Love Slave for Two: Resilience [Love Slave for Two 5] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting)

by Tymber Dalton

  It’d kept Crystal and Elliot busy, that was for sure. Elliot had ordered Crystal to stay in Savannah for now, trying to keep this knocked down as much as possible and working hand in hand with Bob. The only good thing had been the media firestorm surrounding the firing and likely prosecutions of coaches and principals at two local high schools for helping cover up Cole Johnson’s actions. Much of the focus had been there, instead of on them specifically.

  Cash had been opening her car door. “There will be an official press release issued by the PIO tomorrow morning, clearing you and five other families as suspects. That’s another reason I wanted to tell you in person tonight. So it didn’t catch you by surprise. I felt I owed you all that much.” She slid behind the wheel.

  Tyler rested his hands on Nevvie’s shoulders as they watched the detective turn her car around and head down the driveway into the night.

  The rush of air Nevvie didn’t realize she’d been holding whooshed out of her as she collapsed back against Tyler and started crying. Tom stepped in and the men held her there, between them, as she let it out.

  “They arrest someone for it,” she whispered, “and I’m thinking I want to contribute to their defense anonymously. Unless, of course, now they’re stalking us.”

  Tommy kissed her forehead. “Shh, sweetie. Let’s not talk about that. They’ve cleared all of us. That’s what’s important.”

  “Is it sick that before we found out about the creeper that I wanted to know who did it so I could hug them and thank them?”

  “No, pet, that’s not sick at all.” Tyler’s tone bore dark undertones she’d rarely heard from him. “Because I felt the same way.”

  * * * *

  Willow and Mikey stood together in the entry when Nevvie, Tyler, and Tom returned to the house. Tyler looked up and spotted Zoey sitting huddled at the top of the stairs. He didn’t keep them waiting.

  “She stopped by to let us know we’ve all officially been cleared as suspects in Cole’s murder.”

  Willow and Mikey hugged each other, and them, while Zoey stood and disappeared down the hallway, presumably to her room.

  Nevvie started toward the stairs, but Tyler caught her shoulder and let Tom go on after her. Perhaps it was best he was the first to comfort her.

  It certainly would help Tom, who Tyler knew still dealt with guilty rage that he wasn’t home when it’d happened, even though it wouldn’t have stopped or changed what had happened.

  And now…this, their mystery nighttime visitor.

  “Is that all?” Willow asked. “That’s the end?”

  “No,” Nevvie said. She told them about the prowler. “So make sure we keep the outside lights on at night and all the doors locked. And don’t talk about it to anyone. We’re going to call Rhys, Manny, and Korbin and get them up here to revamp security. And one of us, if not your brother, will be driving you to and picking you up from school from now on. No more walking to the bus stop.”

  “Can I sleep with one of your shotguns, Mom?” Willow asked.

  “Don’t even talk about that in jest,” Tyler snapped, softening his tone when Willow flinched. “This is no joking matter. I don’t want any of you outside alone after dark. Not even to walk to either grandparents’ house. Not until we find out who the prowler is and they’re stopped.”

  “No worries there, Dad,” Mikey said. He glanced back up the stairs. “Can we go talk to Zoey?”

  “Let’s let Poppa have a moment with her first,” Nevvie gently said.

  Tyler left all the lights on in the front yard, as well as the ones in the backyard. Then he made sure all the doors and windows downstairs were locked, including the basement. After a few minutes, Tyler and Nevvie headed for Zoey’s room. They found her curled up on her bed, crying, with her head in Tommy’s lap.

  He looked up at them, the tears in his eyes crushing Tyler’s already broken heart. He and Nevvie moved to sit with them, their arms around both of them.

  “He’s dead because of me, isn’t he?” Zoey tearfully whispered.

  “No, honey,” Nevvie said. “He’s dead because someone killed him. It was probably a relative of one of his other victims.”

  “I was the first to go to the cops. If I hadn’t gone to the cops—”

  “No telling how many people you helped by doing that. Your bravery allowed others to come forward. He would have kept doing this. That’s what guys like that do.”

  “He didn’t deserve to die for it.”

  Tyler wanted to say Sure, he did, but resisted the urge.

  Barely.

  “He created his own fate, sweetheart,” Tyler said. “You are not to blame for it.”

  She went quiet for a moment. “I wished him dead,” she admitted. “The night he was killed, I sat right here and wished he was dead, because of what he did to me, and the others, and all the bullshit after. That my life was forever screwed up because of him. And then he was dead the next morning.”

  Now Tyler understood and resisted the urge to chuckle, knowing she’d misunderstand. “Darling, if you suddenly started wishing multiple people dead, and they all dropped dead, I’d worry. But there are plenty of people alive now whom I was unable to wish dead no matter how I tried.”

  “Ditto,” Nevvie said.

  “But doesn’t that make me a horrible person?” Zoey asked. “Because when you first told us, I wanted to cheer. I wanted to scream. Good screams. I wanted to tell the world I was glad he was dead.”

  “You and me both,” Nevvie muttered. “Trust me, that’s a normal, human response,” she added in a slightly louder tone.

  “Add me to the list,” Tommy said. “Although I was hoping he’d die in prison.”

  “You did not pull the trigger,” Tyler reminded her. “And wishing someone dead isn’t against the law, unless it’s the President of the United States and you post it publicly as a valid threat.”

  Zoey sniffled, and Tyler watched as Nevvie tucked her hair behind her ears. She turned face-up in Tommy’s lap to look at them.

  “I had several people say mean stuff to me the first day I went back to school, friends of his. Like I was a liar, and a bitch. Said it was my fault he was dead. But when the other names started coming out, how many people were coming forward, especially after his father acted like such a dick in that interview, then the bitches went quiet. I actually walked up to one girl, Carla Shore, who’d really liked him. I said gee, are we all liars? And she didn’t say anything to me, not even ‘sorry.’”

  “Just ignore those people,” Nevvie said. “You have to. All they’re trying to do is get under your skin.”

  “Do you want to change schools, honey?” Tommy asked.

  Zoey finally sat up. “No.” She set her jaw, looking like a much younger Karen. “Then he wins even though he’s dead. Besides, Steven goes to my school, and Willow and Mikey. If I change schools, I wouldn’t have anyone I could trust.”

  “We’d move, too, brat,” Mikey said from her bedroom doorway, where he and Willow stood. “We wouldn’t let you do that on your own.”

  “Yeah,” Willow said. “Can’t break up the band.”

  Zoey forced a smile that didn’t fool Tyler in the slightest. “Thanks, but I’d rather stay where we are. Besides, Principal Gorden and Coach Torelli are gone. And you’ve got football. Steven said he overheard the assistant coaches talking and they said the school board is going to shake things up even more. They think other people helped cover this up, not just them. So that’s going to help me and the others. They don’t start firing teachers unless they know kids are telling the truth.”

  “You are incredibly brave, sweetheart,” Tyler said. “But are you sure? We could hire a private tutor and homeschool you, if you wish.”

  At that she actually rolled her eyes. “No, Daddy. That’d be boring.” She stared at her hands, where she picked at the nail polish on her left thumb. “I quit school, and I let him win. And since he’s dead, it’d be hard for him to win unless I do something dumb like that.”<
br />
  “It’s not dumb if it’s what you need,” Nevvie insisted.

  “Mom, that’s not what I need.” She finally met her mom’s gaze. “What I need is to get back to normal. I want to go to school, figure out who’s still really my friend, and do what I was doing before all this happened.”

  “You need to keep seeing the counselor,” Tyler quietly said. “At least for now.”

  “Deal.” She fist-bumped with him. “I like talking to her. She gets me.”

  “You’re brave, brat,” Willow said. “I don’t know if I could be as brave as you.” They fist-bumped.

  “Yeah, you could,” Zoey said. “But I hope you never need to find out.”

  “If it means anything,” Mikey said, “Greg says he feels horrible about what happened.”

  “It’s not his fault, or his parents’ fault. Steven tried to warn me about Cole,” Zoey softly said. “I’d asked him if he’d seen Cole, and then he tried to stay with me, not leave me alone. I finally told Steven I wanted to talk to Cole alone, but he asked me to please be careful. I thought he was jealous or something. I didn’t know he really was trying to keep me safe.”

  She looked up at Tyler. “And Steven’s not like Cole. At all. I mean, we’re just friends. He goes out of his way not to be like that. So please don’t think he’s a bad guy.”

  “We don’t, honey,” Tommy said. “He’s family.”

  “If he was like Cole,” Mikey said with a dark look on his features, “he’d already be missing all his teeth.”

  “He is like family,” Willow said, Zoey nodding in agreement. “Like Snothead, here.” She hooked a thumb at Mikey. “Or like any of the cousins.” She hooked an arm around her brother’s shoulders, hugging him. “And if wishing Cole dead were a thing, it would have happened way before it did, because I started wishing him dead the night you told us about it.”

  “Me, too,” Mikey said. “I had a bunch of guys on the team ask me if I wanted help beating him up. Only reason I didn’t take them up on it was I knew it’d get me in trouble.”

  “I don’t think anyone in this family didn’t wish him dead at least once,” Tommy told her. “You’re not horrible.”

  Zoey finally nodded.

  “Mom, do you want us to go finish getting dinner started?” Willow asked.

  “Yes, please. Thank you.”

  “I’ll help.” Zoey moved to get up, but Tyler held out a staying arm.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I don’t want to spend my life focused on him and what he did to me.”

  “You need to process things, though,” Nevvie said. With the counselor, she and Zoey had talked and Nevvie had told her the basics about what she’d been through…and the diametrically opposed situation she’d survived. So Zoey would better understand some of her reactions to it, and why they wanted Zoey to be in counselling to deal with what happened to her.

  “I am processing, Mom. But I…” She slowly nodded. “I miss the way things were before. I don’t want to spend my life thinking about it. I want things back to normal. I know I’ll have stuff come up, but I don’t want that to be my life. I have a life—Cole doesn’t. And now I don’t even have to go through a trial.” She got up, Mikey and Willow waiting for her to head downstairs.

  Tyler and Tommy barely got Nevvie back to their bedroom before she started sobbing against them.

  Tyler sat on the edge of their bed and pulled her into his arms. “I think it’s time you started seeing the counselor regularly, love. You’re not that eighteen-year-old any longer, and it’s time that girl finally gets a chance to heal in a healthy way.”

  Tommy sat next to them. “What he said, baby girl.” His voice bore a firm edge. “We’ll go together, until you’re comfortable. Hell, we’ll go and sit outside every appointment, if you need us to. But you’re going. Zoey needs her momma to be as whole as possible.”

  She tearfully nodded against Tyler’s shoulder.

  He pressed his cheek against hers. “We’ll get through this, love. I swear we will.”

  Tommy leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Time for you to lean on us, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Just like we leaned on you. It’s our turn to carry you, and I swear we will, baby girl. But you have to let us.”

  Eventually, she nodded again.

  Chapter Forty

  Ten days after Cole Johnson’s murder, Tom claimed he needed to look through some plans for Jacob and Kyle at the office in Tampa. He knew Nevvie and Ty would assume he wanted to stay up and peek out the windows in hopes of catching the mysterious prowler, which was fine, too.

  Let them think that. One less fib to tell.

  After everyone else had gone to bed, he locked himself in his office downstairs and powered up his laptop. After taking a deep breath, he plugged in the thumb drive Andrew had given him three days earlier.

  It’d taken him a couple of days, on the heels of everything they’d been dealing with—and working with Manny on the final touches regarding beefing up their security system and adding more motion detector lights and cameras—to find time to read through them. Plus Korbin and Rhys had driven up to Savannah from Tampa with Manny to mix in a family visit with them and Andrew. Tommy had also insisted on security upgrades at Andrew’s, as well as at John and Kelly’s houses, which Tommy was happy to pay for.

  He wanted his family kept safe, even though he was slowly beginning to understand that was frequently outside his control.

  Now, with potential charges for Cole’s murder no longer hanging over their heads, Tom was ready to deal with whatever life brought next. In some ways, it felt like they were in the eye of the hurricane instead of in its wake, just waiting for the next craziness to hit, but he suspected that was more his own nerves than anything else.

  Meanwhile, all they could do was…keep putting one foot in front of the other. Although he wouldn’t deny not having to put Zoey through the trauma of a trial was one unexpected benefit of the events.

  So this Damoclean sword could now be dealt with. Fortunately, with everything else going on, Tyler hadn’t made any mention of the letters.

  Considering there was only one file on the drive, it wasn’t hard to find. After another deep breath, he clicked on it and waited for it to load.

  At the top of the document was a note from Andrew.

  These translations might not be exactly verbatim in some places, due to the subject matter. I made notations between [[brackets]] where I wasn’t certain of the exact intent and added extra possibilities or clarification. — A.

  He’d also organized them by date, oldest first, and included the number he’d assigned to each document for easy reference.

  Tom grabbed the envelope of letters, unplugged the laptop from its power cord, and carried it all over to the sofa in his office he sometimes used. Stretching out on it, he laid the laptop on his stomach and started scrolling while he read, comparing the originals to the translations.

  Even if he couldn’t read them directly, he wanted to see the handwriting. Feel them.

  Tyler had lived decades with the memories in his brain. This was as close as Tom could come to physically touching that time in Tyler’s life.

  Marcus had taken an earned paid sabbatical from his university teaching job after years of work teaching, lecturing, and writing non-fiction books on the subject matter he taught, with little more than long weekends for vacations. Jean-Claude either couldn’t or wouldn’t pack up and leave his job and go with Marcus, and that hadn’t set well with the man. He’d apparently not liked Jean-Claude’s employers for a long while, thought they didn’t appreciate Jean-Claude or compensate him fairly, and Marcus had asked the man to try to find another job if he wouldn’t quit working altogether.

  Quitting altogether had been Marcus’ preference.

  But Jean-Claude had enjoyed the work, and his coworkers, and thought Marcus was being more than a little pushy and unrealistic. Even though Marcus made enough he could easily support them as a couple, and
the apartment was, even at that time, already paid for. It was apparently an ongoing point of contention between them. Jean-Claude wanted to be more than a slave and houseboy. Regardless of Marcus’ opinion, he wanted to earn his living. Not mooch off Marcus.

  I can certainly understand that feeling.

  It didn’t help that Jean-Claude’s resistance to Marcus’ demand spilled over into other areas of their dynamic and relationship. Jean-Claude wanted Marcus to not play or date others. Marcus shot back with why should he, when Jean-Claude wouldn’t fully dedicate himself to their partnership or their M/s dynamic, despite living together for over a year, at that point, and dating for a couple of years beforehand.

  It didn’t matter to Marcus that Jean-Claude could balance his slave duties to and relationship with Marcus along with a job outside the home. What Marcus interpreted his actions to mean was that of a much younger man keeping his options open. A man eighteen years younger than himself—and Marcus had more than a heaping pile of issues about their age difference and what ulterior motives Jean-Claude’s refusal to comply might mean.

  Marcus was ready to spend his life with Jean-Claude, but only if the younger man also displayed the same kind of dedication by making that sacrifice for their relationship.

  And when Tom thought about it, he hated that he could see Marcus’ side of the equation. Empathize with him, to a certain extent, even if he didn’t agree with him.

  Jean-Claude had been a year older than Tyler. Marcus was sensitive about the fact that Jean-Claude was not lacking for friends or attention of the vanilla or kinky kind, much less potential romantic partners. He was insecure about Jean-Claude’s feelings for him. He wanted a commitment for life, and until Jean-Claude could give that to him in return, he wasn’t prepared to make certain…concessions of his own.

  Hence their separation when Marcus accepted Bob and Terry’s invitation to spend most of his sabbatical with them in the States.