“God … Evelyn … it’s always been you. Right, baby?”
No. NO!
She. Her. My friend nodded even as she gagged a little. Silent tears spilled down my cheeks, blurring the couple on the screen, blurring the live version of Graham, twisting his face as he ejaculated onto himself.
I didn’t try to close the cracked door. I just … ran. I ran past Wendy, up the stairs, and straight to my room where I locked my door and fell to my knees before I could make it to the chair or the bed.
The tears. I waited for more tears, but they didn’t form. I fell on my side and hugged my knees to my chest, staring unblinkingly at the wall. I wished Evie wouldn’t have found me in my car that day. I should have died. My life had meant nothing. I meant nothing to the people I allowed myself to believe loved me.
Ronin shouldn’t have saved me on that mountain.
Reaching toward my head, I clenched the wig in my hand and pulled it from my head. I wanted to have cancer.
I wanted … to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Evelyn
He didn’t cheat on me.
I knew it in my heart. It still hurt.
Everything hurt.
“Hello, dear. How was your day?” Sue looked up from the sofa where Anya sat on her lap holding a book.
Franz zoomed past me dropping his coat and backpack on the floor. We encountered an accident after school pick-up, and he nearly wet his pants holding it for the extra twenty-minute detour.
My day was terrible. “Good. How was your day?” I frowned at Mrs. Humphrey, begging for my attention. It wasn’t her fault that Adrianne forced her into our family. Still, I wondered if I would forever look at that dog and think about the woman who tried to break up my marriage. I gave Mrs. Humphrey a few strokes on her head before turning my attention to Anya hopping off the sofa and barreling toward me.
“Lazy.” Sue laughed. “We had the best intentions, but she quickly fell asleep after lunch. I wonder if she’s running a low fever.”
I kissed Anya’s forehead. “You do feel a little warm, baby.”
“Bye, Franz,” Sue yelled as she slipped on her jacket and opened the front door.
“Bye!” Franz returned from the bathroom.
“Thanks, Sue.”
“Of course.” She closed the door behind her as I carried Anya to my room to take her temperature. Just as I set her on the bed, my phone rang. I jogged back out to the kitchen to retrieve it from my purse. “Hey, Noah.”
“Hi, Evelyn. Don’t panic, but I’m on my way to the hospital with Ronin.”
I stumbled backward a few steps as a familiar fear gripped my lungs. “What happened? Did he save someone? Did he get injured?”
“No. Actually, we were having a meeting and he started clawing at his throat like he was choking, but we weren’t eating or drinking anything. His coloring was fine. No obstructed airway, but he kept gasping and whispering that he couldn’t breathe. Before the ambulance arrived, he gasped a full breath and fell to the floor, seeming better but really weak. We don’t know what caused it, but they’ll run all the tests and hopefully figure it out. He doesn’t have any allergies listed on his medical form. Do you know of any?”
“Um, no.” I grabbed my purse, but Franz was still in the bathroom, and Anya was still on the bed, only she’d lain on my pillow, a sure sign she wasn’t feeling well.
“I already messaged Tami. She’s on her way to your house to watch the kids. I’ll see you in a bit. But he’s better. He’ll be fine.”
“O-okay,” I mumbled while fishing through things in my bathroom to find the thermometer. “Thanks. Tell him …” What? I didn’t even know, so I dropped my phone before officially ending the call.
“I want a snack,” Franz declared, emerging from the bathroom as I took Anya’s temperature. “Franz, Tami’s coming over to watch you and Anya for a while. She’ll be here soon and get you a snack. You can have your hour of screen time now if you want it.”
“Okay.” Man, that kid knew when to go easy on me, even if he could be so stubborn at other times.
“One hundred and one, baby. Do you feel okay?” I kissed her forehead again.
Anya nodded, but it didn’t match her lethargy.
Within minutes, Tami arrived, reassuring me that Ronin would be fine and my kids were in good hands. I hated leaving my sick child, but something wasn’t right with Ronin, and that seemed more serious than a fever. As I pulled onto the main road, I called Lila. The last time Ronin had this happen to him, he thought it was Lila. It wasn’t. But I still had to know for sure that this wasn’t him feeling something awful happen to her.
“Why aren’t you picking up?” I murmured to myself as it went to voicemail. After redialing two more times and two more times it going to voicemail, I started to really worry. Once I parked the car at the hospital, I brought up Graham’s number, but before I could press the call button, Lila texted me.
Lila: Sorry, I can’t talk. Graham took me to the ballet and it’s past intermission. He’s the best! What’s up?
In the midst of my chaos, the last thing I wanted to do was give Graham Porter credit for anything good. But the relief of knowing Lila was not only okay, but at the ballet—something she loved—lifted a tiny bit of weight from my suffocating chest.
Evelyn: Nothing important. Have fun.
Until I knew more about Ronin’s situation, I didn’t need to alarm anyone else.
“Hey.” Noah pulled me into his arms when I reached the waiting room at the ER. “They’re running some tests. He said his neck is really tender and his voice is hoarse. But their initial exam didn’t show anything. It’s … weird.”
“Has he done any rescue stuff recently? Like CPR on anyone?”
Noah shook his head. “Why do you ask that?”
“It’s … nothing.”
“He hasn’t even taught a class for nearly a year. But still, I’m not sure where you’re going with that anyway.”
“Really, it’s nothing. And actually he did teach a class not that long ago. Couple months ago he filled in for … I think he said Andy? A CPR and first aid class in Denver.”
“I filled in for Andy with that class, and it was over six months ago.”
My eyes narrowed.
“I mean …” Noah fumbled his words. “A couple months ago? Yeah, that might have been right too. Andy says yes to everything, but then he backs out at the last minute and begs us to help him out.” He couldn’t keep his gaze on me for more than a few seconds before averting it to anywhere else in the room.
Noah lied. He lied for Ronin.
If Ronin didn’t teach a CPR class that day, then where was he? Or who was he with?
Adrianne.
It wasn’t possible, but it felt like the only logical explanation, the only explanation that didn’t make me look incredibly naive.
Noah said very little while we waited for nearly an hour to see Ronin in the ER. When the nurse took me back, sliding open the glass door, Ronin’s tired gaze shifted right to me.
“You need to call Lila.”
Lila … his scapegoat.
“I did. She’s fine.”
“She’s not—”
“Ronin!” I sighed, hoping no one heard my outburst. “It’s not Lila. I checked. It’s something else. If they say it’s nothing, then I think we need to take you to Denver and have you checked out by better doctors. Something is wrong with you. If you feel like you can’t breathe, that’s a serious problem. Don’t you get that?” I didn’t mean to let so much of my aggravation seep through, but I had nothing left.
Too many unanswered questions.
Too many lies.
Too much disconnect from the man I loved.
Doubt ran amuck in my head, and Ronin did nothing to stop the chaos.
“They already discharged me. We can go home.” He sat up.
I reached to help, but he shook his head. “I’m fine. I’ve got it.”
“So that’s it. Y
ou can’t breathe. They run tests. And send you home with nothing. What the hell, Ronin?”
“Not nothing. They wrote me a prescription for an inhaler,” he mumbled his words as he stepped into his jeans, dragging them slowly up his legs. He failed at hiding his weakness.
I pulled them up the rest of the way, giving him a single look when he tried to bat away my hands. On a long sigh of surrender, he let me dress him. I finished tying his boots as he sat on the edge of the bed, legs dangling. When I stood between his spread legs, he pulled me in for a hug, resting one hand on the small of my back and the other hand on the back of my head.
There. Right there … I felt his love. It just felt shackled to something. Like he couldn’t give me all of it.
So much anger brewed inside of me. His touch couldn’t tame that, but it did something. It always did something. And that something brought forth raw emotions that made me say the three words that I’d been feeling since the first time I called 9-1-1 in Ronin’s condo before we were married.
“Please don’t die,” I whispered on a tight sob that clutched my chest and burned my eyes.
We weren’t unbreakable.
I just needed to believe we weren’t unrepairable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Graham
Three hours earlier …
I knew I shut my door. Maybe I didn’t lock it, but my staff didn’t disobey me. Yet clearly someone had ignored my order. As I made my way to fire someone, I noticed Lila’s suitcase parked inside the front door. Before I could pull my phone out of my pocket to check her location, the wavy brunette who cleaned the house—Mindy, Amy, something like that—came down the stairs carrying a bucket of cleaning supplies.
“Sorry, Mr. Porter, I should have carried Mrs. Porter’s suitcase to her room. I got—”
“Is she home?”
“Yes. Her trip was rescheduled.”
“Leave. Now. Ask everyone else to leave as well.” I started up the opposite stairwell.
“Sir, what do you mean—”
“I mean get the fuck out. Tell everyone to get the fuck out and don’t come back until you’re called.”
Well, all my hard work for nothing. I gave Lila permission to go back to work. We ate at her favorite restaurants. I let her wear those stupid short dresses, teasing my cock relentlessly, only to give me a meek whisper of, “I’m not ready,” every time I started to undress in her room. Yet I forced nothing. As her husband, I deserved more respect, but in the spirit of making Evelyn proud of me, I left without a fight and spent a long shower jerking off like pussy husbands who fell for the headache line on a regular basis.
The biggest question … how much did she see when she poked her snoopy head into my office? After watching the video I took at the hotel, I made several business calls and returned a few emails. It was possible she caught me on the phone and decided to not disturb me.
I tried to open her door. It was locked. “Lila?”
No answer. I retrieved a key to her door from under a vase on a recessed shelf in the wall a foot to the left of her door.
Just fucking fantastic …
I found her in a fetal position on the floor, a blank stare focused on the wall and her wig resting a few feet away from her head. She saw the video. In all fairness to myself, that happened before we agreed to make things right between us. Since our truce, I hadn’t fucked anything but my hand. Okay … that was ninety-nine percent true. Kimberly, an intern who looked like a younger version of Evelyn, celebrated her thirtieth birthday after work the previous week. She had a little too much to drink, so I offered to give her a ride home like any gentleman would have done. It was her first time in a car with a divider between the front seat and backseat, supposedly not counting the one time she was arrested for protesting some female rights shit in college.
After giving my driver her address, I closed the dark glass divider and waited for her to make her move. After all, I was technically her boss, and women seemed sensitive to sexual advances in the workplace. My dad said he missed the good ol’ days. I agreed with him.
It took drunk Kimberly less than ten seconds to bite her lower lip while unfastening my pants. For the record … I never touched her. If her idea of a good birthday present from her boss was letting her suck me off, who was I to rain on her birthday parade? The girl gave head like a champ. When we arrived at her dinky apartment building, I assured her she would have a bright future in politics if she kept up the good work.
“Can I ask why you’re on the floor?”
No response.
I nudged Lila’s ass with the toe of my shoe.
No response.
Why did she insist on always putting me in such a predicament? Thinking back to Kimberly had me hard as fuck. Seeing my bald wife on the floor with her wig doing its own thing did nothing for me. But Lila still had a killer body with tits for days. Evelyn had a mouthful at best. See? I always managed to see the good in Lila, even when directly comparing her to Evelyn.
“I sent the staff home.” I scooped her limp body up off the floor. “I thought we could discuss what you saw earlier.” I laid her on the bed, and her cold eyes affixed to me as I loosened my tie. “So … what did you see?” My fingers made quick work with the buttons of my shirt. After I shrugged it off my shoulders, I reached for the button of her light gray pants, half anticipating her batting me away.
She didn’t move more than relinquishing a single slow blink. I removed her pants and underwear. Still, she didn’t move.
“This looks nice.” I traced my finger around her freshly waxed cunt. “I hope you did this for me and not someone else?”
While she held strong to her refusal to speak or move, I unbuttoned her top and shoved her bra up over her tits.
Yep, they were still quite spectacular.
“I normally like you a little more feisty … you know … I like to work for it.” I removed my pants and briefs. “But it’s been a long day, so I’m good with easy tonight.”
“Y-you had s-sex with m-my b-best friend,” Lila said just above a whisper as her lower lip quivered and a single tear trailed down the side of her face.
I didn’t think about the video hard enough to anticipate such an unexpected change of events. The whore … she looked like Evelyn from the back, and I called her Evelyn. I wondered if Lila had called her BFF, but the genuine hurt and tears led me to believe that she never made it further than the floor of her bedroom. Did I want her to think it was Evelyn in that hotel suite? Good question. I had a little time to think on that.
“It was before you and I decided to kiss and make up.” I forced her legs apart, but it didn’t require much force because she didn’t fight me. She could have fought me. I didn’t have her hands tied.
I camped out down low for what felt like hours … or at least a good fifteen minutes.
Nothing.
It was the first time I failed at making her orgasm with oral. “You broken down there?” I sat up and fingered her, but it was the Sahara Desert down there.
Her dead gaze did nothing more than stare at me and leak tears.
“I guess we’ll do it another way.” I spit on my hand a few times and smeared it between her legs and along my dick. It still felt like sandpaper when I pushed into her. By that point I wasn’t doing it for the release as much as I just didn’t want to let her win. So she played the errant, limp child, refusing to cooperate while I did all the work.
It took forever to feel my orgasm approach, even using Kimberly and Evelyn as my visuals. The bedroom lights were on. The blinds were cracked open. And Lila’s grotesque bald head occupied my line of sight.
On the verge of pulling out before finishing, admitting a rare defeat, Lila surprised me. She lifted her knees toward her chest, allowing me deeper penetration. Then she grabbed my head and pulled it to hers, kissing me slowly, teasing her tongue along my lips, turning her head slowly to drag her lips across my cheek—
“Fuuuck!” I reared back, ripping my c
heek from her clenched mouth. Pain seared through my face, and I swear she had part of my cheek still in her blood-stained mouth. I started to pull out of her, readying my right hand to break her face, but then she smiled.
Crimson covered teeth. That hideous bald head. And her nipples erect like doing that to me turned her on.
Instead of making her the victim with a fresh dose of bruises, I opted to simply get rid of that fucking smile. I grabbed the other pillow and covered her whole head.
Problem solved.
All that remained was her perfect body, bouncing tits, and hands clawing at the pillow as I finished … blood dripping from my face to her torso while her body flailed. I took my time, no longer feeling the pain in my face, just the release. The glorious release.
As her fight began to weaken, I pulled out, released the pillow, and walked toward the door.
Lila’s high-pitched gasp turned into a fit of ragged coughs. I plucked her phone from the pocket of her purse discarded by the door and closed it behind me.
Blood from my face dotted the floor from her bedroom to the nearest bathroom.
“Jesus …” I cringed. My cheek looked like a dog attacked it.
I took a picture of it and sent it to a friend. A plastic surgeon friend.
Graham: Come to the house. Bring what you need.
I couldn’t leave Lila. Things were too unstable between us at the moment. I also couldn’t let my face be scarred for life.
I taped gauze to my face while I waited for Dr. Peters, a buddy from high school who needed some help settling a lawsuit and keeping his medical license after operating under the influence on a patient. The thing was … Blake was an excellent plastic surgeon who just so happened to have a drinking problem. He had to sober his ass up as part of our agreement for me to help him.
When I returned to Lila’s room, her lifeless body remained just where I’d left her. Only, she wasn’t without life.
Unfortunately.
With my face mangled and her body untouched, my attorney could have made a solid case for self-defense. My psychotic wife (the one who faked having cancer) going crazy and attacking me. However, that would have been a hard sell to Evelyn. And if I couldn’t have my trophy when all the bullshit finally ended, what was the point?
The Life You Stole Page 21