Don't Leave Me (My Secret Boyfriend Book 3)

by S Doyle

  “That’s not your problem. You’re dead, remember?”

  I could see her thinking about it, considering the angles. Finally, she gave me a tight nod.

  “Meet me here tomorrow, after the bakery closes. I’ll give you what I have then.”

  “Meet you here? Take me home with you now. I’m not waiting for this.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too risky. You can’t know where I live. If someone followed you…”

  “No one followed me! No one gives a shit about me, especially now. You think I’m on Evan Sanderson’s radar?”

  Again, she bit her bottom lip and I had this insane urge to tell her to stop. To stop hurting that bottom lip, because it was mine to bite.

  She shook her head. “I can’t risk it. I told you. There are reasons. Meet me here tomorrow and I’ll give you what I have. That’s all I can promise. I have to go.”

  She got up, and I watched as she made her way across the street to the bakery. I didn’t follow her because I knew she didn’t want that, but I couldn’t leave. After a few minutes inside, she flipped the sign to Closed, locked the shop and got in her car. This time when she drove by me, I thought there was something different about the car. Something I should have registered but couldn’t, because my brain was still so filled with…Ash.

  Numb, I made my way to my truck, then to my motel room. I crashed on the bed and looked at the ceiling and tried to process how I felt. Angry, because I was always angry.

  And devastated. Absolutely gutted that she would do this to me.

  I should call George. Tell him, she’s alive.

  It was the right thing to do. To end his pain over the loss of a person he’d loved like a daughter. But I didn’t reach for my phone. The fear on her face when she talked about the possibility of me being followed was enough to stop me.

  I needed to end Sanderson first. I needed to take him down. Watch his ass being thrown into jail. Then Ash might feel as if the nightmare of these last few years was finally over.

  Then what?

  I couldn’t think beyond Sanderson. I would see her again tomorrow. I would get what I needed to destroy Sanderson.

  Only then would I consider what came next.

  6

  The next day

  Marc

  I sat on the park bench and waited. It was torturous. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so if I hadn’t chosen to get here so early. She said to meet her at two, but I sat my ass down at one because I couldn’t wait any longer in that motel room. I couldn’t wait to see her again, yell at her, make her feel as horrible as I’d felt for so many months.

  All night long, as I laid in bed not sleeping, I thought about what I could do to her. Some small revenge for the pain she’d inflicted.

  Release snakes in her bakery.

  Ash hated snakes.

  Replace all the sugar in her containers with salt.

  Place a blow-up rat outside her doors and tell people who passed by that the woman inside was a cruel and vicious owner.

  Stupid, juvenile stunts that made me smile, even as I considered, then dismissed them.

  Then there were other options.

  Like torture.

  I thought about laying her out on a bed, naked, and finding ways to give her orgasm after orgasm without my cock touching her once, until she cried out in surrender.

  It had been the first time I’d gotten an erection since learning of her death. All that time in jail, all the time since I’d gotten out, I hadn’t even thought of sex. It was like that part of me died with her.

  Only last night, it had reawakened, and I’d jacked off to a fierce orgasm thinking about how I was going to sexually torture my wife.

  My wife.

  Was that how I still thought about her? I’d married her. I’d said I do. Just because Sanderson had intercepted the paperwork didn’t make it any less true.

  I glanced at my phone. A quarter to two. Maybe that was something else we needed to talk about.

  Looking around the park, I saw a woman pushing a stroller along a path that ran around the edge of a playground. Lucky kid to grow up here, where most days seemed like another bright, sunny day in Florida.

  This was Ash’s new reality. The warm weather was good for her lungs, too.

  Although I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about her health, or her wellbeing, or whether she was fucking happy in Florida, because she’d gutted me. My pain needed an outlet. She was going to have to pay for that.

  Possibly in orgasms.

  Then suddenly, it was two o’clock, and I looked toward the store to watch her follow her routine. Flip the sign to Closed, lock the door. She didn’t look across the street to see if I was here; she simply used the crosswalk to make her way to the park.

  I didn’t stand to go to her. I waited until she came to me. I didn’t even glance over when I felt her sit next to me on the bench. She didn’t deserve anything from me other than a nod of my head indicating I knew she was here now.

  “You left me,” I told her. “You promised you never would.”

  She shook her head, and I wondered if she missed her long hair. The way it would fall over her shoulders.

  “No, I promised I would always love you. I haven’t broken that promise. But, like I told you yesterday, some things are bigger and more important than you. Than us.”

  What the hell did that even mean?

  She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a thumb drive. “It’s all here, but you need to listen to me, Marc. You have to think about how you’re going to do this. You can’t be reckless. You can’t give him any outs. You need to figure out what the laws are, make sure the police you work with don’t fuck this up. Because he’s running for federal office, you can go to the FBI. They’ll be better able to handle this. Everything is at stake if you choose to do this and get it wrong.”

  I reached for the drive and pulled it from her fingers. “I’ll do it right. He won’t escape.”

  “He can’t,” she demanded. “Do you hear me? He can’t escape.”

  Finally, I looked at her, and I could see the fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice. “You think he could hurt you? He doesn’t even believe you’re alive.”

  “He’ll know where the evidence came from. He’ll wonder how you got it. I can’t take this chance if I can’t trust you’re going to do it right.”

  My eyes popped open. “Are you saying you don’t trust me? Every fucking thing I’ve done for you, and you don’t trust me?”

  She winced. “I just need you to understand how important this is. It’s bigger than—”

  “Us,” I cut her off. “I know. You’ve said.”

  “Marc, I know you’re hurt and angry. I know what my leaving did to you.”

  “You didn’t leave, Ash. You fucking died. So, no, you don’t know shit about what that did to me.”

  “I hoped you would mourn me,” she said quietly. “I thought, at least, it would give you some peace eventually. That you’d loved me as much as you could, lost me, and, eventually, you would move on until I was just a distant memory from your past.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, rejecting the idea. “You were just passing time. You took my mother’s name. Marie Campbell. In Florida. You knew I would come looking for her eventually. You knew it would end this way.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know. Maybe I’d hoped…I don’t know. But not after what you said that day at the prison. It felt absolute to me. Final. But it was too late to change anything. Everything I’d done was done under her name. There was no turning back. You have to believe me, Marc. When I began all of this, I thought I was so clever, giving you all the clues you needed to come find me. Then things changed. In the end, I thought maybe it was better that you wouldn’t ever look for her and find me.”

  “Better?” I asked, stunned. “How is this better?”

  “Because, I wanted…want…you to be happy. As much as it killed me, I knew I was never going to be the person to give
you that. Not after everything that had happened. I couldn’t be the one who would give you joy and happiness and an easy life. All those things you deserve. Everything about us was always going to be complicated. Riddled with a past filled with pain and hurt. You think you’re furious with me, but if you consider it, faking my death was the most generous thing I could give you. I gave you an out. A real escape. From me.”

  “What if I didn’t want that?”

  I could see the tears in her eyes. “It’s for the best. We suck together. We always have. It took me too long to see that, to let you go. If I had, maybe I could have spared you from what my father did to you. Think about it. Nothing was ever simple or fun.”

  “Florida was fun,” I said, feeling this odd need to defend us. Ash was the hopeful one. I was the surly bastard. I was supposed to be berating her for doing what she did; instead, it felt like I was fighting for us.

  That couldn’t be possible. Not when I was so damn angry with her. Not when I had no clue how to fight for us, when I’d spent years fighting against us.

  “It was, and it wasn’t. Because we weren’t really free. We were just stealing time. My father’s presence was still there looming, even if we chose to ignore it. You were my secret boyfriend. And you were right back then. It sounds ridiculous. Because it is.”

  Except now that threat was over. There was only one person left she feared. I looked at the thumb drive in my fingers. She was right. I had to do this thoughtfully, carefully.

  “I have to go,” she said. She stood and waved to someone behind us. I turned to look at who she was waving at. It was the woman ambling around the park with the stroller. An older woman with gray hair and an easy gait. When the woman saw Ash’s wave, she started in our direction.

  “Who is that?”

  “Just one more reason why you’re going to hate me,” Ash said, wistfully. “I want you to remember that, Marc. I want you to think hard about how you swore you could never love me. You tried to make me believe it our whole short life together. Now you’re going to see how else I betrayed you, and I want you to hold on to the hatred whenever you start to believe we could change our future. Because we can’t.”

  “Hi, Marie,” the older woman called out, bringing the stroller closer. “Delivered as promised.”

  “Thanks, Sandra. How was he today?”

  She shrugged. “A little fussy. Mostly, he’s so happy. Then, every so often, he just throws a fit of temper when he doesn’t get his way. It makes me laugh.”

  I watched as Ash reached into the stroller and pulled out a baby. “Hi there, my little man. How is my darling boy? Are you giving Sandra a hard time?”

  The baby, a year old maybe—I didn’t know kids’ ages—babbled and reached for her face, patting at it as if to suggest he was satisfied he was now in her arms.

  Ash said something to Sandra. About taking the rest of the day off. Sandra smiled at me, obviously curious as to who I was, but she left without another word. And I watched Ash bounce the kid on her hip.

  “This is what’s bigger than us,” she said, not looking at me, but, instead, at the baby. Her expression, so filled with love, was something I’d seen only when Ash looked at me.

  “What are you…who is that…what’s happening right now?” I gulped.

  “This is your son,” she said, then swallowed. “His name is Daniel. He’s thirteen months old. He’s a little late walking. But he wants it so bad that when he falls, he always pitches a fit. He loves bananas. He hates peaches. And he’ll only eat vegetables if I trick him. He’s a good sleeper sometimes. When he doesn’t sleep, it’s agonizing. I love him with every breath I take. And he’s the reason you can’t get this wrong with Evan. If you go after him, you get it right, or you put all of us in jeopardy.”

  I blinked. She’d lost me at the word son.

  “I know,” she nodded. “I know what this is going to do to you. I know how much more you’ll hate me for not telling you. But he is the reason I did what I did, and I don’t regret it. Now, I have to go, and you can’t follow me. You can’t leave any kind of trail to us. You have to promise, Marc.”

  Ash was demanding something. Her voice was stern. She was holding a baby named Daniel. Who didn’t like peaches. I’d always hated peaches.

  My son.

  Thirteen months. I did the math in my head. It worked. If I’d gotten her pregnant in Vegas. Unless she’d lied to me about Evan touching her. Unless she’d wanted to spare me the fact she’d been raped.

  Except now, I knew Sanderson was a sick bastard who fucked underage girls. Ash had only been his prop.

  My son.

  I was sitting there with the words rolling around in my head, forcing them to make sense, when they wouldn’t. All while Ash put him back in his stroller, snapped buckles around him, much to his displeasure if his wails were to be believed, then started to roll him away from me.

  I got up and started to follow her. “No. Wait. You can’t just tell me this and leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, over her shoulder. “It’s not about you. It’s about him, and I have to do everything I can to protect him. You can’t follow us. You can’t see us again. You can’t swing at Evan and miss. If you decide to do nothing, I’ll understand that, too. It might be the better choice. To walk away. Leave it behind you, and move on with your life.”

  “Move on with my fucking life?” I roared. “That’s my son!”

  She was crying now, but almost running as she pushed the stroller in front of her. I followed her across the street. To her sensible car in the parking lot of the strip mall. I watched her hands shake as she tried to get him out of the stroller.

  There was a baby car seat in back. That’s what I’d seen yesterday when she drove away. Something about the car which hadn’t registered in my brain. She snapped the baby in and said a few gentle words to him, but the kid was still wailing.

  Had he heard me shout at her? Was he upset because I was yelling at his mother? Were the first words my son heard from his father filled with anger and fury?

  Fuck. Me.

  “You can’t do this, Ash.” I said, lowering my voice. “You can’t drop this bomb on me and take off. It’s not fair, and you know it.”

  “I do know it. I do.” She opened the driver’s side door. “But we have no choice. You have to let me go. You have to think about everything I said, about every awful thing I’ve done to you, and ask yourself what it would be like if we were in each other’s lives. What it would be like for Daniel to sense all that boiling resentment you must feel for me. You went to prison because of me! We’re poisoned, Marc. It’s neither of our faults, but it’s there. I can’t have that for my baby. I won’t. I’m sorry.”

  Oh. Well. She was sorry. She was telling me to forget the fact I had a kid, but she was sorry about it.

  She got in the car and shut the door, locking it quickly, before I could react. The car started, and I took a step back instinctively as she pulled away.

  Away. She was leaving and I didn’t know where she was going, or how to find her. The only information I’d been able to find about this Marie Campbell was related to the bakery.

  Because this woman was hiding.

  I don’t know how long I stood there looking at an empty parking space. A closed bakery. Feeling a sense of loss for something I didn’t even know I had. Until finally, there was nothing left to do but go back to my motel room, pack my shit and leave Florida.

  I’d come looking for Marie Campbell and I’d found her. That mission accomplished, it was time to take on the next. I would worry about Ash and Daniel after I took Sanderson down. Eliminate him as any possible threat to her and the baby, forever.

  I was going to New Jersey and nothing was going to stop me.

  That night

  Ashleigh

  It wasn’t the first time I’d stared down at my sleeping son, lost in the wonder of him. His soft, brown hair, the little snorting noises he made as he slept. His butt perched in the air, bec
ause, no matter how I put him down to sleep, he always rolled onto his belly and slept this way.

  Now Marc knew he existed.

  I didn’t think I had any more tears left to cry, but still they came.

  When I’d first left Marc, I’d spent a month crying. In fear, because I didn’t know if I was capable of being a single mother. In despair, because I worried Marc might never know he had a son. Might never have the chance to love him or hold him.

  I told myself I had no choice. Every day, every night, I worked to believe it was true. That the only way to escape Evan, to truly remove him and his threats from my life, was for him to believe I was dead. A plan I’d hatched on my return trip from San Diego. When a bodyguard once told me that runaway princesses always fucked up their escape.

  Which meant Marc also had to believe I was dead. Everything I told him yesterday was true. When I looked back at the arc of us, it seemed so clear. I loved Marc. I always had and I’d believed he’d felt the same. Then I had to ask myself if I believed it because it was true, or because I wanted it to be true so badly.

  There were times he tolerated me. He hated me. He wanted me. There were also times I knew he needed me.

  Was that love? Or was it obligation? That’s why he made a deal with my father to bring me home from Switzerland. That’s why he married me. At the time, I’d convinced myself I was essential to him. Providing him the endless well of love he craved because his mother had abandoned him. But when you have nothing but time and distance, and nothing to do other than think, it was easier to be objective.

  Easier to be rational, when there was nothing rational about love.

  Love didn’t make good decisions. Love didn’t behave soberly. Love wasn’t wise or smart or practical.

  It was everything else, and, as my belly grew and my pregnancy became more real, I realized I had to jettison the emotion when it came to Marc. I had to walk away from what had been so much pain and sadness, and start fresh.