by S Doyle
Don’t Leave Me
S. Doyle
Copyright © 2020 by S. Doyle
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Afterword
Excerpt Mostly My Boss
Also by S. Doyle
1
New York City
Two weeks after the wedding
Ashleigh
In the elevator, I pushed the button for the top floor and forgot I needed my card to allow me access. I wasn’t running late, but I still felt a sense of urgency. Evan knew where I’d been today. If anything about my visit to see Marc ruined his plans for tonight, he might use it as leverage to not allow me to go anymore.
Not that Marc was thrilled to see me. I understood it was a pride thing for him, but when he told me I didn’t have to visit, it still hurt. I found the card in my wallet and pushed it into the designated slot on the panel. Then I hit the top floor button and felt the elevator start to move.
This penthouse in the city was where Evan spent most of his time. While I was content to be alone in his home in Harborview. He thought it appropriate people around town see me there, given he was considering running for office in New Jersey, not New York. As it related to our marriage, it would also appear I’d settled in. Making our home in New Jersey, despite him having properties all around the country. A villa in Florida. A beachfront mansion in the Hamptons, a pied a terre in Paris.
This way we each had our space, but I could still get to the city easily when he needed me to be on call. Like he did tonight. The elevator doors slid open and I walked down the hall to his door.
I didn’t have a key because I wasn’t given that much access to his life.
I rang the bell and waited. Glancing at my watch, I timed out how long it would take me to shower, do my hair and makeup, then dress. Evan would have already chosen what I would be wearing. He was ridiculously particular about that, and, since I couldn’t care less, I let him do it. One less decision I had to make. Calculating my time, I realized I had plenty. If anything, I was probably early, which sucked because it meant I might have to be in his company for longer than was absolutely necessary.
He opened the door with a scowl, and I noticed his hair was oddly out of place. I’d never seen him even slightly disheveled. Then again, I hadn’t seen much of him since the wedding.
He’d at least been accurate about that. He did his thing, left me alone, and I had significantly more freedom than I’d had when living with Arthur. Especially during that last month after returning from Vegas.
“You’re early.” He said it like an accusation.
“I didn’t want to risk being late.”
He scowled again, but pulled back the door. I stepped inside and was startled to find he had company. Was that why he was annoyed? Had I interrupted his affair? He had to know I couldn’t care less who he had sex with. I was about to say that, when I stopped and realized the person in the room wasn’t a woman. Her height had confused me, but when I approached her, I realized she was young.
Very young.
“This is Lisa, she’s my cleaning woman’s daughter,” Evan explained. “She just stopped by to pick up a check for her mother.”
“Hi, Lisa,” I said.
She tucked her hair behind her ear and offered a shy smile. “Hi.”
I looked around the penthouse, that was, in fact, spotlessly clean. “Your mother does excellent work.”
She shrugged. “Thanks. I guess.”
Evan had made his way down a hallway to what I assumed was his bedroom, or maybe his study, and a few seconds later, he returned with a check in hand.
“Tell her not to forget it next time,” Evan said as he handed over the check. “You dropping in like this was inconvenient.”
I watched Lisa’s expression. Pouty, sullen. The look of a teenager—I suspected she was no older than sixteen—after being slightly admonished.
She took the check and stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans. Skin-tight jeans. A sexy, white top that exposed her midriff. She was dressed too old for her age, I thought, but she wasn’t my daughter.
“Yep. Sure. See you later,” she said. Then, in a huff, she left and shut the door behind her.
“I’ve laid out what you’re wearing tonight. It’s on the bed in your room. I’ll expect you to be ready promptly at six o’clock. A driver will be waiting downstairs to take us to the restaurant. I’ll be giving a speech this evening. I’ll need you to look at me adoringly.”
I gave him my best attempt at adoring, and he sniffed and moved around me, making his way toward the kitchen.
I wasn’t offered food or a drink. I didn’t expect any, either. I simply hiked my overnight bag higher on my shoulder and made my way down the hall to my room. I noticed his bedroom door was still open. The bed unmade.
Hair out of place, unmade bed. Lisa, picking up her mother’s check.
Evan wrote personal checks to his cleaning lady?
I didn’t think anything more about it and focused on getting ready for the evening.
No, that wasn’t exactly true. I forced myself not to think any more about it.
Until I couldn’t.
Four weeks after the wedding
Ashleigh
I was feeling like shit. I’d been sick for days and didn’t see any end in sight to this stomach bug. However, I knew George would worry if I didn’t make our lunch date. I’d driven closer to his place near Fort Dix. We liked to meet at a small café that served the best sandwiches, although I was thinking, with my stomach, I might be better off with clear soup.
Pulling over to a street-side parking spot, I took a deep breath before getting out of the car. I wasn’t going to humiliate myself by throwing up all over the curb.
George was already waiting for me inside. Seeing me, his face lit up, I was glad I hadn’t canceled. Although when he got a closer look at me, his expression turned grim.
“You look awful.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.” I smiled weakly, then sat across from him. “It’s just a stomach bug. I’ve had it off and on for weeks it feels like. But I think it’s finally getting better.”
I’d felt better last night anyway. I’d been famished and had devoured an entire pizza. But again this morning, the nausea was back. Maybe pizza hadn’t been the best choice, which is why I was thinking soup today.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Peanut. I hope with everything going on you’re at least taking care of yourself.”
I nodded. “I can come and go when I want. I only have to perform when commanded, which isn’t as frequent as I thought it might be.”
There had been another dinner party, a smaller event this time, with friends and business acquaintances, that I’d had to attend last weekend. However, this weekend I was free.
“Marc will give you grief if you’re looking as pale as you are when you go see him tomorrow.”
“I’ll be sure to add some blush,” I said, knowing he was right. “How was he last week?”
“Mad as
hell,” George admitted. “I told him he’s got to let that go. If he stays as mad as he is, it’s only going to make his stint feel even longer.”
It was strange, but George’s use of the word stint sounded familiar.
The waitress popped over to our table to take our order. Young, fresh faced, no makeup. I tried to guess her age, but then, suddenly, wanted to know the actual answer. “Can I ask you how old you are?”
“Sure. Seventeen. Why?”
“I met someone recently and I was just curious. You look to be about the same age. What’s the soup of the day?”
“Chicken noodle,” she answered, and I nodded.
“I’ll have a bowl of that.”
“And I’ll have the Reuben,” George ordered.
When she left, he looked at me funny. “Why did you want to know her age?”
“Why did you use the word stint like that?” I countered instead. “And how do you know how being angry in prison can make the time go slower?”
He sighed, and, for the first time, I wasn’t looking at George my father figure, my friend, my confidant. I was seeing George the man. Who had a story long before I was even born.
“I served time,” he admitted. “Back in my youth. Auto theft.”
“You stole a car?” I asked him.
His lips tweaked. “I still say I was just borrowing it. The law didn’t see it that way. Growing up, Marie and I didn’t have much. We came from the projects. Our mother did what she could, which wasn’t a lot. We have two different fathers, which is why we were almost ten years apart in age. It’s crazy to think now, but getting caught, spending time in jail…it gave me a chance to clear my head. Figure out what I wanted from life. I got out, enlisted in the Army, and kept my nose clean. When I retired, I started picking up odd jobs until I landed with your father. He liked that I was a vet and didn’t care that I was an ex-con.”
“How did I not know this about you? I asked you, all the time, about your life before you came to work for us, but you always made it seem like you were born driving Arthur Landen.”
“Because I was never going to tell my Peanut about anything I had ever done wrong. I didn’t want you to stop looking at me like I hung the moon.”
“I’ll never stop looking at you like you’re my hero. Because you are.”
He frowned. “Some hero. I couldn’t save you from any of this. I should have kidnapped you myself. Then Marc wouldn’t be in this mess, and I could have just tucked you away somewhere.”
I reached over to pat his hand. “It wouldn’t have worked. Trust me. Arthur was always going to find a way to set Marc up. You wouldn’t have been able to stop that, either.”
“I didn’t see it coming,” George said, his hand tightening around his water glass. “His hatred of Marc, it had been there for so long and I never knew it.”
“I know. Sometimes I think he hates everyone. I try to remember if I ever felt love and affection from him. Or if that only ever came from you. Was Arthur always evil, and I just didn’t realize it?”
“I think he did love you, Peanut,” George said, as if he, too, was scrounging for memories of times when Arthur had been different. “Then your mother died, and, not long after that, you had your first asthma attack. It was like he pulled away from you. You were suddenly this person who could hurt him, and I think he shut you out because of it.”
“What father does that?”
George frowned. “Not a good one.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead to me. You and Marc are my only family now. And look at what I’ve done to you both. You’re out of a job and Marc’s in prison.”
“You haven’t done anything. Remember that. Remember you’re our family, too. It goes both ways.”
“I love you, George. I don’t know if I ever said it, but you know I do, right?”
He nodded. “I love you, too. Which is why I want this mess of a marriage behind you. What are you going to do?”
I tapped my temple. “I’ve been working on a few things. Don’t worry about me. I just need time and I have plenty of it right now.”
Our lunches came and my stomach settled enough to allow me to enjoy my soup. For now, I had no worries. I had the weekend to myself. I was going to see Marc tomorrow, and, at least for now, nothing bad could happen to either of us.
Fort Dix
Four weeks after the wedding
Ashleigh
“You feel all right?” Marc asked me from his side of the table. It was my second visit, and, at least this time, he hadn’t started it off by telling me to stop coming. Maybe he’d resigned himself to reality.
Which was that, as long as he was in here, and for as long as I could, I was going to visit. He was going to know that none of what happened had changed my resolve when it came to him.
I never said love. I’d learned that lesson a year ago in Florida. It made him uncomfortable, and while a part of me thought he needed to hear it, the other part of me wanted to protect him from what hurt. Always.
“A stomach bug I haven’t been able to shake,” I told him. “It’s getting better. How are you doing?”
“I’m bored as hell. I’ve never rested so much in my life. It feels strange. I think. A lot. About the future. What job I might get once I’m out, now that all my plans have been shot to hell.”
“You don’t know that, Marc. When you explain to your potential employers the circumstances of what happened, so many are going to overlook this.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and it made me squirm in my seat.
“Stop looking at me like I’m a naïve fool,” I told him.
“Then stop saying naïve, foolish things. You know that’s not how it works. I check the box I’m an ex-con and that’s all any employer needs to know about me. Any success I have, it’s going to have to be done on my own. Which, in some ways, doesn’t scare me.”
“You’re capable of anything. You always have been. You can do or be anything you want.”
He smiled. “And you have always been my biggest cheerleader.”
I wanted to reach for his hand, but I refrained as I knew it would attract the attention of the guards. I didn’t want to think about them. I wanted to pretend we were in that same little lunch spot George and I had found. That we weren’t surrounded by other prisoners meeting with their loved ones. That we could smile at each other and touch each other how, and whenever we wanted, we were just choosing to be discreet. Which would be the case if we were on the outside. Marc was not one given to public displays of affection.
I folded my hands in my lap and just pretended that was the reason I wasn’t reaching for his hand. So he wouldn’t be embarrassed by my obvious affection.
“We covered me. Bored. We covered you. Sick. I’m out of chitchat.”
“That was a very Marc-like thing to say,” I told him. “Your grumpiness has never put me off before. We’ve got forty-five minutes of this visit left and I’m using every second.”
He barked out a laugh. “No, my grumpiness never has. Why is that?”
Because I loved him.
“Exceptional patience,” I said instead. “George taught me I had to have it when it came to you. George recently told me about his past. Did you know?”
Marc shook his head. “No, not until all this shit went down. When he knew I was going inside. He rattled off a list of dos and don’ts, and it was strange, but I suddenly felt closer to him than I ever have in the past.”
It made me sad. For George, and for the boy Marc had been, because he hadn’t let him get that close. “He loves you. He wanted to raise you, guide you, but you wouldn’t let him. You were too self-sufficient for that.”
His expression grew somber. “I couldn’t risk it. Not after what happened with her. Maybe that’s something else I can add to my list of regrets.”
My chest tightened and my stomach sank. Because it was the thing that scared me most. That someday I might be one of his regrets, too. How could I not be?
“Tell me what you’re reading. You said last time you had books. Are you reading fiction or nonfiction?”
“Both. All of it. It passes the time. Sometimes I can pretend I’m still studying. Like Princeton wasn’t a dream, but a reality. I’m also reading any how-to books I can get my hands on. Electrician work, plumbing.”
“Why?”
He leaned forward, thoughtful. “I told you the plan has changed. I never gave a rat’s ass about finance. I just knew if I had that skill, I could make a lot of money. Now I need another skill. Plumbers and electricians can make bank if they do it right. I’m going to need to find a way to build a life, a business, a home. Someplace you can go when you finally leave Evan. Speaking of which, when is that going to happen?”
I bristled at his name. “I don’t want to talk about him. This is our time.”
“No,” Marc said, and I could see him getting agitated. “I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t stop thinking about what he said he would do to you. He told me one of the advantages of having a sick wife is it would make it easier to get rid of you if he needed to. At first, I thought it was just some asshole threat, but I know now he means it.”
“He’s not going to do anything to me now,” I said, certain I was right. “He’s got exactly what he wants. Cover, and obedience from me.”
“Yes, but for how long, Ash? I know when I get out. Thirteen months and two days from now. How long is your sentence?”
I bit my bottom lip; my stomach was starting to roll again. I wondered if there was a bathroom for the visitors, in case I got sick. “I don’t know. Soon. Not forever. I just need to do it right. Bold statements of I’m divorcing you, Evan are not going to get it done. But that’s my job. That task is on me, not you. All you have to do is get through these next thirteen months and two days.”
