Profane (Devout Trilogy Book 2) Page 2

  I’m pissed off that he hid it from me during these past couple of weeks, and that he took exceedingly stupid risks in the process. I’m also pissed off he didn’t just tell me immediately who Ward was and then tell me he wanted to cash in his voucher to fuck the man.

  I would have told him to bring the boy’s ass home and let’s party.

  Because one of my hottest fantasies has always been a three-way involving me, Liam, and Ryan Reynolds.

  This is the second-best situation, and even better, a completely doable one, too.

  Also, the hurting husband inside me knows Liam never would have done this if I hadn’t put the HPF rule into place. Even before I asked Liam if he’d ever cheated on me any other time, deep in my heart I knew the answer to that.

  Never. He’s been faithful. He fell victim to the core structural weakness within his soul that I’ve always known existed. I purposely left that escape hatch in place and propped open with a cinder block. I wanted him to know I trusted him, loved him, and nothing he confessed to me would make me hate him or run away from what we have.

  You might think that’s naive of me, but I read it in his words to Ward. It tore him up inside that he’d broken our vows, and the only reason he was keeping it a secret was to protect Ward from me. Later, that Liam knew he needed to find a way to break this to me that wouldn’t hurt me, and that would simultaneously protect Ward. So Liam wasn’t planning on stringing both of us along for years. The dumb motherfucker simply jumped the gun on cashing in, and just hadn’t worked his way through his plan for the reveal.

  I get it.

  Maybe if Liam had closure with Ward back then, he might have been able to move on and heal more readily and not done this.

  Maybe if Ward hadn’t ghosted on him.

  Maybe if Ward had left more than I’m sorry written on a piece of paper, a little explanation.

  Maybe if Ward had picked up the goddamned phone and talked to Liam, maybe we wouldn’t be here.

  Lot of maybes, sure, but they all point to one conclusion—this is all Ward’s fault, when everything’s said and done.

  Because he easily could have said no to Liam that first day when they talked in Liam’s hideaway office. He didn’t have to drop to his knees for my husband.

  The truth is, Ward didn’t want to say no to Liam.

  Meaning he still loves my husband.

  He broke my husband’s heart in ways I never could mend, no matter how hard I’ve tried to love Liam’s pain away. There were always shards of this trauma and grief deeply embedded within Liam’s soul and far beyond my reach. Like literal shrapnel, there was too much danger to operate, meaning the fragments would have to stay in place, or risk greater injury.

  Liam might have recovered in many ways since losing Ward, but he never truly healed.

  I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen now, but here’s how I look at it. Even if Ward ends up riding off into the sunset with his wife and staying married, maybe now, finally, all these years later, Liam might be able to set aside his burden and move forward and let me love the last of his pain away.

  There can be closure.

  Either way, my husband can finally have a chance to heal from the inside out.

  I hope.

  A lesser man might walk away, turn his back on the greatest love he’s ever known, and let his old pain keep him locked in destructive patterns.

  Am I referring to myself in that sentence, or to my husband?

  Maybe both.

  Definitely both.

  Perhaps it even describes Ward, too. I don’t know.

  I love Liam. I would readily kill or die for him.

  Literally kill. I haven’t yet, but I’ve come damned close a few times.

  I wish I was kidding about that.

  Okay, so Liam’s worry that I might have sabotaged Ward’s life had I known his identity before isn’t exactly an… unfounded one without merit, shall we say?

  I hate to admit that because I don’t want Liam knowing every little detail of my sordid professional history. I’m not exactly proud of some of the things I’ve done. It’s always justifiable. I consider it driving the karma bus over someone’s dogma.

  Before Liam chose to cash in his HPF, I might have done exactly that to Ward, too, if I could have taken revenge on Ward without it somehow splashing back on my husband or myself. Although, from what I’ve learned, Ward’s father is still a mega fucking asshole, and a dangerous one, politically speaking.

  A well-funded one.

  Liam wasn’t exaggerating when he said he worried about Mason Rutherford Callahan’s extended reach. From what I’ve learned about that man over the past couple of weeks, he is a very dangerous political operative, with even more dangerous friends, and it’s the other reason I have held off triggering any ratfucks that could implicate Ward in anything.

  There’s no way I would do that now, though. Ruin Ward, I mean. Because I know it would hurt Liam if I hurt Ward. I might be angry, and hurting, but Liam is my heart and soul and if he loves something, I will do whatever it takes to love and protect it.

  Even if I hate it.

  In the case of one Senator Ward Mason Callahan, at first glance he’s not exactly easy to hate. Especially as hunky as he is.

  You think I won’t try to figure out a way to make this work? To wrench Ward’s head out of his fucking ass, free him from the evil bitch he’s married to, pry him from his father’s clutches, and completely capture him so he’s ours?

  Yeah, if you think I won’t, you definitely don’t know me.

  I saw the agonizing emotional torture my mother endured over the years before losing my father. I would never wish that pain on another soul.

  Especially not my husband. A man who’s already suffered more in this life than he ever should have. I will get my vengeance, and take my pound of flesh straight out of Ward’s ass, one way or another.

  Then, and only then, when I’m certain Liam’s finally hit a point where he can vent the anger and pain he’s suppressed throughout all these years, will I let Liam freely have Ward again and allow them to manage whatever’s still left between them.

  All while trying to protect the three of us from Ward’s father as best I can.

  Because I am a realist. I know if Liam can’t finally purge that anger and heartache and clean out the wound, even if I stay and send Ward away, eventually that rot will poison our marriage. The only reason it hasn’t before now is that my love for Liam and his for me were completely focused on each other and created an antiseptic atmosphere within him, with our dynamic and relationship, and it didn’t allow the infection to spread and destroy us. We safely cocooned it.

  Ward’s return shattered that cocoon and has allowed the poison to spread once more.

  With those protective walls destroyed, it’s only a matter of time before everything withers and dies in the path of the virulent contagion. There’s not enough love and prayer and begging and pleading that could save it. This decision of mine isn’t some perverse profaning of our sacred vows—it’s practicality.

  The only thing now that can save our marriage is Ward, I’m sad to say. Either by Liam sending Ward away of his own free will, or by us absorbing Ward together and letting him finally inoculate us and neuter the poison’s effect.

  I’m a very practical kind of guy, very analytical. It’s what I do, and I’m damned good at it. Running the possibilities through my mind, I know letting Liam atone how he wants to is another recipe for disaster. He’ll always feel guilty, he’ll always want to grovel.

  I don’t want that.

  I want my fucking Master back. That means I need to drive this runaway car we’re in through the fiery valley of Hell as fast as I can without stopping to give us time to catch fire and burn. I can hit the brakes and steer us to safety once we’re past the worst danger.

  Because I am now the aforementioned guy working through his old trauma in the best way he can. At least of the three of us, I’m self-aware enough to ad
mit that. I know to breathe through the pain and let it flow through me and process it in a better, healthier way.

  I cannot send Ward away, even if Liam says it’s okay to do that.

  It has to be Liam’s choice.

  Right now? I want to turn Ward into raw hamburger and drive him hard and deep into subspace and have him realizing that he could have a twofer, if he can ditch his fear and simply accept the situation. He can have his Master back, he can have me as not just his Sir, but as a brother, of sorts. He can shed his unhappy sham of a life—and wife—and finally start truly living.

  And we could do it safely, if the two of them will simply listen to me and be damned careful. Managing optics is one of my strengths. I’ve become an expert at it over the years I’ve worked for the congressman. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. I’ve learned more from the mistakes of others and watching what not to do than I ever could have in any PR class.

  After taking a deep breath, I continue up the stairs, because right now, Ward is on his way here.

  And I have a husband to tie up before Ward arrives.

  Chapter Two

  Then

  Many of my childhood memories, especially the good memories, were lost thanks to the toxic swamp of my teenage years.

  It seems that the emotional trauma I endured and survived created an odd filter of sorts, one which prevents most everything but bad memories from appearing in my brain when I try to think of “good times” growing up. Maybe because it was so difficult to reconcile the bifurcated nature of my upbringing. We went from what felt like being the Brady family to the Manson family in the space of a year.

  Most of the happy, or at least good memories, I can recall now center around my mother, even though I know from photographs in albums that my father was a good dad when I was younger. Many of those few remaining good memories are very benign, unremarkable. Activities such as making brownies, or Mom helping me with my homework.

  Going to church with her.

  Church increasingly became a refuge for both of us while Dad slept late on Sundays. We would attend church, then have lunch somewhere and go grocery shopping.

  By the time we returned home, he was frequently awake and gone.

  I learned not to ask where, because I didn’t want to know. The older I got, the more I understood he was out trying to score drugs or getting high.

  Or getting laid.

  Sometimes, all of the above.

  I hate that my last memory of my mother is seeing her in her coffin. The only comfort I have is that the final words she ever heard me say to her were, “I love you.”

  And they are the last she ever said to me. I always said them. Before I’d return to college from my visits home, I always hugged her tightly and took pictures with her, which I’d text to her so she’d have copies.

  While she grieved my father’s death the year before, at least I was able to make her smile more in the last year of her life than she had in the nine years prior to him ending his with a needle in his arm, finally completing what the accident started.

  I personally think it’s more correct to say she grieved the loss of the man he’d been before the car accident that upended our world, instead of his actual death. His death meant her hope of him ever finding recovery and returning to her died, too.

  My mother loved my father fiercely, even in his darkest moments. When I am sixteen I sit her down one Friday night, during my father’s latest disappearance of over two weeks at this point, and gently confront her about it.

  “Why won’t you divorce him?”

  She sadly smiles. “Because we don’t leave those we love when life gets hard, honey.”

  “This isn’t ‘hard,’ Mom. He’s a junkie and a drunk.”

  “He hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.”

  “Maybe he needs to lose us to hit it. Did you ever think about that?”

  I’ll never forget her sad sigh. “It’s complicated, sweetheart. I know it doesn’t look like it is, but it is.”

  I finally blurt it out. “You know he cheats on you when he gets high, right?” I still can’t erase from my mind the image of seeing him walking into a movie theater the night before, loudly laughing and staggering a little, with his arm draped around a trashy looking woman who could have been a central casting pick for Hooker Number 1 in any given police procedural TV show.

  Needless to say, I do not see the movie. Instead, I tell my friends my mom texted me with a plumbing emergency and needed my help.

  They didn’t know my father. Since the age of thirteen, I’d been telling people my father was dead.

  The truth was, the man my father had been died not long before my tenth birthday, when the car wreck nearly killed him.

  She slowly nods. “I know,” she quietly says. The heartbreak in her tone forever severs any potential future love I could hold in my heart for the man who sired me, even if he did get into recovery. “But he’s sick,” she adds. “The painkillers. They weren’t enough, and he needed more. That’s what led to his addiction.”

  “If you’re only staying with him for my sake, can we kick him out and change the locks? I hate him and what he’s doing to you. If he was trying to go to rehab or something, okay, but he’s not.”

  “I’m not divorcing him.”

  For the first time in my life, I find myself fighting for a loved one. “Mom,” I say, channeling a strength I don’t feel. “I’m changing the locks tonight. I already bought them. And if he shows up tomorrow, I’ll hand him his stuff and tell him not to come home until he’s in recovery.”

  She stares at me, tears welling in her eyes. “I can’t kick him out.”

  I reach over and squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to—I will. But you can’t give him a new key. If you do, I’ll change the locks again and call the cops on him and say he tried to attack me. You know he’ll be drunk or high if he shows up. That means if he tries to leave, and the cops are here, they’ll pop him for DUI. You want him in jail? Maybe he should go to jail and be forced to get clean and sober.”

  “He might never come back,” she whispers.

  I hug her, because I think I finally understand her motivation, even though it’s later in my life I stumble across a more likely truth. “Mom, if he’s not willing to get better when he has us and has every reason to try, then he’s not going to do it. Kicking him out will at least help you and me have peace. We cannot keep living like this. I’m worried that when I leave for college, he might hurt you one night, and I won’t be here to protect you.”

  He hasn’t laid a hand on her—yet—but some of their more recent fights have turned pretty heated on his part, and he’s punched a few walls.

  I already know where he’s staying during this latest series of disappearances, and I have a plan. Tomorrow, I’ll pack all his clothes after Mom leaves for work and drive them over to where he’s staying, and dump them.

  At least he can’t drain their bank account. Mom cut off his access to that years ago, and was able to salvage most of the balance of the insurance settlement before he smoked it, or shot it up his arm, or drank it.

  Or spent it on some whore.

  She did that mostly because she knew she had to take care of me and keep a roof over our heads. It meant she could keep her job working for a local grocery store, which didn’t pay a lot, but she didn’t need a second job to make ends meet.

  We had to be careful, but there was enough there to create a pre-paid college fund for me that meant I could get my education and not feel guilty about her future. She wisely invested in retirement funds, thanks to my father’s pre-accident tutelage about those kinds of things, and she got a life insurance policy and named me the beneficiary.

  She took one out on Dad, too, for all the good it’ll do us.

  Mom finally nods, crying. I cry with her. After she goes to bed, I change the locks and swap out the key on her keyring.

  Late the next morning, when I knock on the door of the shitty apartment where Dad’s lates
t “girlfriend” lives, I realize it’s a different woman than I saw him with at the movies. He takes a never-ending string of low-paying jobs that will hire someone with a sketchy employment history and increasingly sketchy personal grooming habits.

  She looks me up and down. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Paul’s son.” I toss the first garbage bag inside. “I’ve got three more. They’re all his clothes. Congratulations, you now have custody of him.” I also shove an envelope at her. “Trespass warning. Locks have been changed. He shows up, he’s getting arrested.” I turn to grab the other bags from where I staged them on the stoop before I ever knocked.

  “What?”

  “What part of that don’t you understand?” I toss the second bag inside.

  The paperwork is bullshit—I copied it from a legal website. I know it probably won’t stand up in court, especially since Mom and Dad are still married.

  But he might not realize that. Especially if he’s strung-out or drunk.

  The woman’s already ripping open the envelope to read the paperwork. “His son? I didn’t even know he had a kid.”

  Yeah, that makes me feel better. “Terrific. He’s got a wife, too, if you weren’t aware of that. They’re still legally married. But feel free to tell him I’ve been telling people he’s dead for years. Because I have.”

  I grab the last two bags and heave them in. “He shows up at the house, he’s getting arrested. I’ll also tell them he’s fucked up, and they’ll add a DUI to his charges. So whatever you have to do to convince him to forget he ever had a wife and kid, I suggest you do it. He’s your problem now. Have a nice life.”

  I turn to leave, almost expecting her to call after me, but she doesn’t. I hear the door shut and when I get in my car, which was Mom’s old one before she got a new-to-her one last year, I glance back almost expecting the door to open again and for my father to race out to talk to me.

  In fact, I realize I’m hesitating now, even though I’ve started the car.

  This is his last chance to put in the bare-minimum to show me some sign of love remaining within him.