“You’re making me self-conscious, staring at me like that.”
He smiled but didn’t move his eyes from her. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“What about?”
“How to help you. How to fix what I broke.”
She abruptly pushed her plate away; using more force than she’d intended, she almost sent it all the way across the table. He watched it go.
“No, Len. I told you. It’s not for you to fix, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It is for me to fix. For the club to fix. You’re club. Right?”
She stared at him. He was right. But it felt wrong. She didn’t know why.
“We take care of our own. Right? Doc, don’t be stupid. You can’t do this on your own. And you don’t need to.”
“What is it you think you can do? I love you. I love the Horde. You know that. But what pull do you think you have to undo this or make it better?”
“You get to keep your license, right? Still can practice?”
“Yeah. But there’s no one who’ll take me on. No hospital, no private practice. Not without a reference from County. That’s a huge flag.”
“So hang a shingle.”
Tasha laughed and stood up from the table. “That right there shows why you can’t help me. You have no idea what goes into opening a private practice. The expense. The equipment. Finding patients. Dealing with insurance companies. It’s insane. I can’t handle all that on my own.”
Len stood up, too, and walked over to her, grabbing her arms gently. “You’re not listening. You’re not on your own. You don’t think we owe you something—for all you’ve done for us? What you’ve given up for us? We can help you. When the club knows about this, I know we’ll help you.”
“Fuck! You don’t owe me.” When she tried to pull away, his hold got less gentle. Her heart was racing. She hated the way he was talking about the Horde as if it were separate from her. She had no delusions about her place in the club family—or, at least, she didn’t think so. She was not a member. She was the daughter of an original member, a man who was long dead. And she had chosen long ago to put some distance between herself and her family. But they were her family. And she hated to hear him say “we” and “us” as if she were separate from that. She knew what he was talking about. He meant the men who sat around the table in the Keep, who made the decisions, and she was not a part of that. No woman ever would be. But it still hurt, somehow. She didn’t understand it herself, but it was upsetting her badly.
“You don’t owe me, because I did what I did for my family. Please don’t talk about it like you have to balance a ledger.”
“No, Doc. Listen. We need each other. Hear me out. You have to be a doctor. You love it. You’re good at it. You are needed. We need you—and I don’t just mean the club. Signal Bend needs you. Remember how long it took to get Isaac to the hospital after C.J….” He drifted off. None of the Horde talked easily about C.J. any longer. “We had to bring Hav’s kid in ourselves. Remember that? When we carried him in on a fucking board from Isaac’s shop? The town needs a doctor. You need to be a doctor. And we have money. Let this fucking job we’re stuck in do some good.”
She didn’t bother to wonder what ‘fucking job’ he was talking about. Some kind of trouble, obviously, and none of her business. But her brain was running triple-time, trying to work out whether Len’s idea had merit. It sounded good. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t already considered going out on her own. She’d considered the idea and discarded it. The undertaking was enormous. It wasn’t just a matter of putting up a stand on the street corner and hanging a sign that said, ‘Medical Help 5¢—The Doctor Is In.’
“I’m not a general practitioner, Len. I’m an emergency specialist.”
He scoffed at her. “Come on. You’re telling me that you don’t deal with earaches and sore throats in the ER? Seems to me you’d be fine as a country doctor. Bored, maybe.” He grinned. “But we can probably help keep it interesting.”
“I don’t think you understand how much money we’re talking about. Shit, I don’t even understand how much money we’re talking about.” They’d been talking too long about this; she was losing her equanimity as the doom cloud that was her future rose up. She could hear her voice getting shrill. “And staff! And I’d need patients—ones who have insurance. Len, it’s crazy. It is not a workable plan. It’s not. It’s just not. It’s crazy. It’s—”
He pulled her close and kissed her, taking the rest of her sentence into his mouth. His tongue soothed her and his hands caressed her until she was calm again; as soon as she relaxed, he pulled back. But not far; he was still leaning close, looking seriously into her eyes. “Let’s at least play it out. Get some numbers. We’ll see what we can do to understand whether you can make a living that way. A lot of Signal Bend is starting to find work. We’ll never be much more than a wide spot, but people are working. They need a doctor. Maybe we can see to it that they’re insured.”
She didn’t know what to say. She shook her head, but she wasn’t even sure what she meant by the gesture.
“Are you telling me you don’t want it? If that’s true, it’s okay. I’ll drop it. But say so.”
Being a country doctor was not her dream. But being a doctor was. She wasn’t sure how’d she feel about being so deep in Signal Bend again, but she was less sure it was a problem she’d truly have to deal with. She didn’t see how they could get all these different parts to mesh. But she was out of options. She’d been out of work for almost six weeks, and still had no idea even where to turn for the next job. This was probably a dead end, but it was a direction, at least.
“I want it. If we can make it work.”
He grinned. “That’s my girl.”
The possessiveness of that phrase struck her hard, and when he came in to kiss her again, she held him off. “Len, we need to figure this”—she waved her hand between them—“out. What are we doing?”
He stepped back, releasing her arms. “Yeah. I don’t know. So let’s talk about it.”
She took his hand and led him to the sofa. When they sat, she tucked a leg under and turned to face him. It occurred to her that they probably should have gotten more dressed to have this, or any, serious conversation. He looked distractingly good sitting there bare-chested, the top two buttons of his jeans undone so that just the slightest hint of hair was visible, reminding her what was behind his fly. And she was in her robe again. It felt like days since she’d been dressed.
She took a breath. “I’ll start. I think you were right yesterday. There’s something else. More than sex. I’m interested in pursuing that. But you and me, we’re not an obvious match, Len. Maybe we don’t match with anybody.”
“Or maybe that’s why we’d be a good match. Look, Doc. I’m not romantic. I think all that flowery, googly-eyes shit is stupid. And I like to be alone. I need it. I guess it’s kinda funny, then, the way I like to fuck.”
Tasha was no stranger to group sex herself. “I get it. All the pleasure—even more pleasure—without the intimacy. Just bodies at play.”
His eyes went wide, and he stared for a moment, his mouth open. “Christ. That’s it. But I’ll be straight. I was jealous last night. I got over it, but I liked it better when Nadia was gone. Not my usual M.O.—that’s why I know something’s up here.”
She nodded. “I definitely think we need to be straight, because I don’t think either of us plays by the rules. I like physical connections with friends, but that doesn’t mean that I want to be bound to them romantically. And liking more than one sexual partner doesn’t mean that I don’t want a life partner. I’ve had serious relationships, but I’m not that good with pure monogamy. I think there are limits to how sexually interesting two people can be to each other long-term. I’d be reluctant to start something that had that kind of rigid definition of monogamy. I think it’s destructive, really—I know it is—and doesn’t accommodate the realities of human nature.”
He laughed
. “Okay, slow down. Not sure I get you. Is there another kind of monogamy?”
“Polyamorous monogamy.”
He laughed again—harder this time. “What the fuck?”
“There are a few different ways to define it. But I mean one mate, multiple sexual partners.”
“Christ, Doc. That’s hippie shit.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Maybe. Here’s what I’m saying. I really liked what we had last night—before and after Nadia especially. I did feel something click deep with us. Maybe it’s because we know each other already, the foundation is already there. I don’t know. But I liked what went on with Nadia, too.”
“I told you—I was jealous of her.”
“So was I. And that’s very interesting to me. I thought I burned off all my jealousy a long time ago. But I also don’t see you or me doing very well in a traditional, monogamous situation. And I think we’re starting this thing off too far down the line to pretend that we’re not doing something serious if we do anything at all. We know each other too well to start at the beginning.”
With a shake of his head, Len said, “I guess I’m an idiot, because I’m not following. Do you want to be serious or not? I’m too old for games, and I’ve been around long enough to know what’s going on in my own head. I’m already serious, Tasha.”
She felt a powerful thrill at that. But she focused. This was important. She knew him too well to sweep his tastes behind them as if after one night with her he had suddenly eaten his fill from the pussy sampler plate. And she knew herself, too.
“I like that you’re serious. I want that, too. But I’m not that much younger than you are, Len. You know I’m forty. I’m too old to start something that’s set up to fail. I’d like to set us up to succeed. And that means being realistic about who we are. I don’t think we were jealous because we didn’t want Nadia in our mix. I think we were jealous because we didn’t know what it meant that she was there. We need to establish our boundaries.”
“Like rules for fucking around?” His brow was drawn—whether in consternation or concentration, she wasn’t sure.
“Well, my first rule would be no fucking around. What we do, we do together. Even if one of us chooses simply to watch, we are always both involved. That’s the cheating line for me.”
“Is all this about Isaac?”
That shocked her. It came out of nowhere, she thought, and it pissed her off. “Is your shit about Shelley?”
He flinched. “Alright. Sorry. This is…you are…not like other women. I’m just trying to keep up. This isn’t the talk I thought we’d have.”
“Are you saying you were ready to give up other women for me?”
“I was ready to try. I am ready to try.”
She huffed. Men. “It’s the ‘try’ that’s the problem, hon. Why set the expectation in the first place if you can’t even commit to it right off the bat?”
He didn’t answer. In fact, they were both quiet for long, tense seconds. When it appeared that Len was stuck, staring at the white sheepskin rug at their feet, Tasha said, “I told you a rule I have. What’s one you have?”
He lifted his eyes to hers. After several more quiet seconds, he said, “Nobody fucks you but me.”
“Be specific, Len.”
He looked angry. This wasn’t going the way Tasha thought it would, either. She was beginning to think they were wrong to make this effort. “No cock in your pussy but mine—or your ass, if you’re into that.”
“I’m not, especially. But okay. No pussy on your cock but mine.”
“Deal. Here’s one: I don’t fuck dudes.”
“Of course you don’t. But it sounds like you’re not ruling out other men in the mix. How do you feel about a threesome with another man, if the attention’s on me?” That was a particular favorite scenario for Tasha, but she knew it would push Len to his limit.
“Shit, Doc. Shit. You want me to get in bed with another guy? That’s…Christ.”
“Here’s a place where the word ‘try’ is okay. Would you try that?”
“I got no idea. Maybe.”
“Would you watch me with another man—no penetration?”
“Christ. No. Absolutely not. I got no interest at all in watching somebody take what’s mine. Maybe I could try the…other thing. But that’s…I don’t know. I could try. But four, not three. Another chick. I need to think.”
With that, his willingness to compromise and leave his own comfort zone, Tasha understood that he was, indeed, truly serious. He wanted a relationship. It scared her, and she had a more pressing question than what his rules were. “Why, Len? Why now, why me? I believe that you’re serious. That’s quite evident. But this is a huge change. I’m right that you haven’t been serious with anybody since Shelley, right?” That had been nearly twenty-five years ago.
He turned to sit square on the sofa, no longer facing her. “You know why she left?”
Tasha shook her head, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring down at his hands, laced loosely between his knees. So she said, “No.”
“No reason you would. She was pregnant. She had an abortion. Shared both of those pieces of information with me at the same time.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I…fuck.” He stopped, and his hands clenched. Staring at his fists, he said, “I lost my head. I beat the shit out of her, Doc. Really messed her up. That’s when she left. She called a friend to pick her up that night, and she never came back.”
Still hunched over his lap, he turned his head to her. “I have two secrets in my life. Now you know both of ‘em.”
“We’re the other?”
“Yeah.”
She scooted closer and leaned in to kiss his shoulder, running her hand over his back.
He kissed her head. “To answer your question, I guess after that, something just turned off inside me. I didn’t have any notion about not trusting myself with women, or not trusting women. It wasn’t like I made a conscious decision to be alone. I just didn’t want anything else. And then the tree came down on the house, and I moved into my little trailer—no room for anybody but me. In my house or my life. And I started taking a couple of girls at a time in the clubhouse, and it just seemed to fit me better that way. I mean, I don’t always need a party, but usually I like it better. But now I guess whatever it was that turned off got turned back on. Maybe it was getting shot this time. I thought I was a dead man. I guess I almost was. Now, I feel different from the way I was before. Older. Maybe it’s that. I don’t know.”
“So your shit is about Shelley.”
He smiled. “Just like your shit’s about Isaac. You know that’s true, Tash. The reason you don’t think two people can be faithful and happy just on their own. That’s about Isaac.”
“Who is apparently blissfully, erotically, enthusiastically faithful these days. Right?”
“Bitter girl.”
“No. I’m really not. I was. But that was a long time ago. Still, maybe I learned a thing or two. About myself, too. After all these years of being the way we are, do you honestly think we’d be content with just the two of us?”
After a pause of a couple of seconds, he sat back on the sofa with a sigh. “I hear you, Doc. I do. But I don’t like where all these rules are leading us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you don’t like ‘try,’ but aren’t we even gonna try to be just the two of us?”
No. There was no use in setting unattainable expectations. Only pain came from that. “If we do, what happens if it’s only one of us who isn’t satisfied with that?”
His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to focus more tightly on her, see more deeply into her. “You’re scared.”
Maybe he was right. None of the relationships she’d had in these twenty years had made her feel as conflicted as she did now. She was comfortable in polyamory. Discovering it had felt like finding freedom. Now, she felt disoriented. So she needed to keep to her map.
�
��Len…”
His expression smoothing, he put his arm around her and pulled her to his chest. “Okay, Doc. What other rules we got?”
~oOo~
Two weeks later, Tasha stood at the counter, staring at her phone. Willing it to ring. The room was bright and loud with the sounds of her friends drinking, chatting, and laughing. Miles Davis played in the background—Kerry’s pick. Tasha and Greta, her chef friend, were laying out a spread. Chad, Carter, Kerry, and Nadia were noisily ignoring the fact that they were all being stood up. Len was supposed to be joining them.
They all thought they were being stood up, but Tasha knew to be worried. She just couldn’t tell anyone why she was worried.
Carter, he of the multicolored condoms, walked up to her and put his hand on her lower back. In her ear, he whispered, “A watched phone never rings, my love.”
Carter Tate was an excellent example of Tasha’s varied tastes in lovers. He was only as tall as she—five-eight—and probably fifty pounds overweight. He had shaggy, strawberry-blond hair and a permanent three-day scruff of beard, but not the kind that looked planned. He just always managed to look like he’d forgotten to shave. He was nearsighted, and thick horn-rimmed glasses made his watery blue eyes seem too big. But he had an amazing baritone of a voice, which just rolled over the ears like satin. And he was absolutely fucking brilliant. A philosophy professor at the university in Springfield, he could be a pompous ass, but he had a great sense of humor, too, and Tasha adored arguing politics and ethics with him. And then letting him fuck her brains to mush. He was good at that, too. And he was bisexual as well as polyamorous, so he was very good in groups.
However, things had changed lately for their group, because she and Len had worked out their boundaries for this new thing they had, and getting fucked by Carter was off Tasha’s menu. But tonight was supposed to be about Len meeting her friends, who were also the people that she had sex with, and seeing how he fit with them, and vice versa.
They’d spent a lot of the past two weeks alone together, and it had been fantastic. Too fantastic. Tasha could feel herself getting wrapped up in Len, in ways that she was afraid could cripple her. It was time to bring the mix in. She needed to be reminded of how much she enjoyed unconventional arrangements. And so did he.
Show the Fire (Signal Bend Series) Page 7
