by Hope Jones
“They have a name they think may be connected, but the trail runs cold.”
“What’s the name?”
“Lacey Peters,” I told her and listened as she sucked in a sharp breath.
“What is it, Mom?” I asked watching her brow crinkle in confusion and shock. She stumbled away from me, grasping for the chair behind her and nearly missing.
Jumping up, I helped her sit in the seat and pleaded with her to tell me what was wrong.
“There’s something you don’t know, baby.”
“Okay,” I replied slowly. “What is it?”
Mom covered her mouth with her hand, shaking her head in disbelief. That name meant something to her and deep in my bones, I knew what she said was going to be huge.
“Your dad and I were high school sweethearts. We met my freshman year and Dad’s sophomore year. Thick as thieves, we were. If one of us were somewhere, the other wasn’t far behind. We did everything together and were deeply in love, though to our parents we were still children. About a year and a half into our relationship, we found out we were pregnant.”
My mouth fell to the floor in shock. Doing some quick mental math, I knew I was born around the time my parents were in their late twenties, definitely not when they were sixteen and seventeen years old.
“That was my reaction too, sweet girl,” Mom said, patting my cheek softly. “Despite being so young, your dad and I wanted to keep the baby. He was going to drop out of school and start working in the local factory. We kept the pregnancy hidden for about six months before his parents found out. We kept you from them for a reason and never talked about them because it was painful for your dad, but they were mean. Not just strict, plain old mean. His mother wanted me to have an abortion, but at that point, it was too late. No doctor in their right mind would abort a baby that far into the pregnancy. Instead, we were forced to give the baby up for adoption. It broke our hearts, we wanted to keep her so badly. We didn’t know what else to do, so we gave her up. She went to a loving family, we made sure of that, but before the adoption closed, we learned they named their baby girl Lacey Peters.”
My legs no longer able to keep me up, I fell to the floor and hung my head between my legs in shock.
I had a sister.
I had a freakin’ sister and didn’t know about her?
“Mom,” I gasped, “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“Oh, honey,” she whispered, sounding guilty. “The adoption was painful on your father. It broke him in a way I was never able to help him heal from. After the adoption, it was an unspoken agreement to never talk about Lacey. After we got married and had you, it was like your dad was able to fix that broken part of himself. While I still saw the sadness underneath, it was nowhere near as bad as before. I didn’t want to hurt him more by bringing it up.”
I understood where she was coming from. I knew if Graham was hurting in a way I couldn’t fix and something came along and soothed some of that hurt, I would do everything in my power to make sure that balm stayed close.
“Why would my own sister be coming after me? I’ve never even met her, let alone did anything to her,” I rushed out, confused that I had a sister that wanted to hurt me. I had always wanted a sibling growing up, but Mom and Dad were insistent that I was all they needed.
“I have no idea, baby, but I think it’s best I go to the police station and talk to your detective.”
I nodded my head, knowing she was right.
She needed to leave, and I wanted to see my husband.
***
FINISHING MOM’S STORY, I sat across from Graham in his office, my feet propped in his lap and let him rub the tension out of them.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled to himself.
“Tell me about it.”
A knock on the door took our attention away from one another and Olivia’s face popped around the corner.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, Mr. Vano, but I have the payroll that needs to be signed and I can’t seem to find Jim.”
Graham’s jaw hardened, but he said, “Bring them here.”
Olivia timidly stepped inside the door and finally got a view of me, her eyes lighting up.
“Hey, Henley! How are you?”
“I’m good. Are you liking the job?”
“Yes, I love it. Jim and Mr. Vano are great to work with,” she told me, beaming from ear to ear.
I nodded but didn’t speak any further. As much as I knew I had to tolerate Olivia considering she worked for my husband, I didn’t like her, and I wasn’t sure why, which unnerved me.
Graham quickly went through the payroll, signing everything that needed to be signed and handed the papers back to Olivia. She smiled and waved as she left the room and I released a pent-up breath as soon as the door clicked behind her.
Graham watched the door for several moments with a puzzled look on his face.
“Honey, are you okay?” I asked, concerned.
He shook his head, as if clearing his thoughts and nodded his head.
“You weren’t wrong about her yesterday, something is off.”
Humming my agreement, I rested my head on the back of the office chair and closed my eyes.
Some time later I was being jostled on the shoulder and my heavy eyes pried open.
“Huh?” I mumbled, unaware of my surroundings.
“Baby, it’s time to go home, we have to meet the movers in fifteen minutes.”
Quickly gathering my wits, I sat up, realizing Graham had laid me on the couch in his office. The lights were off, save for a small desk lamp and I was grateful considering the headache I had.
“Would you mind driving my car home and letting me ride? I have a bad headache and don’t feel comfortable driving. I’ll bring you back up here in the morning to pick your truck up.”
Graham nodded, gathering me in his arms and walking us out to my Durango before depositing me in the passenger’s seat.
By the time we got home, I was on the verge of puking and knew I needed to lie down. Asking Graham to handle the movers, I found my way to the bedroom, stumbling up the stairs as my vision moved in and out of focus.
Fuck, this headache quickly turned into a migraine.
Finally, making it to the bedroom, I fell onto the bed, not even bothering to remove my clothes as I knew all the jostling would make me throw up.
***
Graham
ADMIRING THE AMAZING woman in front of me, her eyes began to blink rapidly, and she gazed up at me, the look on her face making her seem dazed.
“Hey baby,” I whispered, careful not to be loud in case she still had a headache.
“Hey.” She smiled back groggily, snuggling deeper into my chest.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked. Her headache worried me considering the head wound she had less than a month ago. I figured it would be a good idea to call her doctor and see if she needed to be looked at.
“Considering I remember my niece now; I think I’m perfectly fine,” Henley told me, resting her chin on my chest to look at me.
Her hair was mussed everywhere, her smile was sleepy but no less happy and her eyes held some of the same glow that I remembered her having before her memory loss. She was starting to look more and more like the wife I had before the accident.
“You remember Tarryn?” I asked, eyes wide with disbelief.
Henley nodded her head, beaming and said, “I remember the day she was born, her strawberry-blond hair being the only thing Tuesday and Sam could talk about. Sam joked that Tarryn wasn’t his since both their hair was naturally dark, almost black. Tuesday’s hormones were so messed up she started bawling.” Henley giggled, thinking back on the memory.
“I’m so glad you’re getting your memories back,” I whispered, kissing her brown hair that she hated, and I loved. I wouldn’t change it for the world. Depending on what kind of light she was in, it was normal brown, or red and even had blond spots. She always said that her hair couldn’t make up its min
d about what color it wanted to be, so it chose three colors.
“Me too, baby. That’s not all I remember, though,” she said, smirking.
Propping my head in my hand, I raised an eyebrow and asked, “What else?”
She slowly got off the bed, came to my side of it and held her hand out for me to take. Holding my hand, she led us out of the bedroom and across the hall, opening the door directly across from our bedroom.
Stepping into the room I hadn’t set foot in since Henley’s accident, I admired the soft yellow walls and light blue elephants that she painted herself. When we decided to start trying for a baby, she insisted on the baby having the room across from ours, so we didn’t have to walk as far when it woke up in the night. Henley also decided she would paint the room in neutral colors, so we didn’t have to worry about that later down the road when it wasn’t safe for her to be around the fumes. There wasn’t much arguing I could do, even though I didn’t want to, because when Henley had her mind set on something, she got it.
It wasn’t often that she and I would disagree on things. When we first started dating, she wanted to pay half the bill, I refused, she had a snit but got over it later that night when I kissed her into submission. We had little spats here and there along the way, but never anything major. I was only half of myself before her, and with her, we were one.
Soul mates.
Lovers.
Whatever you wanted to call it, that was Henley and me.
When you felt that way about somebody, you found a way to work things out, because those fights were nothing in comparison to how you felt about your soul mate.
That’s what Henley and I did.
Fights were nothing in comparison to how we felt about one another.
Gazing around the rest of the room, nothing had been touched since Henley finished it. The crib was still along the wall to the left, the dresser against the wall in front of us, waiting to be filled with baby clothes.
My eyes cast down at Henley walking into the room and reverently running her hand across the smooth, white wood of the crib. She grabbed the baby blanket and brought it to the rocking chair in the corner of the room. She stared at the blanket for several moments before looking at me and giving me a watery smile.
“I remember us talking about trying for a baby. You wanted a boy and I wanted a girl. I remember painting this room every day when I got off work. I remember you walking in here on numerous occasions to find me covered in paint. You’d have tire grease all over your hands, so we’d shower together.”
My head bobbed up and down, informing her she was right. All of a sudden, Henley was up, the rocking chair rocking furiously, and flung herself in my arms until I caught her with two hands on her ass. She rained kisses from my forehead to my cheek until she reached my lips and kissed me with passion.
She pulled away and I whispered, “Not that I’m complaining, but what the fuck?”
“I feel like there are two sides of me. On one side, I barely know you and this is new to me and the other side knows you so well and it feels like I haven’t seen you in months. I don’t know, I sound stupid.”
“You are not stupid. Don’t say that shit,” I growled at her, watching her eyes darken with lust.
“I may be in love with you,” she whispered. “Well, that side of me that doesn’t really know you, I me—”
I cut Henley off with a fierce kiss and walked blindly to the bathroom in our bedroom, bumping into things as we went, savoring the sound of her giggles every time I hit something.
“Strip,” I commanded as I set her down and moved the shower curtain to turn the water on.
“Mmm, yes sir,” she said seductively, whipping her white T-shirt over her head, giving me a delicious view of her tits in the push-up bra she was wearing.
I growled, loving the sound of “sir” coming off her plump lips.
We both took our clothes off, leaving them in a pool at our feet before I picked Henley up again, stepping into the shower and letting the water fall over my head then between our naked bodies.
My cock was hard as a rock, jutting out and desperate for her touch and as if she had read my mind, her legs unwrapped from around my waist, one hand reaching for my neck and the other going south.
Henley’s hand wrapped around my aching cock and I instinctively jerked with the contact, thrusting farther in her hand. She pumped me, slowly, painfully, dragging out the pleasure before my control snapped and I picked her up again, slammed her against the shower wall, and took one of her nipples in my mouth.
“Graham,” she groaned, the sound music to my ears.
Continuing my assault on her other nipple, I gripped her tighter in my left arm and used my right to tease the lips to her pussy. Henley rocked her hips in time with my movements, begging quietly for me to fuck her.
Oh, I would fuck her, but not before making her come on my fingers.
When her movements became jerky and frustrated, I slipped a finger inside her, groaning at her tight heat around me. I hadn’t been inside my wife in almost a month and my cock knew it and was begging for it.
Adding a second finger, I pumped my hand up and down, curling the tips of my fingers to hit her G-spot and reveling in the sound of her breathing increasing, knowing she was close to her climax.
On the second to last thrust, I dragged my hand across her clit and she screamed out my name, her muscles drawing up tight until her orgasm reached its peak and she went limp in my arms.
I gave her a moment to gather her wits before I pulled my hand out of her, eliciting a mewl in the back of her throat.
With a devilish gleam, I brought the hand covered in her come up to her mouth, rubbing my pointer finger across the seam of her lips, smearing her come until she opened, sucked my finger in and gagged on it.
Fuck.
Goddammit.
The last of my control snapped and I pulled my fingers out of her mouth.
“Let’s go,” I told her, setting her down and grabbing a towel to wrap around her.
“Where?” she asked, confusion and hurt settling across her face.
“The bed,” I growled.
I needed to be inside her.
Her face lit in understanding and she stepped out of the shower, moving into the bedroom while I cut the water off and didn’t even bother with a towel.
When I walked into the room, she was lying on her back on the bed, her knees cocked so her sweet pussy was on display and her arms by her side so I could see her fucking huge tits.
I knew she didn’t remember me entirely yet, but after tonight, I was gonna make sure the memory of me was ingrained into her brain forever.
Stalking to her, I put a knee to the bed and settled my hips between hers.
“Are you sure?” I asked, making it positive what I was talking about when I rubbed the head of my dick from her ass, all the way to her clit, her hips jerking when my cock snagged it.
She nodded her head quickly.
“I need the words, Henley. I’m only doing this if you’re a hundred percent positive.”
She looked me straight in the face, all serious and said, “I want you, Graham. Please.”
My wife looking at me with huge, begging eyes snapped the final ounce of control I had.
I surged forward, only getting the head of my cock in her tight heat and leaned down to take her mouth in a bruising kiss, lapping at the taste of her own juices on her lips. She whimpered, trying to rock her hips, but I held them down, wanting to take this at my own pace.
When I was satisfied that her come was no longer on her lips, but my own, I surged forward another inch, biting the inside of my cheek to hold it together and not slam all the way home.
Henley relaxed around me and I pushed forward until we were meshed together as tightly as we could be. Her back bowed off the bed, my cock settling at an angle that felt foreign, but fucking amazing and she moaned intensely.
Henley’s back hit the bed again and I lifted up on one arm to
take her nipple in my mouth once more, biting and sucking while staring at her face.
She gazed down at me through heavy, seductive eyelids and nothing was more beautiful on this planet than her at this moment.
I released her nipple with a pop and gave her a smirk. “You ready for this?”
She gave me a smirk back and said, “I’ve never been more ready in my life.”
I grinned, sat up on my knees and pulled her hips all the way down until she sheathed my entire cock.
She cried out and rocked on my dick, begging for more.
I pulled out until just the head was inside her then slammed forward. Sliding forward and out again and again until I could feel the tightening in my balls, I shifted my weight to my legs so I could use both my hands to pinch her nipples and felt her pussy contract around my cock.
She tossed her head back into the pillows and screwed her eyes closed.
“Eyes, baby,” I told her as I pounded into her, releasing one nipple so she wouldn’t come without looking at me.
Henley knew exactly what I meant and opened her eyes, turning the seductive, out of control look on me before she shouted my name, causing my own orgasm to tear through my body, starting at my balls, moving to the base of my spine until it reached the top of my head and I collapsed on top of her, my pace still there, but slower and more leisurely.
My movements stopped, and I lifted on my forearms so I wasn’t crushing Henley and gazed down at her.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned that I had hurt her.
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled, slightly out of breath.
“Are you sure?”
“I… have… never been better,” she said, her breathing coming in short, rapid pants.
A cocky grin took over my face and she rolled her eyes at me.
I slid out of her and laid down next to her, rubbing lazy circles on her stomach when something occurred to me.
“Henley, we didn’t use a condom. You aren’t on birth control,” I told her, panic lacing my tone. I knew where I was at in our marriage, but in her mind, she still didn’t fully know me yet.
