Bless his heart.
* * * *
When they sat down, Paul had laid his phone facedown on the table, off to the side, in case work needed him. He’d left his work cell behind, but they knew to call him on his personal cell.
He did not want to be interrupted, though. He wanted to give Lynn his full attention, especially since he finally felt like there was hope.
The last thing he wanted a distraction.
He had a custom vibration tone for work. If they called or texted him, he’d notice it.
So when his phone burped out a single vibration for a text, he simply reached over and touched the power button to silence it.
Just as their food arrived, another text came in, and again he silenced it.
Whoever it was could wait. It wasn’t work.
The third time it happened, he silenced it again, but Lynn noticed.
“Do you need to look at that?”
“No. It’s not work.”
“How can you tell? Oh.” She smiled, but it broke his heart how sad it looked. “You still have the custom vibrations.”
“Yeah. I’m still predictable.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate you doing that.”
While they were eating, several more texts and a call came through. Unusual, because he rarely received that many in a morning, unless they were from work. When Lynn excused herself to the bathroom halfway through their meal, he glanced at his phone.
Sarah.
The texts and the call.
And she’d left a voice mail.
He quickly played it.
“Why aren’t you returning my texts? I called you at work and they said you were out of the office all next week due to a family emergency. What family emergency? Call me. I want to know what’s going on.”
He angrily deleted the voice mail, as well as her call from his call log.
I don’t owe her anything.
He glanced at the messages. They’d started out innocuous.
Can we talk?
Please text me back.
Why aren’t you answering my texts?
I’m going to call you at work.
What is going on? Where are you? Why are you out of town? What emergency?
Answer my call goddammit!
He fought against the rage building in him. She’d obviously called his direct line, gotten his voice mail that simply said he would be out of the office until the following Monday, and then she must have called the main line to talk to one of his coworkers.
Fuck.
Lynn was just sliding into the booth when his phone buzzed in his hand with an incoming call, startling him.
This time, it was work.
“Sorry, this one’s work.”
“It’s okay.”
He got up to answer, quickly heading to the front door and stepping outside. It was warm and windy, but the temperature was dropping and the blue sky starting to cloud over. “Paul Harman.”
“It’s Ken. Look, I don’t know what’s going on with your ex, but call her and tell her to stop calling here, please? She’s already called like four times, and she’s flipping out on the phone. I don’t appreciate her taking tone with me. Whatever is going on, handle it. Now.”
Shit. His boss understandably sounded pissed off. “I’m really sorry. I told her not to call me at work unless it was an emergency.” Paul’s phone beeped with an incoming text.
He didn’t look at it.
“I know you went through a rough patch with her, but I thought once your divorce was final that you were going to have your head back where it belongs. I need you to deal with this once and for all.”
“I will. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. That’s all I needed.”
“Okay.”
His boss ended the call, and Paul swiped to his text messages.
Another from Sarah.
I’m not going to stop trying to reach you until you deal with me.
He finally tapped out a reply. What do you want?
Where are you?
Taking a deep breath, he tapped his reply. None of your business. Tell me what you want, or leave me alone. If you don’t leave me alone I WILL block your number. NEVER call my work again.
There was a hesitation. That was the first time he’d ever replied to her so harshly before. Usually he kept it polite and refused her efforts to drag him into her drama.
She finally replied. I just want to talk. Do you have a minute?
Is it about finances?
No, I just want to talk.
I’m NOT doing this. I’m out of town. Stop texting me.
He quickly swiped through screens to find the mute feature and set her texts and phone number so that it wouldn’t ring or vibrate if she called or texted.
Now angry and shaking, he took a couple of deep breaths before returning inside to Lynn.
Lynn cocked her head. “Everything okay?”
He refused to lie to her or withhold anything. “Apparently Sarah’s been trying to text me. When I didn’t respond, she called work and got snippy with my boss. Which made him call me. So I had to text her back to shut her down.”
Like a steel door, a mask settled over Lynn’s expression. She even sat back in her seat. “Oh.”
Fuck. He hated that. Here he was, already fucking things up when he thought maybe he’d made a little progress.
He set his phone facedown on the table again and reached over, moving his plate out of the way, to take her hand in his. “I texted her back and told her to leave me alone or I’d block her number. I’ll show you the texts, if you want. I deleted the voice mail already, or I’d let you listen to that, too.”
She didn’t pull her hand away, which gave him hope. “What’d she want?”
“She said just to talk. Which basically means hinting around at getting together. She’s done that a few times. Each time she did, I shut her down before she could get to that point. All I told work was that I had a family emergency, so now she’s using that as an excuse to try to get me to talk to her.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not getting back together with her. The divorce is final. I haven’t seen her in weeks, and that’s only because she stopped by my apartment to bring me some mail that ended up mixed up with hers right after we’d just started the change of address process and mail was still going to the house.”
“Okay. Does she know you’re here with me?”
“No. She doesn’t know where I am. I didn’t tell my boss where I was going, either.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have made you take off like that.”
“It’s not your fault. I had to take a lot of time off, a lot of screwy stuff, last-minute calling off toward the end of my marriage while dealing with her. Before I finally filed and then for the divorce. I was just settling into a stable routine again.”
Her expression clouded. “I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize. This is worth it. If he wouldn’t give me the time off, I would have quit right there. No way in hell was I going to blow this chance with you.”
“I don’t want to cost you your job.”
“I can get another job. I’m in IT. Might not make the money I am now, but I don’t give a crap at this point. You’re the only person I care about.”
He hated how scared she looked. She’d almost started relaxing, hints of smiles, even a few smiles that were almost, but not quite, as bright as he remembered.
“What can I do to make you feel safe?” he asked.
She stared at where his hand still held hers for a long, tense moment. “I’m scared she’s going to call you and threaten to kill herself and you’ll go back to her.”
“You and I haven’t had a chance to talk about any of this, but no. I absolutely will not go back to her.”
“Before, you said you couldn’t handle the guilt if she harmed herself. I understood that and respected you for it, even though I didn’t agree with your choice.�
��
Hell, no one who knew most of the story the way Lynn did had agreed with his choice. They’d all said Sarah was probably playing him and wouldn’t really get the serious help she needed long-term.
They’d all been right, despite what he’d thought and hoped at the time.
“I promised her there were things I’d never tell anyone,” he finally said. “Just like there were things you and I discussed that I refused to tell her because you’d asked me not to. And maybe that was part of her issues. I don’t know and don’t care at this point. But when all this started, when she first had her breakdown, I laid out firm conditions that she had to meet for me to stay in our marriage. She promised me she would. And then…”
“She didn’t.”
He nodded. “You were right. You all were right. When she turned around and refused to uphold her end of the deal, after I’d warned her several times in front of her therapist what would happen, and even after the therapist reminded her what she’d freely agreed to, I gave her one last chance. She told me to go to hell, that I was the one who was wrong. She moved my stuff out of our bedroom while I wasn’t home and gave me the silent treatment. So I filed. I moved out, and we sold the house. I think up until the point the judge signed the final orders and the house sold that she thought I was going to come back. That I would cancel it.”
“I’m sorry. I hoped at least something good would come from all of that. That she’d heal.”
“Something good did come of it.” He squeezed her hand again and waited until she looked him in the eye. “I was finally able to move on and put that behind me so I can try to make things right with you.”
“But look what it cost you.”
“It cost you more. I wish I could go back and make different choices, starting at the beginning of my relationship with her. I loved her, but I should have forced her into counseling years ago. I wouldn’t have dragged you into that if I’d known what she was hiding. I can’t change anything that happened. All I can do is change what I do now. And what I want to do now is spend the rest of my life trying to regain your trust.”
* * * *
Lynn had actually been starting to enjoy herself somewhat until all that happened. She’d remembered how, before, any time they were together and Sarah called or texted him, even about stupid stuff that didn’t matter and could have waited, he would immediately reply. While it had irritated her, she’d understood and even admired him for it. It’d been part of the deal when Sarah had told him he could not only play with Lynn but be poly with her as well.
Sarah had even once told her she appreciated that Lynn didn’t seem bothered by it.
“I’m pissed off that she lied to me,” Lynn finally admitted to him, even though she hadn’t wanted to get into this conversation at the restaurant. “I’m pissed off that I considered her a friend, would have done anything for her, loved her in a way, even, and she lied to me.”
“She didn’t lie, exactly. She told the best truth she was able to. She’s got borderline personality disorder. Something else you were absolutely right about. She doesn’t deal with things the way we do. She doesn’t process.”
“You can call it what you want, but she lied.” Lynn resisted the urge to pull her hand from his.
“I understand why you feel that way. She…” He seemed to need a moment to find a way to say it without revealing things he’d promised not to. “She felt betrayed that we fell in love.”
“But we promised that nothing we did would hurt your marriage, and we didn’t. She was the only one who thought your marriage was in trouble.”
“I know.”
“How are we in any version of this story the bad guys?”
“There are no bad guys.”
“She lied to me. She lied to you. An omission is as good as a lie. We followed all her rules. Every one of them. To the letter, and sometimes even beyond the letter when one of us wasn’t sure if we were crossing a line. We never went around behind her back. We never hid anything. You always put her first. I begged her to talk to me, to come to me at any time. The first time she finally did in a couple of years it was to basically bash the crap out of you to me and make you sound like you were the world’s suckiest husband, as if I wasn’t your girlfriend. And that was after months of barely being able to coax more than a few words out of her.”
“I know—”
The cork was off that genie’s bottle. She plowed over him. “And here I was, having to sit there and listen to her talking about what a shitty-assed husband you were, all the horrible things you supposedly did, like I was suddenly her best buddy to confide in when I’d already heard your side of things and knew that she was either outright lying or batshit crazy!”
“I know.”
“And she got pissed when I told you what she said? What the hell did she think was going to happen? We already told her that, with only a few exceptions, we had no secrets. And she didn’t ask me not to tell you what she said, or I would have stopped her.”
She took a deep breath as she realized her voice was going up in volume. She toned it down, leaning over the table. “You were my best friend. If nothing else, someone sitting there, anyone else, saying those same things about you, I would have gone after them for it. Defended you because you were my best friend. For over an hour, Paul, I had to sit there and listen and pretend I wasn’t seething with rage and point out to her everything she was wrong about. Because I was afraid to speak up and stop her for fear of pissing her off and her pulling our permissions. How was that fair to me? Huh? I did consider her a friend up until that point. Then she paints me and you to be the bad guys in this? And, oh yeah, ended up pulling all our permissions anyway.”
He listened without interruption, his gaze fixed on her.
“Then I told you—everyone told you—get her a therapist who won’t let her gaslight them. You said she’d picked a religious-based counselor recommended by her church. Did I not tell you I thought she had a personality disorder? That you needed to force her to see someone with experience dealing with those? I took psych classes in college, and I’ve done a shit-ton of behavioral research for my books. I know as much or more about personality disorders than some practicing mental health experts. And what did I tell you?”
“That she would gaslight the hell out of the counselor if they weren’t used to dealing with that,” he quietly said. “Especially because of the poly situation.”
“And what did Tilly tell you?”
“The same thing.”
“And what did everyone else you confided in say?”
He let out a weary sigh. “That unless she got intense inpatient therapy for her personality disorder, she would revert once she thought she’d got what she wanted. That she was only doing enough to make me cut ties with you, isolate me from my friends, and get me settled into the pattern she wanted.”
“And what did we all tell you about her slowly revoking our privileges?”
Now his gaze fell to the table. “That she was going to chip away at them until she completely isolated me from all my friends in the lifestyle and you.”
“Exactly. And the counselor treated the situation like you’d cheated on her, even though that absolutely was not the case and Sarah even admitted it wasn’t the case, right?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what happened.” He was silent for a moment. “I had to at least try.”
“I know.” She squeezed his hand, hard. “That’s one of the things I love so damn much about you because I knew how much this was tearing you up. Do you know why I haven’t so much as gone on a coffee date with anyone in two years?”
She waited until he met her gaze again. “Why?”
“Because I couldn’t get the sound of you sobbing out of my head that last night we ever saw each other face-to-face and you told me you had to do this so she’d have a chance to find recovery. You were not an emotional man. I’d been to funerals with you, of good friends, where you loved them and got choked up and teary. But th
e sound of you sobbing as we held each other that last time will haunt me to my dying day. It was at that moment I realized I didn’t give a shit about myself, but I hated her for doing this to you.”
Chapter Fourteen
They didn’t talk much during the rest of their lunch. Lynn knew she’d need some time to regroup and figure out what she wanted to say to him.
Things she didn’t want to say in an increasingly busy restaurant, when she knew dang well she’d be crying through a lot of it.
Paul’s phone didn’t go off again, either.
“Did you want to go anywhere?” he finally asked. “Sightsee?”
“I would like to see Falls Park. It sounds pretty. Not like we get to see many of those in Florida. Waterfalls, that is.”
“Where is it?”
She pulled it up on her phone. “Not too far from here. It’s just north of downtown.”
“Do you want me to reserve a separate hotel room when we get back?”
Staring at him, she realized he was serious. “No, I don’t want you to get a separate room. Why would I want you to do that?”
“I’m just asking. I didn’t want to assume anything.”
“I didn’t just spend two years forcibly separated from you to not have you in the same room.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you don’t hate me.”
She fought back the prickle of tears threatening to break through again. “I’ve never hated you. I hated the circumstances and what happened. I’ve always loved you. I knew you didn’t want this to work out the way it did.”
Outside, the sky had clouded up, and the temperature had dropped a little more, but it didn’t feel like rain yet. With Lynn navigating, they soon found their way to the park. Hand in hand, they walked over toward the falls and stood there, reading the information on one of the placards, Paul finally stepping behind her and wrapping his arms around her.
She pulled her phone out and took a selfie of them together. Their first in two years.
Even if this flamed out and crashed, she knew she would in the future spend countless hours staring at that one picture.
Beware Falling Rocks [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Page 11