Love Is Hell: A Valentine's Story, Book 2 [The Male Order, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Edith DuBois

  After sipping a bit of the sauce, Sherri thought it could use a few more minutes, so she began pulling plates and cups from the cabinet. They all three moved around the kitchen, handing each other things and scooting out of the way if someone needed in a drawer. They cleaned all the dishes that Sherri had dirtied while preparing the sauce, and the whole time they didn’t speak.

  A few minutes later she tasted the sauce again and nodded. It was about as ready as it would be. They dipped their plates and sat down at the table. As they were bustling about the kitchen, she hadn’t noticed Benji tending to the roses he’d brought in. Now she saw that he’d found a pink vase and put them in some water.

  She touched the vase and then looked at her adorable, goofy, extremely thoughtful husband. “Thank you,” she said quietly. Even though under normal circumstances she was adamantly against such frivolous displays on Valentine’s Day, she didn’t feel like fighting it right now. And in fact, she was touched that he’d brought them to her despite her rather vocal and rather numerous objections to the holiday.

  “This is delicious,” Ethan said, after they’d each had a few bites of the spaghetti.

  “Thank you.”

  “Did you use a different herb? Thyme maybe?”

  Sherri nodded. “And a little bit of basil.”

  “And rosemary butter on the bread?” Benji asked.

  “Yes.”

  They each had a few more bites but didn’t say anything.

  Sherri put down her fork and took a deep gulp of her chilled water. Then she looked at her husbands. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I know I should have, but I didn’t know how.”

  Immediately, both of their shoulders relaxed. The tension visibly seeped out of them. God, they cared about her so much. Everything they did revolved around her. She didn’t know how she’d gotten so lucky or what she’d done to deserve two such amazing men, but she thanked the stars for what she had been given.

  She sucked in a deep breath. If she were going to get better, if she were going to move past this crippling lump of darkness that she’d buried deep inside herself, she’d have to be completely honest with her men. And it had to start now.

  “Sometimes,” she said, choking a little on the word. “Sometimes it feels like if I concentrate hard enough, I can see what we’d all look like. It’s like I can step away from myself and look at my life up ’til now. And then I can turn, just a little to the left maybe, and see another version of myself, of my life. When I look at it, all the different paths I could have taken were taken, and all the what-ifs are answered. What if my parents hadn’t died when I was five? What if Aunt Birdie didn’t live in Male Order? What if I’d gone to Sarah Lawrence instead? What if I’d gone to England instead of taking the internship at the Brandsen Center? I look at this version of myself, this ghost Sherri, and for the most part, I’m happy she’s only a figment of my imagination.

  “But then I see our little girl, and I feel the crack in my resolve. I look behind her and I see a son. I see another daughter. I see all the children we’ll never have, and I am shattered. I start to crave impossible and broken things. And I feel so guilty. For wanting a different life, for pushing you both away, for not being a better mother. God, how many times have I thought, was it me? Did I let our little girl die? Did I kill her? What could I have done different? I start to wonder, is this my fault? Why couldn’t I take care of her? What is wrong with me?”

  Sherri’s head fell forward. There was so much pressing down hard on her.

  “Sweetie,” Benji said in hushed tones, “I know it’s hard, but you can’t do this to yourself.” He kissed her neck. He kissed behind her ear. He kissed her temple. “It’s not your fault.” He put his face in her hair. “It is not your fault.” Gripping her face between his hands, he made her look him in the eye. “You need to say it.”

  Her lips trembled. She wanted to say it. She wanted to believe it.

  “What if it’s not true?”

  “It doesn’t matter if you think it is or it isn’t. I know it is. Ethan knows it is.”

  He held her face and waited. Ethan held her hand. Deep in Benji’s eyes, she could see that he was determined. He would pull her out of this. He would go to battle with her and for her. She could do it. She could do this one small thing.

  She had to.

  “It’s not my fault.” Her voice tripped over the words. They barely made it out of her throat, and she felt like she needed to throw up.

  “Say it again.” Benji was neither firm, nor gentle. He was only steady.

  Clenching her teeth for a moment and then releasing, Sherri said the words again. “It’s not my fault.”

  “Say it again.”

  “Benji.” She squeezed her eyes and swallowed hard. The words felt like bile.

  “Open your eyes, Sherri. You can do this. Now say it again.”

  Ethan squeezed her hand, lending her strength.

  “It’s not my fault,” she said again.

  “You are so beautiful,” Ethan said. “We’re gonna get through this one breath at a time if we have to.” He put his forehead to her shoulder and pushed hard. “I love you so goddamn much.”

  They held themselves together this way for almost a minute. But then Ethan’s phone went off. It was the tone that he’d set for Deputy Shires and Deputy Smith. Since Smith was on duty, Sherri figured it was from him.

  “I gotta check this, baby.”

  She nodded and pulled back, allowing him to reach for his phone.

  His eyes quickly scanned over the message. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “What is it?”

  “The Abrams mansion has been hit.”

  “Hit?”

  “With that French graffiti crap.” He let out a long sigh. “Guess I’ll need to go take a look and then do a cruise or two around the neighborhood, see if I can’t scare this pest away.”

  As he trudged to the front closet where he kept his work belt, gun, and uniform jacket, Sherri nibbled on some bread, watching Ethan get ready. She didn’t really want to be away from him tonight, but she’d learned a long time ago that the biggest part of being the sheriff’s wife was sitting at home and waiting. She wasn’t going to ask him to stay or pester him about letting her go. She really wasn’t, but then Benji met her eyes. His eyebrows were way up in his forehead and he was making some strange gesture toward Ethan.

  Sherri frowned, not comprehending his awkward, twitching head movements. Finally he rolled his eyes and called out, “You want some company, bro?”

  That perked Ethan right up. He flashed her his brilliant smile and deep-set dimples. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

  “Really?” Sherri asked. “That would be okay?”

  “More than okay, baby.”

  Now Sherri was the one who perked right up. “Let me go grab my coat. I left it in the bedroom.” She darted off to their room in the back of her cabin. She pulled on her purple North Face jacket and then grabbed a cap that her Aunt Birdie had knitted for her about fifteen years ago. Sherri had fastened an imitation mother-of-pearl flower brooch to it, and she positioned this a little to the left on her forehead. Satisfied with her appearance, she dashed back up to the front.

  She gave one halfhearted glance to the kitchen and to the table where all the dirty dishes and the leftover food remained. They’d get to it later, she decided. Right now she needed to be with her husbands.

  They locked the door behind them, climbed into Benji’s truck, and then headed out to find a graffiti bandit.

  Chapter Three

  Ethan shook Alexander Abrams’s hand, offered him the same assurances about keeping a lookout, and then headed back to the truck. It was already dark outside, and he couldn’t see much, but he doubted he would have found any sort of helpful clue even if there were some daylight left. He’d informed Deputy Smith that nothing of import could be ascertained at the site and that he didn’t need to make a trip out. He thought over all four cases so far, trying to pick out any tin
y details he may have overlooked, but no matter how he looked at it, he didn’t have much to go on.

  This person was damn sneaky. So far, that was about the biggest lead Ethan had.

  A moment later he hopped back in the truck to find Sherri and Benji giggling over something.

  “What?” he asked.

  Benji spoke through his chuckling. “We were just trying to come up with a list of suspects.”

  “What you got so far?” he asked, reversing out of the parking lot. It still blew his mind that a house could have a parking lot. What on earth did they need a parking lot for? He couldn’t wrap his brain around it. He’d been to a few of the lavish parties the Abramses put on every so often, but he wasn’t close with the family.

  He knew Emilie, Grayson, and Gavin were friends with the Abramses, and Emilie once told them that Alexander had a Rubik’s Cube made out of solid gold.

  He didn’t know if he believed her, but then why would she make that up?

  The graffiti bandit had really gotten the Abramses good. He’d spray-painted the entire east side of their guesthouse. When the sun rose tomorrow, that would be the first thing they saw in all its blazing, radiant glory out the kitchen window as they drank their morning coffee.

  “Let’s see,” Sherri said, drawing his attention back to the conversation. “First I guessed Betty Louise.”

  “Your hairdresser?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “She told me three days ago that her boyfriend of four years dumped her for another woman.”

  “Ah, the jilted lover angle. I like it.”

  “But isn’t she in her sixties?” Benji asked, leaning forward from the back. “I don’t really see her as the type to make her way nimbly through the night on a jealous rampage. I don’t really see her as the type to spray-paint people’s houses either.”

  “But that’s why she’s the perfect suspect.”

  “Okay, we’ll put her on the list,” Benji conceded, “but I have my eye on Harold Harper.”

  “The ice cream shop owner?”

  Sherri huffed. “No way. Why would anyone who’s surrounded by such deliciousness all day need to go around vandalizing houses?”

  “That’s what I’m saying, though. Don’t you ever get the feeling that he’s just a little too nice? I could definitely see a little Jekyll and Hyde thing going on with him.”

  “No,” Sherri said, shaking her head. “Not with that java triple fudge flavor he’s got going on. No one that creates something so perfect could be capable of this.”

  They continued going through their list of Male Order inhabitants, and Ethan offered his two cents here and there. Mostly, though, he kept his eyes peeled for the sight of anyone suspicious.

  A little over half an hour later, after they’d gone around the neighborhood and a couple of the surrounding neighborhoods twice, Ethan parked the truck in a dark, tucked-away corner of the town square, figuring they could sit tight for a few minutes Sherri had just finished ticking off all the reasons why the perpetrator could be none other than their postman, so Ethan grabbed her hand in his and rested them on the middle console. He’d keep a watchful eye for any cyclists trying to sneak through the square, but he didn’t think the “stakeout” would amount to anything.

  She gave him a squeeze. Even though the light was dim, he could see the pale gleam of her teeth as she smiled at him. A second later they both leaned back in their chairs. He heard Benji settling himself more comfortably in the back.

  Sherri eventually broke the pleasant silence. “I’m sorry I freaked on y’all. I know it was probably weird.”

  “No need to apologize,” Ethan said, rubbing his fingers over her knuckles.

  “Besides,” Benji added, “you know we’re used to your weirdness by now.”

  “Hey!” Sherri whipped around to give Benji the stink eye.

  “Oh, I’m teasing. I love your weird little self.”

  “Well…thanks. I guess.”

  A pensive silence blossomed between them, and Ethan thought about everything Sherri had said at their kitchen table while curled up in his lap. He didn’t want her to be unhappy. He knew how easy it was for someone to sink down into a grief like this, to let it wrap around a heart and blot out every warm, peace-giving thing that came along. He feared Sherri’s grief. He feared what it would do to her.

  He’d feared his own for a while

  It had been so blindingly powerful. He’d never felt anything like it, never been brought to his knees like that. Every day was a crippling battle against its melancholy seduction. Yet it was the only way he knew how to keep going, to not sink down, to reach up and up out of the black shining arc of his grief. He had to fight, plain and simple, because that was the only thing he knew how to do.

  Seeing Sherri so upset frightened the shit out of him. He wanted to shake her, tell her to stop, tell her to not give in. But at the same time, he couldn’t ignore her pain, or make light of it. This wasn’t something that would go away because he wanted it to.

  On top of that, he understood that Sherri’s pain was different. It sliced through her a different way. She’d had their daughter inside of her. Their little baby was a part of her body, and then suddenly she wasn’t. That was life altering. That sort of thing would get in a person’s mind and rip and tear and shred. It would obliterate completely everything Sherri was and had ever been.

  She was his wife, but she was not his wife, and they were still crawling toward each other through the dark.

  There was something else on his mind, something that had been tapping against the back of his head for a few months now. He didn’t know how to bring it up, and for a while, he didn’t know if he even would. Partly, he feared Sherri would punch him in the face for even mentioning it, but also, when he’d first gotten the idea, he hated himself for even thinking it. So at first, he’d shoved it away. He’d refused to give it attention.

  But the idea had persisted. Once lodged in some small, tiny, ignored part of his brain, it refused to leave. Every once in a while it would pop into the forefront, and he would wrestle it back into obscurity. Lately, though, it had gotten more and more persistent until he realized he’d have to talk about it.

  He wondered if now was the moment and opened his mouth to test the waters, but Sherri spoke first.

  “I’m sorry I said that about Emilie, too. Really sorry. Of course I love Gaston and Penny.”

  “Aw, sweetie, we know that,” Benji said, reaching up to rub her shoulder. “And it’s understandable that you’d feel that way. Hell, I can’t pretend like I haven’t looked at them and thought ‘Why not us?’ That’s just part of being a human being.”

  “I do love those two squirts. It would have been really nice to have them over tonight. Although now that I think about it, I’m sure by the time we got them back to Em and the twins, they would say Aunt Sherri was trying to suffocate them with hugs.”

  They all three chuckled, and Ethan realized this was probably the best opportunity he would get.

  “Sherri?”

  “Mmhmm?”

  “Have you ever thought about that?”

  “About what?”

  “Other kids. I mean, about loving them. Maybe adopting one or two of them.”

  He felt her stiffen immediately. Her hand clenched his. Even Benji fidgeted in the backseat. Too late, Ethan realized he should have probably talked this over with Benji before bringing it up with Sherri, but he couldn’t take it back now. He’d have to go through with this conversation.

  A second later, Sherri released a little bit of the tension from her grip on his hand. “The idea has popped into my head a time or two.”

  “Really?” Benji asked, sounding as surprised as Ethan felt.

  “But then I get angry and sad and kind of sick to my stomach, so I’ve been avoiding thinking about it as much as possible.”

  Although her description didn’t sound very promising, Ethan was comforted that she’d reacted the same
way he had when his brain first presented the idea. It gave him a little hope. “Do you think that could ever change?” he ventured.

  “I don’t know, baby, and it’s really hard to think about.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, not wanting to upset her in any way. “I’m just curious. And it’s been on my mind a little bit. That’s all.”

  Sherri leaned across the console, surprising him by firmly planting an assertive kiss right on his mouth. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s an understandable thought. And I won’t say that I’ll never want that. But right now I’m not ready.”

  Wrapping his hand around the back of her head, he pulled her in for a softer, deeper kiss. He ran his fingers through her shoulder-length silky, wavy strands, pushing them back from her face and tucking one side behind an ear. Their tongues danced together in a leisurely manner, rolling and twirling, advancing and retreating, and then Sherri sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. After holding it for a long moment, she released it and settled back into her seat.

  He thought she’d finished discussing it and that they would move on to another topic, but she said, “I keep thinking about how our daughter was a part of us, all three of us, and I think about how much I still want that even though it’s crazy and impossible and pointless.

  “You know…there has never been a point in my life where I questioned whether or not I wanted to be a mother. I had girlfriends in college who would go through these phases of rejecting the desire or—I guess I should say ‘expectation’—put upon women to procreate, to nurture, to rear. All that. And they would get really angry that society put all these pressures on them to want children, and I totally get it. I can see why they were upset. Nobody likes to be told what to do, but it never affected me that way. Through all my rebelliousness and my teen angst and my awkwardness, that is the one thing I have always known about myself. It was the one absolute truth that I never doubted. I would be a mother.”

  She let out a strangled laugh. “Sometimes it feels like I kind of don’t even know who I am anymore.”