by LK Shaw
“How long was I asleep? Any change? How’s he doing? Is he going to be okay?” I fired off question after question, barely pausing for breath between each one, as I felt Bridget stirring next to me.
Rita placed both hands up palm facing toward me and huffed out, “Calm down, he’s going to be okay. They placed a few pins to set his leg and his spleen was removed. He will be moved to ICU to monitor his condition to make sure he has no complications like swelling or bleeding. All scans show he is lucky and only has a severe concussion. He’s not awake yet, so I can only let you see him for a few minutes if you want.”
Tears of relief began sliding down my face with the news, and I felt Bridget’s arms around me as the first sob escaped. I covered my face with my hands and began to sob uncontrollably, with Bridget crying as well while trying to comfort and reassure me. After a couple minutes, my sobs slowed to a hiccup or two. I quickly dried my eyes.
“I need to see him,” I sighed, with wetness still shimmering in my eyes and slightly smeared mascara surrounding them. After promising Bridget I’d call her the next day, I followed Rita through the halls until we reached the ICU. She led me to a room, and with a quick “take all the time you need” left me standing there hesitant about entering.
I gathered my courage, opened the door, and walked in. On the bed in front of me lay the love of my life, tubes and lines running everywhere, the beeping and whirring of the monitors the only sound in the room. I stepped up to the bed and reached out to hold Marcus’ hand. It was surprisingly warm to the touch. Even under the gauze wrapped around his head, I noticed they’d shaved off part of his beautiful, dark wavy hair. I almost cried for its loss, which was ridiculous considering everything else. Seeing him like this, I knew he was lucky to be alive. Not wanting to disturb him, I leaned over and gently kissed his forehead and then brushed a soft kiss on his lips. I thought I felt a light squeeze of his hand on mine. I wasn’t sure if it was real or wishful thinking. I took a seat in the chair next to the bed, and settled in for what I expected to be a long and uncomfortable night.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Marcus
I struggled to open my eyes as I slowly started to awaken. I shifted, then winced at the movement when shockwaves of pain shot through my entire body. I took inventory of my aches and pains and didn’t know which hurt worse, my leg or my head. I started to shake my head slightly to get the kinks out and to orient myself. The stabbing pain in my head made me think twice. I blinked a few times to get used to the fluorescent lighting glaring down at me from the ceiling. As the grogginess lifted, I took in all the tubes in my body and the medical equipment lining the walls and realized I lay in a hospital bed. I took a chance against the pain and turned my head to peer at the room around me. Slouched in an awkward position in an extremely uncomfortable looking chair was the love of my life. Suddenly, the door opened and a nurse walked in with a vital signs machine, startled to see me awake.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” she apologized.
“No, you’re fine, I was awake. What happened? How did I wind up here?” I cleared my throat, when my voice came out on a croak.
She didn’t say anything at first as she walked over to check the monitors and began writing down what I assumed were the numbers displayed on them. She stepped over to me and took my vital signs. “Are you in any pain?”
“Only when I move,” I groaned.
“Understandable. Do you remember anything?”
Not wanting a repeat of the agony when I tried moving my head, I kept myself still. “I remember driving over to my,” I paused, “girlfriend’s house. After that the rest is blank.”
She offered me a sympathetic smile. “You were in a car accident. You have a concussion and a broken leg. Let me go get the doctor, and he can speak more to you. Press your call light next to the bed if you need anything.”
I nodded absently as she walked out of the room. I laid there for a while trying to stay awake, when I heard rustling from the other side of the room. I eased my head to the left and watched as Penny slowly wakened. She stretched her arms above her head, and I gave a little moan as her shirt pulled taut across her breasts. She jumped, as if startled, and a flash of relief sparked in her eyes. She leapt from her uncomfortable perch and rushed over to kneel beside me as she grabbed my hand. “Marcus, thank God, you’re awake.”
“This certainly isn’t how I expected our next meeting to go.” I chuckled in spite of the pain in my head. “God, everything hurts. It’s like I was hit by a truck.”
Penny gave a watery laugh. “Well, Sir, you kind of were. Do you remember what happened?”
As I began to speak, the nurse and doctor walked in. They examined me and asked me a series of questions, while Penny remained unobtrusive in the background and listened. The doctor recommended I remain in the hospital for a few more days for observation and after their brief conversation both the doctor and the nurse left us alone.
“So, Sir, I mean Marcus, can you tell me what happened?” Penny asked again.
“I like hearing you call me Sir again. Honestly, it’s all a little hazy. I do remember that I was on my way to see you,” I replied, almost sheepishly. I knew I’d shocked her. She hadn’t heard a peep from me for two months and out of the blue, without a phone call or text or notice of any kind, I had been on my way to see her.
“Wh-Why,” she stuttered and pointed at me accusingly. “Why now? I mean, that last time we talked you said all I thought needed to be said. You left me Marcus. YOU left ME. Not the other way around. I thought you loved me and then without warning, you left. You didn’t return my calls, and believe me, I called you more times than was healthy. I went to the club for weeks waiting for you to show up. I didn’t get anything in return except silence. So tell me, Marcus, what makes now different than two months ago?”
She waited with her arms crossed pushing her luscious breasts upwards and her toe tapping a staccato on the tiled floor. I sighed heavily and weighed every word before it left my mouth.
“First, let me tell you how sorry I am that I hurt you. In hindsight, I probably should have handled the situation differently.” I held my hand up when she started to interrupt me. “Let me finish, please. There is a lot you don’t understand and that I kept from you. Things about my personal life outside of my relationship with you that I didn’t want you to be involved in.” Seeing the hurt flash across her face, I rushed on to explain further. “It was for your safety, Penny.”
I needed to tell her everything, but exhaustion took over. I tried to control the yawn that threatened to escape. I lost the battle. I needed her to stay until I could make her understand. She took pity on me, because she stopped me from continuing. “Marcus, you don’t have to explain right now. You just woke up and I know you’re exhausted and in pain. Get some sleep and I’ll be back in a day or two.”
I tried to say thank you, but I was asleep again before she’d finished speaking.
The next morning I woke in much less pain than the day before. I had timed it perfectly, because Penny walked in my room fifteen minutes later.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I told her when she entered the room, her hesitancy evident.
“To be honest, I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to come back. I realized that I deserved the truth.”
“Yes, you do. Please sit down, this is going to take a while.”
Almost against her will, she moved to the recliner she’d woken from yesterday and sat down, waiting impatiently for the explanation I hoped would grant me her forgiveness for leaving the way I did.
“When I was young, I fell in love. I met her our junior year of college and we dated for almost a year. She stopped coming to class one day. She moved out of her dorm, and when I tried calling, I heard only a recorded message telling me that the number had been disconnected. She had kept her family life quiet. Not once in the entire year we dated did I meet either of her parents, although I tried to push the issue a couple of times. It upset her
so much that I eventually stopped asking. So I had no way of finding her.” I paused for breath and took a sip of water to wet my dry mouth.
Penny had relaxed since her initial stiffened posture when I first began my story. “I gave up ever hearing from her again until about seven years ago, when, suddenly, I received a phone call. It was Grace asking me if I would please meet her for dinner. I should have said no, but I didn’t. I mean, she had been my first love, and I never forgot her. I had even started searching for a ring. I had wanted to marry that girl, and I thought she owed me an explanation. Two days later, I met her for dinner at this hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant about an hour from where we went to school. She didn’t even look like my Grace. She was a ghost of her former self. She’d lost so much weight to the point she was almost skeletal. She proceeded to tell me about her billionaire businessman father and how he knew she’d been involved with someone. He didn’t know it was me since she had kept me away from them. He’d gone ballistic, wanting to know who had been defiling his daughter.”
I peeked at Penny to try and gauge her reaction. When I didn’t notice a change in her posture, I continued. “You see, I’d already been experimenting in BDSM back then, and Grace was interested in it as well. Apparently, her mom had seen some crop markings on her one day and told her husband. Grace freaked out when he threatened to kill the man she’d been seeing so she left, trying to protect me.”
After this statement, Penny moved to the edge of her seat in rapt attention now. Her gaze was fixated on me, and she was wringing her hands in her lap. She nodded for me to continue.
“She told me how within a year after she left me, she married the son of one of the men who worked for her father. Soon after the wedding, her husband began changing. At first, it was verbal abuse. Then it escalated to physical abuse. She lived in fear for her life for ten years. She wanted out, but didn’t know how to get help. I was the only person she thought to turn to. Coincidentally, Donovan was familiar with several battered women’s shelters through his work at the District Attorney’s office, so I put her in touch with him to get the help she needed. I didn’t see her again until two years later when she reached out to me again. She’d gained confidence and was more like the Grace I had fallen in love with. She’d reconciled with her parents and had filed for divorce. We began an affair. It wasn’t a true love affair. We’d both changed too much for it to be anything more than a comfortable relationship. She agreed to try a D/s relationship again, but after living through Evan’s abuse, she wasn’t able to submit to me. I didn’t push her, especially after everything she’d suffered. It was the only time I maintained a vanilla relationship. About two years into our affair, she came to me one day and told me she was pregnant.”
Penny gasped softly at hearing this. I had a child she didn’t even know about. I knew she’d always wanted children and my heart ached because of the hurt she must be feeling knowing I had kept my child from her. I avoided looking at her, because I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. I had slowed in my telling of the story as I began to tire.
“Shortly after we found out she was pregnant, her ex-husband, Evan, happened upon us together at a restaurant. He began stalking her and threatening to kill us both. He became so completely obsessed with Grace that she was forced to get a restraining order against him. One night, he found her and beat her so badly she almost lost the baby. The police arrested him for criminal domestic violence. I don’t know how, maybe a payoff somewhere, but he spent less than a year in jail. While he was in jail, I would get threatening letters. They weren’t specific enough to be traced back to him even though I knew that’s where they were coming from. When Hailey was born, I sent them both into hiding. I’ve been doing everything possible to protect them from Evan and his obsession since then. The entire time he’s been out of jail, he’s kept a low profile and stayed out of trouble.”
“About four months ago, shortly before I met you, I discovered someone following me. I suspected Evan, so I hired a private security firm to confirm it. However, he went to ground and disappeared. Then the letters started arriving. They were vaguely threatening until he sent me pictures of you. I knew then that he’d switched his focus from Grace to you, and I was afraid of what he might do to you. Since Grace was out of his reach, you were the next best thing. Grace was always his target, but he’d do anything to hurt me in anyway possible. He’d already tried to kill Grace once before, and he blamed me for her leaving him. I’m also positive he was the one who almost ran you down the day you and Bridget went shopping. I knew that the only way to protect you was to show Evan that I didn’t care. He needed to see that you were replaceable, especially after that day at the coffee shop when he was within striking distance of you. So I took the only available option. I let you go.”
As I finished speaking, a stunned Penny moved from her perch on the chair and came to sit next to me on the bed. I reached for her hand and laced our fingers as the tears spilled down her cheeks. I didn’t even know who she was crying for. Was it for Grace and her escape from an abusive situation? Was it because at some point, I had loved another woman? Did she cry because all the hurt I had caused her by not telling her about Hailey? Or was she crying because I loved her enough to try and protect her even knowing that I was breaking her heart in the process?
“I know you’re exhausted, but I need to know. You said you were coming to see me the night of the accident. If you left to protect me, then why were you coming back?”
With her question, my entire demeanor changed. Up until this point, I had been serious, but occasionally smiling, especially when talking about Hailey, but then, true grief hit me. My eyes closed against the tears. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore, but she deserved the full truth. I fought the grief that threatened to consume me. I coughed to clear my throat as I continued.
“Evan found Grace. He had an informant working at Connor’s security firm who shared the location of the safe house where I’d housed Grace and Hailey for the last two years. Evan watched the house and discovered the routine of shift change. He broke in one night about a month after I left you and confronted Grace. During their argument, Evan pulled out a gun. They struggled for control of it. During the melee, Grace was shot and killed. When the security guards rushed in, Evan turned the gun on himself. I have spent the last month focused so much on Grace’s parents, Hailey’s grandparents, that I didn’t have time to truly grieve. I needed you. I needed your strength to help me grieve or it would have overwhelmed me. That’s why I was coming to see you.”
Penny let out a horrified gasp. “Oh my God, Marcus. What about Hailey? Is she alright? Where is she?”
“She’s staying with Grace’s parents right now. Thank God, she was asleep when everything happened. I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to her. I’m devastated that Grace is gone. While our intimate relationship was over long ago, she was still the mother of my child, and at one time in my life, I did love her. I’m saddened by the fact that Hailey is going to grow up not knowing what an amazing woman her mother was. That her mom died protecting her.”
Between my fatigue and grief, I was utterly spent. Telling her my story had me completely wiped out. I had nothing left in me today. I tried to ask Penny to stay, but the words wouldn’t form. I thought I heard her tell me to get some rest, but my eyes were already closed and I fell asleep instantly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Penny
A week after the accident, Marcus had been released from the hospital. He had been going stir crazy lying in that hospital bed and told the doctor that if he didn’t let him leave, he’d walk, or crawl if need be, out of there on his own. Knowing how stubborn the man was, I knew he was serious. Marcus wasn’t one to remain idle for long. He had contacted Grace’s parents the second day after he’d awakened to let them know what had happened. They were sympathetic and offered to keep Hailey for as long as he needed them. Marcus had been lucky in that Grace had made sure
that her parents realized he was, and always would be, a part of Hailey’s life. They shared custody of Hailey, and for now, it worked for all of them. I’m not sure where I fit in the puzzle though. I was still so angry that he’d kept so many secrets from me. The second day after Marcus awakened, I returned to my regular life and routine. I went back to work, only stopping in to visit either during a break or for a short visit after my shift. Whenever he attempted to bring up the topic of our relationship and why he returned, I’d change the subject. Our relationship was on rocky ground, and I was unsure if continuing on this route was the right choice. Regardless of his reasons for leaving, Marcus had broken my heart and shaken my trust in him.
After Marcus left the hospital, the phone calls started. I was a coward and ignored them all knowing he wasn’t able to drive over and start banging on my door when I didn’t answer. I was still processing everything and wasn’t quite ready to deal with it. I recognized why he left and even appreciated that he’d been trying to protect me. Regardless, it still hurt. In a real partnership, the couple communicated with each other. That was the first rule he ever taught me. Communication was the key to every relationship. Yes, I knew I’d currently broken that rule by ignoring his calls. He shouldn’t have been keeping secrets from me and told me what was happening. I would have understood and made sure I was careful. He didn’t, and now it had been three weeks since I’d last seen or talked to Marcus.
I talked to Bridget daily. She said she’d been to his house a few times to drop off some food and to help with anything around the house. Marcus was using crutches and tired easily trying to hop around on one foot all the time. I hadn’t even been to the club after those first few weeks since Marcus first left me. There was no reason to. I wasn’t going to scene with anyone. Instead, I sat at home on a Saturday night drinking a glass of wine and reading the latest release by one of my favorite authors. I’d just started a smoldering hot ménage scene, when someone knocked on my door.
