13 – NOVA
“I don’t understand. What do you mean I have to return home?” I ask as I nervously pace the cottage.
“It’s the only way we’re going to figure out who’s behind these attacks. Falcon and everyone else on the council is sure that he won’t strike without you there.”
“Will you be there with me, Kai?”
His face scrunches up, and my belly turns to Jell-O.
“I will be, but not inside of the house with you.”
“Why not?”
“They think he’s watching your comings and goings, and he won’t move with me there. It’ll be pointless, but I promise that I’ll be close by.”
Shaking my head, I stop pacing and wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t like this, Kai. We’re dealing with a psychopath here. I mean, the guy removed my panties from my body while I was sleeping, and he’s been poisoning my water. All I want to do is go in there and throw all that shit out.”
“And you will. We’ll get fresh things in there for you to eat. In the meantime, you’ll inform your staff that you’re taking a three-day mini vacation. They don’t need to know whether you’re still in town or away on vacation. You will stay at home and not leave for anything.”
“I can’t go down to the beach? That’s what I loved about the cottage because it’s right on the beach.”
“Yeah, you can do that, but other than that, stick close to home.”
“So, I’m supposed to do what? Stay at home for three days with no visitors and go nowhere?”
He nods, and I don’t like this one bit.
“How do we know it won’t take longer, Kai? I can’t stay pent up there forever.”
“I get it, babe.” He looks sheepish at the term of endearment and then mutters, “Sorry.”
Waving a hand, I say, “No. It’s okay. How close will you be? How long will it take for you to get to me if anything happens?”
“They’re still working out the logistics of that. I don’t know, but what I need to know is, do you know how to shoot?”
“Yes. I carry a Canik Elite.”
“Nice. How long have you known how to shoot?”
“Just over eight years. Will used to take me to a firing range in Santa Fe. He thought that everyone should know how to protect themselves, and sometimes, he would go away for lengthy periods to medical seminars. He wanted to know that I was safe while he was away,” I explain, thinking about the last time that I’d handled a gun was the day I walked in on him cheating on me.
“You ever use it?”
“Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had intentions to use it when I found Will cheating on me. It was the final time that I’d put up with it. All the times before, I’d only found evidence or had suspicions. That time I had indisputable proof in front of my eyes with Will humping one of the nurses he worked with from behind in our bed.”
Tears prick my eyes as I recall that afternoon.
“He was supposed to be at work, and I was supposed to be in LA with my best friend, Sandra, at a gallery opening. After two days, I was ready to come home, and I wasn’t sure why. I just had this gut feeling in my belly, you know. It was pressuring me to return home early from what was supposed to be a four-day trip. Sandra encouraged me to go with my gut, and I did.”
Confusion fills me as I grab my bags from the Uber driver and walk up the sidewalk to my front door. There’s no way that Will’s cars should all be there. He has a Range Rover, a Dodge Ram 2500, and a BMW. All three of them are parked in the detached garage. I’d just spoken with him this morning, and he hadn’t mentioned that he was taking the day off.
Neither had I mentioned that I was coming home from my trip early. Maybe it was that gut instinct that pressured me to keep silent on that.
That same gut instinct is what’s pressuring me to take my shoes off inside the door after I enter. Leaving my luggage at the front door, I head into my study, unlock the drawer, and remove the package.
I close my eyes, whispering a prayer of forgiveness as I make my way up the stairs to the third floor of our home. The French bedroom doors are thrown wide open, and clothes are carelessly discarded on the cherry floors of the hallway leading into our bedroom.
I step over the dress pants, jacket, and skirt. I kick aside a pair of panties and a bra and glance around the meticulously cleaned bedroom. It looks nothing like I left it. Smells nothing like it either.
I take a seat in my favorite teal armchair by the window and place my hands in my lap. Disgusted at the disarray in my bedroom and the pungent, distinctly fishy odor, I turn my attention to the scene playing out before me.
The tufted headboard of my French bed bangs crudely against the dove grey walls that just had a fresh coat not even two months ago. The chorus of sighs and moans turns into hiccupping pleas and coarse barks of pleasure as they intermittently become shrill and deafening.
He spreads her legs wider and holds them in the air, gripping her ankles until they turn red. The forceful, brutish way that he’s thumping inside of her is sure to leave her sore and bruised for days. Surely, they know that considering they’re both medical professionals, but I guess that’s not important now.
“Oh! Will! Just like that...mph, mph, yeahhh!”
“Who’s your man? Huh? Who’s your man?”
I roll my eyes as she screams, “You, Will!”
If it wasn’t so pathetic and dismal, it might be comical. I glance at my watch and wonder how long this has been going on. I’ve been sitting here for at least five minutes now.
“You love me?” he grunts out as he continues to jackhammer her insides.
“Yes! Yes! Yes, I love you, Will!” she shrieks.
They kiss as the urgency of his pumps slows, but they don’t disconnect. He moves up and down, and she rocks with him, welcoming him over and over and stirring up the amazing funk that’s coming from her pussy. Oddly, he doesn’t seem to notice or allow it to deter him.
Filthy bastard.
“You said you’d leave her. Are you leaving?”
“Yeah, baby,” he groans, thrusting in her hard again.
“Said that...ohhh, Will! You said that for the last year.”
“I...will,” he says between grunts.
“Are you coming, baby?”
“Yeah...Big Willy’s coming!” he cries out.
She pumps up harder and faster and cries, too, as they both orgasm. Bored with the theatrics, I start applauding their performance.
Will jumps off her, and they both clutch the covers to their chests.
“I think it’s a bit late for that, seeing as how I’ve viewed both of your anatomy from every possible angle. Oh, Marie, you might want to get that smell checked out. There’s nothing healthy about that,” I say.
“Nova, baby, it’s not what it looks like.”
“Oh, it’s not my husband of nine years fucking his scrub nurse in our home, in our bedroom, in our bed. That’s not what I just saw and watched for...” I check my watch again. “At least the last nine minutes?”
“Baby, I thought—”
“You thought that I was still out of town, and you could openly have fun and screw everything in sight the way you typically do behind closed doors.”
“She doesn’t mean anything to me!” he declares.
“Will!” she cries.
“You know, I had planned on coming up here putting a cap in both of your asses,” I say, lifting my gun and watching in fascination as their eyes grow wide.
I stroke the butt of the gun and turn it over in my hands.
“Nova, please put that thing away!” Will grunts.
“You said that I need to know how to use it to protect myself. Well, the way that my heart has just shattered on the floor for the last time, I think that I need protection against that,” I say calmly.
“Nova, come on, baby. Let’s talk about this and get some healing. We can seek therapy.”
In a bored and detached tone, I stand and wave the gun at them. “No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything with you anymore except for determining how we’ll split this house and everything we’ve acquired together.”
Will jumps from the bed, dick sagging sadly, without even a condom to cover it. Just a sticky mess. I shake my head at him and say, “Will, don’t bother. No matter what you say or do, I will never forgive you. Our marriage is over. Has been for a while.”
Tiredly, I walk down the stairs, ignoring his pleas. I can hear Marie fumbling around upstairs, getting her clothes together.
“Baby, just stay so we can talk it over.”
I grab my car keys off the hook by the door, pick up my luggage and start walking outside.
Will stops at the door and cries out, “Baby! I can’t live without you.”
Even then, I keep moving until I’m in my car, pulling down the driveway. I drive five miles away before I pull over at a park and let the tears fly. I promise that will be the last time that I shed a tear over my no-good, cheating husband.
“Damn, I’m sorry.”
Waving off his compassion, I say, “It’s in the past.”
“I know this isn’t easy for you, Nova, but—”
“You promised me that you’d keep me safe, Kai. I expect you to uphold that promise. I don’t expect that you’ll let me down. Just keep your word this time, okay?” I state.
His face turns red. He shoves his hands into the front pocket of his jeans and nods.
He steps toward me and cups my chin. “You think this could be one of the guys you’ve been seeing?”
I bite my lip to keep from telling him the truth, but it’s no use.
“I never dated anyone else, Kai. Never wanted to.”
“I don’t get it. That’s why you pushed me out of your life.”
“I didn’t push you out. At least not that way. I only wanted space where you were concerned because things were moving too fast. I trusted you once before, Kai, and you disappointed me. My heart can’t take that anymore,” I confide my half-truth.
“So, all this time, you haven’t been dating? Haven’t been seeing anyone else?”
Shaking my head, I say, “No, Kai. But I’m weak where you’re concerned.”
“I don’t get it.”
“When I saw you again, all my old feelings came rushing back. I wanted you in the worst way. Felt like I could be whole again. After you left...I tried...I tried—” a sob chokes my words.
“Nova,” he whispers, pulling me to him. He lifts my head. “Please say you didn’t.”
I nod. “Pills. Dylan was the one that found me this time. It hadn’t been long after I’d taken them, but he found me in the room passed out. Called nine-one-one. No one else was home, and he was supposed to be at school. I’d skipped, but he did, too. Came by the house before going to a skip party and found me. I spent six weeks in the psych ward after that.”
“Fuck!” Kai grumbles, crushing me against his body.
My face buries in his leather cut, and I summon the strength I know that I have.
“It’s the reason that my marriage to Dylan didn’t work. He one day told me that I needed to face the fact that I wasn’t over you. Before I met Will, I finally went to counseling. Probably a year after Dylan’s and my divorce. It was the loss that I couldn’t deal with. Almost like being rejected.”
“I’m so sorry that I put you through that shit,” he grumbles.
“No, Kai. I stopped blaming you a long time ago. I needed to deal with my grief over my parents and losing you. I did that. So, when you came back into my life, I was scared of losing myself to you. I felt that it was happening, and I knew that I could never go back to that dark place in my life. I knew that I could never lose you and lose myself again. You never intentionally hurt me, Kai, but your choices did. I just don’t want that to happen again.”
He presses his forehead against mine and brushes the tip of my nose with his lips.
“Promise that I won’t. Just give me a chance to make shit right, and I’ll show you.”
I close my eyes and nod, savoring the sweet brush of his lips against mine before he pulls away and heads out of the cottage. I don’t bother to open my eyes until I hear the door close behind him.
When I open my eyes, a single tear drop falls.
I can no more stay away from that man than I can deny that the sky is blue.
***
“This is why you need to know how to protect yourself, ladies,” Marlo says.
“I’m not shooting a gun. Sorry, if I tried that, I might end up putting a damn bullet in my own foot,” Siren says, filing one of her nails down.
I’ve come to learn that although she’s in the MC, she’s a very prissy thing. Yet, I like her well enough. She’s funny, and it seems as if she and Roxie are close, and I really like Roxie.
“It’s better than getting one put in your head by someone intent on taking your life,” Mama Bear grouses.
She’s one of the surliest women that I’ve seen in quite some time.
“Ladies, I think that’s enough of that talk,” Roxie says, frowning.
They’ve all crowded into my little cottage for the last hour. Roxie showed up to have “tea” and brought a load of other women with her. They’re all curious about my circumstances, and rightly so. Each of them came bearing some dessert, or in the case of Bonnie, she brought margaritas and daiquiris.
“So, how do you know End Game again?”
Shrugging, I say, “We met as kids.”
“In foster care?” Marlo asks when I’m reluctant to do so.
Not because of worrying about sharing my business, but I don’t know how much he’s shared with them. I nod.
“You’ve kept in touch with him all these years?”
“No. We lost touch right before my eighteenth birthday. It’s a small world, though. After I left Georgia, I’d given up hope on ever seeing him again.”
“Heard you were married to a doctor in Santa Fe,” Lizzy says.
“You will soon learn that men gossip as much as women. Most of the information these ladies have came from their Ol’ Men,” Roxie says fondly.
“Yeah, Bullet can’t keep shit a secret. The only damn thing he ever kept a secret was when he was screwing around with that whore Tennessee,” Lizzy hisses sourly, pulling her long dark curls up into a high ponytail and securing it with a rubber band.
“Calm your ass down. That happened eons ago,” Marlo says, shaking her head as she looks up from filing her nails.
“May as well have been yesterday,” Lizzy says.
“Do you know Stiletto’s been slinking up under Decker? Caught him a few months back with that slut on his lap,” Siren says.
“Yeah, heard you damn near sliced her,” Mama Bear says, snickering.
“Damn right, I did,” she declares proudly. “Raider jumped between us, and that tramp hightailed it out of there so damn fast. Ain’t seen her since.”
“Well, she’s still hanging around,” Marlo pronounces.
“What about you? Are you and End Game in a relationship? Is he planning on claiming you?” Siren asks.
“No and no.”
“The fact that he brought you here to this compound says something different,” Marlo says.
“I don’t know what it does or doesn’t say, but we’re not involved. He’s just looking out for me for old times’ sake.”
“Mm,” Mama Bear grunts and all eyes turn her way. “These men are protective as hell, and the one thing they don’t play is about someone screwing with their women. But they also don’t just bring any old body onto the compound for protection without reason. Every time it’s happened, I’ve seen the woman get claimed.”
“That’s only happened twice, Mama Bear,” Siren says. “Roxie and...Hadiyah.”
“Well, he hasn’t claimed her,” Roxie counters.
“Yeah, he may as well have. We all see how Phantom is about Hadiyah,” Siren says.
“Has been since they rescued her,” Roxie points out.
“Well, it’s just a matter of time before you are,” Siren says.
Marlo and Lizzy mutter their agreement.
“So, what is it that these guys do anyway?” I ask, changing the subject from myself.
“They run businesses like anyone else. The bar, gun range, securities firm, locksmith, leather shop, bike repair, dispensary, restaurant, computer shop. I mean, you name it, they do it.”
“Aside from that,” I say, hoping Roxie will be honest with me. “It’s no secret they live on the opposite side of the law. I guess I’d just like to know what Kai is up to when he isn’t at the dispensary.”
“Honey, why don’t you ask him?” Roxie says.
“I don’t believe he’d be honest with me.”
“Why’s that?” she asks.
“I think he’s worried that I can’t handle it and that I might judge him.”
“Can you? Will you?” she asks, giving me something to think about.
“I have never judged Kai, and I’m not about to start now. The only thing that I’m afraid of is losing him again. That...I can’t handle.”
“Sounds like you’re in love,” Roxie says smoothly.
“Maybe I am,” I whisper. “Maybe I am.”
***
“Hey, I haven’t seen you in a few days.”
I look up from the book I’ve been reading and scrunch my face against the sun that blinds me.
“Clark? What’re you doing here?”
“Hanging out on the beach today with some friends of mine,” he says, pointing down the shore to a group of people playing volleyball.
“Oh.”
“Thought you were on vacation out of town.”
Shrugging, I say, “I returned earlier. I was bored.”
“Never heard anyone being bored on vacation,” he laughs.
“Yeah, well...”
He sits down on the sand beside me. I scoot over, making just enough room for him.
“You don’t have to sit in the sand.”
Shrugging, he smiles at me and says, “I’m a beach hum, Nova. A little sand never hurt me. I grew up on a beach like this one. I’ve had sand in places that you couldn’t even imagine.”
“Do I want to?” I ask, chuckling.
He winks at me and says, “Probably not.”
“How’s everyone?” I ask.
“Briana and Lalah are acquiring a fan club of their own at the bookstore. Myrah worked the first shift. She headed home early to catch up on sleep. Natalie went to visit her grandmother in Alabama, and Cody and Martin’s at work, I guess, and me? Well, it’s Saturday, and it’s my first one off this month.”
“Nice.”
“Well, I know you don’t want to be talking about work while you’re off. You got anything special planned for your time off?”
“No, just relaxing. I’ll be back soon, though.”
“You need a weekend off. Just relax and don’t think about that place.”
“I know, but I had the previous weekend off. You know that I don’t take off every weekend. I don’t like to leave my staff to work those hours. I split it up fairly amongst us all. After all, it’s my dream. Besides, I love being there.”
“More so than home?”
“Sometimes,” I say, thinking of all the crazy things that’s been happening.
“That’s probably because you have nothing to do.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. Do you date? Got friends? Cook? Maybe if you had a roommate or hell, I don’t know another pet.”
Laughing, I say, “I hardly think any of those things would be enough to keep me away from the store.”
He grows serious and says, “What about the right man? Think he might keep you at home long enough to keep your attention?”
His piercing gaze on me makes me just a bit uncomfortable. I lay back on my towel, pulling my sunglasses down over my eyes and blocking out his penetrative stare. Instead, I bask in the laughter of the children playing in the water and those building castles and other ideas from their imaginations just feet away.
I listen to the parents chiding their children, adult conversation and all the other sounds that make this beach the perfect place to be. The cry of the seagulls and the rushing waters slapping the shore.
“What’s wrong? Not into men?” he asks.
Peering over my sunglasses, I reply, “Clark, I’m very much into men. To suggest anything otherwise would be ludicrous in my mind. But no...I’ve had my share of men and relationships. There’s not a man that’s engaging enough to keep me at home. My books are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Name one thing that a book can give you that a man can’t.”
I sit up on my elbows and reply, “Several things.”
“Okay. Name them,” he says, smirking.
“Escape, peace, laughter, and titillating my imagination.”
“Men can give you all that,” he says in a lower tone.
“Trust me...I’ve been married twice and have had at least one other serious relationship. I’m good on my own.”
“Books can’t offer you protection.”
“I can get a security service for that.”
“Even the best of them fail.”
“I hardly think this conversation is appropriate for me to be having with a staff member.”
“We’re friends. You hang out at the champagne bar with me and talk about lots of stuff.”
I see the sincerity in his eyes, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that we’re not.
“I need to continue pretending that I’m on vacation, Clark. And you? Well, people are waiting for you,” I say, laughing as I point down the beach to where his friends are waving him back.
I grab my belongings.
“Where’re you going?”
“I’ve been sitting out in the sun too much. I’m ready to go inside and shower. Get some rest. Besides, your friends are waiting for you.”
“They’re just...”
“Just what?”
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head and glancing back down the beach.
“I’ll see you later,” I say, hopping up.
That conversation was bordering on disturbing. Clark was becoming a little too personal for my liking. Or maybe I’m just suspicious of everything and everyone these days.
No sooner than I’m in the house, I head back outside to check my mailbox. I know there must be a stack waiting for me since I’ve been gone for a few days. Heading back to the mailbox, I pull out several envelopes along with a small box.
I wait until I’m inside to open the unmarked box with nothing except for my name and address.
I open the box and find a gold chain inside with a heart broken in two. Nothing is engraved on the heart, but there is a slip of paper nestled underneath.
You’ve been a naughty girl.
They can’t protect you.
XOXOXO,
Your Secret Admirer