Unforgettable You (19 page)

His laughter is sarcastic, and it’s not wasted on me. “Oh, yeah? I don’t have a problem right now
except
you.”

“That’s not true. I need to talk to you, and I need to talk to you
alone
. When I tell you what I have to tell you, you’ll be glad Trish isn’t with you.”

There’s a deep pause on the other end before he responds, “Steffen, Trish and I don’t have any secrets. If there’s something you need to tell me, then she needs to know too.”

“I think that’s a huge mistake.”

“You let me be the judge of that. How soon do I need to know about this?”

“Right now. Give me fifteen to shower and then head over here. And whatever you do,
don’t
bring the girls. Hear me? Please?” I’m getting desperate now. If Adele shows up over there before I get a chance to tell Clint, it’ll ruin his relationship with Trish, and I can’t bear the thought of that happening. “Hurry. It’s really important.”

He doesn’t sound quite so angry when he says, “Okay then. We’ll be there as fast as we can get there. But this had better be important, Steffen.”

“Oh, it is. Trust me. It’s very, very important.”

“See you in, oh, probably thirty?”

“See you then.” I hit END again, then dial Sheila once more. “Baby, please, I really, really need to talk to you. It’s important that you understand what’s going on here. It’s not at all like you think. Not at all. Please, please, call me.” Once I end the call, I wait and stare at my phone, but she doesn’t call back. After five minutes, I dash off to the shower.

On my trip through the bedroom, I look at the bed. The restraints are still lying there, the bed sheets all rumpled, and I pick up a pillow and sniff. Sheila. I can smell her perfume on it where she slept last night, and I hug it to me and bury my face in it. When I finally look up, I glance over at the dresser and there, on its dark surface, is the bracelet, dropped and abandoned. That’s all I can take, and I do something I haven’t done in over twenty years.

I cry.

“God, Cothran, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Clint stares at me when I open the door, and when Trish turns and looks at me, she mirrors his expression.

“I have. And you’re about to too.” I move out of the doorway to let them in. “Have a seat. This won’t take long unless we need the paramedics.”

“What the fuck?” Clint sits down and pulls Trish down next to him. “Okay, so what’s this big emergency?”

“You know that Adele showed up.”

“Yeah. I got that part. You never got that taken care of?”

“How could I? We couldn’t find her. But I got my attorney to set the final dissolution into motion a while back and I was just waiting to hear from him. I wanted to finalize it. I really thought I could get it done without Sheila ever having to know.”

Trish shakes her head. “You weren’t planning to
ever
tell her? Because, I’ve gotta tell ya, I don’t like that one bit.”

“Oh, I was planning to eventually tell her, just not yet.”

Clint eyes me. “Didn’t she ask you if you’d been married before?”

I shake my head. “No. Honest to god, it never came up. She did ask me if I’d ever been divorced, and I said no.”

Clint rolls his eyes and sighs deeply. “Semantics. You as good as lied to her, Steffen. What the fuck were you thinking?”

“That the situation would be very difficult to explain, and I needed her to trust me totally before I even tried that. Adele is hard to explain. Actually, that one time she asked was the only time we even got close to a situation where I could talk about it, and that was just a short time ago, not early on. I haven’t considered myself married in a very long time. You know that.”

“Yeah, but legally . . .”

I interrupt him. “We’ve got much, much bigger fish to fry, my friend.” I look at Trish. “I hope you love him, because I’m about to tell you something that’s going to be pretty hard to take.”

“I do.” Trish reaches for the hand of a very confused Clint. “Do your worst.”

“Okay.” I turn all my attention to Clint, and now I have his. “When Trish got that call from Sheila and you guys started talking about this, did you think to tell her about all the times you scened with me and Adele?”

Now his face is turning a deep crimson. “No. Didn’t cross my mind. That was a long time ago.” I see Trish’s mouth drop open out of my peripheral vision. “Maybe I should now.”

I nod. “I think now would be a good time.”

He nods back slowly, then turns to Trish. “Baby, Steffen and Adele were still married when Christi . . . well, you know.” Trish nods. “Steffen thought it would be good for me to get back out into circulation. I didn’t really want to, but I figured it would be safe enough with the two of them.”

“When was this?” I can see Trish trying to digest the information.

“Let’s see . . . When Christi left us, McKenna was about six months old. She came back about six months later, so McKenna would’ve been about a year old. She waited about a month until she . . . So McKenna just turned ten. Christi’s been gone nine years. And that was about, what, Steffen, two years after?”

I nod. “Something like that.”

“Steffen and Adele would scene at the club several times a week.” He glances at me. “Hell, did you even have sex at home?”

I snort. “Not really. She liked an audience.”

Clint purses his lips. “Yeah. She really did. Anyway, babe, he asked if I wanted to scene with them a few times.”

Trish interrupts with, “What’s ‘a few?’”

Clint looks at me, and I respond with, “Oh, maybe a dozen?”

“And what did this ‘scening’ consist of?” Now we’ve got Trish’s attention.

Clint forges ahead. “Three-ways. Sometimes we’d fuck her all night. She couldn’t get enough. She was always like that.” Then he stops. “There’s something you don’t know, Steffen, something I never told you.”

I can feel my eyes widening and I’m pretty sure everything is about to make sense, if I know Adele. “Oh? What’s that?”

“She called me once while you were on one of those bankers’ trips you always took, said she was lonely and needed to be fucked. Asked me over, told me she’d cleared it with you. So I went to your place. It made sense; hell, we fucked each other all the time, but with you present, of course. Still, I didn’t think much about it. I showed up, brought a pizza, we ate and laughed, and then she turned on the charm. Actually, she was all over me. I’d had a couple of beers and I was younger than I am now, and I was really, really hard and turned on. It didn’t take much for her to get me into bed, and we did some pretty kinky shit that night. Damn kinky shit.”

“Clint,” I start, “I need to know something.” He nods. “Did you by any chance fuck her without a condom?”

He’s really scarlet now. “Yeah. I didn’t realize it until later.”

“How many times that night without a condom?”

With a shrug, he says, “I don’t know. Maybe five? Six? Eight? I lost count. It was almost like she put something in my drink . . .” He stops. “Oh, god, she didn’t put something in my drink, did she?”

The big breath I just sucked in comes out as a huge sigh. “Oh, yeah, she probably did. And buddy, I’ve got some bad news for you.”

Every bit of redness drains from his face and he and Trish both go stark white. He manages to groan out, “Oh, god, please don’t tell me she has AIDS.”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” I watch both of them relax, but only a little. “No.
Much
harder to treat than that.”

“Wha????”

“Clint, she showed up here with a kid. And he’s yours. I knew his eyes looked familiar, and I finally figured it out. You got her pregnant. She’s trying to convince me that he’s mine, but I knew something had gone on there. He looks too much like you.”

I hear Clint make a little sound, almost like he’s choking, and his eyes go glassy. “Hey, buddy, stay with me!” I grab his shoulders and hold him upright, and I bark at Trish, “Go get him some water! Now!” She scurries off to the kitchen and I slap him hard enough to rock his head. “Wake up, Clint. Get it together, man, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll get through this.” Trish reappears with a glass in her shaking hands and I put it to his lips. That seems to reanimate him, and he takes the glass and swallows a couple of huge gulps. “Better?”

“Oh my god,” is all he manages to squeeze out of his throat. “Oh my god. How the hell? Oh my god.” He turns and stares at Trish. “Baby, I swear, I didn’t . . .”

And my faith in true love is completely restored by her next words as she takes his chin in her hand and looks straight into his dark eyes. “That was before me. It has nothing to do with us. I love you, Clint, and I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll face this together and do whatever we have to do.” She turns to me. “What now?”

“Well, they let something important slip. I asked him – by the way, his name is Morris – if he likes school. He told me he doesn’t go to school, that his mom says he’s too smart for school.”

“Oh my god.” Clint stares at me. “She’s not sending him to school?”

“Nope. And I’m wondering what else she’s letting slip by in her insanity. The woman’s crazy, you know that.”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. If he’s not even going to school, he needs to be taken away from her and put in a home where that happens.” Then I see a look pass over his face as he understands. “Oh shit. That would be our home. Oh, god, Trish.” He props his elbows on his knees and drops his face into his hands, and she rubs his back between his shoulder blades.

“Yep. I’ve got to find out where they’re holed up, and then get social services involved. And you’ll need to do a DNA test right away so it’s on file.”

“Okay. I’ll do that tomorrow.” Clint raises his head and looks at me. “Steffen, I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry for you guys. I’m sorry you got dragged into this whole thing.”

Then Trish turns and puts a hand on my knee. “Now, about you and Sheila. Steffen, what can we do? I want this fixed. You were so happy together. Sheila loves you.”

I feel my eyes welling up. “I feel the same way about her. We talked about that last night and this morning, before . . . I can’t live without her, Trish.” And I can’t hold it in anymore – I start to cry like a little kid, and Trish moves in beside me and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Damn Adele. She’s kept me under a cloud for years. I finally thought that was all behind me, and . . .”

“Hey.” With a soft hand, she pulls my face to meet hers. “I’ll talk to her. I’m sure it’ll be okay when I explain. At least I’ll do my best.” She smiles at me. “Have faith, sweetie.” Then she drops a soft little kiss on my forehead. Next thing I know, my arms are wrapped tight around her waist and I’m sobbing into her lap as she strokes my hair.

I feel Clint’s firm hand on my back. “We’re all going to make it through this, Steffen. I don’t know how, but we will, I promise. We’ve got to stick together.”

“Stuck like glue,” I choke out.

Trish laughs. “Yep! Stuck like glue.”

After they leave, I send Sheila a text.

Baby, please, I need to talk to you.

What I get back is short and sweet.

Don’t text me again. Leave me alone. Stay away from me.

I send back another attempt.

Please, you just don’t understand. We need to talk.

The next text is a valid question with a complicated answer.

Are you married?

I have to tell her sometime. Now would probably be a good time to be honest.

Legally, yes.

I wait for her next text, and it’s the question that’s the most important.

Why didn’t you tell me you were married?

I figure I should probably tell her the truth.

I forgot.

But her next text tears my heart right out of my chest.

And how long would it take you to forget me? I think you’re about to find out.

A tear rolls down my cheek as I type with shaking fingers.

A million years.
I wait, then try again.
Sheila, please talk to me. Please? I can explain.
Still nothing.
You know how I feel about you. Please?

Twenty minutes later, I stop staring at my phone and lay it face down on the nightstand, then crawl into the bed and just lie there, staring at the ceiling. I don’t know what else to do.