Bonnie had shared with Allie that, since she’d entered the picture, Liam was like a new man. She hadn’t really understood the extent of his reclusiveness following the accident. From what she could discern, he had basically shut himself off from the world.
But he was back, happy to socialize, willing to meet new people, and fully engaged in their relationship. Matt and Bonnie had invited the two of them to their favorite BDSM club, Paradise Found, to celebrate Liam’s birthday that Saturday night, now only two days away. Liam, though he’d seemed to hesitate at first, had agreed they should go. Allie was very excited at the prospect of going to the club with Matt and Bonnie, both of whom had expressed strong interest in a shared scene.
Allie had been working off and on in secret on his present for the last week, ever since the parts she’d needed for it had arrived at Bonnie’s house. She kept the project hidden beneath her worktable, lost in a jumble of supplies Liam would never think or want to go through.
A new idea for the filigreed top piece came to her suddenly in the middle of the night, waking her from sleep. Allie glanced at the clock beside the bed. Though it was still dark out, she was surprised to see it was already nearly five in the morning. She wouldn’t get back to sleep until she brought the idea to life, so she slipped quietly out of bed and padded silently out of the bedroom.
She was soldering a delicate piece into place when she heard Liam’s voice from their bedroom. She pricked her ears, her heart quickening.
Another nightmare.
Once every few weeks, he woke in a sweat, his eyes wild, his breathing ragged. Each time, she’d soothed him back to sleep, but every episode left her worried and sad. She had talked to Bonnie about it, wondering aloud if it was normal that he still had these nightmares a year after the accident.
“The other driver died,” Bonnie reminded her. “He was the father of three children. Liam did go to therapy for a few sessions when it happened, but from what you’re telling me, clearly there are still demons doing damage inside his head.”
Allie had tried a time or two to broach the subject, gently suggesting he might want to return to therapy, but so far, while Liam seemed to listen and ponder her suggestion, he hadn’t taken any action.
Allie quickly put away her project beneath her worktable and hurried across the hall to the bedroom to comfort her lover.
“No, no, no,” he moaned, urgency in his tone. Allie could see from the light in the hallway that he was thrashing, caught in the throes of his nightmare.
She touched his shoulder lightly. “Liam. Liam, honey. Wake up. Wake up, it’s okay.”
“Stop it, you idiot!” he cried. “Put the phone down! Put the fucking phone down!”
What the hell? That was new.
Allie shook his shoulder more insistently. “Liam. Wake up.”
His eyes flew open as he shot upright, his entire body rigid. “What?” He cried. “What is it? Who? What?”
“Shh,” Allie said soothingly, though her heart clutched with sympathetic anxiety. “You’re awake now. It was the nightmare. You were talking in your sleep.”
She took the bottle of water from beside his bed, unscrewed the cap and handed it to him. As he drank, she ventured, “You said something different this time. Something about a phone.”
Liam’s eyes met hers and then skittered rapidly away. “I did?” he said, his head averted.
“Yes. You said, let me see…” Allie regarded the ceiling a moment as she tried to recall his exact words. “You said, ‘Stop it, you idiot. Put the phone down. Put the fucking phone down.’”
“Oh, my god,” Liam breathed. “Oh, my god.” He looked at her, his face stricken. To her shock, tears formed in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
Alarmed, Allie squeezed his arm. “What is it, Liam? What does it mean? Why are you crying?”
Liam looked surprised and then confused. Slowly he lifted his hand to his cheek and then regarded his finger, which was wet with his tears. “I don’t know.”
Something in his tone sounded false. “Liam?” He didn’t look up. “Liam,” Allie said again, a little more forcefully. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“Oh, Allie,” he said, the pain in his voice driving a knife of pity and compassion through her heart. “If you knew…” He dropped his head into his hands.
Allie scooted closer and placed her hand on his shoulder. “What is it? Talk to me.”
Liam was silent for a long moment, his face still hidden in his hands. Finally he whispered, “I’ve never told anyone. No one knows.”
A deep sense of unease clutched at Allie’s innards, but she forced herself to remain calm. She would handle whatever it was. They would handle it together. “You can tell me, Liam. I’m here for you. I’m your safe place as you are mine, remember?”
Slowly, he lifted his head, his face a mask of anguish. “You’re right, Allie. I owe you the truth. You trusted me with your secrets. It’s time I do the same.”
Allie waited, silently sending him all the strength and love she could.
“It’s my fault, Allie,” Liam finally said. “That guy is dead because of me. Those kids have no dad because of me.”
Allie stared at him in confusion. “What? The guy was drunk and his car jumped the median. How could that possibly be your fault?”
Again he paused, this time for so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“Liam?”
He took a deep breath, as if girding himself, and then, speaking so softly she had to strain to hear him, said, “I was texting. I was texting on my stupid phone when the accident happened.” He looked away, his words tumbling together in a rush, he went on, “I know it’s totally stupid, but Lila”—he cut himself off with a press of his lips, but then made himself continue—”Lila and I had been having one of our endless arguments. I was using my thumbs instead of Siri, so my eyes weren’t on the road. I glanced up and saw that car heading toward me at a million miles an hour.”
Finally he looked at Allie, his expression at once tragic and beseeching. “Don’t you see? If I hadn’t been texting”—his voice cracked and he cleared his throat—“maybe I could have swerved away in time. Maybe that guy would still be alive.” His voice cracked again, and he swallowed hard, wiping angrily at his eyes.
“Oh, Liam, no,” Allie burst out. “No, that’s all wrong. How long were your eyes off the road—two seconds? Three?” When Liam didn’t respond, she went on earnestly, “There’s no way that accident could have been prevented, even if your eyes had been glued to the road.”
“You don’t know that,” Liam countered miserably.
Allie glanced out the window as she pondered this, an idea popping into her head. The sky was lightening outside, color edging over the windowsill. She didn’t voice her idea, instead saying gently, “It’s time you let yourself heal. It’s time to forgive yourself, no matter what your role might have been.”
“I know,” Liam said quietly. “Maybe I’ll do what you and Bonnie suggest and go back to that therapist. I don’t like to think my shit is affecting someone else—affecting you.”
Allie nodded. “I love you,” she said simply, her heart warming at his answering smile.
“Me, too, you,” he replied. “More than anything in this world.”
Relieved the nightmare seemed to have fully released him from its dark hold, Allie asked, “Do you think you can go back to sleep?”
Liam shook his head. “No way. I’m totally awake. How about you?”
“Same here,” Allie agreed, not mentioning she had already been awake and working on his secret gift. “How about I get some coffee going while you wash up?”
“Excellent idea.” Liam swung his legs over the side of the bed. As he moved, he turned his face, but not before she saw the spasm of pain that twisted it into a grimace. That accident, she thought grimly, would be with them forever.
While Liam showered and shaved, Allie put on the coffee, slid some frozen biscuits into the
oven, and hurried into his study. She hesitated a moment, worried about violating his privacy, but decided her goal superseded the moral dilemma.
Moving with purpose, she went to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room and pulled open the top drawer. There were many files, each one with a neatly labeled tab containing the name of an individual or a company. Work files, she could see.
The second drawer contained home and car insurance files, receipts and various other personal documents, nothing that pointed to the financial settlement or other details of the accident.
In the bottom drawer, she found what she was looking for, though her task, she saw, wasn’t going to be easy. Unlike the other neatly organized drawers, this one was crammed with dozens of manila folders filled with mountains of paper. Many of the folders weren’t labeled at all, and for a moment, she despaired of finding what she sought without spending an inordinate amount of time.
Crouching in front of the open drawer, she fingered rapidly through the mess, breathing a sigh of relief when she found the file she was seeking, labeled in the same strong, neat hand as those in the upper drawers: Police Report.
Pulling the file from the drawer, she flicked it open and quickly scanned the report, looking for basic data she hoped would mitigate Liam’s concerns over his culpability. The first few paragraphs noted the condition of the cars, the injuries and the fatality sustained as a result of the collision, and the surviving driver’s condition at the scene. Liam, the police noted, had been wearing his seatbelt. Witnesses at the scene stated he had been driving in the proper lane at a safe speed. There were diagrams on a pre-printed map, the cars placed on the grid to show their positions at the time of the accident. The notes on the map indicated Liam had swerved to the right just before the vehicles collided, shifting the point of impact from head-on to the front left and side of his vehicle.
Allie flipped to the last page of the report, an addendum dated a week after the initial report.
After regaining consciousness shortly after admission to Providence Portland Medical Center, Mr. Byrne signed consent to release information to the police regarding his mental status while driving, as well as cell phone usage.
The blood test performed during admission at the hospital revealed no alcohol or drugs in his system.
As Allie read the next section, her mouth fell open, and she lost her balance, falling back from her crouch onto her butt on the carpet. Upon examination, the investigator determined there had been no incoming or outgoing phone calls or texts received during the minutes leading up to the accident.
Allie startled at the sound of Liam’s voice. Looking up, she saw him standing in the doorway.
“There you are,” he said with a smile. “I heard the oven timer going off so I—“ He broke off, his smile falling away, his eyebrows furrowing. “What’re you doing, Allie? Why is the filing cabinet open? Why are you going through my things?”
“Evidence,” she said, aware he might be angry at the breach of his privacy. There was too much at stake to worry about that right now. “I wanted to find something, anything, to help us really understand what happened that day.” Allie rose to her feet. “Have you ever read the police report, Liam?” She waved it toward him.
Liam scowled and turned away. “I didn’t need to read it,” he said, both anger and defeat in his tone. “I lived it.”
Allie moved quickly toward him. Gently, she touched his arm. “You need to read it now.” She held the pages in front of him and pointed. “Right there. Read what it says, Liam. Please.”
Chapter 12
Liam sat at the kitchen table, the police report before him. “This is so weird.” I can’t make sense of it.” He stared down at words that flew in the face of what he knew to be true. He didn’t remember the police being in the emergency room. He didn’t recall signing any kind of consent, though apparently he must have done so. He looked up at Allie. “The pieces don’t fit together.”
Allie set a mug of coffee on the table by Liam’s elbow. “We’ll figure this out together. It’s a mystery right now, but it’s a good mystery.”
Liam looked up at her, desperately wanting to believe her, though his heart told him something different. He reached automatically for the coffee and took a sip.
The entire reality of his life for the past year had been suddenly flipped on its head. It said right there in black and white that he hadn't been texting in the seconds leading up to the accident. And yet, he had been. Did the investigator deliberately cover up Liam’s culpability for some reason? Or maybe the phone had been damaged during the collision, somehow erasing whatever data had been stored? Liam’s head throbbed with the effort of sorting through the confusion.
Allie set a plate of biscuits on the table, along with butter and blackberry jam. She cut open a biscuit, spread butter over each side and spooned on some jam. She put the prepared biscuit on a plate and pushed it toward him.
“Thanks.” In spite of his turmoil, Liam appreciated her sweet domesticity.
As she prepared a second biscuit for herself, Allie said, “So, tell me again. You say you remember texting with Lila in the moments before the crash, right?”
“Yeah. We were having an argument about something stupid.” He smiled ruefully. “We were always having arguments, seems like. I don’t even remember what it was about. Oh, wait.” He squinted at the middle distance, the memory of their texted conversation suddenly tumbling back into his mind with vivid clarity.
“I remember now,” he said. “It was about the wedding ceremony. She wanted to wear a heavy chain slave collar with her bridal gown and carry a leather flogger down the aisle instead of a bouquet. She was adamant about it.”
Even as he said the strange words, he realized how completely ridiculous they sounded. Not only ridiculous, but incongruous with the preparations Lila had made for the wedding. She had invited friends and family who knew nothing about their lifestyle, both sets of parents included. She had spent a fortune on a designer wedding gown, and there was no way in hell she would have wanted to wear chains in lieu of her grandmother’s pearls.
“Are you serious? She really wanted to do that?” Allie asked, echoing his thoughts.
Liam shook his head, as if he could somehow shake everything back into place. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It does sound pretty crazy, now that I’m saying it out loud. But I have this distinct memory.” He paused, thinking it over. “It’s really weird, though, because I never text when I drive.”
He frowned, recalling the scenario—the phone beeping on his lap, looking down to see her message. Which was also odd, since he never kept his phone on his lap, where it might slip down between his feet if he had to stop suddenly.
“Something isn’t right here, Liam,” Allie said, interrupting his thought process. “The pieces aren’t fitting together. The police report says definitively that you weren’t using your phone in the moments leading up to the accident. Yet you have a memory of texting, a very specific memory. Something doesn’t add up.”
Liam pressed his fingers hard against his temples, as if he could somehow squeeze his thoughts into some semblance of order. “I know. It doesn’t make sense, but they must have got it wrong, because I remember it. I remember the buzz of the phone on my lap. I remember looking down and seeing it was from Lila. I can still see myself picking up the phone, reading the message, and jabbing back an angry reply.” He laughed mirthlessly. “My face was all red and scrunched up while I was texting. I was fucking furious.”
“Wait.” Allie wrinkled her nose in evident confusion. “That doesn’t make sense. What you just said doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, right?” Liam agreed. “I can’t get my head around all this. I feel like I did when I was in the hospital just after the accident. For the first week at least, I don’t really remember how long it was, I was in and out of consciousness. I had this morphine drip, and when it squirted into my system it was like I would be dragged down into this sort of whi
rlpool, a torpor of weird, slow-motion dreams. I feel sort of like that now. Reality is shifting under my feet like the floor in a funhouse. I can’t get my balance.”
“Oh, my god,” Allie said softly. “That’s it, Liam.
“What’s it?”
“It didn’t happen. The texting. The argument. None of it actually happened. At least, not in the moments leading up to the accident.”
“What?” Liam tilted his head at Allie. “What’re you talking about? I remember it. That’s what I’m telling you.”
Allie shook her head decisively. “You believe the whole texting thing took place while you were driving, but that doesn’t make it so.” When Liam opened his mouth to protest, Allie stopped him with a raised hand, her tone increasingly urgent. “No, please, just hear me out, okay?”
Liam closed his mouth and nodded, mentally reaching for the lifeline Allie was dangling toward him with her words, though he didn’t yet understand their meaning.
“It didn’t happen, Liam,” she repeated. “You must have dreamed it.”
“What?”
Allie rushed on. “First off, that bizarre argument with Lila sounds pretty implausible, though admittedly, I don’t know the girl. But what you said about seeing yourself is impossible. It has to be a false memory. A morphine-induced false memory.” Her voice rose with excitement. “I’ve heard of that happening. That has to be it!”
Liam’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Allie persisted, “You said, ‘My face was all red and scrunched up while I was texting.’ You can’t see your own face, Liam. Except in a dream.”
Liam was suddenly lightheaded, as if the coffee he’d been sipping was actually pure grain alcohol.
Allie jumped excitedly from her chair. “Don’t you see, Liam? You were in that hospital, half out of your mind from pain and drugs. It was a dream, not a memory at all. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
Liam stared at Allie. It was as if she’d jolted his heart with defibrillator paddles. He understood her words, but couldn’t quite grab hold of them. What of the persistent nightmares, so vivid, so insistent, so damning? What of the memory, burned like acid on his synapses, of jerking his head up from the phone screen just in time to see the car speeding toward him like an oncoming bullet? What of the deep, hidden wound of his shame at his part in the accident, which had festered and oozed in his psyche for all those long, lonely months?
BDSM Connections - The Complete 4 Novel Series Page 17