The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (8 page)

“Yeah, you’ll see me, but you won’t talk to me.”

“Actually, I do need to talk to you.”

“Come to my apartment after work.” Going to Dharma’s apartment was a bad idea. I’d fucked her six ways from Sunday there over the past two years. She was bisexual, an exhibitionist, and she loved toys. Every inch of her place reminded me of sex.

“I was thinking we could go out for a drink. Maybe head to Delaware or somewhere else out of the way.” I kept my voice light. I didn’t want to piss her off.

“My apartment. Six thirty. Like usual.” Dharma wasn’t pissed. She was scary.

I parked my car in its assigned spot, took the elevator to the main floor, and then switched elevators to the top. I opened the door to my corner office on the forty-first floor, and it was exactly as I’d left it the week before. The week before I’d suspected my wife of cheating. The week before her head had bounced off our wooden stairs. The week before I’d taken over as the primary caregiver of my children.

“Hey! How’s Meredith?” Amit asked and fell into the seat in front of my desk. He was my only peer in the Philadelphia office. Everyone else was beneath me—or under me, as Dharma liked to joke.

“She’s much better. Thanks for asking.”

“Scary shit, right?”

“She still doesn’t remember anything from last year.”

“I should come over. She’ll remember me.” Amit started laughing before he finished. “I’m unforgettable.”

“Yeah. In all the wrong ways.” I sorted through the pile of papers in the center of my desk.

“I’m glad you’re back. This place is boring without you. Not one person acted like a prick the whole time you were gone.”

“I’m glad I’m back, too.”

Amit took the picture of Liv and James off my desk and examined it as if he’d never seen it before.

“Hey, do your kids ask crazy questions nonstop?” I asked him.

“Like what? They ask a lot of questions.”

“Like,
is clear a color
or
why haven’t we tried bionics to solve the water shortage problem?
” Amit’s eyebrows rose. He shook his head slowly as he thought. “How about,
how fast is a knot
;
why can’t only bad people die a slow, painful death
; or
if a baby gave birth right as it was born, would they be twins
?” Even I had to stop and digest the last one.

Amit’s head now shook quickly. “No, man. My kids don’t ask any of that.”

Figures.

My hopes of the barrage of questions being normal were squashed by the disturbed look on Amit’s face. “It sounds like they’re wicked smart, though.”

“They are.” I sighed. “Smart and exhausting.”

They have their mother’s brain.

Chief Vincent Pratt

I THOUGHT I COULDN’T LOVE
her more, but I did. Without the guilt of an affair and the fear of being caught stifling her, Meredith was playful and funny. She was the Meredith who ate lunch with me naked and snuck pictures of me to hide in her secret file on her phone. She was the woman I was in love with.

“So what have you been up to since the Franklin Institute? Anything with me?” She looked at me with hope as she asked.

I promised I’d never lie to her, but I would. I couldn’t share everything we’d done together or what we meant to each other. She’d have to unlock those memories for herself. “We were at the same places a few times.”

“Please tell. No matter how boring. It’s fascinating to me.” She was wearing a long strapless dress. It was white, and her tanned skin made me want to take it off her. She had a lopsided straw hat on that hid the side of her head that was partially shaved. Her eyes were almost as blue as the sky today.

“Let’s see. I saw you at the pool once last summer.”

Meredith stared past the people at the table next to us and into the street. After a few seconds, she turned back. She was happy again. “Did I ever tell you how I feel about the pool?” It was a test. To see how well I knew her.

“You said you felt trapped there.”

She was in shock. Her words came slowly. “I must really trust you. I’ve never told that to anyone. I think.”

“I think so, too.” I warmed, and all the secrets between us held me tightly. “And I’m pretty trustworthy.”

“Tell me something else. Please!” She was as giddy as a child, and I couldn’t deny her a thing.

“You volunteered to chair the Spring Fair Committee for the elementary school.”

“I what?”

I laughed at her shock. I’d had the same reaction the night she volunteered. “You did.” When the astonishment dissipated from her face, I added, “Your daughter won the costume contest at the Fall Festival last year.” Meredith’s eyes filled with tears, and I regretted telling her.

“She did? What was she?”

“Umm, an underwater ballerina or something like that.”

“That sounds like Liv.” The tears fell down her cheeks, and it was almost impossible not to lift her into my lap right there in the restaurant. “What kind of mother can’t remember such things?”

“From everything I’ve seen you’re an incredible mother. You’d give up your life for your kids.”

“That’s all moms.” She dismissed me completely.

We finished lunch and stayed at our table until the server’s shift changed. Meredith fought me for the bill, and I won. One more benefit of being in public together. She had to let me pay.

I drove her back to her house on the beach and walked her to the door. She stopped halfway up the path. Her back was to me, and when I looked on the ground to see why she’d stopped, she twirled around.

“You were with Richie’s dad.” I stayed silent, letting her put the pieces together. “At the pool, you were with Richie’s dad, sitting at a picnic table.” She was elated as the thoughts came back to her, and then she was in my arms. She pulled me to her and repeated near my ear, “You were at the picnic table.”

I ached for everything to come back. I laid my hands flat on her back and closed my eyes.

Meredith stepped back awkwardly. She was blushing, and my heart sank back into the darkness. “I’m sorry.” She was embarrassed to have touched me. The idea was ridiculous. “If I ask you something, will you promise not to take it the wrong way?”

“Yes.”

God, anything.

“Will you stay for dinner?”

“Is there a wrong way to take that?”

She laughed at me. The same small laugh she’d tried to hide when she was falling in love with me, but today, she didn’t hide it at all. “I’m not the kind of woman who has an affair.” The laughter stopped. It was one of the first things she’d said to me, and I knew it had meant so much to her, but I didn’t care. I wanted her more than anything. “But you’re the only one who’s jogged my memory. Jenna told me stories for hours last week, and it was as if every single one of them was about someone else.” She struggled with what she was about to say. “And frankly, my husband wasn’t around enough to have a lot of memories to share.” She never broke eye contact, but the playfulness drained from her words as if she were ashamed of her last statement.

“I’ll stay. If I can ask you something and you promise not to take it the wrong way.”

“Anything.”

“For now, don’t mention this visit to your husband.” I still hated the idea of him anywhere near her.

Meredith’s eyes fell from mine to my mouth. I knew she was lost in thought, in some internal, moral debate. She finally looked up. “Deal,” she said, and I followed her through the house and out to the back deck.

Meredith interrogated me as the sun set over the ocean. I told her about the Fourth of July Parade and party we were both at, and then I told her about the Lawson’s Christmas party. I left out any details of intimacy between us, and nothing seemed to spark a memory. When she became frustrated, we went inside to make dinner.

She opened the refrigerator and leaned over to peer into it. I could see crab cakes, an entire roasted chicken, cut vegetables, and a pizza. The packed shelves were visible even from behind the island in the middle of the room.

“That’s a stocked refrigerator.”

“My husband is extravagant as a rule.” The way she spoke so nonchalantly about him left no doubt she still didn’t remember. Our spouses were always off limits, and even though I knew it was unfair, I saw it as an opportunity.

“The two of you seem so different from each other.”

“I like to think so.”

We both laughed. Complaining about husbands and wives was something we’d never have done before. Meredith would have left me before she’d said a cross word about Brad to me. It would have been one more betrayal, and there were already so many.

“Brad’s a good guy. He just has trouble hearing me. He’s a bit self-contained.”

“Is self-contained like selfish?”

She didn’t respond. Instead, she smiled over her shoulder at me as she began to heat oil in the skillet for the crab cakes. “Have I ever met your wife?”

“You have. A few times. You seemed to like her.”

She thought about this, too. Even without her facing me, I could tell her beautiful mind was swirling. “Who don’t I like?” She turned to me when she asked. She opened a container of ranch dip and a bag of sliced red peppers and placed them on the counter between us. She waited for me to answer, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to reveal how intimate we were, how much more I knew, and yet, I couldn’t disappoint her.

She leaned in until she was very close, and the urge to kiss her was stronger than my resolve to wait for her. Her lips were full and a deep red from the wine she had drunk. If I kissed her, she might remember. If I laid her on top of the island and spread her legs wide, she’d remember.

“I can tell you know a lot about me,” she said. “And yet you’re holding back.” I stayed still as she watched for my reaction. “So, either you hate me and you’re being kind.” She held me hostage in her stare. “Or something completely different but equally as startling is going on.” Her voice was steady. Meredith was born to uncover the truth, and she didn’t let it shake her. Her smile was coercive, and I couldn’t look away to save myself.

She was ingenious and observant, and I was trapped, torn between wanting to lay down with her and feeling obligated to blurt out every truth between us. I knew the truth would only unhinge her more. And I loved her.

“I think I should go.”

Brad Walsh

“I SHOULD GO,” I SAID
to both women staring at me in Dharma’s apartment. “I thought we were going to talk.” I ignored the other woman and focused only on Dharma. “I need to talk to you.”

“I know what you need.” Dharma’s voice was thick and deep. She was standing in the living room of her apartment wearing only a thong. She’d answered the door like that. I rushed inside, concealing her enormous breasts from anyone in the hallway.

“Dharma,” I started, but stopped myself and looked at the girl standing in the bedroom doorway. She wore only a robe and an absent smile on her face.

“She likes to be used,” Dharma said. “Don’t you, Carrie?”

Carrie untied her robe and rested one hand on the doorway high above her head. The robe fell open, exposing one side of her naked body. I let my eyes linger over her small breasts and the ample black hair between her legs. Dharma was always waxed. She was manufactured in every way. Carrie looked like she’d been dropped here in a taxi from the eighties.

I concentrated again on Dharma. “I should go.” I was here to end this, not to add another person to it. My heart raced in my chest as I fought to remember Meredith lying on the lounge chair facing the ocean.

A fresh start.

“You don’t have to do a thing, Brad. Just watch.”

Instincts shook my head back and forth. I raised my hands up in front of me, but no one was coming near me. Carrie dropped her robe in the doorway and walked over to Dharma. She kneeled at Dharma’s feet, and Dharma took off her thong and lifted her leg. She rested her foot on the coffee table next to her. Carrie smiled at me before turning back to Dharma and licking her pussy. I watched, remembering the taste of Dharma on my own lips. It had been there hundreds of times before.

I inhaled deeply as the idea of Carrie’s mouth on me forced the air into my lungs. Dharma placed her hand on the back of Carrie’s head and I watched. Carrie never paused the assault on Dharma’s clit, as if they were the only two people in the room.