Toronto Collection Volume 2 (Toronto Series #6-9)

by Heather Wardell

  I shrug. "Three therapy sessions, a bit more apartment organizing... nothing big. You?"

  "Not much," he says, and I wonder why he asked since he doesn't seem to want to continue the conversation but then realize he was just trying to stop me and Ryan connecting. Annoyed, I say to Ryan, "And what are your big plans?"

  "Work. Seeing my mom." His eyes hold mine and it feels like there's something else he wants to say, but all he adds is, "And I'll probably go to the gym at least a few times. Wild and crazy stuff."

  I smile, then for completeness ask Hannah what she's doing.

  She brushes her fingers over her plan folder. "Working on this." Her eyes light up. "Would you meet with me later in the week? I could use more advice."

  "For sure. Just let me know when."

  She grins, then says to Ryan, "I'd ask you too but you won't be here."

  "I'm here in spirit," he says jokingly, but our eyes meet again and I'm not sure he's really joking. He is here in spirit, here with me in the memories we share though I can't access mine and in the diamond rings on my right hand. I think I like it.

  "Well, I'm here in the flesh," Jake says. "So call me if you want, Hannah. You too, Kate, for that matter. We could do lunch again."

  I mumble something noncommittal and wonder why Jake has to emphasize that I see him during the week. Ryan knows, though I doubt he likes it much, and Jake knows he knows and probably knows he doesn't like it.

  I think I answered my own question: he's doing it on purpose to sting Ryan. And I don't appreciate it.

  After a brief awkward pause, Ryan says, "I'll just visit the bathroom and then I think it's time for me to go."

  I nod, and he gets up and heads to the back area of Starbucks where the bathrooms are.

  "Great, he mentioned it and now I have to go." Hannah hops up and follows Ryan away.

  I want to give Jake grief for the whole 'I'll be seeing your wife while you're gone' thing, but I have something else I want to ask, something that's been nagging at me all weekend, and this might be the perfect time. I haven't thought it through so I just say it, hoping I'll find the right words somehow. "I know you spent a lot of money on me when I was living with you."

  "Don't thank me again," he says, reaching for his nearly empty drink. "It's okay."

  "I wasn't going to, actually. Although yes, thank you. But I really wanted to, well, offer you some of it back."

  He raises his eyebrows. "How will you do that? You don't have a job."

  "True, but..." I have credit cards and bank accounts and a husband who's told me I can spend whatever I feel is right. "I do have money."

  "You have his money," he says, jerking his head toward the bathrooms. "And I won't take even a cent from him."

  "But it's not from him, it's from me. Because I know you don't have a lot and--"

  "I have enough."

  His voice, cold and hurt, cuts me off, and he goes on. "I have enough, and I wouldn't take it even if I didn't. Save that money. You're going to need it when you're off on your own."

  I frown, lost. "Why will I be--"

  "He did something to you," Jake says in a low fierce voice. "You ran for a reason. And if you don't already know the reason and just haven't told me, you will know it soon and then you'll know he's no good."

  "I--"

  "No. I didn't help you to get repaid. I helped you because it was right and..." His eyes meet mine. "To make up for things I might have done wrong."

  The rape charge.

  He leans forward. "Frankly, I'm offended that you offered. Didn't I make it clear it was a gift?"

  "Yeah, but..."

  Jake mutters, "He's coming back," then says loudly, "You can finish that sculpture whenever you want. And if you find something else you want to try sculpting, let me know."

  Ryan sits down partway through this sentence and looks at me. His eyes are calm but somehow I know he's bothered by something. His words don't let on, though. "You're a sculptor now?"

  I shrug. "Hardly. But I'm making a model of Jake's hand, or trying to anyhow. It's not great but I'm having fun with it. Hey, am I artistic? As far as you know?"

  He shakes his head. "Brilliant at business, and you love looking at art, but I've never seen you make any. When you finish the hand, I'd love to see it."

  "Sure."

  He glances at Jake, then they both look away. As a teenager I thought it'd be deliciously romantic to have two guys fighting over me. Now I know it's just awkward.

  Hannah comes back and Ryan gets up before she can sit down. "I really should go."

  Ryan helps me into my jacket, then puts on his while the others do the same, and we head outside into the dark cool night.

  "I can drive you home if you'd like," Ryan says to me, but we're close to the on-ramp for the highway and taking me home would be way out of his way so I say, "Thanks, but I'm fine. The subway station's just around the corner. You get yourself back to Ottawa before it's really late."

  He nods. "Take care, Donna."

  "You too."

  We look at each other for a moment. I know he wants to hug me, but I also know that even more he wants me to hug him. And I want to, want one more of those firm strong embraces before he leaves for the week, so even though I know Jake's watching I open my arms to my husband.

  He pulls me close and we hold each other for a few seconds, then he draws back enough to look at me and says, "Have a great week. I'll call you tomorrow."

  "Sounds good. Drive carefully."

  "Will do." He smiles at me, then lets me go and says, "Good luck with the planning, Hannah. And Jake?" I tense, but he says in a calm voice, "Have a good week."

  "You too," Jake says, sounding like someone's hauling the words from him, and Hannah says, "Bye now."

  Ryan looks at me for a long moment. If the other two weren't there I think he might try to kiss me, but instead he gives my shoulder a squeeze then turns and walks away.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At two o'clock in the morning I'm still wide awake, my mind too busy to succumb to sleep. I can't stop thinking about my two men.

  Jake seems to want me still, although he hasn't done anything about it but say mean things about Ryan, and though he aggravates me I also still feel a connection with him.

  Ryan definitely still loves me. I don't love him, but I can see that I could. That I did.

  If only I could remember. It's so frustrating.

  My phone gives its new-email sound, and since I'm awake anyhow I check it out.

  Donna,

  Just wanted to let you know I got home safely. Thanks for the coffee - I might have fallen asleep without it.

  I'll call you around nine Monday night if that's all right.

  Love,

  Ryan

  I write back.

  Nine is good. I'm glad you didn't have too bad a drive.

  In seconds, he sends another message.

  You're still awake?

  I respond that I can't sleep, and moments later the phone rings. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah." I curl onto my side. "Just awake."

  "Not tired?"

  "I'm baked. All that walking in Niagara? But I can't fall asleep."

  He says, "You need a teddy bear. You have one here."

  "I sleep with a teddy bear? Maybe I really am seventeen after all."

  He chuckles. "You don't sleep with it. You just like to have it around. I'll email you a picture so you can sort of have it with you."

  "Okay. But tomorrow. You should get to sleep."

  "Mmm, not happening."

  "Why not?"

  He sighs. "Lots on my mind."

  "Well, if I'm awake, and you're awake, why not tell me about it?"

  He pauses, then says, "Oh, Donna."

  His voice is low and soft, almost a growl, and it sends an electricity through me that I've never felt from anything else. I've heard him say my name that way before, I know it, heard it while he held me and touched me and made love to me. I don't re
member it but I know. My body knows, right to its core.

  I can barely gather enough breath to say, "Yes?"

  "I wish you were here," he says in that same sexy rumbling voice, and I shut my eyes as it seems to set all my cells rumbling too.

  While I'm trying to pull myself together, he clears his throat and says, "Sorry. Shouldn't have said that."

  "I liked it," I admit before I can stop myself.

  The silence on the line is absolute, like he's holding his breath the same way I am. We haven't had the physical connection I had with Jake when we were together in person, but my God, do we have it now. I don't know what to do with it, but we have it.

  "Is it hot in here or is it just me?"

  I giggle. "I think it's you."

  "Far more likely to be you. You're the pretty one in this relationship."

  "Hardly." It's so much easier to flirt over the phone than in person. No wonder phone sex became so popular.

  "Pretty and smart too. If you weren't so nice I'd have to hate you."

  His imitation of a grumpy woman's tone makes me laugh.

  "Then it's good I am so nice. And to prove it, I want to hear what's on your mind." Especially if you'll tell me in that gorgeous voice.

  He sighs, and I shut my eyes, knowing I've broken the mood and wishing I hadn't. I'm not surprised when he says, "How much time do you spend with Jake?"

  Jake and the gorgeous voice can't co-exist, no question. "I saw him a couple of times last week. Lunch twice, we worked on my sculpture, and I helped him make a plan to sell his art. Why?"

  He doesn't speak for so long that I'm beginning to wonder if we've been disconnected, then says, "Hannah warned me about him."

  I half-sit up. "What about him? Does she know about the... the charge thing?"

  "Not that she said. No, she figures he's after you and thought I should know."

  Settling back into bed, I say, "She's after him, she's not exactly unbiased."

  "Sure, but still. She thinks I should make sure you don't see too much of Jake."

  "So she can have him! And besides, how are you supposed to make sure I don't see him? It's not up to you."

  I hear him snap in a breath, like he's going to challenge this, but then he breathes out slowly. "No, it's not. But I guess I'd rather you didn't spend much time with him."

  Given how Jake walked away from me outside Starbucks without saying goodbye, not even waiting for poor Hannah to stop looking at me in shock and confusion and hurry after him, I doubt I will see him but I still don't like this. "Ryan, I can see anyone I want."

  He doesn't respond to this. "What were you talking about when I came out of the bathroom? He was obviously mad about something."

  "Nothing."

  "If you're not going to tell me that's one thing, but don't pretend there's nothing to tell. I know there is."

  "Fine," I say, annoyed that he won't leave it be. "I offered to give him back the money he spent on me when I stayed with him."

  "You what? Why?"

  "Because he took good care of me and it cost him a lot of money, and I thought it was only fair."

  "You wanted to give my--"

  He cuts himself off but it's too late. "I thought it was our money. Actually, the way you talked before I thought a lot of it was my money. So can't I use it however I want?"

  "But why on him?"

  "I told you, because he helped me."

  "I..."

  He stops and doesn't seem to be able to get started again.

  "But it doesn't matter anyhow because he wouldn't take it from me. He was mad I offered, actually. So it's no big deal."

  This time the pause stretches so long I have to say, "Hello?"

  He sighs. "God, I'll never get it right with you, will I?"

  The sadness and frustration in his voice touch me. "What do you mean?"

  "It's a sweet thing you tried to do. I shouldn't be an ass about it."

  I find myself arguing the other side. "But it makes sense you don't want your, our, money going to a guy who might be trying to get your wife away from you."

  "I'd never have found my wife without him."

  That might well be true. We'll never know for sure.

  "Honey, look, I'm sorry. I just worry, you know? I'm here and you're there and he's there and it makes me uncomfortable. But I trust you. I know you won't do anything with him."

  I remember telling Jake that if I left Ryan I'd go to him. I feel like a slimeball.

  "Get some sleep, okay? We both need some."

  "I'm sorry, Ryan."

  "For what?"

  My eyes fill with tears in a rush and I choke out, "For everything. I've ruined our lives."

  "Oh, honey. You haven't. The ECT has. And they're not ruined anyhow. We'll figure it out."

  "Really?"

  "Really," he says with such certainty I have to believe him though I can't see how it'll happen. "We'll find a way. Or start over together."

  "Okay," I whisper, feeling calmer. "If you say so."

  "I do," he says softly, and I think of how he must have said those words at our wedding.

  "Do we have a wedding video?"

  He chuckles. "I thought the same thing just there. And yes. We'll watch it some time."

  "I'd like that."

  "I'll take a picture of your bear and email him to you. It'll help you sleep."

  I smile. "What will help you sleep?"

  "Well, I have the real bear."

  "Lucky."

  "Definitely," he says, in that sexy growl.

  I shiver. "Good night, Ryan."

  "Good night, honey. Sleep well."

  "Once I get my bear, you mean."

  "Of course."

  We hang up and a few minutes later my phone signals an email. I open it and burst out laughing. He's put leather gloves and a black fuzzy scarf on the bear, a big sad-eyed plushy thing that would probably be a polar bear if it weren't a faint shade of pink, and he's captioned the picture with, "Didn't want him to get cold zooming through the Internet to you."

  I write back, "Thank you. He says he's nice and warm."

  Then I fall asleep, but the image in my mind isn't of the bear.

  It's of what Ryan might have looked like saying, "Definitely," in that voice that makes my body go wild.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I don't see Jake until Thursday, and by then I'm sadder than the eyes on my bear.

  Monday morning I wake up from a fitful sleep feeling miserable for no apparent reason, and though I'm still exhausted I can't go back to sleep. When I eventually get up I can't make myself eat, and nothing seems to matter. I see Doctor Ferraro on Tuesday, then call Wednesday morning to book another session later that day, but she can't fix me because she can't give me my memories back.

  We talk over and over about Ryan and Jake and who I want to be and what will happen, and there are no answers. I hate not having answers. Ryan says we'll start over if we have to, but I don't even know if I should want that.

  I told her before about Ryan's affair but we discuss it again, and she agrees that it might have made my depression worse but doesn't accept that I was driven to the point of needing ECT by an affair, no matter how awful it must have felt to be cheated on. I don't quite accept it either, but I don't know what else could have happened. Again with the lack of answers.

  Doctor Ferraro wants me to see a psychiatrist so I can start taking anti-depressants but I don't want to. It feels wrong to drug away my feelings. I know I did it for years but I don't remember and I don't want to do it now. I am desperately looking for a connection to Ryan or to some other thing that will bring back my lost years, and I'm afraid the drugs will block that. When Doctor Ferraro concedes that they will dull my emotions, that in fact that's part of the point of taking them, I know I'm making the right choice.

  But it's so hard. Hard to feel the pain, and hard to hide it from the world.

  At least, it feels hard to hide, but I see Hannah a few times that week and
she never notices a thing. She asks me, when we have coffee Monday afternoon, why Jake had seemed mad at me at Starbucks. I claim not to know, and she shrugs and says, "Artists and their moods," as if that explains it. It doesn't, of course, but I don't want her to know so I'm glad she dropped it. We chat about her business and her steadily growing client list, and she is light and happy and seems to think I'm the same.

  I'm not. I feel like I'm sliding down a steep ramp into darkness. I try to cheer myself up, during the sleepless hours I spend alone, by reading jokes on the Internet and playing with Bubbly Words, but the jokes don't seem funny and the game just frustrates me because I know it's got my secrets locked inside.

  Donna's secrets. If I unlock those, will I still be Kate or will I be Donna or some mix of the two? I desperately want to get my memories back and am also terrified of what will happen when I do. If I do. I don't even know whether to hope I do.

  I cry myself to sleep Wednesday night, and am lying in bed the next morning around eleven trying to gather the strength to get up and shower, though it all seems so pointless, when my phone rings.

  "Hey, Kate."

  "Jake. Hi."

  He clears his throat. "I'm sorry. I was a jerk on Sunday."

  I'm not sure what to say to this so I say nothing.

  "It's just weird, you know?"

  "Totally."

  "I like you," he says, the words exploding from him. "And then I see him hugging you and holding your hands and stuff, and I don't like it. But he's your husband so he has the right to do it. But I still don't like it."

  "Oh," I say stupidly. I thought he was feeling weird because I offered him money. I didn't expect him to admit to feelings for me. I still have them for him, I think. But I'm starting to have some for Ryan too. My life is more screwed up than the twistiest soap opera.

  "Yeah. Oh."

  We sit in silence for a few moments, then I say, "So what happens now?"

  "We have lunch?"

  "Will that help?"

  "Maybe not. But I'd like to see you. See you and not be a jerk to you. You know, for a change."

  I laugh and he does too. "Think you can manage it?"

  "I think so," he says. "Let me know if I don't."

  Knowing I have somewhere to go makes me get out of bed and shower, then I put on the brightest clothes I can find in an attempt to brighten my mood.