by Shae Banks
Thom cradled his mug in one hand, apparently oblivious to the heat of the porcelain, and smiled sadly. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Something banged above us, then a door slammed, and feet clumsily came down the stairs until Ryan emerged out of the hallway.
With eyes full of panic, he announced, “All the stuff is still here.”
Thom frowned as he watched Ryan pull out a chair. He was by no means sober, but he seemed to have steadied considerably now that the reality of the situation had sunk in. “What stuff?”
I looked to Thom, then back to Ryan, and shifted uncomfortably. “What are you on about?”
He pointed up. “All her stuff is still here. Her room’s just as she left it. Her toothbrush is in the bathroom, her towel in the basket.”
I caught Thom’s eye as he gawked at me from across the table.
“What is it?” Thom demanded, reading my body language.
“I, uh.” I paused, grimacing. “I might know why she left.”
“Which is?” Ryan pressed, canting his head.
Out of habit, I reached down and felt the outline of the earbuds in my pocket. Gripping them through the material of my trousers, I started, “I don’t know for certain, I mean, I didn’t mean for it to happen, we were just talking, and she helped me with my—”
“Spit it out!” Ryan snapped.
“We, uh, I—” My throat became dry and I took a gulp of my tea. It was still too hot, but the pain of that was nowhere near as uncomfortable as their attention fixed on me. “We kissed this morning.”
Both of them were speechless for a moment, and my shoulders drew up closer to my ears with tension the longer they sat there in silence while staring at me.
Ryan looked incredulous. “You… you… kissed?”
With a groan, I confirmed, “She kissed me, but I didn’t push her away.”
“Jesus,” Ryan breathed, before grabbing the table to heave himself up. Without a backward glance, he stumbled through the kitchen and stomped upstairs before a door slammed.
Guilt swamped me for ruining something they had together. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“She’s… Well, I’m not surprised,” Thom admitted, no hint of annoyance in his tone. “There’s just something about her, isn’t there? Honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”
Dumbfounded, my head shot up. “What?”
“You know me, Sam, let shit happen and it’ll work itself out. If you think she could make you happy, and you her… then go for it. But,” he added, his tone changing, “and this really is a warning, if she comes back, don’t ever make her choose. She doesn’t have to, not between the three of us. If you want her, you let her choose how and when. We don’t make those decisions for her.”
I should’ve expected Thom to say something like that instead of waiting for him to rip my throat out. Was that even a possibility? I understood them starting something together, but me? One kiss didn’t mean anything, did it?
“She left without a word. I don’t think she’ll be coming back,” I point out.
The chair scraped quietly across the floor as he stood and placed his cup in the sink. “Let’s… well, we’ll see what happens, yeah?” Then before he left the room, he groaned and said, “I need to put a bucket in Ryan’s room, no doubt he’ll be puking, or worse, getting up and pissing in his fucking wardrobe.”
Normally I’d laugh, but that wasn’t the time.
With both of them upstairs, leaving me alone in the kitchen, I had time to sit and stew over that kiss. For a brief moment after she’d kissed me, I wondered if I was mixing my feelings for Lloyd with her, but a press of her lips made me realise that I wasn’t. I truly did like her. She’s considerate, caring, funny, her smile was infectious, and her laugh had the power to raise my spirits despite my grief.
And I wanted her.
I’d had to turn the music up on more than one occasion to drown out what was going on in the bedrooms below mine when they were together. And even more often, I had to stop myself from tugging on my dick in time to the noises she was making. Fuck. She’d lost her brother, and there I was trying not to jack off to my dead best friend’s twin.
A week had passed since my conversation with Thom in the kitchen. Lyla hadn’t come home, so the assumption was she’d gone back to her life in London and her husband.
Someone had turned up to collect Lyla’s car, and thankfully Ryan had been at work when that happened, otherwise, I’d had no doubt I’d have had to smooth over an assault accusation.
Still, it felt off. After everything I’d learned about Lyla through Lloyd, not once did he paint her as someone who didn’t face her problems. Leaving was the ultimate confrontation, and she continued to face Francis through every phone call they had with him demanding she come home. So the car being picked up by someone else didn’t sit right with me, and what cemented that was when I asked the delivery guy for the paperwork, which had been signed and printed with Francis’s signature, not Lyla’s. He’d sent recovery rather than allow her to collect it herself.
Things had gone from bad to worse between Ryan and Thom, and I wasn’t sure how to even begin fixing things. Ryan was ignoring me and Thom, but it was hitting Thom harder. Not only had he lost Lyla, but it looked like he’d lost Ryan, too.
Ryan had reverted back to his old self. He wasn’t allowing Thom to touch him or sleep in his bedroom, and when Thom did grasp his shoulder for his attention or in support, or simply try to get him to join us at the table, he’d shrug him off and go back upstairs. Most evenings he hit the gym after work, knowing Thom would have left, and came home and went directly to his room.
I couldn’t help but feel like everything that had happened, and what was now happening between my two closest friends, was down to me. If I’d spotted the signs with Lloyd, if I’d gotten him help sooner, if I’d not kissed Lyla, then none of this would be happening.
Desperation to do something clawed at me, so I ran upstairs two at a time and barged into Lloyd’s old bedroom. Not much had changed in the time Lyla had been staying here, and when I took a breath, I was hit with both her perfume and Lloyd’s aftershave at the same time. It wasn’t unpleasant, it had me wanting to close the door and bask in it as I thought about them both.
About the laughs with Lloyd as I helped him pick up the guitar again. The week we’d spent in Spain. His back and forth drama with his ex-girlfriend. So many memories packed into the short time we’d been friends with no opportunities left to make more.
And Lyla. How supportive she’d been of me despite my errors of judgement. The way she’d kissed me that morning, on what must have been one of the worst days of her life, and the feelings that one gesture had stirred.
Fuck. If I was feeling so bad now, Ryan and Thom must be going out of their minds.
Snapping out of it, I spotted Lloyd’s camouflage bag tucked into the corner with Lyla’s stuff. It had been dropped off a few days before the funeral and Lyla had asked Thom to just leave it in her room. She never got the chance to go through it.
Grabbing it, I placed it on the bed and tipped it up. “Give me a sign, Lloyd, anything,” I mumbled, as the contents spilled over the comforter. At a loss, I began folding his clothes back up when something dropped out from between a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Lloyd’s phone.
My ass plonked heavily onto the bed as the phone rested in my hand. Could I call her, beg her to come home?
“Some sign, Lloyd,” I rasped, as my eyes filled with tears.
Fuck, I missed him.
With the need to put everything right, I powered up the phone before hitting the contacts button and scrolling through until I got to Hagrid. Lyla likely had no idea her brother saved her number under his nickname for her. I’d have to show her.
I raised the phone to my ear as the ringing sounded through the speaker and I prayed she would answer. I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but I needed to say something, anything at this point to let her know we still cared. That
she had a family here if she wanted it, and all she had to do was come home.
When the voicemail kicked in, I choked and cancelled the call. My finger hovered over the power button to shut the phone back off, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I took the phone to my room and put it on charge while I hoped she’d see the missed call and contact one of us.
There was no doubt in my mind that any one of us would go get her if she said she wanted to come home. Come back to where she belonged. Where she was happy.
But the call never came.
25
Lyla
Two weeks passed, and there was nothing left of the happier Lyla I’d become in the time I spent with Thom, Ryan, and Sam.
It felt like longer. My stomach churned all day, and I ignored Francis as best I could all night. He’d only attempted any sort of intimacy once, taking the hint when I turned my head away from his kiss, but it didn’t go without consequence. After that, he’d dined out every evening, hired a cleaner, and booked me a spa treatment under the supervision of his mother.
The effort would’ve been there, had I not had to wear long sleeves to cover the finger bruises on my wrists, or if I’d been allowed to leave the house without a babysitter.
I’d prepared breakfast, which annoyed him when it was perfect, and he couldn’t find a reason to punish me. I was peeling the layer from my untasted croissant when he announced, “The appointment is at three. I’ll be home from work at two.”
I glanced up and nodded once before resuming my systematic destruction of the pastry.
“You’re much lighter than you were last time, and you’ve stopped drinking your glass of wine with dinner. Perhaps that bodes well,” he continued, apparently unaware of how insensitive his comments were. Of course the failures of our marriage, lack of a child, and everything else had been my fault—naturally I’d reverted back to accepting that. And my apparent weight loss, well that was a mystery. As for a glass of wine, that wasn’t through my own doing. Francis controlled how much and when I was allowed to drink. If it had been left up to me, I’d already be polishing off full bottles just to get me through each day.
He still had my mobile. I hadn’t enquired about its whereabouts. Betty had turned up at the house a few days before, bloody furious that she couldn’t get a hold of me and prepared to demand an address from Francis so she could pay me a visit.
I dissolved into tears the moment I saw her, and she hauled me through the front door to a bar a few streets away, much to Francis’s annoyance. There, I spilled the entire sordid story—well, almost the entire story, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the bruises—while nursing a glass of Châteauneuf Du Pape, and while she didn’t give an opinion, I could read her surprise in her many expressions.
And that was the last time I’d so much as uttered any of their names. Surprisingly, even saying Sam’s name was hard. I’d fucked up there by kissing him.
The house, my marital home, felt alien. There were none of their things littered here and there. No jackets hung in the hall. No shoes piled by the front door. No Gunner curled at my feet while I sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea.
I had considered running home again, albeit briefly. Francis had my car recovered two days after I left, but he kept the keys, so driving was out of the question. The temptation to disappear into the night was one I had to fight against. With being back in London, the tube station was a little less than ten minutes away. I could be out of the city within an hour, and on a train to my guys in less than two.
But with Francis’s threat hanging over all of us, that wasn’t an option. As much as I longed to leave, I just couldn’t bring myself to put our lives at risk. I’d considered calling Francis’s bluff several times, but the more bruises that were added to my body quickly had me backing down from a confrontation with him.
The longer I was there, the more I’d grown numb to everything around me. The guilt hadn’t passed, but I was doing all I could to protect them, and that had to be enough. The suffocating loneliness I’d felt in those first few days had somewhat faded, but I doubted I’d ever feel whole, even if I was surrounded by people in a crowded room. I only wanted to be around three, but the cost was too great. Love was born and extinguished every day in every corner of the world, but it didn’t make it any easier. Francis expected that with time, I’d forget, and as much as it killed me inside, for the sake of my own sanity, I had no choice but to.
I told myself this every day, many times over, but the feelings seemed to be making themselves permanent.
Particularly the ones towards Francis, but they’d been there long before Thom and Ryan.
“It makes sense for us to have another try,” he insisted, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “They’re our embryos, we should give each and every one of them a chance.”
A chance at what? What the fuck did he plan to offer them? Money? Beatings? Children didn’t want money or a firm hand to keep them in line, they needed love and a safe home. He wasn’t capable of giving anyone that.
I bit back my retort, which was becoming harder to do. Not because I wasn’t up for an argument—the longer I was here, the closer I came—but because I was still attending the appointment, but in the hope that Michael—our specialist—would tell us he was unable to give Francis what he wanted.
“Don’t come all the way home,” I said with a forced smile. “We need some toiletries, so I can pick those up on the way over and meet you at the clinic. The walk will do me good.”
Draining his bone china teacup, he replied, “Mm-hmm, I’ll get Andrew to collect you.”
There was no way I was allowing his PA to cart me around like a prisoner. Swallowing down the rage, I choked out, “I… Andrew has better things to do, Francis, the last thing the man wants to do is go grocery shopping with me. Plus, the doctor suggested last time that walking can help with weight loss.”
“Okay. You’re right,” he finally conceded after some thought, then picked up his paper and placed it under his arm.
He headed for the doorway, but stopped and came to stand in front of me, announcing, “Oh, before I forget, once we’re done with the appointment, we’re going to stop by a gallery. My mother has been hinting that there’s a new exhibit in town holding new talent. I plan to buy something for her birthday. Please dress appropriately.”
I snorted, but quickly covered it with a cough and replied, “Of course, that sounds like a perfect end to the day.”
I managed not to shudder when he placed a gentle kiss on the top of my head. I refused to look up as he left the kitchen without clearing his empty plate and teacup. “Three o’clock,” he called, walking briskly out into the hallway. A second later, the elevator dinged, signalling its arrival.
I turned and watched as the doors immediately opened, and he stepped inside without waiting for my response.
Once the elevator hummed into action, I grit my teeth and grasped the croissant, crushing the delicate pastry. It wasn’t his face mashed in my clenched fist, but it was enough to relieve a little of my anger.
Our embryos. Damn him, they were mine.
They weren’t people to him. Tiny little lives that needed love and careful nurturing. They were little more than trophies, belongings, people to lay claim to, just as I was. They weren’t created out of love, not on his part. He didn’t know the meaning of love or what it truly entailed.
Opening my fist, I allowed the pastry to drop to my plate and wiped my hands on a napkin.
I couldn’t spend another minute in the house through fear I’d do something stupid. I needed to get out.
His cleaner could handle this mess.
Our fertility specialist, Michael Harvey, was a lovely guy. In his mid-forties with a receding hairline, frameless glasses perched on a squat nose that wrinkled when he smiled, and his soft tone and optimism, he made the whole process almost bearable.
I placed my urine sample in the box on the desk and went to wash my han
ds at the basin on the left-hand wall while listening to his patter.
“I’ll test a little now, just to rule out any infection or pregnancy. Now, I know it seems foolish, given why you’re both here, but stranger things have happened. Sometimes, the treatment can encourage ovulation and the goal is reached as nature intended.”
I rolled my eyes and reached for a paper towel. I’d heard that tale enough times, but I didn’t ovulate, we knew that from the level of invasive procedures I’d endured to harvest enough eggs to even attempt IVF with my own embryos. There had been talk of donor eggs but… well, we hadn’t come to that bridge yet. There were only three of my own left for this next treatment.
I returned to the comfortable chair beside Francis as Dr Harvey drew a pipette of urine from the pot and resealed it, before dropping it into a bag clearly labelled with my details.
“Well, that looks healthy enough,” he remarked, glancing to us from the little stainless-steel table in the corner behind his desk. “I’ll pop the rest into this test, so it can be doing its thing while we go back through your notes.”
He removed his gloves and moved silently towards the sink I’d just used.
I’d only been in the room for fifteen minutes and already wanted to run.
“Your BMI is much better, Lyla,” he added, returning to his seat and scribbling down whatever the stick test of my urine had told him. “Another good sign. So, three to go?”
He looked to me, but Francis answered, “Yes, all three.”
Nausea churned my stomach again and I closed my eyes. Three left. Last try. When this cycle failed, I could re-evaluate my choices.
“Very good,” the doctor muttered, scribbling more notes. “Let’s make this one count then, shall we?” Pushing away from the desk, he rolled his chair a few feet to his right. “As suspected the test says… goodness, Lyla, you have made some positive changes.”