Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Brian
Opening the door to what he expected to be his quiet home, Brian did not think to pause to see what Morgan and Asad were up to. He knew they were there because their cars were out front, but that hadn’t meant much other than knowing they were around.
He was hopeful the gossip hadn’t flown too fast, though. After the hellacious boat ride, then an uncomfortable plane ride he’d pretended to sleep through, all he wanted was quiet. Since he couldn’t have quiet, he wanted some time with people who didn’t know he’d been sleeping with Rae all week.
So, he wasn’t expecting to walk in on Asad and Morgan in the middle of the living room playing hide the pickle while dressed as what looked like Aragorn and an elf lady.
Asad was wearing a wig. Morgan, with her long red hair, was not, so he couldn’t call her Arwen—and wasn’t he a giant nerd for even knowing that.
“Shit.” He clapped his hands over his eyes. While he’d seen both of them naked and even having sex at the clubs since they’d gotten together, it was a little different to walk in on it unexpectedly.
“Shit! Sorry!” Morgan squealed, then Asad grunted.
Brian wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing because he was still covering his eyes, inwardly sighing.
Asad made Morgan very happy, and that was the biggest thing, but…
“You two couldn’t do this at Asad’s house?” he asked plaintively.
“Morgan has to film this afternoon,” Asad answered. “Her room at my place isn’t ready yet.”
Morgan had an even more tragic backstory than Brian.
She’d been raised by heinous parents who threw her out when she was a teenager after they found out she’d had sex, and she ended up with the man who groomed her until he basically sold her to an abusive so-called ‘Dom.’ Since she’d been rescued, she’d gone right back into kink, this time learning about consent, limits, and being able to make her own decisions rather than being someone’s sex slave.
He didn’t want to squash that, but he also hadn’t really wanted to come home to see her boyfriend balls deep in her while they were doing nerdy role-play.
“Sorry, Brian,” she apologized.
He let his hand drop from his face so he could see them straightening their clothes. Morgan’s expression was a mix of contriteness and defiance.
“You should have texted to let me know when you were on the way.”
“I did.”
“Oh.” Heat filled her cheeks, turning her pale skin bright pink. She glanced at Asad, who didn’t look sorry at all—although maybe sorry they’d been interrupted before they could finish. “Sorry, I must not have heard the alert go off.”
“It’s fine.” Now, he just needed to retreat to his room. He gave Asad a half-hearted wave. “You two just keep on as you were. Sorry for interrupting. I’m going to go rest. It was a long plane ride.”
“Are you sure?” Morgan asked, just as Asad spoke up.
“We can move it to her room.” They gave each other a little look, one of those looks that two people who were connected by more than physical attraction gave each other. The kind of little look that couples shared, where they didn’t need to speak to know what the other was thinking.
The kind of little look that Brian so desperately wanted to share with someone.
That he’d almost felt like he’d had with Rae the last week.
“Thanks. You can do what you want, but I’m definitely going to my room.” He needed to be alone for a while. He gave them a wan smile, trying his damndest to make it seem like he was tired from traveling and nothing more. “I just want to lay down and sleep until tomorrow.”
Surely, tomorrow would be better. Or at least, he’d be a little further away from it all. He could mope around the house. Hopefully, Morgan and Asad would decamp to Asad’s, then he’d be ready to go back to work on Monday. A buffer day to let himself recalibrate and reacclimate to reality.
And the reality was that he and Rae were never going to work.
“Okay,” Morgan said, nodding. “Do you want me to make some food for you for dinner, so you don’t have to?”
That was one of the best things about having Morgan as a housemate.
She tended to take things at face value.
While Asad was looking at him with curiosity, as if he’d realized there was something more going on, Morgan just heard that he was tired, accepted it, then did what she could to offer help.
Thankfully, he and Asad weren’t close enough for Asad to feel comfortable questioning him.
“Only if you were going to make some for yourself and will have extra. Otherwise, I can just order in.”
“Well…” Her voice started to trail off, and she glanced at Asad, who nodded encouragingly. “I was going to make you a welcome home dinner, but if you feel too tired to come eat with us, that’s okay.”
Dammit. He was an ass. He pushed another smile he didn’t feel onto his face.
“I just didn’t want to intrude on your plans, but if you were planning for me…”
“She was,” Asad confirmed, shooting him a grateful look, as if he knew Brian really wanted alone time but was adjusting for Morgan. “You do look tired, though. We won’t keep you up late.”
“Oh, no, definitely not.” Morgan’s expression had lit up now that she knew Brian was going to have dinner with them. “I can’t wait to hear about the week and the resort.”
Great. Now, he really needed to go sit in his room and figure out what highly edited version he was going to tell her.
Or if he could tell her a highly edited version.
Somehow, he didn’t think it would be better to let her hear about him and Rae hooking up through the grapevine, and it would reach her, eventually.
Hell, probably sooner rather than later, now that she was with Asad. He was very close friends with Law.
“Great. I just need to rest my eyes for a bit, then I’ll tell you all about it.” He nodded his head and headed to his room. Yeah, he’d have to tell her all about it, though he’d emphasize that he and Rae were not getting into a real relationship or anything like that.
She and Rae had gotten off on the wrong foot when they’d been in the Intro for Submissives class together, and things had only marginally improved since then.
He didn’t think she’d be upset or anything, but who knew?
Morgan could also be very protective of him, so he’d have to ensure she understood there really were no hard feelings between him and Rae.
He didn’t want to accidentally exacerbate the divide that already existed between the two women.
As he was headed down the hallway, he heard the chime of Morgan’s phone going off. It practically echoed down the hall. She must have turned it up after realizing she’d missed his text message.
He’d just opened the door to his bedroom when he heard the screech.
“You spent the week hooking up with Rae, and you didn’t tell me?!”
Ah, fuck.
Rae
Home sweet home.
Except it was more like home lonely home. Not that she’d ever been an extrovert, but she had lived very happily with Domi and her daughter Ana for years. Now Domi lived with Mitch, and when Ana wasn’t with her father, she was over there. At first, Rae had liked the quiet.
Now, she was semi-grateful for the quiet because she didn’t really want to put up with any more of Domi’s interrogation about Brian, but…
She’d gotten used to living with Brian during the week.
Which was crazy because it had only been for a few days, but she couldn’t explain why else she felt lonely.
And she wasn’t thinking of Domi or any of her other friends when she was wishing she wasn’t alone—in fact, she was relieved to get away from their questions for a bit.
It was Brian who kept popping into her head.
Which was maddening for a number of reasons.
Unpacking meant throwing everything into her laundry machine and turning it on. Then she just… wandered around the house. She tried to write, but she couldn’t get her head in the game. She turned on the television but couldn’t find anything to watch.
Her phone pinged several times, including a threatening message from Domi that said, ‘You can’t avoid me forever.’
After she moved her clothes into the dryer, Rae gave up and headed out to the place she really wanted to go to get reassurance on what she wanted from her future—her parents’ home.
What Domi had said about her parents just hiding their fights from her… she didn’t really believe it, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. As much as she was thinking about the week with Brian, she was also thinking about that.
She texted her mom that she was on her way and got back a thumbs up.
It wasn’t unheard of for her to drop by for dinner with little notice.
With her parents living only twenty minutes away, it was easy, and they had an open-door policy for any family members.
Well, anyone except her mom’s sister, Aunt Deirdre.
The two of them always needed at least a day’s notice before seeing each other so they could prep for the inevitable clash and get their best comebacks ready.
They always got into a fight, so Rae knew her mom could; she just didn’t with Rae’s dad.
It did keep the holidays interesting.
“Hey, babygirl,” her dad said as soon as she walked in the door, striding down the hallway like he’d been waiting to hear the door open.
Nearly a head taller than her, his closely cropped hair liberally sprinkled with grey and a beard to match, he was broad-shouldered and carried just a bit of extra weight around his middle.
She always felt like he was a giant teddy bear.
Rae beamed at him, stepping into his big bear hug and sighing as some of the tension leeched from her body.
“How was your trip? I didn’t think we’d be seeing you today. Too tired to cook?”
“Something like that.” As close as she was to her dad, boy problems were not something they talked about.
That had always been kept between her and her mom, and she wasn’t going to change that now.
Neither of them knew anything about Hideaway Resort, though, other than she’d gone to an all-inclusive resort for Domi’s bachelorette party.
“Well, it’s good to see you.” He gave her another little squeeze and let go, turning to head into the living room where the television was on.
It was always on during the weekends of football season.
Her dad followed both the colleges and the pros, and her mom tolerated it. “Wanna come watch the game with me?”
“Yeah, in a few. I wanted to talk to Mom real quick.” At least, she assumed it would be a quick question.
Do you and Dad hide your fights from me?
No, baby, of course not.
The reason she couldn’t ask her dad was because she knew that even if they did, he’d never admit it to her. And he was a good enough actor that she might not know. It had served him well during many a practical joke while she was growing up.
Her mom, on the other hand, had a terrible poker face.
That was also why Rae felt so sure her parents hadn’t been hiding fights from her.
Her mom had never been able to hide anything.
She’d figured out that Santa wasn’t real when she was only four years old because when she’d asked her mom why Santa had the same wrapping paper as them, her mom froze.
Her dad had jumped in to cover, something about Santa also wanting to support the neighbor’s kid’s school fundraiser, but it had been too late.
Thus had followed the pattern—if she wanted to know the truth just by an expression, ask mom.
Her dad might have been able to hide fights from her over the years, and she could totally see him doing that to try to protect her, but mom? Nope. There was no way.
But she just needed it confirmed. For her own peace of mind. To know that what she’d been wanting was something she could actually have. Because if she didn’t ask, she was never going to get Domi’s voice out of her head.
“Mom’s in the kitchen,” her dad said with a wave of his hand, settling down into his favorite chair, his gaze already on the game.
Following the smell of home-cooked chili, Rae headed on in and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that her mom was not actually cooking but was sitting at the island counter, nibbling on an apple slice and reading a book.
The cover looked like the latest by Leslye Penelope, her mom’s favorite author.
She looked up as Rae walked in, smiling and sliding her bookmark into place so she could put it down.
She was dressed in colorful, comfortable clothing that she called her ‘house clothes’ and a headwrap to keep her hair out of her face.
She always said she didn’t feel like messing with it on weekends.
Rae had a lot of memories of weekends at home with her mom looking exactly like this when she was younger—then the flurry of activity that would happen if they needed to leave the house for some reason.
“Hey, babygirl.” Her mom greeted her in the same manner her dad had, getting to her feet and enveloping Rae in a warm hug. “I guess you were too tired to cook tonight, huh? How was your trip?”
Both the greeting and the question were completely natural, and she couldn’t help but think that her parents were two peas in a pod. It wasn’t just the words of the greeting or the inquiry. It was the way they said it, with the exact same intonation. She relaxed a little more.
“It was good. Domi had a great time, and that was the most important thing.”
Her mom smiled as she sat back down, gesturing for Rae to take the seat next to her.
Her parents had opted for very comfortable bar seats with backs for the kitchen island because the kitchen was her mom’s favorite place to sit and read.
Sometimes, she did it in the window seat next to the big bay window, but when she wanted to eat and read, she preferred the counter where she could lean on her elbows and prop her book up.
Rae got her love of books and reading from her mom, though her mom didn’t read the same kinds of romance as Rae did. She didn’t think her mom had gone down the kink rabbit hole, but if she had, Rae didn’t want to know.
“I hope you still enjoyed yourself, too,” her mom teased. “I didn’t expect to see you today, though.”
“Right… well. Actually, I had something to ask you.” She felt odd. Was she sweating? No. She just felt… strange, as though her body was a little out of sync with the rest of the world. Domi was wrong. She must be. Yet, it was hard to get the words out.
“Of course, honey, what?” Her mom raised her eyebrow, the little signal that said spit it out.
“Did you and Dad hide your fights from me?” The words came out in a rush, barely any space in between them, almost unintelligible… and her mom froze, eyes widening, the exact same way she had when Rae had asked about Santa’s Christmas wrapping paper.
No! Fuck!
Domi was right.