Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Mark
I was choosing to look at our time apart as a period of growth and self-discovery. It might seem impossible for people to believe, but I genuinely think now that we were stronger because of it.
We’d gotten married relatively young—in fact, we were still pretty young—but when you know, you know.
But— but —what if we hadn’t had that time? Would we still be together? I’d loved her more than life back then, but I couldn’t remember ever feeling this relaxed and content. Then again, maybe it was because her family knew about us and were coming round to accepting it? We didn’t need to hide or worry about being caught anymore, so we were free to be us.
You just never know what life holds, so maybe our time apart was fate or for a special purpose?
Tonight was her birthday party, but I’d asked her parents to hold off until nine o’clock for it to start. After a lot of begging and promises, the house had finally been released, and we were allowed to go into it. Granted, we wouldn’t be staying in it or touching anything, but it was ours again, and we didn’t have to worry about buried bodies or stories of snuff films being made in it. Yes, that had occurred to me.
With a blindfold around her eyes, I drove us around town for a while, laughing when she got frustrated.
“Mark, if you don’t tell me where we’re going or get us there soon, I’m either going to throw up in your car, or I’m going to choke you with the blindfold and shove it up your ass. I’ll even make sure half of it’s hanging out like a tail and tell them you were too kinky for me.”
“You’re inventive, baby. I’ll give you that,” I snorted as I turned onto our road.
“Oh, did you hear? Sayla’s buying the house two doors down from yours.”
As always, the change in topics took my brain a second to catch up with, but then something hit me, and I pulled over to the side of the road five houses down from ours.
“Are we there?” Layla reached up to take the blindfold off, and I only just caught her hand in time to stop her.
“No, not yet, but I need to make something clear. This house is our house, regardless of whether we live in it together right now, next week, six months from now, or even next year. I bought it to make a dream come true and hoped that my part of that dream would come back to Piersville.” Her shuddering inhale seemed overly loud in the silent car. “But now that you’re here, it’s ours .”
Through the dim light coming from the dash, I saw her chin start wobbling and panicked. Layla had never been a crier, she just didn’t have it in her, so whenever she gave in and shed tears, it ripped me to pieces.
That’s why I softened the blow. “I get it, we need to have it sterilized and then maybe go around with those sage stick things and cleanse the demons out of it. I’m also not against spraying holy water and trying to get my hands on feathers from the wings of angels to dry it off. But I deliberately didn’t change anything inside it so that we could decide together what to do to it to make it ours.”
She snorted out a laugh. “You want smudge sticks and holy water?”
“Babe, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. If you did, you might decide to bulldoze it down and start again. I even considered it the night our brothers brought the Luminol in, and then when I found out it wasn’t the Luminol making it glow and what that meant….”
God, it always left a nasty taste in my mouth thinking about it… Maybe not unlike the people who’d taken part in putting the fluids on the walls had in their mouths. Gag!
“I love that it’s ours, and we get to work on it together.”
“After it’s been sterilized,” I reminded her. Like she’d ever forget it.
“And sterilized,” she snickered. “How long do you think it’ll take for them to disinfect it?”
I started the engine back up and drove the short distance to the house, where I pulled into the driveway.
“Well, if you decide you want some stuff removed, it might not take them as long because there’ll be fewer surfaces to clean,” I hedged, deliberately leaving it relatively vague and not mentioning the mirrors everywhere that could easily be removed.
Getting out and going round to Layla’s side, I opened the door and helped her until she stood in front of me.
Leaning down, I put my mouth right next to her ear. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she breathed, then snapped, “but if you do anything mean like push me off the edge of a cliff into the water like my brothers did when I was six, I’ll kick you in the balls and leave you behind.”
I looked up at the sky, which was just turning dark enough to see the stars. “How do conversations always end up like this? I take you to a surprise I’ve planned out for you, and it turns into a nightmare story from your childhood and ends up with my nuts in my gallbladder and me stranded next to a cliff somewhere?”
“Just lucky like that, I guess.”
Figuring I’d leave her blindfold on for a couple more minutes, I duck walked us toward the house's front door and opened it.
My brothers had come in here earlier, in actual hazmat suits that they’d bought off Amazon, and had strung up fairy lights and put some flowers in vases around the place. It still looked like a gaudy porn palace, but it had a softer edge to it now.
With a tug on the ties at the back of the blindfold, I let it drop away from her face, revealing the inside of her dream home to her.
“Where are we?” she whispered, turning around in a circle as she took it all in. “Is this a strip club?”
Damn it!
“No, this is the inside of your dream house.”
Her head snapped in my direction as she opened and closed her mouth, totally lost for words.
“I know,” I held my hands up in front of me. “It’s not what I thought it would be either, but take away the obvious bits like the mirrors—and this ain’t even the half of it—and picture it painted in neutral colors.” I shifted so I could turn the light on in the dining room. “Think about it looking like this.”
“Oh,” she breathed, rushing into the room. “This is beautiful. Can you imagine picking up a handmade wooden table for in here? We could have a matching cabinet to put our dishes in, then another one over here, and maybe get a restored record player for it.”
I grinned happily at the mental image of what she’d described. “Roy Orbison on vinyl would sound amazing in this room.”
With the idea in my head, I pulled my phone out and opened up my music app, hitting the album I listened to when I thought about Layla. You Got It began playing, the music bouncing off the empty walls of the house and making it sound slightly wrong, but the look on her face fixed that.
“I don’t want to move out of this room,” she sighed, spinning around again. “I want ceiling to floor curtains in an oyster color in here, and I think I want to paint the walls in a shade that’s slightly off-white with a tiny bit of gray mixed into it, and all of the trim has to be brightest white.”
I didn’t have a clue what oyster, off-white with gray, and brightest white was—although, I could guess at the last one—but if that’s what she wanted, that’s what we’d do.
“We can bring the music with us, Layla, or we can switch it off and brainstorm as we go, but let’s look at the kitchen.” I pointed at the door that led to it and warned her, “It’s not been updated since avocado, Formica, and laminate floor tiles were a thing, though, so don’t get too excited.”
I held the door open and waved her in, biting my lip to hold in the laughter her reaction would no doubt result in.
I wasn’t disappointed.
“Oh, it’s so- Ohh, oh, bloody hell. What were they thinking? How do you leave a room as big as this looking like something out of a test house on a nuclear bomb site?” She walked deeper into the room and turned around, taking it all in at once. “I love the area at the back that looks like a small version of my parent's dining room, but why would they add that and not work on the rest?”
“They were too busy partying?”
“Gah,” she shuddered. “This will look gorgeous once it’s got wooden flooring laid and the kitchen’s updated. It’s relatively easy work, thankfully.”
I was surprised. “You want wooden flooring in here, not tiles?”
She moved a couple of steps to the side to see around the crumbling island at where the sink was. “We could put tiles here, but I think we should keep the rest of the flooring downstairs wooden.”
That suited me perfectly.
As we walked around the bottom level of the house, we discussed and planned what adjustments we’d make to the place. She wasn’t wrong—it was all relatively easy work. Some of it I could do with our brothers, but the kitchen I wanted to be fitted by someone who knew how to do it. Dad had tried fitting a new kitchen in their house, and so had Luke, and both of them had failed miserably. I was more than happy to pay for someone who knew what the hell they were doing to do it all.
We made our way back to the entrance and stared at the staircase.
“I think we should keep the glass and the mirrors,” Layla suddenly announced.
“Really?” I barked, taking a step away from her.
“Yeah, it gives it an edge.”
I was speechless. There wasn’t even one thing I could think of that could make me agree with her. Could this be a deal breaker? I didn’t think so, but I needed her to agree that they could go.
“Layla—”
“Just kidding, that shit has got to go. Who needs that many mirrors? Seeing this when we first came in was bad enough, but when we went into the two bathrooms down here, and there were more on the wall next to the toilet? They were freaking nuts.”
Because she’d almost given me a heart attack, I didn’t tell her there was more upstairs.
Nudging her toward the staircase, I only just managed to warn her at the last minute before she grabbed onto the railing. “Don’t touch anything.”
She looked over her shoulder at me, her eyes wide as she pointed at it. “Even on here?”
“Oh, yes! The crime scene techs reckon they slid down the banister either after sex or as part of a show.”
She snatched her hand back from where she’d been pointing at it, even though there was still at least a foot of space between them.
“Gross! What the hell was wrong with those people? Do you know if any of their party buddies still live in the area? Just so I know who to tell the girls to wear gloves for if they come into the salon.”
I put my hands on her hips, urging her to make her way up the stairs as I told her what I knew. “According to our neighbor, Mrs. Keegan, they were part of a group that traveled all over the world for get togethers, but they also had contacts in stateside ones who visited each other’s houses.”
“Seriously? Did they have their own social media platform, too? Maybe something along the lines of Tinder? If not, setting one up and calling it Kinker doesn’t seem like a bad idea.”
Layla joked, but I wouldn’t have called it impossible.
Leading her upstairs, I showed her the bedrooms one by one, making sure to touch the light switches with a tissue from a pack I’d brought with me.
When I opened the door to the bathroom in the main bedroom, instead of reacting like I had, i.e., in a stunned stupor, she threw her head back and burst out laughing, almost touching the door frame when she tipped over.
"Oh, God, why would anyone do this?” she wheezed as she stood facing the toilet and looked at her reflection in the small mirrored tiles. “If you’re standing taking a pee and look up, it looks like the tiger’s about to bite your head on one side and the sloth’s climbing up your leg.” Her eyes caught on something else on the wall, and she laughed even harder. “Is the monkey wanking the banana?”
I spun around to see what she meant and gaped. “How does this place get worse? I didn’t think it’d be possible, and I’ve lived in it for a year.”
Yes, the banana was right over the little guy’s crotch, and he had his fist wrapped around it.
Grabbing her hand, I turned the lights off as we left and made our way to the next bathroom.
“This one has more of a Grecian feel to it,” I warned her. “And there’s no way you won’t see the carvings for what they are.”
Layla walked in ahead of me and gasped. “Did they get a Grecian style Karma Sutra for the walls?”
The Mitchells had bought carved stone tiles for the walls, all of which had a scene reminiscent of the Karma Sutra, although some involved water jugs and other objects that I hadn’t looked too closely at. This was the bathroom I’d showered in while I’d lived here, but even my curiosity hadn’t been enough to give in to the need to examine them closely. That water jug had been enough for me, and I still wasn’t even sure what they were doing with it.
“Something like that.”
I knew she’d seen it the moment she shrieked and collapsed into me. Next to the toilet was a stone statue of a Roman soldier who’d been turned into a toilet paper holder, complete with a two-foot-long erection to slide the rolls onto.
“I should give that to Gramps. He’d get a kick out of it.”
“I thought the same thing the first time I saw it,” I murmured, finding it awkward when I made eye contact with the guy.
It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, and bizarrely enough, my awkwardness now was because most of the previous times it’d happened, I’d been taking a piss at the time.
By the time we got to the room I’d slept in, Layla was complaining of a stitch from all the laughing she’d done.
“This was my room while I was here,” I told her as I flicked the lights on for her to see.
“What were all the hooks and weird railings for?” she asked, spinning in a circle in the middle of the room. My old bed had been taken away and hopefully incinerated, so I wasn’t worried about her bumping into anything.
“Well, it appears that they used this as their playroom, so they’d probably have hung their sex toys on them or used cuffs or restraints to attach people to them.”
Layla squinted as she looked at one that was closer to the ground, then she made a noise and lurched away from it like she’d been burned.
“What? Are you okay?”
“I read a book once about this ranch that was centered around BDSM and things like that. They had these little nooks where they attached punishment dildos.”
“Please don’t finish the story,” I begged. “I have so many awful mental images about what went on in this house. In my little corner of sanity, I’m choosing to believe that was for a bedside table, like an anchor for one of those wall-mounted ones.”
She nodded understandingly. “Okay, shall we make our way back downstairs?”
I followed gratefully behind, wincing when I went to turn the light off and remembered what was on that wall.
Just as I put my foot on the first step, she spun around and said quickly, “The dildos are for men and women, usually the ones who are submissive, not the tops. They have to get themselves off on it until the top tells them to stop, and it doesn’t matter which hole they stick it in.”
The second she was finished, she turned around and skipped down two stairs.
Not to be outdone, I said loudly, “Right next to the door, where the light switch was in that room, and roughly about six inches away from where you were standing, there’s an outline of a woman made when she was covered in sex juices. You can even make out her nipples and her tits. Next to where the wall-mounted nightstand was that you were so close to, there’s a guy’s ass and thighs also imprinted with sex juices, including his slightly saggy balls.”
With that, I walked around her, made my way down to the bottom, and watched her walk toward me. On the last step, she launched herself at me, and I caught her, spinning her around and laughing.
“Well played, Montgomery,” she snickered as I put her on her feet.
“Backatcha, Mrs. Montgomery.”
Looking around, she shuddered. “Okay, I can’t spend much longer in here without going home and bleaching my skin until the first five layers of skin come off.”
Grabbing her hand, I dropped the tissue I’d used to open doors and turn on lights with on the counter in the kitchen and pulled her out into the backyard that I’d had my brothers also set up for me. More lights were woven through the bushes, and small lanterns were hanging from the tree branches.
“Oh, it’s so pretty.”
I pointed at the area we’d cordoned off with police tape because it’d been the only thing we had to hand at the time. “Me and Bond went through the files to find the one about Mr. Mitchell’s death and marked off where it happened according to the photos. Fortunately, the officers who dealt with it were very precise and even mapped it out so we could use their measurements to cordon it off.”
“That’s where he died?”
“Apparently. I was thinking that because it’s on the opposite side, far away from the door, we could probably put a cement planter or something over it.”
“God, yes. Can you imagine our nieces and nephews lying down there or having a picnic?”
Exactly.
Speaking of picnics, I led her over to where a blanket had been laid out for us, with my gifts next to it.
“Before we go to the party, I wanted to speak to you about what happened back then,” I started, doing my best not to fidget. “I know we should have done this a long time ago—”
“That was my fault,” she sighed. “I was being pig headed, and then I just wanted to bury my head in the sand about it all. I’m sorry.”
I reached out for her hand and gave her a squeeze. “I get it, I just want to do this right. We’ve obviously been able to settle some things, but we need to get it all cleared away so we can move on.”
Layla nodded and looked down at her lap. “When I got that positive result on the pregnancy test, I was scared, but after it sank in, I wanted the baby. I started making all these plans in my head for the three of us, and then you insisted we get married, and I guess I was so focused on the baby that I didn’t let the fear of how our families would react to it all takeover. I don’t think I even thought about it after the first day.”
“I can understand that. I freaked out when you told me about the baby, but then I was so excited that I decided we had to go to Vegas and get married immediately.”
Layla frowned at me. “You didn’t sound or act excited.”
“Baby, think about how your brothers would have reacted—how they did react—when they found out about us being married. Next, add in you being pregnant, too.” Her mouth turned into an ‘O’ as it finally made sense. “It wasn’t me I was worried about, it was you getting upset. They just love you so much that they’d have happily beaten the shit out of me, which would have hurt and upset you. I didn’t want that.”
“But when I told you about it being a false positive, all you said was ‘oh.’”
“I was at the departure gate, picking my shit up to board the plane for Rocko’s bachelor party, when that text came through. I managed to hit the letter ‘o’ to type out a message asking if you were okay, but I got hit from behind by these assholes who’d been drinking since they’d checked in. My phone got dropped, and it must have thought I was sending ‘oh’ and sent it when it hit a surface. That’s the only thing I can think of.”
She chewed on her lower lip and then tugged at it with her teeth. “Why didn’t you even message me on Facebook or something? I get why you didn’t text because I only know my parents’ and grandparents’ landline numbers by heart, but you still could have messaged me.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, regret kicking my ass all over again. “I could have. I just assumed because I don’t check that weird folder with messages from people I’m not friends with that no one else does. I forget some people think outside the box and actually enjoy meeting new people.”
Layla tipped her head back and stared at the stars, then suddenly threw her arms in the air. “Okay, fine, I never check the damn folder. Satisfied? You could have sent me fifty messages, and I’d likely never have even known unless I’d gone looking for them.”
Pulling her into my chest, I buried my nose in the top of her hair. “Actually, yes, I’m very satisfied. I’ve got my wife in my arms and a house that’ll be awesome once it’s been cleaned and had some work done on it. What more could I ask for?”
“You forgot the sound of tiny little feet on the flooring we’re putting in.”
My heart froze, and I think my balls crawled into my spine. “What?”
Wasn’t it too soon? We weren’t ready for that kind of life, were we? Hell, it’d only been twenty-four fucking hours, what type of pregnancy tests did they do nowadays that told you that quickly?
“I can hear your heart racing,” she snickered, patting me on the chest. “I meant Zeus and Skippy.”
I had to let go of her as I sagged down until my back hit the ground. “Oh, thank you, great porn palace in the sky.”
Layla’s head appeared hanging over mine, her hair trailing down until it hit my chest. “You don’t want to have kids with me?”
Grabbing her by the back of her head, I pulled her down until her eyes were level with mine. It wasn’t easy to do, given that we were upside down because of our noses, but we could make anything work.
“I absolutely want to have kids with you, but our families are still adjusting to us being married. Adding a baby to it will likely end up with me buried under the concrete planter we’re hiding Mr. Mitchell’s place of death with.”
Layla winked at me. “I don’t want to have kids yet. Imagine them touching the walls in that house before we’ve painted them all or put the new flooring down.” I made a gagging noise and smiled when she giggled, and I felt it on my forehead. “Plus, I think we need more time just the two of us, for ourselves, not just our families.”
“So we wait for kids?”
“We definitely wait for kids.”
I tipped my head back and used my chin to move her head so I could reach her mouth. “Good. Now kiss me, baby, and let me give you your belated birthday presents.”
This time a year ago, there was no sign of Layla moving home. Then, four months ago, I’d heard she might be moving back and that rumors were circulating about her working at Delicious Divas. I’d been too scared to get my hopes up, so I’d ignored it until I saw her walking around with a big smile as she said hello to people. While she’d been away, I’d invested time and money in arranging things like the house and smaller plans we’d discussed, but it’d always been a case of ‘what if’ instead of ‘when.’
I now had my ‘when,’ and as she opened the first box with her official key to the house along with deeds which had both of our names on them, the house finally changed into a home. Granted, not one we could live in just yet, but it wasn’t just something she’d always wanted anymore, it was going to be the home we built our future in.
Each gift that she opened was a link to our past, from a framed penny we’d put into a machine at Disneyland when we were kids that’d been stamped with Minnie and Mickey, to the pink princess ring she’d lost when she was little, and I’d found at the bottom of my closet when I’d moved out of my parents’ place. Then there were the tickets I’d booked to Bimini in three weeks so we could spend a week together. That’d been where we’d had our first kiss when we’d gone with our families, and I’d even booked us into the same hotel we’d stayed at the first time.
Layla stared at them all laid out on the blanket in front of her, and promptly burst into tears.
“I hate crying,” she wailed, throwing her arms around my neck and almost choking me.
“Then why are you doing it?” I wheezed, wondering if she’d realize what she was doing to my airway without me having to pull her arms away first.
“Because there’s no way I’ll ever be able to get you things that even come close to what you’ve got me. I tried with the underwear—”
“Which I love.”
“But it’ll never come close.”
She was underestimating herself on that one. As a man, let me tell you something, when your woman goes out and purchases numerous pairs of underwear in silk and lace, matching bras, and an assortment of lacy, silky nighties, she most certainly has come close to a dog and a vacation to Bimini. In fact, I’d award her bonus points exceeding the two gifts if she brought them and some bikinis with her.
Then it clicked. “That’s why you’re choking me, isn’t it?”
Finally she released me and sat back on her feet, tears still trailing down her beautiful face.
“Just stop doing it, okay? I need a chance to catch up.”
I did everything I could to smile genuinely and reassure her, but I knew the moment she picked up that I was lying how badly I’d done.
“What did you do?”
“It’s nothing big. We’ve got to get to your party.”
Pulling her to her feet, I decided to wrap the gifts in the blanket and put them in the car like that instead of picking each item up individually. We were only about fifteen minutes from where the party was being held, but Layla quizzed me the whole way, almost driving me out of my mind.
Would she hate what I’d set up? Would she love it? Would she try to choke me again?