Reconstructing Meredith (13 page)

I didn’t ask. I rewrapped it and slid it back into the box. I closed the cardboard flaps, taped them into place, and carried the pictures out to the truck. There, I wedged it between a couple of other boxes. Not enough to crush it, just enough to keep it from being jarred loose while the truck was in motion.

As I walked back into the storage unit, Meredith pulled a large cobalt vase out of a box and held it up, eyeing it.

“Wow, I’m surprised this ended up in here,” she said. It was intricate, in one piece and looked
very
expensive.

“Looks like it survived, though,” I said.

“Yep. It did.” She pursed her lips, still eyeing the vase. “Not a single crack or scratch or anything.” After a second, she let it go, not even flinching when it shattered on the concrete. She looked down at the debris, then at me, and shrugged. “Oops.”

I blinked. “Did you just…”

“Rich gave it to me.”

“Oh. Never mind, then.”

She laughed. “He bought me all kinds of expensive shit when we first started dating.” She kicked a piece of glass and watched it skitter across the floor into the side of a box. “I guess I should sweep this up before one of us gets cut. I’ll be right back.” She stepped around some boxes. A piece of glass crunched beneath her shoe. She looked down, lifting her foot to reveal a large shard that had broken into smaller pieces. She put her foot down again, ground her heel into it, and went out to the truck to get the broom we’d found earlier, leaving a pile of dust and tiny fragments where that piece had been.

I stared at the shattered blue glass. Grinning to myself, I started going through another box of books. I hoped that vase was even more expensive than it looked.

After a couple of hours, Meredith twisted a crick out of her back and looked around at the remaining boxes. “This should be enough for now.” She took her gloves off and tossed them on top of a box. “We need to get everything that’s already in the truck up to my apartment before dark. Trust me, we don’t want to be unloading in that neighborhood after dark.”

“I don’t doubt that.” I took my own gloves off.

We loaded a few more boxes into the truck. Then I pulled the door down and she put a brand new lock on it, one to which she had the key. After making sure everything in the truck was secure, we closed it and headed back to her apartment.

Meredith was right about the timing. By the time everything was upstairs, it was just starting to get dark.

Though we were both exhausted at this point, Meredith looked at everything we’d stacked in her living room and hallway. “I need to get this shit unpacked. Can’t stand having boxes all over the place.”

“Need a hand?”

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, let me at least get you a beer first,” she said. “In fact, I could use one myself.”

“Hey, if there’s beer involved, I’ll definitely stick around.”

She laughed. “Why does that not surprise me?”

We cracked open a pair of beers, returned to the living room, and got started. Just as we’d done all day long, we took out box cutters, sliced through tape, opened boxes, and pulled out the pieces of her past. Newspaper, bubble wrap, and cardboard accumulated on the floor. Every surface was quickly covered with knickknacks, dishes, and whatever else had survived. We stacked books beside bookcases and on tables, to be sorted and shelved later.

At one point, I sat on the couch and pulled books out of a box, stacking them on the coffee table. The covers of two caught my attention as I brought them out. To my surprise, it was a pair of engineering textbooks from my grad school days.

I held them up. “How the hell did these get in here?”

She shrugged. “Well, I never knew when I might need a doorstop or a boat anchor.”

“Don’t blame you.” I flipped through the pages of one. “That’s about all these two are good for.”

“You’re more than welcome to take them back.”

“Oh, no, I’ll pass. I haven’t missed them, and I don’t need them.”

“No, I insist.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” I dropped them on to the table. “All yours, darling.”

“Fucker,” she muttered. “I’m going to leave them at your—” She paused, then laughed. “Oh my God, remember this thing?” She pulled a tiny, ancient television out of a box.

I chuckled. “Jesus, I thought we got rid of that at a yard sale or something.”

“Apparently not. I wonder if it even still works. Looks like some moisture got to it.” She gestured at one side, and it definitely looked like water had gotten into it.

“Might as well chuck it,” I said. “The electronics are probably toast anyway.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like I need it.” She set it down, shaking her head and laughing to herself. She turned to go through the rest of the box.

“I don’t think it even worked back then, did—” I stopped when her expression abruptly changed. Looking into the open box, her lips parted and her eyes widened, but I couldn’t tell if it was disbelief, horror, or both. “What’s wrong?”

“That son of a bitch,” she whispered, but there was no venom behind the words. Just pain. She reached into the box, and my heart beat faster as I rose and stepped toward her.

“Meredith?”

When she brought her hands out, my heart sank.

A few years before he died, her father had made her a music box. He was a master woodworker, and the box was stunning. Dark cherry wood with a lighter wood inlayed on top, spelling out “Meri,” which was his nickname for her. It played “White Christmas,” her favorite Christmas song. I’d never forgotten the day I came home from work to find her crying on the couch with it clutched to her chest. To this day, I still associated that song with her father’s death.

If there was anything among her possessions that meant the world to her, it was that little box, and it hadn’t fared well. Not in those moist conditions and under the weight of the television. It was mostly intact, but one of the legs had snapped off and the lid sat at an odd angle. Meredith worked the lid until it finally opened enough to see inside, which resulted in one of the bent, corroded hinges snapping off on one side. Inside the box, the velvet lining was stained with mildew, and the little mirror was splintered into dozens of pieces. No music played when the box opened, so it was a safe bet the music box itself was damaged too.

Sniffing sharply, Meredith unceremoniously shoved it aside. “Guess I should be happy at least some things made it through in one piece.” She reached into the box to see what else was in it. Without looking up, she said, “Could you put that thing in one of the trash bags?”

I swallowed hard. She wasn’t nearly as stoic about it as she tried to sound. I had no doubt it broke her heart to see that music box destroyed. But what could I say?

Without a word, I picked it up and took it across the room to the trash bags. I carefully slipped it into a bag that was mostly ripped-up newspaper and pieces of bubble wrap.

“I’m going to run a few of these down to the dumpster,” I said.

She looked up and offered a weak smile. “Okay, thanks.”

“Be right back.” I picked up the bag of newspaper along with two others, and headed downstairs.

At the dumpster, I threw two of the bags in, but not the third. I set it on the ground and opened it, riffling around in the newspaper and bubble wrap until I found the music box.

Turning it in my hands, I furrowed my brow and inspected the damage. The music box itself was, as I’d suspected, corroded beyond repair. One leg was cracked, a second missing. There was some damage to the inlay of her name on the lid, and the finish was dulled and scratched. The dovetailing was fine, thank God, but one wall of the box was badly rotted. I’d have to cut that area out and put another in its place.

All in all, the music box was in bad shape, but it could have been a lot worse.

I didn’t want to get Meredith’s hopes up that it was salvageable, but with a little TLC, it was possible. Maybe.

I freed a piece of newspaper, carefully wrapped it around the box, threw the rest in the dumpster, and went to my car. I tucked the music box behind the seat, then shut and locked the car.

I wasn’t the master woodworker her late father had been, but I could hold my own. Hopefully I could fix this thing, even if I couldn’t restore it to quite what it had been before. It meant the world to her, and Rich had broken it. Both of those things made fixing it worth a try.

I gave the unassuming ball of newspaper one last look, then turned and headed back upstairs.

The clock on the microwave read a little past seven. Amy would be here soon, and though I was excited to see her, I couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that what I really wanted to do was call her, cancel, and just sleep for a few hours.

But I didn’t. It was the same feeling I’d had before Kristen showed up one night not long ago, so I reminded myself—repeatedly—that once Amy arrived, my mood would change just like it did with Kristen.

I closed my eyes and tried to work some stiffness out of my neck and shoulders with my fingers. I hadn’t slept for shit lately, and it was taking its toll. The deeper I got into this situation with Meredith, the more I learned about the two and a half of years she’d spent in hell, the more it gnawed at me. When I’d agreed to this, I hadn’t realized just how much it would consume me. Between worrying about her and simply being haunted by everything I learned about what happened to her, it did just that. When I managed to sleep, I dreamed about it all. Whenever Meredith slept beside me, I expected every sound or movement to be the start of a violent awakening from a nightmare, and more often than not, it was.

Sighing, I went into the living room and dropped on to the couch, very nearly tripping over Malia when she darted past me. I’d given her some catnip earlier, so she was completely cracked out and losing her mind. She attacked the kitty condo, sprinted around the living room, smacked into shit. She disappeared into the kitchen, and though I could no longer see her, the
slide-crash
filled me in. A moment later she returned, looking around as nonchalantly as she could before a toy caught her eye. She tore across the carpet, pounced on the hapless toy, missed and somersaulted into the wall.

And I couldn’t even bring myself to laugh at her antics. Or pick up the laser pointer off the coffee table and tease her with it, which was usually more than enough to lighten my mood. Something told me it was going to take a hell of a lot more to lighten this mood than making my cat chase a red dot up the wall.

Rubbing my forehead, I exhaled hard. Amy would be here soon. Once she was here, I’d be fine.

About fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang. Malia startled as if someone had crashed a car into the house. Eyes wide, claws out, hackles up, she looked like she was about to jump out of her skin.

“It’s just Amy, stupid.” I managed a quiet laugh on my way to answer the door. As I reached for the doorknob, Malia took off into another room, and I chuckled to myself. Apparently humans weren’t the only creatures that got paranoid when they were stoned.

When I opened the door, Amy was there with a devilish grin and a low-cut blouse, looking for all the world like a woman who had every intention of sending me to sleep with a smile on my face tonight. In the mood for a brutal flogging, knowing her, and ready to be fucked out of her mind.

As soon as the door was closed behind us, I put my arms around her and kissed her, taking in a long breath of her familiar perfume as I gently parted her lips with my tongue. She dragged her nails down the back of my shirt while I twisted her hair in my hand and pulled her head back so I could kiss her neck.

And I felt… nothing.

Nothing but a sinking feeling in my chest.

Amy broke the kiss and looked up at me. Brushing the pad of her thumb over my cheekbone, she said, “You look exhausted. Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Worrying about your ex?”

I
almost
shuddered. “Basically.”

“How is she doing, anyway?”

“Getting better by the day.” I forced a smile.
Not so sure the same can be said about me
.

“Good to hear.” She furrowed her brow. “You sure you’re okay?”

There was no point in lying to her. She wasn’t responsible for my mood, and I obviously wasn’t going to get it past her anyway.

I let out a breath. “Just exhausted.”

A half-playful, half-cautious smile pulled at her lips. “You’re not in the mood tonight, are you?”

Avoiding her eyes, I sighed. “Would you be offended if I said I wasn’t?”

“With everything you’re dealing with right now? Not in the least.”

I held her close to me again and kissed her gently. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I know you will. For tonight, do you want me to just rub your back?”

That woke up some nerves. No one on the planet gave back massages like she did, and my knotted muscles needed some of the magic from her hands. I smiled and played with her hair. “You’re an angel, Amy.”

In my bedroom, she had me take off my shirt and lie facedown on the bed. I closed my eyes and sighed, resting my head on my arms while she got a bottle of massage oil out of the bedside table. I swore my body had a Pavlovian response to the very suggestion of a massage from her; just the anticipation of her hands eased some of the tension.

She sat over me, straddling my hips. The bottle clicked once, then again, and she leaned to the side to set it beside us. She rubbed her hands together, the soft hiss of oiled skin on skin raising goose bumps all over me.

Her weight shifted forward slightly. Then she pressed the heels of her hands into my lower back on either side of my spine. Groaning, I closed my eyes and lost myself in the hypnotic circles she made all the way up and down my back.

“Jesus, Scott.” She pressed her hand in even harder just below my left shoulder blade. “You are tense.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No, I mean
really
tense.” She dug her knuckle in.

I winced. “Fuck…”

“Sorry. Only way to get the knots out.”

“I know.” I gritted my teeth and forced myself to keep breathing while she worked the stiffness out. After a moment that felt like a goddamned hour, the tension released. She rubbed it gently with her palm, and I exhaled as the pain diminished.

I couldn’t say how much time passed. I almost fell asleep a few times, but right about the time I’d start to drift off, she’d find another knot. Then she’d knead the back of my neck, or my shoulders, or even my upper arms, and I’d relax once more. By the time she was finished, I simultaneously ached all over and felt like a million bucks.

“Have I ever mentioned how much I love your hands?” I murmured.

“You’ve mentioned it a time or two.” She moved off me and set the oil bottle on the nightstand. “Feel better?”

“Much.” I rolled on to my back. She leaned down to kiss me, then laid beside me with her head on my chest. I wrapped my arms around her. She nestled her head beneath my chin, and I stroked her hair.

“I’ve missed you lately,” she said.

“I’ve missed you too.” I nudged her to raise her head, and when she did, I kissed her forehead. I had missed her. My God, had I ever. I even had to stop and think to figure out exactly how long it had been since I last saw her, and cringed when I realized the time had to be measured in weeks, not days. We’d spoken on the phone, sent e-mails and texts back and forth, but this was the first time we’d been in the same room, let alone the same bed, in almost a month.

I wished I could say it was the situation with Meredith that had kept us apart. While that situation occupied a lot of my time and energy lately, it was just another splash of water on this already dying fire. Over the last six months or so, Amy and I had spent progressively less time together. It wasn’t by design, or because of any negative feelings, it was just life. Our other relationships—her marriage to Ryan, my relationship with Krissy—had their own implicit demands that we’d always worked around.

But now, Amy was up to her neck in finishing her master’s degree while she and Ryan dove into the long, stressful process of having their new house built. My employer had had the audacity to cut into my play time with demands of overtime. Life happened, and we had, for some time now, been two ships who could barely find the time to pass in the night.

Though I would never have held it against Meredith, nor did I regret agreeing to help her, I couldn’t deny her re-emergence from my past had happened at the worst possible time where Amy and I were concerned.

I ran my fingers through Amy’s hair. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much.”

“It’s okay.” She lifted her head to look at me. “I’ve just missed you.”

“It’s mutual, believe me.”

She touched my face, and her smile fell a little. “Are you doing okay? I mean, everything you’ve been dealing with…”

I closed my hand around hers and kissed her palm. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“I do worry about you.”

I chuckled. “You and Krissy both worry about me too much.”

“Well, why shouldn’t we? I mean, when you’re left without adult supervision, and—”

“Hey, is that any way to talk to your Dom?”

“You’re not my Dom right now.”

“Okay, good point. But don’t let it become a habit.” I gave her the sternest look I could muster, which wasn’t much because her grin made me laugh.

Then her expression turned serious. “So, everything that’s going on, you’re doing okay with it?”

At the reminder of everything that existed in the rest of my life, that sinking feeling came back, but I nodded anyway. “I told you, I’m doing fine. It’s just been time-consuming.” I caressed her face with the backs of my fingers. “I hate neglecting you in the process, though.”

She smiled. “Just means Ryan’s had his hands full.”

“I’m sure he has.” I laughed. “Have you taught him to flog you yet?”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on. He’d sooner cut his own throat than hit me.”

“Yeah, true. Sorry I wasn’t game for it tonight, I—”

“Scott.” She raised her chin and kissed me lightly. “You’ve got a lot on your mind. I’m not going to get upset about that.” She eyed me. “And don’t try to tell me you don’t have a lot on your mind, because the knots in your back told a very different story.”

Sighing, I nodded. “Okay, yeah, I do have a lot on my mind these days.”

“Everything all right?” She touched my face. “I mean, you said you were helping your ex with some problems, but…”

“Nothing I can really talk about,” I said. “Except to say I’m helping the most traumatized, brutalized sub I’ve ever seen.”

Her eyes widened. “My God, what happened to her?”

“What happened to her,” I growled through clenched teeth, “was a son of a bitch who called himself a Dom, but was nothing more than a sadistic wife beater.”

“Wow.” She exhaled. “I can’t even begin to imagine.” She draped her arm over me and rested her head on my shoulder again. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swore she held me a little closer, a little tighter.

I stroked her hair. “It’s a nightmare, honestly. So, I’ve been worried about that lately. A lot.”

“I don’t blame you. At least she’s in good hands.”

“God, I hope so.”

Amy looked up. “I’m serious. I couldn’t think of anyone better to help someone in her position.”

I managed a half-hearted smile. “You have more faith in me than I do sometimes.”

Her smile was more enthusiastic than mine. “I have faith in you because I know what you’re like as a Dom.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I mean it, Scott,” she said. “If I were in her shoes, I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d turn to.”

“Thanks, babe.” For a moment, I just looked at her, taking her in and caressing her face. My God, it
had
been too long. Way too long.

“What are you thinking about?” she whispered.

“You.” I slid my hand into her hair and kissed her. Touching my forehead to hers, I whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” She drew me closer as the kiss deepened, her shirt brushing my bare chest. I let my hand drift down her side, then under her shirt. Warm contact between her skin and my fingertips made us both inhale and pull each other closer.

I lifted my head and looked at her again. A shiver ran down my spine. Whatever I hadn’t felt when she arrived, it came to me now. I wanted her. Naked, bound, taking whatever I chose to give her, whether I fucked her or flogged her. Holy hell, I needed her.

When I bent to kiss her neck, she arched her back, pressing her breasts against my chest, but there was still too much clothing between us.

“Hmm,” I murmured against her neck, “any chance of a happy ending to that massage?”

She laughed. “I thought you weren’t in the mood.”

“I wasn’t.” With a quick motion of my fingers, I unsnapped her bra. “But I am now.”

~ * ~

Amy squirmed and cried out.

The Saint Andrew’s Cross groaned and the restraints clanked and creaked as she struggled.

I raised the cat o’ nine tails and shivered when her cry fell to a whimper. She was always enthusiastic, but never like this. By now, she’d usually drifted into subspace, quietly moaning and murmuring while I laid knotted leather tails across her back. Tonight, she screamed. Something I couldn’t understand, words that didn’t quite make it to my arousal-fogged mind, but her voice drove me, the shrill sound that started anew every time I hit her. Strike after strike across her back, and with each crack of leather on flesh, she screamed louder.