Mind Lies (5 page)

Portia throws a pillow at him. “You are so full of sh—
crap
, Cooper! You love my late night phone calls.”

He smirks at her. “Close call on the curse words love, and I only love your late-night calls when you’re alone. In
our
bed.”

The heat in his eyes cannot be missed, and once again I find myself missing the man in my memories. I’ll continue to think of them as memories and not just fantastical dreams until I can prove myself otherwise.

I’m also jealous. Happy for them, but jealous that I’m alone. Or soon to be.

Her laughter pulls me from my misery. “And that, my dear Jerri, is code for phone sex, which I can’t have with him when I’m in bed with you. But we make the most of it. Here,” she says, jogging out of the room. Seconds later, she comes back with a photo album. “I know you’re tired, but I’ll leave these here for you to look at. There are lots of good times in there.”

I nod. “Thanks, Portia, for everything. I’m gonna try to get some sleep now; that trip kicked my ass.”

I give her a small smile. But from the look on her face, I know she sees through it.

The trip isn’t what knocked me on my ass.

It’s the unknown that’s doing the kicking.

Chapter Seven

“You have to stay here, Jerri. You have to. I can’t keep you safe if you don’t.”

His pleading falls on deaf ears. I don’t want to stay here.

Not without him.

I don’t want to do this alone.

“Would you listen to me, Lock? I don’t want to be here without you! I’ll go wherever you want me to go, do whatever you want me to do. I just want to be together,” I cry.

Unfortunately, that falls on deaf ears too.

Only this time, they’re not my own.

This time they’re his.

“I won’t tell you again, Lass. You know why I can’t stay with you. I can’t do what I need to do if you don’t
LISTEN
, Jerri.” He scrubs a hand down his face and squeezes the back of his neck in frustration as he looks to the sky, presumably for answers that I doubt he will find.

He continues. “Why must you be so stubborn? Why can’t you trust me? Trust that I will do anything, anything”—he draws it out—“to keep you safe. And you being with me, wherever I am, is not safe for you, Lass.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat, straightening my spine. Be it my stubbornness or my pride, I don’t know, but I can’t have him leave me. Not this time, not again.

Because it hurts too damn bad.

I open the door and head into my small apartment above the laundromat. It’s tiny and always smells like fabric softener. And it’s safe.

That’s always his requirement for wherever he leaves me.

That where I stay is safe.

I go to shut the door, but his large body blocks it as he follows me into the apartment. I turn, prepared to tell him to leave, to get the hell out if he can’t take me with him. To never come back.

But I don’t.

Because that’s the sick part of this fucked-up relationship. I can’t ever leave him. And even though he doesn’t admit it, he can’t ever leave me.

We’re dependent on each other. We’ve needed too much from the one another other for so long that we don’t know any other way. We don’t know any other person.

Sure he’s had others. I’ve had others too. But that doesn’t change the fact that we always come back to this.

Him and me.

Locklin and Jerri.

And that’s why when he slams my back against the door and crushes his lips to mine, I don’t tell him to stop. I don’t tell him to leave, get the hell out, stop breaking my heart—to never come back.

No. I don’t do any of that.

I let him wrap my waist-length hair around his large fist so he can devour me.

Heart.

Body.

Mind and soul.

And when he guides my leg up around his waist, I enable him further by unzipping his jeans and releasing him from the confines of his boxers.

Because this is what we do, him and me.

We fight.

And then we fuck.

And then he does the same thing he always does, the one thing that breaks my heart more and more each time.

He leaves.

But that doesn’t stop me from wrapping my other leg around his trim waist.

And it doesn’t stop him from pushing my skirt up and impaling me with the force only a man of his size can achieve.

Large, strong, sure.

It doesn’t stop any of it.

I moan. He’s so good, I couldn’t hold it in if I tried.

I shiver when he touches me because it’s him, the only man who has ever brought endless goosebumps to my skin and pleasure—real pleasure—to my body.

I kiss him back, tasting and devouring, consuming everything I can of this beautiful man before he goes.

Because this will be the last time.

This time, I tell myself, I need to be strong.

Not for me.

Not for him.

But for the child he doesn’t know that’s growing inside me.

So I push and I pull.

And when he groans into my neck, “Fuck me harder, Jerri girl,”

I do just that.

We fuck and we fight and we pull and we push.

And when his hand comes between us, his thumb making delicious circles on my little bundle of nerves, his mouth moving in rhythm with his cock, we explode.

Two souls forever, stuck together, and perhaps too afraid to break apart.

He settles me back on the ground, forehead to forehead, our heavy breath mixing together.

“I care for you deeply, Lass,” he whispers across my lips.

Never, “I love you.”

Never, “More.”

Because Lock does not give more.

“Stay,” I plead with him again. The stinging in my eyes lets me know tears are soon to fall. I won’t let them, I rarely do.

But they’re coming.

It’s been a month since I’ve seen him, and there will most likely be another before he comes back again.

So I give him one more chance, one more plea, one more shot at a forever.

Because as much as it hurts me to walk away, I know this is not just about me anymore.

It’s about him, or her.

It’s about something greater than the both of us.

Warm, full lips press against my forehead, then my nose, last my mouth.

“I can’t,” He whispers against my lips.

I turn my head, duck around his body, and head toward the bathroom to clean up. I don’t turn around; I just ask the other question I always want the answer to.

“How long?”

I wait for him to reply. His answer will be my timeline, my countdown to when I need to have my stuff gone and moved.

“A month, possibly two. I’ll text you.”

I nod and close the bathroom door, knowing I won’t get the text—because I don’t plan on keeping the phone.

And I have no plan to see him in a month, or possibly two, because I won’t be living here.

I’ll be gone by then.

We’ll be gone by then.

* * *

I finish in the shower. It was heavenly, with quality conditioner and soap that doesn’t smell as if it came from a dispenser at a department store bathroom. After a healthy dose of moisturizer, a thorough shave which would have impressed Chewbacca, and clean pair of lounge clothes, I feel more like myself.

Or the myself I assume I should feel like.

I take stock in my appearance, trying to recognize the woman in the mirror. She has dark, thick hair that doesn’t reach her shoulders. Gray eyes that look lost. Empty. Her skin is lightly tanned despite spending nearly a month indoors. Her cheek bones are high, chin small, and nose straight.

“Who are you, Jerri Sloane?” I whisper to myself.

Dr. Katherine Hope was right; she is a good looking woman. Not too tall, maybe five-foot-six. Not too curvy but not stick-thin either. I brush my fingers over the tattoo on the shoulder of a black bird in flight before leaving the mirror, the stranger, behind. Perhaps she’ll have more answers for me tomorrow.

              I walk out of the bathroom to find Portia waiting outside with a food tray. “You look much better, babe. Hop back in bed, and we’ll get dinner out of the way.”

Warily, I move back to the bed, refreshed and a little hungry. I eye the tray she brought in topped with a bowl of soup and half a sandwich before she scurries away back to the kitchen. It doesn’t smell bad. It can’t be worse than hospital food.

“Don’t worry. It’s from Junior’s, the deli we like,” Portia tells me.

I open my mouth to say something, but she cuts me off. “I saw that look. And trust me, you have every right to have it there. I’m not a terrible cook, so long as I pay attention to what I’m doing. It’s when I don’t pay attention when shit happens.”

I smile as she settles onto the bed beside me with her own dinner. “Like burning Cooper’s dinner?” I ask.

She nods with a gleam in her eye. “Exactly that. That man can be distracting . . . trust me.”

I test a spoonful of the vegetable soup. It is absolutely divine. “This is really good.”

“It’s your favorite from Junior’s. We eat there a lot when we’re working; it’s a few doors down from the shop.”

After eating in silence for a few moments, I broach what I feel is one of many elephants in the room. “I dreamt about him again.”

Her eyes leave mine. She fiddles with her sandwich. “You wanna tell me about it?”

I lean back against the headboard, releasing a held breath. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

Soft eyes meet mine. “No, Jer. You’re a lot of things, but crazy is not one of them. You’re meticulous and driven. You’re thorough and loyal. You’ve never been late paying a bill. If my hair looks like shit, you give it to me straight, and you don’t give false promises. You may have lost your memory, but you’re not crazy.” She pauses to take a breath. “I guess the hardest thing is I feel like I’ve missed something, you know? Like, I’ve been so overwhelmed and consumed by the wedding and pregnancy stuff this past year that I feel like maybe I didn’t pay enough attention.”

I reach out and grab her hand because it feels like the right thing to do.

“Jer, I could be wrong, and so could you. But I’d be an idiot and a liar if I said I wasn’t curious sometimes. When you go on your hunts for the shop, you’re almost always still around Boston, but there are times you’ll fly somewhere. There are times when I don’t talk to you for a few days.”

I give her hand a squeeze and gesture for her to continue. She tucks her blonde hair behind her ear and says, “Cooper and I talked last night. And please don’t get upset with him because Cooper and I tell each other everything. But we talked about how you are when you come back. Sometimes, you’re Suzy Sunshine, with deliveries on the way and a truck full of new treasures for the shop.” She looks off, not really at anything in particular. Her eyes are glazed, lost in a moment of the past.

Softly, she says, “And sometimes, you’re just
back
, with no extravagant finds, smile on your face, or deliveries coming in. Sometimes, it’s like wherever you went, you forgot your happy. You’ll shrug it off, sleep it off, or take the rest of the day off. I’ve asked—even pushed once—but I’ve never looked much more into it. Sometimes you’d tell me you were a little lonely. Sometimes you’d say you had the flu. And, hell, sometimes you’d say you were remembering little bits from your childhood and the loss of your family. Those memories would put you in a mood.”

I contemplate before telling her, “Perhaps that is all it was. I don’t know, and I can’t give you the answers now.”

“I know, Jer. But sometimes I wonder if I should have pushed harder. You never liked talking about your past, and we silently agreed to keep it off-limits, since I didn’t enjoy talking about mine either. But maybe, Jer, maybe I should have pushed. Maybe I could be giving more answers than questions right now.”

I shake my head. “No matter what, I don’t think it’s your fault. Nor do I blame you.”

Resolute, she continues with her dinner, and when we finish, she sets the trays aside. “Do you want to tell me what you remember?”

I settle into the pillows. “Yes.”