Chapter Forty-Three
A Crock of Shit
This time, my head literally spun, my surroundings swirling in a kaleidoscope of evening colors. My stomach cramped and felt acidic. “I’m gonna throw up.” I stood up off the couch and walked toward the bathroom.
“Sara, what’s the matter?” he asked, following after me.
I dry heaved several times over the toilet before pushing the lid down and plastering my naked ass on it. Tom stood at the entry, leaning a shoulder on the doorframe.
I looked at him, my face contorted from the sick feeling still clinging to my stomach. “And I guess that night you just happened to be naked too, right?”
“I always sleep naked.”
“Convenient, don’t you think?” I challenged him.
“Are you insinuating I wanted this to happen?”
“I don’t even know what this is yet, Tom. But I mean, how the hell does a naked woman just walk into your room? Wasn’t the door locked?”
“I never lock my doors. I hardly ever close them. It’s not like I thought she’d pull that crap.”
I burst into sheer laughter. “You have to be fucking kidding me, right? You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”
“Believe whatever it is you want to believe. You’re going to anyway.”
“Are you also going to tell me she fucked you in your sleep?”
He studied me for a moment. “You know what, forget I ever said anything.” Then he stormed away and disappeared into his bedroom.
I sat alone and nude in his bathroom, wondering what the heck I was going to do with this new information. Still livid from his crock of shit story about Tiffany sneaking into his room naked and from the fact he was sleeping through the whole thing, I hadn’t realized he hadn’t finished his cockamamie story. I still had no clue what really happened on Tuesday. I jumped to conclusions again, lashing out like always. I felt stupid, instantly regretting everything I’d said.
I followed after Tom. He lay on his bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He remained silent.
“I jumped to conclusions before I let you finish.”
Still, more silence.
“Did you hear what I said? I’m sorry, okay? I over reacted. Tiffany just—”
“Baby, I was sleeping,” he finally said. “I had no idea what was going on. The next thing I knew, I had her by the neck, choking her. I almost killed her.”
I blinked fast, completely taken off guard with that statement. “What?”
“She thought she could seduce me while I slept, perhaps that I’d wake up mid-something and then we’d conclude what she started. The only thing I remember is jolting awake from one of my nightmares, still in a fog. I’d been in close combat in the middle of gun fire and men yelling. When I finally came to, I was squeezing her neck so tight she nearly lost consciousness. A few more seconds and I would have crushed her wind pipe. She would have died in minutes.”
I could have been pissed at Tiffany’s sneaky tactics or angry she tried to take advantage of him. The probability something could have happened was all too palpable. But, what I saw in Tom’s eyes, quickly took my anger and fears and reduced them to ashes. Tom was utterly horrified, and it was more concerning than anything else.
It was the honest emotion he exuded that told me he was being one hundred percent truthful. The reality of what could have happened, that he could have killed her, made any feelings of jealousy I might have had simply vanish.
I lay next to him.
“The first thing that went through my mind,” he said, “when the nightmare began to dissolve and I realized what’d happened was, what if she had been you?” He turned to face me. “Sara, her neck was black and blue, I was squeezing so tight. She would have died. She could have easily been you. I just…I wouldn’t be able to deal with it. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ever hurt you. If I ever…”
I reached over and cupped his cheek. “You wouldn’t.”
He turned his face from me. “You don’t know that.”
“You’ve said it yourself,” I reminded him as I sat up in bed. “You don’t have the nightmares as much anymore.”
“It’s a risk I don’t want to take.”
“So, what’s going to happen? You can’t live like this, not sleeping.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch or in the other room.”
I blinked. “You are being ridiculous. I’m not keeping you from your own bed.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to until I can figure out how to control this.” He spoke calmly, but his soft words were not able to hide the dread seeping into his eyes, saturating the ambivalence holding him captive. I’d never seen him so worried.
I placed my head on his chest. “We’ll get through it. We’ll figure this out. Together.”
He squeezed me tight and placed a kiss on my head. “I reassigned her, you know. She’s no longer working as my assistant,” he added out of nowhere.
My spidey senses fired an electrical web inside my head and jolted me up. “Say what, again?”
He sat up. “She betrayed years of friendship. I can’t work with someone I don’t trust.”
My spine tightened. “Yeah, but what do you mean you reassigned her? Why didn’t you fire her?”
He shook his head, a twitching smirk pulling at the corners of his lips. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“Clearly. So, why didn’t you fire her ass?”
“Look, aside from what she did that night, Tiffany has been a good friend and a good employee. I didn’t want her to lose her job for something so stupid. She did what she thought she needed to do get what she wanted. It backfired. What matters is that I reassigned her to our LA branch as the office manager. My new assistant is some geeky dude. Nothing for you to worry about, okay?” he said as he tucked a strand of lose hair behind my ear. “Tiffany is out of the picture.”
I shimmied away from his touch. “Until you visit the LA office. She is never going to be out of the picture until she is no longer working for you—in any capacity. She’s shown she is willing to do anything to get you back.”
“She never had me, Sara. I’m serious. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“I don’t like it.”
Tom looked at the clock. “It’s late. You should be getting some sleep.”
I hated it when he did that, dismissing what I was saying because he was done talking about it. I didn’t have the energy for another argument, so I let it slide. “What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, all right? I’ll stay up and watch TV.”
“Don’t leave me in this bed alone.”
“Baby, please try to understand, it’s not that I want to leave you here. God, it’s the last thing I want.”
“Watch TV here instead.” With puppy-dog eyes and a playful pout, I pleaded with him to stay.
He looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “Who taught you to do that?”
“Do what?” I said, rolling my eyes and pretending I had no idea what he was referring to.
“Get men to do whatever it is you want just by looking so adorable?”
“Not men. Only you.”
He smirked. “I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep.”
“Deal.” I giggled as I slipped under the comforter with him. Like the gravitational pull of a planet, his body snatched me into its atmosphere and slowly dropped me into his world. The safest and only place I ever wanted to be in.
A couple of hours later, I awoke to a heavy and sloppy tongue licking my face. I opened one eye and saw a pair of anxious amber eyes staring right at me. I was lying flat on my stomach with my arm dangling off the bed.
“Bax, what gives? Shouldn’t you be bothering your daddy for this?”
Bax sat down on his hind legs with his tongue sticking out. He whined, putting his paws back up on the bed, licking me and nudging my arm.
“Okay, okay. I get it. I’ll get up. Where’s your dad? Did he forget to take you for a walk?” As I turned around to rise, my hand hit a bulk by my side.
Lying down and completely passed out next to me was Tom.
Oh, snap. So much for watching TV.