Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 4) (13 page)

That left me with one
option: walk away and not look back. It was the only option I’d
ever had with Drex, but I’d been too blinded by love to accept it.

“Are you okay?”
Drex asked, wrapping his warm, strong arm around my shoulders.

“Fine,” I said. I
couldn’t have sounded less convincing if I’d tried.

“Scott had no right
to speak to you that way. Son-of-a-bitch. I’ll ruin him.”

No
right?
Was Drex crazy? I tore out of his grip and whirled
to face him. “Don’t,” I said. “Everything he said is true and
you know it.”

“What? Jane, stop.
Don’t listen to that garbage. He’s wanted me to marry Brooke for
as long as –”

“This has nothing to
do with them,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level. “It’s
about me and the people I’m hurting.”

Drex ran his fingers
roughly through his hair. He looked so sexy in his tux that I hated
to look at him, but I had to look now while I could. I wouldn’t be
coming back here again.

His gaze was so
intense, I felt it like a burn in my gut. “Love is never wrong,”
he said.

“Love?” I repeated.

“You know how I
feel,” he said, clenching my hands. “You have to.”

“Please,” I said.
“You can’t do this to me.”

My eyes burned with
tears and I could hardly breathe. I had to get away now or I would
break.

“Do what to you?”
he asked.

I could only shake my
head. Pulling free, I ran toward the row of limos idling in front of
the club. I jumped in the back of one, slammed the door, and locked
it.

“Take me to the
Houston Grand Hotel.”

The driver turned to
stare at me. “This is a private limo,” he said, black eyebrows
heavy below the brim of his cap.

“I’ll give you
five-hundred dollars to make it mine for ten minutes,” I said. “How
does that sound?”

Drex stood at the
window shouting my name. Cameras flashed. I couldn’t look at him.
If our eyes connected even once, I was lost.

The driver gave me a
skeptical smirk. “Five-hundred?”

“Cash. Plus tip if we
go right now.”

“In that case,” he
said, “hang on to your high heels.”

Drex pounded on the
window as we pulled away from the curb. Then the pounding stopped and
the limo was silent. Not matter how badly I wanted to, I would not
look back.

I had no strength left.
I crossed my arms over my stomach and let the tears wrack my body.
Why did doing the right thing have to hurt so much? If leaving Drex
was so good for me, why did I want to die?

“I love you,” I
whispered. I’ll love you forever.”

Saying it out loud only
made it worse. Forcing myself to sit up straight, I wiped my cheeks.
I could fold, or make the best of what little I had left.

From this miserable
moment on, I would rededicate myself to my career, my husband, and
the life I’d spent years building.

I’d heard it was
possible to learn to love someone. And if it was possible, then damn
everything, I could do it.

“How was the
opening?” David asked, pecking me on the cheek the next afternoon.

“Nice,” I said,
letting him take the handle of my wheeled carry-on. “But I’m glad
to be home now.”

He pulled back and
looked at me. All I could see was my plastered-on smile reflected in
his glasses. “You’re glad?” he asked. “Really?”

“Really.”

I went up on my tiptoes
and kissed his lips. They were dry and cool, the most uninviting lips
I could imagine. But a marriage wasn’t built in a day.

A little effort and a
few restored memories and I might be grateful that Drex and I were
finished. I might see how suited for each other David and I really
were. The cerebral professor and the hard-charging lawyer he’d
nurtured as a student. We might be a great intellectual match, a true
power couple.

The operative word
being “might.”

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Starving.”

I was too sad and
nervous to be hungry, but I let him heat up a piece of the lasagna
I’d made before my trip. I would fake it ‘til I made it, no
matter what it took.

“You’re seeing the
occupational therapist tomorrow?” he asked, taking the chair across
the table from me.

“On my lunch hour.”

“It’s helping?”

“I think so. I’m
noticing the difference at work.”

“Good.”

We lapsed into one of
our silences. My fork rang against the plate. All I could hear was my
own chewing and the ticking of the wall clock. Every second was
excruciating.

When I glanced up, I
found David staring at me.

“What?” I asked, my
cheek full of lasagna.

“Nothing,” he said.
“I just – well, I don’t know if this helps, but I’ll say it
anyway. You’re the same person you always were, Karina. You’ll be
fine. I know you will.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

He threaded his fingers
through mine. As I smiled and nodded, my body recoiled.

You’re
not attracted to him anymore
, a voice inside me whispered.
You never will be.

But it was just a
voice, like the voice that kept telling me I’d never get over Drex.
If I didn’t listen to it, eventually it would get quieter. And with
time, it might even go away.

When David tried to
touch me that night in bed, I stiffened and squeezed my eyes shut. I
couldn’t help it. It was as instinctual as pulling my hand away
from a flame.

“You all right?” he
whispered.

He lay beside me with
his shirt off and his boxers on, his small erection pressing against
my hip.

Why was I here? What
had made me marry this man in the first place?

“I’m fine,” I
said, turning away onto my side. “Just tired, that’s all.”

“Usually you’re the
frustrated one and I’m the one who’s tired,” he said, a smile
in his voice.

“I’m sorry. I’ll
feel better tomorrow.”

There was a long pause.
“Is it because…you saw
him
?”

I forced brightness
into my voice. “No, of course not. It was just a long trip. I
probably pushed myself too hard.”

“That’s all it is?”

“That’s all,” I said, staring
into the darkness. “I promise.”

The next morning, I
stopped at Ivy’s house before work. When she opened the door, I
didn’t even give her a chance to say hello.

“Can you talk for a
minute?” I asked. “Alone?”

“Yeah,” she said.
“John just left for work and my shift doesn’t start until 11.”

“Then I’m not going
to beat around the bush here,” I said.

“Isn’t it a little
early for straight talk?” she said, stepping out onto the porch.
“Just kidding. Shoot.”

I sat beside her on the
top step, not sure I even wanted to know the truth. But without a
memory, the truth was all I had.

“Why did I marry
David?” I asked.

“Karina…” She
trailed off.

“Don’t tell me what
I want to hear. Please. Tell me what happened.”

She stared out at her
neatly-mowed front yard. “You really want to know?”

I turned toward her.
“That’s why I’m here.”

“All right,” she
said, her voice hushed. “You got pregnant. Six weeks later, you
eloped.”

“What?” Oh, God. An
honest-to-goodness shotgun wedding, and David hadn’t even told me.
Maybe he hadn’t known how.

“Did I love him?” I
asked.

“I don’t – well,
I think you loved the idea of him. You wanted a family.”

“Did I? So soon?”

She nodded. “You were
an only child and your dad died young. David wanted children as much
as you did. He was older and he’d been ready for a long time.”

“That doesn’t sound
like the worst reason to get married.”

“It isn’t,” she
said. “Unless that reason disappears a few months after the
wedding.”

Her words were like a
kick in the throat. “You mean my miscarriage.”

“Yes,” she said.
“It was really hard on you, and hard on David, too.”

I shut my eyes. I
couldn’t forget him in all of this. He was just as human as I was,
though sometimes he could seem so aloof.

“So…why did we stay
together?”

“The truth?” she
said, looping her arm around her knees. “You drifted apart after
you lost Grace. David couldn’t be there for you. He didn’t want
to talk about it after a while. He worked a lot. But you stayed
because you were afraid no other man would want you.”

“I was?”

“You used to say it
all the time. No man would marry an infertile woman unless he didn’t
want children. You were afraid David would be the only man who’d
ever love you.”

I let out a tearful
breath. It had taken losing my memory to realize that another man
wanted me. Of course, everything might change if he found out I
couldn’t have children, but he never would. He’d never have the
chance to.

“So, how were we
doing lately?” I asked. “Were we happy?”

She squinted into the
distance. “Happy? Uh…”

“Come on, Ivy. Don’t
sugarcoat it.”

“Okay. You
were…afraid he didn’t love you anymore.”

“Why?”

“He was distant the
last year or so. He’d come home late and give you lame excuses.
You’d sit in total silence at the dinner table.”

I snorted. “We still
do.”

“I guess considering
what’s happened, it’s no surprise.”

“But I loved him
once?”

“You were really
young,” she said, shrugging. “He was your professor. You were
star struck.”

“But I don’t
understand why I stayed with him.”

“You don’t give up
on things easily, Karina. You felt obligated. He helped you pay for
law school and gave you a beautiful home. Your mother struggled to
make ends meet after your dad died. It was more than you’d ever had
in your life.”

It all made sense now,
a practical, dismally unromantic kind of sense. “So he gave me
stability.”

“Right,” she said,
her forehead wrinkling. “I hate to use the term ‘father figure,’
but that’s what he was. He was filling in for the man you didn’t
have growing up.”

“But I don’t want a
father figure. I want…”

She stared at me in
silence before giving me a knowing nod. “Drex, right? Who’s the
woman he’s always with on social media?”

“Maybe his ex, maybe
his girlfriend,” I said around the tears in my throat. “He says
it’s over, but I don’t know what to believe.”

Just thinking about
Drex with Brooke turned my stomach. I had to take a deep breath and
force the images out of my mind.

“What does your gut
tell you?” she asked.

“Honestly?”

“Hell, yes,
honestly,” she said. “You’ve never lied to me before. You’d
better not start now.”

“All right. You want
the truth? I love him, and I think he loves me.”

“Oh, shit,” she
said. “I knew it.”

I leaned my head on her
shoulder. “This sucks. What do I do?”

She paused for a long time.
“Sweetie,” she said finally, “you do what any woman in this
situation does. You make a choice.”

In July, I went to a
conference in New York. Every minute of my existence was an effort
since I’d left Houston, but I was getting used to it. I could
almost imagine making a life of this – work, home, doctor’s
appointments, dinners with people I used to know and was getting to
know again. Considering what had happened to me, I knew I should be
grateful.

But I wasn’t. I was
quietly, stoically miserable as hell.

I wanted Drex. Maybe it
was a choice to stay with David and work on my marriage, but it sure
didn’t feel like one.

I tried to be glad for
what I had. I could have been hurt or killed when I was out wandering
by myself, but instead I was back at work and my short-term memory
was better than the doctors had expected. So why did I think about
Drex almost constantly? Why did I feel like I’d never be happy
without him?

I would have to get
over it. It was just a matter of willpower, and I had that in spades.

I took the train back
to Boston on a Wednesday night, one night before David was expecting
me. The final seminar had been canceled, and it seemed like a message
to get home early and be the wife I hadn’t been in a long time.

Tonight, looking out
the train window at the coast of Connecticut, I could almost
understand why he’d delayed looking for me.

If he’d believed I
was having an affair, it must have really hurt him, especially after
all he’d done for me. I tried to picture it from his perspective.
He’d heard suspicions from Lily, and they’d taken root in his
mind. She was only trying to protect him. I’d said things to her
that made her wonder. I was out a lot at night with friends and
co-workers. When I disappeared in Mexico, it fit in perfectly with
the jealous narrative David had concocted in his mind.

I couldn’t forgive
him, but I could try to understand him. He’d taken me back after
I’d been with Drex, after all the salacious news stories. I’d
made mistakes, too. The biggest was falling in love.

On my way home from the
train station, I stopped to buy wine and flowers. I was beginning to
know my neighborhood and recognize shop owners and street names. I
hoped it was the first step toward feeling comfortable in my life
again.

I unlocked the front
door and walked inside. I dropped my house keys into the basket on
the table – a habit I’d always had, according to David, and one I
had just picked up again.

“David?” I called.

I still had to force
myself to sound cheerful, but one of these days I would really feel
it. All it would take was repetition and believing in myself. If I
could go back to work two months after losing my memory, I could do
anything.

I pushed off my pumps
with my toes. “I’m home!” I called up the stairs.

It was after eight.
David taught a late afternoon class on Wednesdays, but was always
back by six-thirty. Or at least he had been for the last three weeks.
Well, this was what happened when you tried to surprise somebody.
They stopped for dinner after work or went out for a drink with a
friend, and your surprise had to wait until they showed up.