Quantum Series Boxed Set, Books 1-7

by Marie Force

  “Ugh.” Focus, Natalie. One thing at a time.

  The door to the basement is in the hallway. In the short amount of time I’ve spent in this house, I haven’t paid it much attention. That’s how I managed to miss the fact that there’s a dead-bolt lock on the door. I insert the key and turn the lock, which disengages with a loud click that sends my anxiety into the red zone. I’m fully aware that if I open that door and go down those stairs, I’m violating his privacy. That once I do this, it can’t be undone.

  Other than my accidental foray into Hayden’s closet, I’ve never done anything even close to this before. I mind my own business. That’s who I am. But there’s a first—and second—time for everything. I flip on the light and start down the stairs, my heart beating so hard I can hear the flutter of it echoing in my ears.

  My throat is tight and my mouth is dry. What will I find here, and will it change everything? I don’t have to go far to confirm that Valerie was telling the truth. “Oh my God,” I whisper. Flynn’s playroom is bigger and even more elaborate than Hayden’s. There are numerous pieces of equipment, one of them an S-shaped chaise that I didn’t see on any of the sites I visited online.

  Like in Hayden’s room, ropes fall from the ceiling and a row of paddles in various sizes as well as floggers and whips hang from a pegboard on the wall. I don’t bother to cross the room to the armoire because I already know what I’ll find inside.

  I’ve seen more than enough to know the truth about my husband and his true preferences. Half-expecting to find him waiting for me, I trudge up the stairs, my mind whirling as I relive every moment we’ve spent together and every sexual encounter. I’ve been blown away by our physical connection. I thought he was, too. But is he only pretending to be satisfied while wishing for so much more than his broken wife can give him?

  I turn off the light, lock the door and return the key to the hook in the kitchen. There’s no way I’ll sleep, so I fix myself a cup of hot chocolate and take it to the sofa. I’m so far out of my league with this situation that I don’t know how to begin to wrap my mind around it.

  Over the course of the next few hours, I sit in the darkness and dissect every minute, every second, every conversation, every caress, every word that has passed between us. There were clues, here and there, little things that didn’t make sense at the time, but in this new context, I realize they were red flags that I missed. Such as his insistence on a safe word, which is a mainstay of the BDSM lifestyle. I recall something he once said: “I’ve been with a lot of women. Probably too many. I’ve kissed them and fucked them and done things with them you’d no doubt find distasteful at best, objectionable at worst.”

  Is this what he meant by objectionable? I never suspected my husband was a dominant or that he participated in things so far outside my realm of understanding I wouldn’t have recognized them if they slapped me in the face.

  Among all those moments we spent together were the ones in which I’d bared my soul to him, sharing my painful past and bringing him into my life. I have been closer to him in the few weeks we’ve spent together than I’ve been to anyone in my life. He knows me in ways that no one else ever has.

  While I was giving him everything, he was lying to me about who and what he really is. If not for his ex-wife clueing me in, I might never have known. Now I’m angry—that he kept his truth from me, that his ex-wife, a woman he despises, was the one to tell me and not him. Was he ever going to tell me? What was his plan? Initiate me to regular sex and then change the rules?

  Or is it possible that he never planned to tell me? Probably… I recall our wedding night and the panic attack I had when he pinned down my hands. After hearing my story, I can see why he might’ve decided to keep the dominant side of himself hidden from me. Though I don’t approve of him entering into a marriage with such a big secret between us, I understand that he thought he was protecting me. And I love him for that, even though I can’t condone the keeping of secrets of this magnitude.

  I think about all the good things that have happened between us. I remember his generosity toward Aileen and her family, the way he paid the rent on our New York apartment for a year, paid for meals for all the kids in my school, hosted the gathering of my students, put up with my hostile dog in his bed and went to war over my wrongful termination. I relive his heartfelt proposal, the acceptance and love his family has shown me, and the tenderness he has given me when I needed it most.

  I’ve seen his heart, over and over again. He loves me. I have no doubt about that. But does he love me enough to tell me the truth? Does he love me enough to figure this out together? Does he love me enough to let me see the rest of him? The part he has kept hidden from me?

  What I won’t tolerate are lies and secrets. I’ve had enough of both those things in my life already. I want the truth. I want him to want to tell me. What will I do if he looks me in the eye and lies?

  My heart is breaking as it becomes clear to me that if he lies, I’ll have no choice but to leave him. I can’t—and I won’t—be in a relationship built on lies. Even if he had my best interests at heart by keeping this from me, it’s time now to come clean. I’ll give him the chance to tell the truth, and if he does, we’ll figure out our next steps together. If he lies… Well, then I know what I have to do.

  Chapter 20

  I wake up to the most god-awful smell. I’m almost afraid to open my eyes to see what it is. When I do, I realize I’m sharing my pillow with the wildebeest, and she’s got some nasty morning breath.

  “Christ on a stick,” I mutter as I realize that not only is she sharing my pillow, but apparently I’m snuggling with her, too. I long for the days when she was snapping at me. How in the hell did I end up snuggled up to Fluff rather than my gorgeous wife? And speaking of my gorgeous wife, where is she?

  I roll out of bed, leaving the beast snoring, go into the bathroom to take a leak and brush my teeth. I find a pair of gym shorts that I pull on before I go looking for Natalie. In the living room, I spot her rolled up in a ball on the sofa, her dark hair spread out on a pillow.

  Why is she sleeping on the sofa and not with me?

  I sit next to her and lean over to kiss her awake. Her eyes flutter open, and for a second she looks happy to see me before the light in her eyes goes dull. What’s that about?

  “What’re you doing out here, sweetheart?”

  “Couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to bother you.”

  “You wouldn’t have bothered me. I much prefer you and your sweetness to Fluff and her gorilla breath.”

  “She doesn’t have gorilla breath.”

  “Yes, she does. And that’s me being kind.” I tug on her hand. “Come back to bed for a while. It’s still early, and we have nowhere to be until later.” Addie will know to book us on a late-day flight so we can have some time to regroup before we head to Mexico.

  Natalie resists my efforts to lure her back to bed.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Could I talk to you about something?”

  “Of course.”

  Her brows furrow and her lips purse, like she’s screwing up the courage to tell me what’s on her mind.

  “Sweetheart, tell me what’s wrong.”

  She looks at me, and it occurs to me that I still haven’t seen the true color of her eyes without the brown contact lenses she wears. I want to see the real color. Maybe she’ll show me while we’re in Mexico.

  “If I ask you something personal, will you tell me the truth?” she asks.

  “I’ll always tell you the truth.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “What’s this about, Natalie?”

  “The room at Hayden’s…”

  Oh fuck… “What about it?”

  “Are you into that stuff, too?”

  For a second, my brain totally freezes. I just promised to tell her the truth, but if I do, then she’ll know that I’ve kept it from her until now. She’ll think I’ve been unsatisfied every time we made love when I’
m the opposite of unsatisfied.

  “Flynn?”

  “No, I’m not into it. That’s his thing, not mine. I’m into you. You’re all I need, Natalie.” I lean in to kiss her forehead. “Can we go back to bed now?”

  “You go ahead. I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Let me get you dirty first.” I turn my attention to her neck, but she slides out from under me, her face set in an unreadable expression, which is all new. I can always read her. “Nat? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just want a shower.”

  “Okay, then…” She leaves the room, and I sit there for a minute, confused by her behavior. What the hell just happened here? I return to the bedroom and get back into bed to wait for her. She comes out of the bathroom thirty minutes later, fully dressed for much colder weather than what we’re experiencing in Southern California.

  Then I see the suitcase she’s pulling behind her. I get out of bed. “What’re you doing?”

  “I’m going home to New York. I’m returning to school and my apartment with Leah.”

  I feel like I’ve been knifed in the heart. “What the fuck, Natalie? You’re leaving me?”

  Her eyes fill and her jaw sets before she nods.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a liar, and I won’t be married to a man who lies to me about who and what he really is.”

  That’s when I realize two things—one, she’s seriously leaving me, and two, she knows the truth about me. How in the fuck did she find out?

  “Natalie, wait. Let’s talk about this.”

  “We did talk, and I gave you the opportunity to tell me the truth. Instead, you looked me in the eye and lied.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We both know you lied.”

  “And that’s a deal breaker? After everything we’ve been through, you’re actually going to walk away from me? I thought you loved me.”

  “I do love you. I love you with my whole heart and soul. I’ve shared every part of myself with you, even the most painful parts. I’ve been closer to you in the last month than I’ve been to anyone else in my life. I’ve kept nothing secret. Can you say the same?”

  “Natalie… You don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. You didn’t think I could handle it, so you kept it from me.”

  “Yes! That! Exactly.”

  “Except, when I gave you the chance to fix it, you continued to lie. That’s the part I can’t live with. How will I ever know what else you’re keeping from me? How will I ever know if you’re satisfied with me when you obviously want more than you think I can give?”

  The ground is shifting under me, and I can’t find my footing in this situation. A sense of desperation unlike anything I’ve ever experienced overtakes me. I want the last hour to do over again more than I’ve ever wanted anything, ever.

  “If you leave, there’s no chance we’ll ever find our way through this.”

  “If I stay, there’s no way I’ll ever know that I truly have all of you. I’ve lived half a life for long enough, Flynn.” Her voice catches, but she recovers her composure. “I’ve loved every minute we’ve spent together. You’ve been so extraordinarily generous and tender toward me from the beginning, and you’ll never know how much I appreciate that.”

  “I don’t want your goddamn appreciation.”

  “And I don’t want your goddamn lies. Come on, Fluff. Let’s go home.”

  Fluff launches off the bed and follows Natalie and her suitcase out of the bedroom.

  “Natalie, wait. This is insane. You can’t go back to who you were before. The press will be all over you. You won’t be safe.”

  “I’ll be fine. After a while, they’ll lose interest in the boring schoolteacher from New York who was briefly married to the movie star.”

  Hearing her describe our marriage in the past tense fills me with panic. “You’re just going to give up on us that quickly? Without even giving me a chance?”

  “I’ve given you every chance. You’ve had more than enough time to tell me the truth, and you didn’t. And this morning, you lied to my face.”

  “How do you know? Who told you?”

  “Valerie.”

  Hearing that, I want to roar from the rage that surges through me like a tidal wave, sucking me under and making me see red. I’ll fucking kill her for this. I somehow manage to find the words to ask the one question that has to be asked. “When did you see Valerie?”

  “The other night in the ladies’ room at the SAGs. She gave me quite the earful, but I didn’t believe her. The Flynn I know and love bears no resemblance whatsoever to the man she described to me, so I blew it off as meaningless jealousy. Then when she called me last night, after you were asleep, to tell me about your room downstairs and where I could find the key, I had a feeling she wasn’t making it up after all.”

  I feel like I’ve been shot straight through the heart. I never got around to getting rid of the stuff in the basement, and now she’s seen it. This can’t be happening.

  “After I saw what you have down there, you know what occurred to me?”

  “What?” I ask through gritted teeth.

  “Yesterday, when we were in Hayden’s room, you were naked and hard as a rock. It turned you on to be in that room with me, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I hiss. “So what?”

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t have just told me that. Now we’ll never know what might’ve been, will we?”

  “You can’t leave me over this. I won’t let you!”

  “You won’t let me? What’re you going to do?”

  I make an effort to soften my tone so I don’t make this worse, if that’s even possible. “You’re overreacting, baby. I kept it from you because I didn’t want to scare you after everything you’ve been through.”

  “And I understand that. I even appreciate it. But when I asked you straight out and you lied to me, that’s something else altogether.”

  “I realize that now. I shouldn’t have done that. I swear to God, I’ve never lied to you about anything else—and I never will again. Can’t we please talk this through and figure it out together?”

  She wants to. I can see that, yet I also know there’s a backbone made of steel in her that’s gotten her through worse than this.

  “So many times,” I say, “I told myself I should walk away because you deserve better than me. Remember after our first date when I didn’t call you? It was because Hayden convinced me that a nice girl like you had no business getting tangled up with the likes of me. Then you texted me and asked me to see Aileen. I took one look at you that day and knew I could never walk away from you. I love you so much, Nat. I put your needs ahead of my own. That’s what this comes down to.”

  Her eyes are full of unshed tears that break my heart. “I had a right to know about your needs. You should’ve told me, especially before you married me.”

  “Yes, I should have. You’re absolutely right—and I was wrong. So very, very wrong. I screwed up. I’ll never deny that. But we can fix this. I know we can. We’ve already endured more than some people do in a lifetime. Please don’t give up on us, Nat. You told me the night we got married that you wouldn’t.” I take a step closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “You made promises to me.”

  She pushes my hands away. “You lied to me! Don’t talk to me about promises, Flynn. This is why Hayden can’t bear to look at me, because he knew the truth about you—and I didn’t.”

  I gather her in close to me, breathing in the scent of her hair. “You can’t leave me, Nat. You’ll ruin me.”

  She begins to cry in earnest. “I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t live with someone who lies to me as easily as you did this morning, especially over something so important.”

  “It’s not important! That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

  She wiggles out of my embrace, pushing me back. “If it’s not important to you, then why do you have a room full
of BDSM equipment in your house? And don’t make it worse by telling me it’s not yours or some other line of bullshit.”

  Before I can form a response to that, Fluff begins to bark and snarl at me the way she did when Natalie and I were first together.

  “I have to go.”

  “You can’t leave without security.”

  “I’ll let them drive me to the airport, and then I’ll put my hair up and wear glasses. No one will recognize me.”

  “Yes, they will, Natalie. You’re being naïve.”

  “I’ve been naïve from the beginning where you’re concerned. Why stop now?” She goes into the kitchen to retrieve her purse and then returns to the foyer, where she bends to clip Fluff’s leash to her collar.

  “So that’s it? Just like that it’s over?”

  After a long, endless pause during which I die a thousand times, she finally looks at me. “I need some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk to you.”

  “I’ll give you a week, and then I’m coming after you.” As I say the words, I wonder how I’ll survive a week without her, the same week we were supposed to spend on our honeymoon.

  “Don’t do that. I won’t see you until I’m ready to.”

  “I’m sorry, Natalie. I fucked this up. I freely admit that. Please don’t go. I love you so much. Please.” I have never once, in all my life, begged a woman for anything.

  Until now.

  “I don’t want to go, but it’s what I need right now. I will call you. When I’m ready.” With Fluff’s leash attached to one hand and her suitcase in the other, she opens the door but turns back once more. “I love you, too. You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

  The door closes with a click that echoes throughout the house like a gunshot.

  Through the beveled glass on the side of the door, I watch her approach the security detail. I see one of them open the back door of an SUV for her. I see her and Fluff get in. Right before the door closes, Natalie wipes tears from her face. And then they’re gone. Almost as fast as they entered my life, they’ve exited it.