"Two months?" Richard repeated, glancing over at his wife in surprise. "I don't think Sebastian's gone two months without having sex since he was fourteen!"
They both turned back to me, waiting expectantly.
"I'm not saying anything," I repeated.
"Oh, you'll tell us." Linda reached out and picked the lid off one of the pots resting on the counter. "Since it's just the three of us, I cooked all your favorites for dinner. I remember from when you still lived here. Truffle macaroni and cheese, beef brisket that's been cooking for hours, homemade horseradish au jus, and fresh biscuits with Italian herbs, made from scratch..."
My nose greedily inhaled the scents from her cooking, and I suddenly realized just how hungry I felt. My stomach added a loud growl that everyone heard, one that stretched on for several seconds. I felt my mouth filling with saliva at the imagined taste of the decadent, heavy food.
"Almost four months."
Linda jerked upright in surprise, her eyes widening. Richard nearly fell off the counter, barely catching himself from an ungraceful flop on the floor. "Four months?" he repeated, sounding stunned. "Are you serious?"
Linda recovered faster than her husband. "It was with Tori, wasn't it?" she guessed, peering back at me.
"Maybe." God, even the memory hit me like an emotional wrecking ball. I remembered how it had felt different, more intense and overwhelming than ever before when we'd been together. And yet, almost paradoxically, I'd gone slower, exploring her body, committing it to memory while I had all five of my senses operating at full strength and not dulled by drugs or drink. Even now, months later, that memory burned brightly, making my breath come a little faster in my chest.
Richard looked like he wanted to ask a million more questions, but Linda made a decision as her husband levered himself back up from where he'd nearly hit the floor. "I think we should eat dinner," she announced.
"But I want to know if he's broken his-"
She hit her husband in the ribs, hard enough to make Richard's remaining breath come out in a whoosh. "Dinner first," she insisted. "We can talk about anything else that's new in our lives afterwards."
Richard didn't look happy with the decision, but I quickly grabbed the plate that his wife offered me. I dolloped out generous helpings of everything, even taking a bit of the premade salad I'd brought. I grabbed a fork, another beer from the fridge, and headed into the dining room to eat.
Linda kept her questions to herself; she filled her own plate and joined me. Richard wolfed his food down, looking like he was about to explode with questions, but Linda just studied me. I felt a bit like a bug trapped under a microscope slide, being scrutinized by a giant eyeball from above. I tried to slow my own eating, despite my stomach's complaints, attempting to stretch out dinner for as long as possible.
"Sebastian," Linda said softly, as I picked at the last couple of bites on my plate, pushing them around so that I wouldn't have to swallow them and open myself up to questions for a few second longer. "Don't worry."
I looked up. "Don't worry about what?"
"I'm not going to pry," she said, making Richard jerk in surprise. "I'll offer you advice if you want it, but I won't push any unwanted advice on you."
"Thanks." I finished off the last couple of bites, drained my bottle of beer, cracked the second. I looked down at it for a moment, watching the mist come up from inside the neck, thinking about just ducking out of here and going back home so that I wouldn't have to answer any more embarrassing questions. I'd go...
...back home, back to my empty apartment, back to that same routine of failing to get with any girls, failing to find anyone to distract me from these awful thoughts of Tori.
Oh, the hell with it.
"Fine," I growled, slumping back in my seat. "Go ahead, doc. Take my brain apart, ask your embarrassing questions so you can tell me what's wrong with my head. I just want this to stop."
Linda just smiled back at me. "Well, there's good news and bad news there."
"Yeah? What're they?"
"The bad news," she said, "is that this isn't going to go away, I'm afraid. Not like you're hoping. But the good news is that I know exactly what's wrong with you."
Chapter Twenty-Two
SEBASTIAN
*
"The bad news," Linda said pleasantly to me from across the huge, ornate antique dining table in the Stone family mansion, "is that this isn't going to go away, I'm afraid. Not like you're hoping. But the good news," she continued, putting on a little smile, "is that I know exactly what's wrong with you."
She paused, maybe for effect, maybe waiting for me to say something.
"And?" I snapped after a couple of seconds. "What's wrong with me, then?"
"Easy." She smiled, first at her husband, and then back at me. "You're in love."
"What?" I blinked. "No way. Love's that sappy, stupid thing that you two have." I pointed at Richard and Linda. They exchanged another set of smiling glances. "There, like that. I don't have that with Tori."
"But you want to have it with her, don't you?" Linda slipped in quickly, and my mouth snapped shut on any response.
For a second, I saw myself sitting next to Tori, right where Linda and Richard were now. I saw myself turning to smile at her, looking deep into her eyes, seeing her whole face light up as she smiled back at me. I remembered how Richard and Linda hugged in the kitchen, how they leaned into each other, trusting and depending on the other, and I pictured Tori and myself doing the same thing.
It would never work. Hell, that was what we'd tried at the suburban house. Yeah, I'd enjoyed having her around, hadn't objected to living with her like I'd imagined, but it ended up falling apart in the end, didn't it?
Because of you, a little voice whispered inside my head, treacherously. You destroyed it, ruined everything that you two had together. She would have been happy to stay with you forever, to fall in love with you. But you were the asshole who got scared and ran away, stomped on her heart instead of accepting it and caring for it.
The voice swelled in my head, drowning out everything else. You ruined this. Linda's right, you were in love, and you threw it all away-
The voice cut off abruptly as my head suddenly rang. Pain radiated out from my jaw. I blinked, snapping back to the present moment. "What happened?"
"I slapped you," Linda said calmly, standing next to me on my side of the dining room table. I looked up at her in confusion. I hadn't even noticed when she left her seat on the other side of the table.
"Why?"
"Because I could see you tearing yourself down inside your head," she answered immediately. She leaned forward, her eyes blazing as she glared at me. "Stop it. Stop beating yourself up over this. You'll never win that fight."
The little voice inside of my head whispered to me to ignore her, but I forced it to be silent. "Okay," I got out, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Okay, I won't listen to that voice. But now what?"
"First, I take this away from you," Richard jumped in, reaching out to snag my bottle of beer. "If there's one thing that I've learned from falling in love, it's that love and alcohol don't mix very well."
I cast a slightly longing, disappointed glance after my beer, but let Richard take it away. I brought my attention back to Linda, still sitting across from me, peering directly at me. "Fine, no more drinking," I said, adding 'for now' inside my head. "But what else?"
Richard came back from dropping off my mostly-full beer in the kitchen. "I think he should have stayed in the military for longer," he said to Linda, talking about me in the third person as if I wasn't sitting right in front of him. "He never learned the discipline that he needed."
Linda smiled, but shushed her husband with a gentle hand on his arm. "Sebastian, you need to think about what you want," she said to me.
"Think about what I want?" I repeated. "That's what I've been trying not to do for a month, now, and I can't stop thinking about it! How much more thinking do I need to do?"
"En
ough to know for certain that you won't wake up again with cold feet," she said immediately, and my jaw snapped shut. How had she known?
"I heard about the house in the suburbs," Linda said, as if she could read my mind. "Given that you've ended up here looking like hell, I'm guessing that things didn't work out – and I know you well enough to guess why that happened."
Fine. Fair enough. "So what do I need to figure out, then?" I groaned, reaching up to rub my forehead with my palms. "I want her back, but how do I know I won't ever wake up again with cold feet?"
Linda just looked at me for a long minute, her smile slowly fading from her face. "I don't think that I can answer that question for you," she admitted. "It's not the kind of question where someone else can provide a lasting answer. It's something that you need to answer for yourself."
"Great. Thanks." I told myself that I wasn't mad at Linda, but it certainly felt that way.
Trying to distract myself and keep my quick mouth from snapping out a retort I'd regret, I stood up from the chair. I paced back and forth along the length of the dining room table, feeling my fists tighten at my sides.
"Should have stayed in the military longer," Richard said, once again entering the dining room and frowning me. "Would have taught you how to control some of that anger."
"Control it like you did? Drinking and landing myself in the hospital?" I snapped – and then winced, reaching up one hand as if I could catch the words out of the air before they hit their target. "Sorry. I didn't mean that."
"I know." Richard moved over to me, holding out a drink with bubbles rising from the ice cubes inside. "Ginger ale," he said. "Non-alcoholic. Now, come on."
Confused, I followed him and Linda out of the dining room, into the huge living room. Since I'd left, Richard had cleared off one of the walls, creating a massive white canvas for a powerful projector mounted on the ceiling. "Better than a seventy-inch flat screen," he boasted as we entered. "Now, sit."
I sat, still not totally sure what was going on. "Uh," I said eloquently.
Richard clicked on the projector, then turned to me as it started to warm up. "You want to know something weird, brother?" he asked, and then answered his own question without giving me a chance to answer. "I've seen you get annoyed before. Pissed off and irritated, whenever some little thing doesn't go your way. But even at those times, there's one thing that you've never really lost."
"What's that?" I finally asked, when his pause made it clear that he wanted me to try and guess.
"Your control," he answered. Richard's blue eyes examined me, and suddenly, I wondered if how much of the psychology lessons from his wife had worn off on him. He seemed to look right through me, as if he could read my thoughts. "But right now, I think you're on the edge of losing it, and that makes me concerned."
"So?" I tried to keep my words disaffected, not let on how close he'd come to hitting the mark. To be honest, I really did feel like I was clinging, just barely, to the last shreds of control. How had my life spiraled so far out of control? How did Tori get into my head and break everything, her and the baby and that one stupid night, way back whenever, that apparently started it all?
"So right now, I want you to not do anything stupid. And that's why you're going to spend the rest of the night sitting here with us, watching comedy movies to distract you from thinking about getting your ass in trouble that it can't escape."
"Comedy movies?" I glanced over at Linda, hoping that she'd talk her husband out of this stupid idea, but she just nodded.
"Comedy can sometimes be very good for relieving stress," she offered, as if I just needed a massage to make things right as rain. "And it is true that you won't get yourself in any further trouble if you stay in with us."
"Look, thanks for the invitation, but I'm gonna decline," I said, rising from the couch. I set the ginger ale that Richard put into my hand on a nearby table, pointedly setting it next to, but not atop, a coaster. "I've got better things to do-"
"Really?" Richard snuck in. "Like what, exactly? Go out to a club, get drunk, and throw money at some other woman to distract you from the fact that she isn't Tori?"
Okay, maybe he really could read minds. Freaky. I stood next to the sofa for a minute longer, torn between leaving to save my pride, or dropping down onto the seat again and acknowledging the truth. I felt my mind stick, like a car jammed in neutral.
Finally, with a sigh, Linda stood up. "Sit," she said gently to me, placing both hands on my shoulders and easing me down onto the couch once again. "You help my husband choose a movie – something that's not too crude, please – and I'll go make popcorn."
"She does make the best popcorn," Richard admitted. "Real butter, all sorts of seasonings tossed on it, everything."
"Well, I guess I have to at least stay and taste the popcorn," I said, feeling a huge surge of relief inside my chest at having the decision made for me. "So, what have you got for movies?"
The projector had now warmed up, and showed a huge list of movies, covers and titles drifting slowly past. "Pretty much everything," Richard said with a smile. "I've got it hooked up to a computer that can play everything in super-high resolution, too. You name it, and I can probably play it."
"Good. I'm feeling like something especially raunchy." I flicked my eyes after Linda, feeling, for perhaps the first time in quite a while, something almost like a smile appearing on my face.
Richard grinned back at me, and for a minute, the two of us were boys together once again, brothers planning a prank on serious Teddy or one of our parents. In that moment, I suddenly didn't want to leave at all. Instead, a wave of longing shot through me; I wanted this, to be able to stay in at night instead of go out, to have someone who would make me delicious popcorn and curl up next to me as we watched the most foul-mouthed and offensive movie that I could find.
I bet that Tori can make pretty delicious popcorn.
I didn't say anything out loud to Richard, but I saw that smile remain slightly on his face, lifting the corners of his lips as he scrolled through the movies. I made a selection, a recent film that came close to the record for highest number of total swear words, and he chuckled as he selected it.
"Linda's going to be thrilled," he said sarcastically, and I laughed along with him.
It felt good to laugh, to sit in the house and sip the ginger ale, not have my ears assaulted by thumping bass from the club music, not feel like everyone around me only saw me as a cash dispenser. It felt good to see Linda come back, roll her eyes at the opening credits, but still plop down between Richard and myself, a bowl of popcorn on her lap. It felt nice to relax, to not have to feel "on" for the night, to sit back and enjoy the movie.
But even still, in the back of my mind, I wished that I could have Tori there with me.
I missed her, loath as I was to admit it. I wanted her to give me one last chance, a chance that I knew that I didn't deserve.
If I was a character in a comedy movie, in one of these silly, sappy, sometimes offensive love stories, what would I do?
Well, that answer was obvious. I'd hatch a harebrained scheme to win her back.
So as the movie played on, I started considering how I would win back the girl of my dreams, the one that I, in the biggest mistake of my life, let slip away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
TORI
*
Things were turning around. Really. Sometimes, I felt like this newfound success was a soap bubble, so fragile that it would pop at any second, if I so much as glanced at it the wrong way.
But even though I woke up each morning almost hesitantly, as if all this new success would turn out to be nothing but an insubstantial dream, it persisted. I woke up to the silence of an empty apartment. I picked up the half-finished book from my bedside table and, tucking it under one arm, descended the stairs to be greeted by the hustle and bustle, the clinking of dishes and the ringing of metal utensils in the kitchen, that meant the café was in full swing for the first meal of the day
.
"Orders twelve, thirteen, and fifteen, ready for pickup!" Ellen called as she darted past me, pausing only long enough to give me a bright little smile before her attention returned to the crowd of customers inside the restaurant.
"What about fourteen?" called out one man in a suit, looking slightly annoyed.
Ellen, however, wasn't fazed. "Still cooking – we're going to get it perfect, don't worry," she promised him.
"Yeah, but they got their orders before me!"
"They also didn't order a full breakfast with multiple sides," she said, planting one hand on her hip as she looked directly back at him. "Good food takes time – or you could always go to the McDonalds' drive-through."
The man backed down immediately at those words, just as Ellen had known that he would. "No, I'll wait," he said, dropping his eyes for a moment bashfully before looking back up. "Besides, the server's cuter here."
Instantly, Ellen was back to her normal, smiling self, giving the man a flirty wink before turning away. "They all cave if you smile at them," she whispered to me as she darted past again, back into the kitchen to pick up the next batch of orders.
I followed behind her, doing my best to keep out of the way. Vicky Beckers glared down at half a dozen different orders cooking on the big flat-top stove, but her expression softened as she glanced up at me. "Morning, Tori," she greeted me.
"Everything going well? Anything I can get you?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. I'm all set. This take-out order system seems to be working great."
I helped myself to a cup of coffee – decaf, since I'd been told that I needed to ration my caffeine intake during the pregnancy. "Your fault if I fall asleep," I murmured down to my swollen belly.
Holding the cup in hand, I carefully returned out to the customer area of the restaurant, taking a seat away from the crowd of waiting businessmen. I'd had the idea a couple of weeks ago to advertise that River's Edge offered breakfast – a real breakfast, nothing premade or from a mix – as a pick-up option to businesspeople heading in to work. The idea became an immediate hit, to the point where we set aside a whole hour for take-out orders only, before any customers could request sit-down service!
For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3) Page 15