Underestimated Too

by Jettie Woodruff

  ‘Goodnight, Drew,’ Morgan quietly spoke. I didn’t want to let her go.

  ‘Night, Morgan.’

  Watching her disappear up the stairs I went to my office to watch her. Smiling, I watched her unzip her dress and slip it over her shoulders.

  ‘You’re an idiot, Drew Kelley. I gave you an open invitation and you chickened out,’ she spoke into the mirror.

  I was acting like a coward, and didn’t know why. I took what I wanted, I didn’t wait for it. It was the Callaway way. I’d been taught it from an early age.

  Morgan slid on a pair of shorts, more like men’s boxers, and a cotton shirt. Pulling down the covers she opened the nightstand drawer.

  ‘Ouch, son of a bitch,’ I yelled, running into the side of my desk. I had to get to her before she turned it on. I knew what kind of dom/sub stories were on that e-reader. I didn’t think she was quite ready for that yet. Luckily the batteries were dead and she hadn’t had time to get it plugged in yet before I got to her.

  I played it off, telling her she shouldn’t read yet. Dr. Tharp didn’t want that much eye movement yet. He really did say that, sort of.” Drew turned and told me matter of factly.

  I didn’t respond, only smiled.

  “Morgan reminded me, ‘I spent two hours reading in the library yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah, but you don’t have the bright light behind the words in a book,’ I said, making it up as I went along, made sense to me.

  ‘Did you come up here to tell me I can’t read on that? How did you know I had it?’

  ‘No, I came to see if you wanted to go for a walk.’ I laughed at the absurdity of my excuse.

  That’s where I made my move. We kissed, standing under the black sky. I’d never kissed Morgan like that. I mean I have, but I fought it every time. I didn’t allow the feelings to surface. I did this time, feeling something burning deep in my chest. I knew I was playing with fire and needed to get a grasp on things. She could still be playing me for a fool and I was falling for it, or her—hard.”

  That made me smile, I liked thinking about Drew falling in love with me.

  “Morgan saw something that night. I took her back to my room and fought with every demon in me. I wanted to do things. I wanted to order her to her knees, bend her over my lap, and shove my dick forcefully in her ass.”

  I shook my head at my no filter husband.

  “I couldn’t keep the true Drew at bay. It was killing me to hold back. I romanced her as much as I could, got her naked, and told her to spread her legs. Nothing looked more beautiful than Morgan across my bed, exposing her glistening glorious pussy for me. She was timid, but I didn’t give her time to back out. I kept in constant contact with her not letting her pull back.”

  Oh, my god, Drew.

  “I rasped with an excruciating hard-on and a tone that I didn’t mean to let slip, ‘You want to come, Morgan?’ I jumped back, startled when Morgan jumped up, seeing something or having a flashback or something.

  ‘Did you hit me, Drew?’

  ‘What? No, why would you ask that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just, I..it’s..I don’t know, Drew. I have to go. I can’t do this,’ Morgan ended our foreplay.”

  I lost myself, briefly, thinking about what Drew was saying. That was the first night I started seeing flashes of my life. They were never anything more than a flash, a quick image of certain things from my past, mostly Drew. I always analyzed them, willing myself to remember something, anything.

  “I watched Morgan gather her clothes and storm out of my room. Unable to stop her for whatever reason, I reached for my laptop. She ran her fingers through her hair and groaned frustrated, closing her door behind her. Shaking her head, she climbed into bed, hit the bed on both sides of her body, and grumbled again. I sat straight up, witnessing her move her hand under the covers. She was masturbating. What the hell?”

  And there goes the filter again. I remembered that night too. I wanted him to stop. I didn’t like that night.

  Drew relayed his side of that night, “I demanded her to stop, standing right by her bed. She never even heard me come in. She was close to coming. Morgan looked up to me with wide eyes. I was fighting the worst of my demons. I tried so hard to make it about her, make love to her and be in the moment with her. I lost. I started with one finger in her ass, and she let me. Did she want it? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t stop.

  I wasn’t easy on her at all. I didn’t make it about anyone but me. I fucked her up the ass, let her come, gathered my clothes, and left her trembling and scared. I’d done that a thousand times over the years, never did it hit me like this did. Why was I having such a hard time leaving her like that? I hurt her, not all the times before. I mean right now. Right that moment, I hurt her. I just used her and left her alone and scared.

  I spent the better part of the next day alone in my office. I never let her out of my sight, wondering more than once what she was thinking about. She tried to read, but kept dropping her book, lost in thought. Marta made her coffee and a sandwich that she barely touched. I had to get a hold of myself. This couldn’t be happening. What the hell had I done?

  Morgan helped with the unwanted feelings at dinner with Mr. Callaway. She defied me more than once, and when I told her it was time to go, and she made the decision to sit down beside Mr. Callaway, deciding that we were staying for desert, I flipped. Anger began to pour out of my skin, and I was ready to put a stop to her little charade.”

  Screw you, buddy.

  “Yelling at me in the car, she asked, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong? You just embarrassed the hell out of me in there, and you want to know what is wrong?’

  ‘And how the hell do you think I did that? You shouldn’t have lied and said I didn’t feel well. Have I always let you talk for me and decide what I wanted?’

  ‘Yeah, Morgan you did and when you didn’t listen, you would be punished once we were home. Maybe I need to show you how we do things around here,’ I threatened.

  That scared her, and her tough act was halted, but only briefly.

  “FUCK YOU!”

  ‘You need to stop. I’m warning you, Morgan. You don’t want to do this.’ I didn’t mean to grab her hair. I just lost it. I couldn’t control it.

  ‘Take your hands off me!’ she demanded through gritted teeth.

  I waited until Morgan was in the shower and replaced her pain meds with the ones that Dr. Tharp had given me in emergency cases only. She was only to take one of them if she couldn’t bare the pain. She took two of the ones from the bottle on her nightstand, and not every night. I wasn’t even sure she’d take it.

  I watched her climb into her bed and roll over, not taking a pill. She didn’t touch them. She tossed and turned for over an hour before finally giving up and dry swallowing the two little pills. I was a little nervous when I went to her. Maybe two was too much. She was out of it. Really out of it.

  I did everything I’d ever done to Morgan that night, everything I longed to do since she came back to me contriving amnesia. I was a morbid son of a bitch. Morgan had no clue what was going on. I fucked her in every position her limp body would allow, and once I’d finished pumping in and out of her ass, I removed the condom and shot my load in her mouth, rubbing my come about her lips, just like old times.”

  This part didn’t shock me. Drew and I had talked about this before, and he confessed to doing that to me. I wondered though what Deidra was thinking about all this. Surely she’d never heard anything like this before.

  “Morgan took me by surprise again the next day. She took my hand and apologized for the night before. I was stunned. I didn’t know how to respond. I twisted her comatose body and fucked her in every imaginable way and she was apologizing. She shocked the hell out of me again when she stormed into my office later in the afternoon, demanding Derik to leave us alone. He pissed me off the way he talked to her and looked down on her, and then had to go run his mouth
in front of her.

  ‘You’re fucking up. I’m telling you, Drew, you’re giving her too much leeway. You need to reel her back in before she blows it all.’

  ‘Shut the hell up, Derik. I don’t need you to tell me how to control my wife.’

  ‘You just gave her your fucking keys. She’s playing you. She’s not the dumb little girl we thought. She managed to embezzle over eighty thousand dollars and disappear for almost two years. You really think she’s not doing the same thing now? She’s setting you up. Just because she came back the last time doesn’t mean she’s going to keep coming back. Marta is probably helping her.’

  ‘Marta’s not with her. She went alone.’

  ‘You fucking let her leave alone? What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re not the only one who has something to lose here, Drew. I’ve devoted almost ten years of my life for this money too. You’re not fucking this up for me,’ Derik yelled. It wasn’t the first time he’d jumped down my throat for letting her have the ball in her court. He mentioned it a few times over the past few weeks.

  ‘Actually, DERIK! You work for me. You’re my piss-ant assistant. You do what I tell you to do. I don’t do what you tell me to do, and I sure as hell don’t need you to tell me how to control my wife. You got that? That’s the last time you’re ever going to mention Morgan. Are we clear here?’ I twisted my fists at my side.

  ‘Whatever, dude. You go ahead and learn the hard way, but don’t be pissed off at me when I say I told you so.’

  ‘Get out of here. Go downtown and wait for Mr. Carlos.’

  I waited and waited for her return. She’d been gone for almost two hours. I was beginning to panic. She ran. I was such a fool. I let her run again. I decided to call her.

  ‘Hello,’ she answered her phone in a whisper. I smiled. She wouldn’t have answered if she’d run.

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ I whispered too.

  ‘I’m in the library.’

  ‘Come home. We were going to buy you a dress, remember?’

  ‘Okay, sorry. I got into this really good book. Have you ever read The Morning by Onslow Warrior?’

  ‘No, and that’s not a real name.’

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s really, really good. I don’t want to put it down.’

  ‘Can you check it out and maybe read it later at home?’

  ‘Yes, I’m coming, but I’m a little afraid of stairwells right now.’

  ‘Let me guess, it’s another one of those horror books?’

  ‘Yes, he only kills girls in stairwells.’

  ‘There are no stairwells in that library.’

  “Yeah, well there are steps.’

  ‘Come home.’ I laughed, at her silliness.

  If someone would have told me I was going to fall in love with Morgan, I would have called them crazy. I was so in love with Morgan, with this Morgan, the Morgan that ran around in shorts and short shirts, the Morgan that told Derik off every chance she got. This Morgan barged into my office, fell asleep on my chaise lounge while I worked, and believe it or not wanted me to spank her and do all the dirty little things that I loved doing.”

  Nice, Drew.

  “I did ridiculous crazy things for her. I was wearing jeans, sneakers, going to baseball games, and sleeping with her in my bed. I drank beer in a sports bar and ate messy barbeque, which I loved by the way. I swam in our pool with her. I hadn’t been in that pool since I was a boy. Men didn’t do that, Michael told me so, and like a dumb boy I believed him.

  I moved her to my room after a couple months of her being home. I needed her to feel safe and stop with the nightmares. It broke my heart to see her wake like that, scared and alone. I hoped that her being out of that room where the nightmares originated would help. I guess it did to a certain degree, but she still had them, and I wanted to be right there to hold her and talk her down from them.

  My new mission in life became only her, making her happy and praying like hell that she never remembered. I needed her to know this Drew, and how much he loved her. I never wanted her to remember again. I loved her.

  ‘Stop that,’ she ordered, crawling into my lap and closing the work I had in front of me.

  ‘I’m going to start working in the office downtown,’ I threatened, although I was loving it on the inside. She didn’t want me to work. She wanted my attention.

  ‘I’m bored. It’s after five, you always work.’

  ‘I work so you can live like this,’ I reminded her, running my hand up her bare legs.

  ‘I don’t need this. Give me a beach and some sea glass and I’d be just as happy,’ Morgan said.”

  “You remember that, Morgan?” Drew asked, turning my way, but continued without my response. “She froze. I froze. She was remembering something.

  ‘Why did I say that, Drew?’

  ‘I don’t know, Morgan. I guess you were seeing something.’

  ‘Telling the truth is easier to remember,’ Morgan countered.”

  I smiled, remembering that day. That was a good day. My Grandma Joyce always told me that. I knew Drew was lying that day. He didn’t want me to remember.

  “I smiled up at her without a reply. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t lying though. I didn’t know when she’d ever been to a beach. Was that where she was during her time she was away from me?

  ‘You can work, I’ll read or something,’ she offered, removing herself from my lap. I held onto her, picking up on the mood change. She sounded sad and distant.

  ‘Morgan,’ I quietly spoke, looking down to her tiny hand in mine.”

  ‘It’s okay. I get it.’

  ‘What do you get? Talk to me.’

  ‘You don’t want me to remember, do you?’

  ‘No, Morgan. I don’t.’

  She smiled a sad smile and left me. I’d long forgotten that she may be faking the whole loss of memory thing. She didn’t remember. I was sure of it, and my worst nightmare was that she would. She would remember everything and not love me. I wasn’t sure I could live without her now. I’d take a bullet for her. I’d give up every penny for her. None of it meant anything without her.

  Chapter 28

  “I did my best to keep Derik away from her and out of the house. I sent him on every business trip that I didn’t want to take. I hated leaving her, mostly because I hated seeing her wake afraid and alone when I wasn’t there to save her. She hated it when I left too. I did take her a couple times. She hated it. She hated the boring meetings that I had let her sit through. She hated to sit in the hotel room.”

  “That’s because you wouldn’t let me leave the hotel to shop or see a movie or anything,” I complained out loud, looking to Deidra for support, thinking about the stripes on my ass from the last time I went out and did something without him.

  “Needless to say,” Drew continued with a snide grin. “On the occasions that I had to go, she whined like a two year old, begging me to send Derik. The only good thing about leaving her was coming home to her. I’d get so mad at her for sending Marta away. I didn’t want her to be alone. It didn’t matter, she did it anyway and was waiting at the door for my return. Sometimes we didn’t make it away from the door before we were naked, making love on the cold marble floor.

  ‘Oh, my god, don’t you ever leave for five whole days again. Do you have any idea how much I missed you,’ she asked, throwing herself in my arms after a long drawn out go to hell deal that I lost. I should have sent Derik. Five days away from my wife and I come home a failure.”

  That was not a good night, I remembered. He did the same thing then that he does now when he comes home after a bad day at work. Drew losing a deal was like spitting in his face. He couldn’t handle it. I’m sure it had something to do with Michael telling him what a failure he was.

  “Removing her arms from around my neck, I said, ‘I need a shower.’ It wasn’t her. I was happy to see her. I was pissed off at myself. Three quarters of a million dollars and I flushed it down the drain, handing it over to Brinkley.


  ‘Yeah, okay,’ she said disappointed.

  I tried to wash it away in the shower, to not think about it. I tried my best not to hear Michael’s voice telling me what a loser I was. It wasn’t working. I was pissed, and trying my best not to go back to the Drew that wanted to hurt Morgan. I was struggling. I was struggling so hard. She should have left me alone. She shouldn’t have pushed her luck.

  ‘You never quit, do you Morgan?’ I asked, turning to her sneaking in the shower with me. She was instantly frightened when I slammed her wet body against the tile.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked, kissing her fiercely.

  ‘Drew, you’re scaring me,’ she rasped in a shaky voice.

  ‘You should be scared. You should be terrified of me. Why did you come in here? What do you want?’ I asked, twisting her nipple hard between my fingers.

  ‘I wanted you,’ she whimpered.

  ‘You wanted me? You wanted me to do what?’

  ‘Drew, stop,’ she begged.

  I didn’t stop. Who the hell did she think she was? She didn’t tell me to stop. She didn’t have that power or that control. I held the control. I pulled her hair and kissed her lips right after I back handed her with my knuckles. Her tears flowed, uncontrollably while I shoved her against the wall and took her, putting her in that dark place I’d once kept her. I pounded in and out of her fighting the Y-chromosome entrenched deep in my soul. I didn’t want to be this Drew. I was hurting her. Why couldn’t I stop?”

  “That’s the day I truly knew I was in love with you,” I told Drew and Deidra. “Drew hit me for the first time that day. Well, the first time that I remembered, and I still wanted him.”

  Drew and I briefly stared at each other in a way that only he and I could understand before he continued, “Morgan cried, ‘Drew, it’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.’ I stopped and looked down at her crying eyes. I never wanted to see that again. Promising myself that was the last time. I was never hurting her again.

  ‘Why, Morgan? I don’t deserve you. How can you say that?’

  ‘I love you,’ she cried.”