Her Heart's Divide (4 page)

After another day of observation and what seemed like an endless round of tests, Ryan got to come home with a walking cast on his foot. I couldn’t stop touching him.

He smiled. “I’m not going to vanish if you take both hands off me.”

“I was terrified,” I said for the thousandth time.

“I know, babe,” he said seriously. Then he brightened. “But something good came out of this. You and Jack seem to be closer.”

I couldn’t help it. I turned bright red. My husband raised an eyebrow at me.

“Something happen?”

“When we got the call from the hospital, saying you were okay, we about went crazy from relief. We were screaming and jumping off the couches and spinning around.”

Ryan grinned. “The nurse said you shrieked into the phone out of pure happy.”

“Honey, you have no idea. You slept through all the scary parts,” I said in mock accusation.

He took my hand and kissed it. “I promise never to have a massive concussion again.”

“Darn right.”

“So what happened with you and Jack?”

“Well, I hugged him and thanked him for staying with me. And he started to kiss me.” I left out my reaction. “And then he realized what he was doing and stopped.”

“That all? I can’t believe he didn’t do that a week ago.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

“Well, he feels married to you. I couldn’t control myself, thinking you were my wife and not being able to touch you. I’ve been feeling bad for him all along.”

“You don’t…mind? That he kissed me?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at me for a minute. “I think I’d mind more if I didn’t believe he really was from an alternate universe. I could see someone wanting you so much that they made themselves believe you were really theirs. But I just don’t think anyone would make up a whole universe where they’ve bought a spotlight instead of hiring a blimp to promote our big midsummer sale.”

“Or more trucks instead of sedans.”

“Exactly, babe. Anyway, he’s not betraying me by loving you. And I know you’re my girl, all the way. Can’t be jealous unless you’ve got something to be afraid of.”

My husband never ceased to amaze me. I leaned in, as carefully as possible, for his kiss. I meant it as an expression of gratitude for his understanding and goodness, but he didn’t let it stay calm. It picked up warmth and speed.

His tongue was familiar. My lips opened the exact amount they always do when we kiss, and the pattern that always thrills me played itself out. He flicked his tongue along mine and then plunged deeper. Gently he bit on my lower lip and ran his tongue over the soft, wet inner part near my teeth. I returned the gesture and let my own tongue explore.

I couldn’t stop touching him and ran my fingers over his taut stomach, his muscular thighs and the bulge in his jeans. My nipples tightened when I felt him shift under my touch. His breathing was getting deeper, and when he moaned, I slid a hand inside his waistband.

“Do you think we could, if I was careful?”

He smiled at me. “Honey, we could no matter what.”

His broken foot was propped up on a pillow, and the bruising on his right leg was spectacular. I lay down on his left side and resumed the interrupted kiss.

The rough stubble on his chin scraped at my face while his fingertips glided over my ear. The gentle touch made me shiver, and my husband said, “Oh no, we can’t have you getting cold. Need to get your blood moving. Scootch up a little.”

I moved up on the bed, confused, until he lifted my shirt. The shift brought my breasts within range of his lips, and without removing my bra, he enveloped one of my nipples with his hot mouth. I arched my back a little, and he took that encouragement to mean he should slide away the wet lace to better reach my tender skin.

His tongue moving in circles and then flicking across the tip had me making the low sounds of pleasure that he loved so much. I unbuttoned his jeans and gripped him tightly, marveling at the hard smoothness. With my thumb I echoed the motions of his tongue.

“Take off your pants, babe. Better yet…why don’t you imagine Jack is taking them off?”

My clit spasmed, but I tried not to react in any other way. “What?”

“Doesn’t it make you feel good, knowing how desirable you are?”

“I’m married to you.”

“That wasn’t the question.” Ryan moved his hand from my breast to my ass, in between my skin and my underwear. His strong fingers kneaded the muscle while his lips stayed on my breasts.

“I don’t need anyone else to want me as long as you do.”

Now his hand was sliding around to my pussy. He teased me for a minute and then cupped me tightly, with his hard middle finger sliding into the groove. “Of course I want you. But I want to make you happy, Lila, as happy as you make me. And I’ve only got two hands. One hand when we’re lying like this. How would you feel if there were four hands on your body right now?”

He gave me a little push until I was lying on my back beside him. His hand was suddenly everywhere—on my lips, then my nipples, then my clit—in rapid succession. And I could imagine four hands touching everywhere at once.

“That’s so good, Ryan.”

“I know.” He kissed me, his tongue strong and deep. “Now imagine Jack’s tongue on your clit while I kiss you.”

His fingers stroked my clit with short, rhythmic flicks while we kissed again, and the thought of both men in the bed, touching me, made me slick and wetter than ever before.

“Ryan…god…please, Ryan…”

“I want you, Lila.”

I got my pants off with some difficulty and didn’t bother taking Ryan’s all the way off. I straddled him and took his wonderful cock inside me with one motion. He had me so going with the fantasy that I couldn’t control myself. I rode him hard, leaning over his powerful chest. The crisp hair gently abraded my skin, somehow increasing the sensations deep inside me. His hands squeezed between our chests, pulling and rolling my nipples between his strong fingers. All along he was whispering, almost gasping out, what he and Jack working together could be doing to my body.

The orgasm hit hard. I cried out and shook, my nails digging into his shoulders. My husband put his hands on my hips and arched his back, thrusting himself up again and again, and I matched his movements as soon as I could think.

His was head back, his mouth open, and a sheen of sweat covered his skin. I wanted him to come as hard as I had. With my pussy still shaking, I could feel another orgasm building. But when he came, I held off. I loved to feel him coming, his hard cock pumping and his whole body focused on that one moment. I loved to feel him relax and come down to earth, and the way he stared at me with those dark eyes afterward.

He smiled and tweaked one of my nipples. I jumped a little.

“Oh, babe, I’m sorry. You were about to come again.”

“Probably not that close.”

“Don’t lie, silly girl.” He moved his hand down my stomach, slick with sweat, and brushed my clit. This time I jumped a lot and hit his bruised leg. He yelped.

“Oh, no! Sorry, Ry, are you okay?”

He laughed gingerly. “Don’t be sorry. But I think I’d better not startle you like that until the bruises start fading.”

“How long’s that going to take?”

“A couple weeks?”

I groaned and he laughed again. We heard the downstairs door slam, and we grinned at each other when we heard Jack pause at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, guys, can I come in?”

“Hold on!” we both shouted.

“Come on up, man,” said Ryan, after we made ourselves presentable and left the bedroom. “Hey, are you all right?” he asked, concerned, as Jack came up the stairs. Our friend was pale and sweating.

“That banging noise and that orange flash thing. Happened again, and I almost flipped the damned loaner.”

“What the hell?” Ryan and I asked at the same time.

“I wish I knew, guys, because it’s going to kill me if it doesn’t stop.” Jack set the groceries he’d fetched for us down on the table. “It always seems to happen on the old Coller Road, and if there were any other way to get to town in under two hours, I’d take it rather than go that way again. As it is, I still might go around the mountain next time.”

We were wondering what to say when the phone rang.

I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Hey, Li, it’s Allison. Is…my husband there?”

“Allison! Aren’t you in Sedona?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack swallow hard and sit down.

“Not anymore. There are some things I can’t say over the phone, so I cut the trip short. Flew into Roanoke a few hours ago and cabbed it home.”

“Are you ever going to get a cell phone? I could have picked you up.”

“They give you brain cancer, Lila,” she said very seriously.

“You don’t have to glue it to your skull. Carrying it in your purse is fine.”

My best girlfriend laughed. “Talk me into it later. Seriously, is…my husband there?”

This time I noticed the pause. “Yeah, Jack’s here.”

“Thank goodness. I had a premonition.”

“I hope you weren’t driving when the premonition hit you,” I said, trying desperately to keep my voice neutral. Both men winced as I had when they heard my comment.

“I wasn’t, but I really need to come over. Is that okay?”

“See you soon. Uh, Allison, it’s been a really weird couple weeks.”

“You have no idea. See you in a bit.”

I turned the phone off and looked over to see that Jack had turned pale. “What’s the matter?”

“I can’t see her—not yet,” Jack said. “I know you guys say she’s my wife, but to me she’s just a friend and a really good office manager. I need to think about what to say.” He looked at Ryan.

My husband said, “Well, at least she’s the one of us who’s most likely to buy an alternate universe story at face value.”

“There’s that small comfort.” Jack turned to me. “I know I’m asking a lot, but please don’t tell her anything. This is the kind of thing a man’s got to do himself.”

“I’ll try, Jack,” I said.

“Jack, buddy, you’re gonna go down the stairs in front of me,” said Ryan.

“What for?”

“If I wobble on this cast and fall down the stairs, I’m taking your ass with me. Let’s go sit by the river and drink beer.”

“If you fall on me, I can’t carry the beer.”

Their easy banter made me laugh. Watching them walk down to the river brought tears to my eyes. They were both so handsome, so loving and good. I loved my husband, and while I’d always been fond of Jack as a friend and a boss, knowing that he loved me as a wife had brought my old crush back to life. I loved Ryan more than anything. Was I falling in love with Jack too?

Before I could chase those thoughts, I heard a cheerful beeping noise. Allison’s green convertible VW Bug was spraying gravel as she tore down the driveway. I leaned out of the sliding glass door to the deck and waved.

“That was fast! What were you doing? Seventy?”

“At least.” Allison jumped out of the car, and a minute later I heard the back door slam.

“Want a drink?” I hollered from the kitchen. She followed the sound of my voice, and we hugged our greetings. She looked wonderful, tanned and rested.

“No, I’m fine. Look, I couldn’t ask you this on the phone. It would have sounded too weird.” She saw my expression and sighed. “I know what you’re thinking, but seriously, this would have been really weird.”

“You cannot possibly top the month I’m having.” I took a sip of water.

“Did Jack show up believing that he’s not married to me?”

I dropped the glass. Allison shrieked with laughter, but she helped me clean sweep the shards off the wooden floor.

“Alli, it’s fine, really,” I grumbled after she apologized for the tenth time. “What made you say that?”

“He did, didn’t he? He got here and he didn’t know he was married to me.”

I looked at my hands. “I can’t talk about it.”

“You know that’s all the answer I need, right?”

“What makes you so sure that Jack is saying stuff like that?”

“So, you have to promise not to make that face.” She started playing with a clear calcite crystal she was wearing as a pendant.

“What face?”

“That face you always make when I talk about things unknown to science.”

I sighed. “I’ll try.”

“See!”

“I am more willing than usual to suspend my disbelief, okay? That’s the best I can do.”

She got up and started pacing in front of the sliding doors. “The thing is, Jack is probably telling the truth, because he’s not really Jack. I mean, he’s Jack, in that we’re all basically the sum of our experiences, and he’s got mostly the same experiences as our Jack.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I’m confused.”

“I’m not explaining it very well. It started with my new subliminal CD.”

I stifled a groan. Allison had a billion of these things. Some crazy nutjob in California had a synthesizer, a wave machine and a very soothing voice. It was essentially guided meditation and a little autohypnosis, and every single CD was identical, except for his vocal track in the second half of each one. The discs purportedly had subliminal messages that would reinforce his instructions to quit smoking, eat less, be more popular and explore past lives—but not all of those things on one CD. You had to buy a different CD for each concept. The main thing that was accomplished was making the nutjob rich, so really, maybe he was crazy like a fox.

“What was this one for?”

“Getting a glimpse at alternate realities.”

“And why do you want to do that?”

She stared at me. “How can you be not even a little curious to see how things might have turned out in the present if you made a different choice in the past?”

I shrugged and smiled. “I can always ask you if I’m feeling curious.”

“Goon.” She smiled back and then grew serious. “So, here’s the thing. The retreat I was at had a workshop on building a window between our reality and the alternate reality we wanted to view. Lila, you’re making the face.”

“I swear I’m not making the face.” I might have been making a face, actually, but it wasn’t the one that she suspected. I had a feeling I knew where this was going, and I didn’t want to believe it.

“Okay, okay. So with my CD I’d been curious to see what my life would have been like if I hadn’t married Jack. It was the biggest fork in the road in my life, really. But the images I was getting with the CD just weren’t very clear. I thought exploring that alternate reality at the workshop would be…fun.”

My voice cracked. “Fun?”

“Well, it wouldn’t change my decision to marry Jack in the here and now. Honestly, being married to Jack has brought us both a lot of happiness and peace. I assumed I’d see validation for my choice, if you know what I mean.” She sighed.

I was afraid of where this was going, but I had to ask. “So how’d you know Jack’s gone insane in this world?”

“I’m getting there. I’m not going to bother going into all the details because I know how you feel about this stuff, but here’s the short version. There was a ceremony that was supposed to cut a temporary window between the worlds that I could look through. Something went wrong. I fainted and came to literally
in
that alternate world. And—”

“And you didn’t marry Jack in that world because I’d already married him before you realized you cared for him that way.” Now I really was feeling dizzy.

She looked at me kindly. “Yeah. And I had a hell of a time getting back here too. The other people at the retreat realized what had happened right away when the alternate me woke up in Sedona and started raising hell. It still took a week for everything to work out right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the window has to be opened, which isn’t trivial, and it had to be open near to where I was in both worlds, and then both of…me, I guess you have to call it, have to step through at the exact same time because we can’t both be in one world at the same time.”

“You know this is insane.”

“But there’s Jack, completely confused and wondering why he’s not married to you.”

“Yes. There’s that. If you’re the one going back and forth, how’d he get here?” I jumped up and went over to the deck doors, looking out at Ryan and Jack sitting on the dock.

Allison sighed. “The ceremony involves burning a piece of clothing with some of your essence on it—skin oil, sweat, hair, whatever. It’s supposed to draw you and the other you close. My guess is that when the ceremony went wrong, it went really wrong. I swapped with my counterpart, and Jack swapped with his. I guess he’d used the bandanna I brought for the ceremony to wipe his face or something before I packed it. But I don’t know.”

I turned back to face her. “This is unbelievable. Literally.”

“Yeah? Has he been seeing orange flashes of light, with loud banging noises? Holy crap, Lila, don’t pass out on me!”

“How did you…?” I gasped.

“That’s the window. The people in Sedona have been trying to open the window so the two Jacks can get into their proper places. The Jack who belongs here already knows to expect it, because we, uh, got in touch while I was figuring things out, but the Jack who belongs in the world where you married him…doesn’t.”

I tried not to yell. “So you’ve been trying to get him on the Coller Road, because almost no one drives it regularly but him.”

She clapped her hands. “Right. It isn’t safe to build the window around a lot of people. They would have questions.”

“It’s not safe, period. Ryan almost died in the truck wreck that happened when your stupid window scared Jack off the road.”

Allison looked horrified, but before she could say anything else, we heard the back door slam. Ryan called out, “You girls decent?”

“Never!” shouted Allison.

We heard the men laugh, but the amusement died away when they got to the top of the stairs. The four of us stared at each other awkwardly.

“Allison,” began Jack.

“Forget it,” I muttered. “She knows.”

Jack’s face reflected his confusion and relief, and I couldn’t help but smile as Allison started her explanation over from the beginning.