Twenty-One
Aday can make all the difference in the world.
Two weeks can do even more. Amazing that just fourteen days later, I was safe and healed and completely ensconced back in my life.
I was at work with Aubrey, Sam was riding his desk, on restricted duty, not happy about it at all, and Susan Reid, not Caleb Reid, was sitting in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital for observation. It was all very normal, if you were me.
Dane had dismissed Aja’s bodyguard, and they’d moved out of the condo and into their stunning two-story Queen Anne in Oak Park.
He’d loaned his biological father the money he needed to get his business back on its feet.
It was all he could do in the way of comforting Daniel Reid.
He’d had no idea that his wife, Dane’s mother, was capable of the atrocities she’d committed in her desire for vengeance.
Somewhere along the line, her love for her son had turned to hate.
She was no longer speaking to anyone, so her true motive—the how and why of the crimes, why she had not just killed me instead of others—was locked in a vault inside of her.
There was no telling when or if she would ever explain her murderous actions.
Caleb was released from jail, and had to visit a court mandated psychiatrist as well as attend group sessions, but mostly, but he was free to live his life.
Calhoun reduced the charges from kidnapping me to false imprisonment, or unlawful restraint, based on my statement, and the fact that he felt Susan had exercised undue influence over her son and therefore, he was not completely responsible for his actions.
There was a fair amount of duress involved, and coercion.
Caleb was still going to have to serve an ungodly number of community service hours, but that was all right. He was ready.
He was also excited to be going to work with his father and Jeremy, the three of them changing the name of the company from Reid Global to Reid and Sons.
They would start over, and with Dane as their safety net and many new prospects, it seemed like they were well on their way to success. All wounds healed with time.
I saw Caleb before he went home, and he hugged me so tight and long that I finally started laughing.
He did too, and when we pulled apart, he leaned in and kissed me.
I was stunned, and he just smiled sheepishly.
He didn’t want me to get any ideas about him, he just didn’t know how else to express the depth of his feelings.
I alone had believed in him, trusted him, and known his true heart.
He loved me, and that was all there was left to say.
It started raining as I left the airport, and it felt like a blessing.
I loved rain so much, I could have lived in Seattle, but I was in the minority.
The constant gray skies, wet clothes, and puddles bummed most people out.
The fact that it had been raining for a week and a half straight was taking its toll on the moods of everyone I knew.
Half the problem, in my opinion, was cold feet.
Your shoes got wet, then so did your socks or nylons, and walking into work, your feet froze.
What everyone needed were galoshes. I had a bright yellow pair just like I had when I was five, so my feet were never wet.
Dane was certain that only gay men could pull that look off, but I disagreed.
Sam had an olive-green pair that I’d bought him, and no one ever gave him any crap.
Dane felt that had more to do with my boyfriend’s size and muscles than anything else.
Whatever the reason, I’d got Sam into the habit of keeping two extra pairs of shoes at work. He told me that all the married guys had galoshes and dry socks. I was very pleased with him. But my goodwill had changed in the face of our constant arguing. It had all started with Aaron Sutter.
Sam had wanted to accept Aaron’s offer to have dinner with him because he felt that if Aaron saw us together, interacting, he’d get that we were an exclusive item that worked.
I didn’t want to go to dinner on that premise.
I wanted us to go to be friends. Sam said that it would be a one-time-only thing.
We’d eat and say goodbye and that would be it, forever.
I found the whole thing immature and childish.
He found it cathartic. I wanted no part of lording something over Aaron Sutter.
Sam said Aaron and I needed closure; I told him to get over it.
So Aaron kept calling Sam, and I kept telling Sam no. We were at an impasse.
We were also fighting about my assorted friends.
Sam liked Evan and Loudon, but that was as far as it went.
And I knew why he was comfortable with them.
Unless someone told you, figuring out that Loudon was gay was just like guessing about Sam, and because Loudon acted straight, he could deal with Evan being his diva self.
So Sam was fine going out with them, being seen with them—the problem arose with my extended circle.
My friends who were out and proud, who made statements with their clothes or lack thereof, and who had adorable expressions for everything, including pet names for Sam and me—the girls, they would call us, or Jory and his girl, or the diva and her man—were too much for him.
The fact that my phone rang sometimes in the middle of the night drove him crazy.
That I was needed to sit with someone or rescue someone or be there to offer a shoulder to cry on, all of this was beyond Sam’s grasp to understand, or he acted like it was.
I explained that because he was older than me, our friends were at different stages in their lives.
Most of his were settled down with kids; most of mine were still partying like rock stars into the wee hours of the morning.
When I’d brought up our age gap, he’d asked me if I thought it was a problem.
I’d replied honestly that I had never thought so before.
He had no comeback, and I had nothing else to say.
It was something to contemplate, and we did so at opposite ends of the apartment.
It had been easier with all the breaking up and making up that we had done in the past to not consider the bigger picture of living together, and what the happiness and horror of that could be.
Faced with the reality of trying to blend two very separate, very different lives, with people who populated both places…
It was harder than either of us had ever imagined.
The fact that we had moved in together the moment we got back from Dallas had been a spur-of-the-moment decision that I was beginning to regret. We had acted in haste, and it showed.
Sam’s friends were doing the best they could with me.
It was awkward. They accidentally said things like “that’s so gay” when it was something bad, and then immediately looked at me and winced or flinched or muttered expletives under their breath.
They never looked at Sam, only me. One evening I overheard two of his friends’ wives saying that it was just a phase.
Sam had been straight first, and eventually he’d find a nice girl and settle down, once he got this “gay thing” out of his system.
Like he wasn’t bi and I was the flu instead of someone he loved.
When I told him what had been said, wanting him to address it, he told me not to worry about it, that they would all come around. I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
Both of us being stubborn people by nature, I wasn’t going to give up Saturday night dancing with my friends, and he wasn’t about to give up dinner and beer and pool with his.
So we had gone our separate ways, and I’d felt hollow inside all night long, even as I forced myself to try and enjoy what I was doing.
When I broke down and called him to tell him how much I loved and missed him, he acted like he couldn’t be bothered.
He was having a good time, not giving me a second thought, and there I had been, fretting the entire night.
I hung up on him, turned off my phone, and didn’t stumble home until after three in the morning.
I didn’t make it any farther than the couch before I passed out.
Sunday morning, he was gone when I woke up at noon, still in my shoes and jacket from the night before.
I was hurt that he hadn’t woken me, hurt that he hadn’t moved me, and hurt that he had abandoned me so easily.
When I called him, it went straight to voicemail.
I made sure I was gone before he got home.
I had dinner with his family, and he ended up being the one in trouble for not calling to say he was working and couldn’t make it.
I went to my office afterward, then to Evan and Loudon’s for late-night dessert.
Evan scolded me for being a baby and told me to just get up the guts to make the first move toward reconciliation.
“What courage?” I asked him. “It’s easy to be the one that gives in.”
“No,” he assured me. “That’s the hard part.”
Aja agreed with Evan when I talked to her on the phone.
“Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” she said.
“What does that even mean?”
“You know what it means,” she said indulgently.
“Well, yeah, I know what it means, but what? I have to give in or I’m too stubborn for my own good?”
“Something like that.”
“But why do I have to give in every time?”
“You don’t, not every time. But maybe this one time or this first time you do, or should.”
I groaned.
“Don’t be such a baby.”
Which was exactly what Evan had said.