guts with shards of glass. Lynn even sounded different, broken.

  He had done this to her.

  He suspected her emotions would run the entire gamut from angry to loving, back and forth, until she worked her way through it. However long it took, that’s how long it would take.

  His only hope was that when she did finish working her way through it that she decided she still wanted him. This wasn’t a guaranteed win by any stretch of the imagination. There’d been no real closure for either of them. Sarah had seen to that. Once Lynn did work through that part of her grief, she still might decide that she didn’t want him after all.

  Her breath came in long, hitching gasps as her sobs finally eased. What did it say about him that he’d cried harder the last night they’d seen each other than he had over the loss of his marriage?

  Eventually, Lynn sat back and sniffled, tried wiping her eyes with her hands. He got up and brought her the box of tissues from the vanity counter.

  “Can I get you a glass of water?”

  She nodded.

  He brought that, sitting next to her on the edge of the bed.

  It took her several minutes before she spoke again. “Hypothetically, she gets back in recovery and her shrink tells you she’s doing great.”

  “That won’t happen, but even if it did, I’ve moved on already.”

  “Even though you loved her?”

  “I won’t lie to you and tell you that everything was horrible. I loved her. We had good times together. I feel more than partially responsible that I didn’t dig harder and deeper early on. I own that. I don’t resent her not sticking to her recovery plan. I feel badly for her, and I hold her responsible for not keeping her promises. But I also don’t blame her, just like I wouldn’t blame her if she had diabetes or cancer.”

  “And you can’t tell me what it was that happened to her?”

  He stared into her sad, blue eyes, blue eyes now red from crying. “I can’t. I promised. I will say some of your suppositions early on were…very close to the mark. But there were things we discussed that I can’t talk to you about. I’m sorry.”

  “What if I tell you if you want to stay with me, you’ll have to tell me?”

  He hoped she wasn’t serious, that it was only a test. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. There were things I refused to tell her that you and I discussed that I promised not to reveal to anyone.”

  She blew her nose again. “I bet that pissed her off.”

  “It didn’t make her happy, no.”

  “How can you stay so calm about all of this?”

  “I’m not always calm. There were times I lost my temper with her. And I felt like shit later for doing it. One thing the past two years taught me is that losing my temper absolutely will not help and absolutely will make things worse. Just because I’m acting calm doesn’t mean I’m feeling calm.”

  “So you’re basically lying about how you feel?”

  “No. I can be and feel angry without losing control.”

  “Like a fucking robot?”

  He sensed her poking, prodding, trying to find the weak spots.

  Testing.

  “Pet, if you want to yell and scream at me, do it. I’ll take it. Don’t expect me to yell and scream back.”

  She visibly recoiled, as if he’d reached out and slapped her. Then her tears started again. “I wanted to hate you,” she said, destroying another tissue in the process. “I wanted to scream what an asshole you were, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate you because I couldn’t forget how you cried, and you never cried. It would have been easy to walk away and start over again if I could hate you, but I couldn’t. Because I knew you didn’t want to walk away from me. That made everything that much worse.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything, didn’t interrupt.

  “And here I was, fucked over, couldn’t stomach the thought of anyone touching me, couldn’t fucking masturbate, couldn’t hate you. Couldn’t even stand to not have my collar on. Had to force myself to keep going. Every fucking morning I’d wake up and force myself not to reach for my phone to text you good morning. Every night before bed I’d stare at my phone and think good night to you.”

  She blew her nose again. “I’d saved voice mail messages you left me, and I’d play them to hear your voice. I’d close my eyes and imagine you were talking to me. How fucked up and desperate is that?” Another tissue annihilated. “And here I had to put on a brave face and pretend I wasn’t dying inside every day. I couldn’t stand to look at my back in the mirror because I’d see my tattoo there and know that I’d never feel your fingers touching it again.”

  She stared down at her lap. “I’d try to talk myself into getting over it and realize how fucking stupid that was because how was I supposed to get over someone I loved? And we couldn’t even be friends? You weren’t just my boyfriend and my Sir. You were my best goddamned friend. I told you stuff I never even told Terrie in all the years I’ve known her.”

  Lifting her head again, she stared out into space, not at him. “Everything from music, to books, to movies and TV. Everything reminded me of you because we liked so many of the same damn things. I could hardly stand to do anything for the first few months except work because everything reminded me of you. I’d be driving and a song you and I used to sing to would come on. Or scrolling through the cable guide I’d see one of our favorite movies or shows. I could barely stand to eat because anything I cooked I’d think of you and the last time we ate it together.”

  Her gaze finally returned to him. “And I knew that you’d go on and be able to sleep with her. You’d get to fuck her, she’d get to have her husband, and there you were, giving up an essent
ial part of yourself for someone who basically lied to you your entire relationship and who didn’t even want or appreciate that part of you to start with. While me, the honest one, the one you never had to hide your demons or your dark places from, got fucked over sideways. How is any of that fair?”

  “It’s not,” he said.

  “She didn’t want the dark side of you. I loved you for it!”

  “I know, pet.”

  “How was I even supposed to trust anyone again after I opened myself to you and got eviscerated, huh?”

  He nodded. Nothing he said would be right, and he knew it.

  “I grew up not really trusting a lot of people. You knew that. I met Ron and divorced him. Thought I’d learned my lesson. Then came you. Before I knew it, I was trusting you. That got me fucked over way harder than with Ron. At least I could hate Ron. I couldn’t fucking hate you!”

  She reached over and shoved him, hard. He’d been prepared for it and grabbed her, holding on to her as she briefly struggled before going limp against him again, crying.

  “I know, pet,” he whispered into her ear. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about you, love you, and miss you. I’m so sorry.”

  He gently laid her back on the bed, holding her until her tears quieted again.

  Yes, his dark side. They’d always joked that their demons played well together. Sarah wasn’t interested in anything more than maybe a little rough sex, nothing kinky.

  That should have been another clue to him early on, that, while they’d met through friends in the lifestyle, at a private party, Sarah only been active in it because of her ex. Most of her friends had been in the lifestyle, which was the only reason she still hung around with them after her ex left her.

  Then he’d met Lynn.

  He rolled her onto her back and kissed her, hard, closing his eyes when he finally felt her responding. Her arms slipped around him, holding on, a soft, sniffly moan escaping her as her lips parted for him, allowing his tongue to sweep against hers.

  He worked his way down her body, kissing every inch of her, reading her as her breath grew faster, her fingers twining in his hair.