Restored (The Walsh Series Book 5) (14 page)

J
une

I
love my wife
. I love my wife. I love my wife.

That was the only good explanation as to why my trousers were on the other side of the room, my boxer briefs were shoved to my knees, and two fingers were exploring my ass like they were Lewis and Clark and I was the fucking Oregon Trail.

I love my wife. I love my wife. I love my wife.

"Try to relax," I heard over my shoulder. "Just a little pressure."

There was a time when I enjoyed ass play. There was no mistaking the taboo nature of it all, but for me, it was the least intimate option on the menu. No eye contact, no kissing, no more than a lifted skirt and panties edged to the side, definitely no repeats. That time was also marked by my exceptional ability to be an unrepentant dick.

Given that I was the one bent over the table now while cold lube trickled down, down,
down
and two surprisingly long, thick fingers moved inside me, I was feeling more than a little violated. The urge to take out a full-page apology ad in both
The Boston Globe
and
The Herald
was great, although Shannon would beat the snot out of me if I pulled that stunt.

Also, my wife wouldn't be thrilled, and this was all for her.

There was only one problem with riding on that logic: my wife didn't know I was here.

This was a full-on breach of our total honesty agreement, but since losing the baby, my words were all wrong. I wanted Tiel to know that we didn't have to dive back into any robust baby-making activities until she was ready, that my only concern was her, but nothing sounded right. Nothing made it better.

The academic year was winding down, and Tiel had thrown herself into work. It was fully apparent that she loathed this professorship, but it wasn't something she was ready to discuss. Each time I'd ventured into that territory, she'd shut it down with an insistence that her schedule would lighten up when she gained tenure, or it would be easier when she was on top of her research and publication schedule.

She didn't want to go there, and I had a good idea as to why. It was the same reason I didn't want to tell her I was here today.

"Everything looks good," the doctor said as she crossed the exam room. She snapped off her gloves and folded them over each other until they formed a tiny blue ball. If I wasn't slathered in lube and on the tail end of a thorough inspection of my belowdecks, I'd offer a wise comment about the number of blue balls a urologist encountered in the regular course of business.

Instead, I hiked up my boxers and thanked the deities for allowing me to survive that ordeal without an accidental erection. Penises were moody creatures. I couldn't be expected to know how mine would react to this experience, and wouldn't that add some flavor to the indignity of all this?

"Good," I repeated. I sat on the exam table and cringed at the sensation of lube on my backside. "Then—"

She dropped onto the rolling stool beside the table and consulted her tablet. "How long have you been trying to conceive?"

There were several answers to that. Technically, we'd been intentional about having sex during certain times since our wedding five months ago. In actuality, Tiel started keeping track of her cycles in November, around the time we got engaged. But, truly, we stopped all forms of birth control last summer.

"Six months," I said.

The doctor nodded and tapped her screen. "How old is your partner?"

"Thirty," I said.

She nodded again. "Six months at thirty isn't cause for concern yet," she said, gesturing toward me with a frown. "But since you're here and there's a history of miscarriage, I want to do a sperm count and semen analysis, and run a hormone panel. There are some early studies that suggest type 1 diabetes negatively impacts the quality of the DNA in the sperm's nuclei—"

Of course.

Of fucking course.

I know I'm the problem in this equation. Yeah. This is
all
me.

"—but they're limited in scope, and I'm not sold on them yet. We'll run some tests, get some data, and see what we're working with." She started typing. "Can you visit my lab today and leave a sample? If you have time, we can get answers by the end of the week."

Medical professionals were outstanding at keeping me alive. They'd been doing it since my first breath, plus all the moments when I'd treated my body like a punching bag, and for that I was thankful.

But I hated them so much that I had to talk myself out of full-on, slobbering panic attacks every time I found myself playing the patient. I hated that I was weak, that I wasn't in control, that no matter how much I sorted out my life, I'd always be fucked up.

And now I was jerking off into a cup and offering another pint of my blood for analysis.

I love my wife. I love my wife. I love my wife.

"Yes," I said, mentally flipping through my afternoon appointments. Riley could handle them all on his own. "I've got all day."

A nurse led me to a narrow room that was exactly as unpleasant as you'd imagine. The flat white walls were bordered with a (badly) hand-stenciled strip of mallards and rowboats. I think they were intended to be masculine, but I didn't feel that vibe from ducks. A pile of magazines was fanned out across the wicker coffee table, and a woven basket beside the television was stuffed with porn—VHS
and
DVD. The furniture was straight out of the Newly Divorced Men's Catalog, circa 1991, and I didn't think it was possible for me to touch anything without requiring a decontamination bath afterward. It wasn't more than two meters from the grandmotherly receptionist's desk, which meant echoes of every conversation traveled through the hollow-core door and left me with the sense I was masturbating in the yarn aisle of a craft store.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

Nope, the worst part was knowing that this room was the clinical equivalent of an hourly motel. But I had to know whether I was the root of our issues.

I love my wife. I love my wife. I love my wife. Now fill the fucking cup.

I
didn't know where
to go after leaving the urologist's office, but I knew I couldn't go home yet. I wasn't ready to chat with Tiel about her day or argue with Riley over business or sports, not when I was still busy hating my body's weaknesses and trying to forget about jerking off in the duck room. I needed to be alone with my suspected inadequacy.

Instead of returning to the comforts of the firehouse, I found myself at Wellesley, my childhood home. With Andy at the helm, the property was undergoing extensive renovations after decades of little more than basic upkeep. Add to that the twisted, tangled vines of my father's deception, and excavating the passages where he secreted away all memories of my mother and as much of us as he could force into fire-safe lockers, and this project was looking at another year before completion.

Wellesley used to serve as a monument to everything wrong in my life, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't still stir up spikes of anger and anxiety. But now, surrounded by the light of construction lamps and scaffolding, that old, awful history functioned not as dead weight but as a breathless reminder that I'd—
we'd
—survived.

I walked through each room, studying the restoration work and lingering over memories. The closet that Riley used as his personal canvas was painted over, and no sign of impressionist Rivera, Wyeth, or O'Keefe remained. The constellation map that Erin drew on her bedroom ceiling was gone, and the tricky quarter-circle window she used to sneak out was replaced. The hand-carved newel post at the top of the staircase—the one Angus smashed with a baseball bat after one especially bad day—was repaired.

These walls had seen everything, from the loving moments to the tragedies. They knew the atrocities, even the ones we never talked about because how could we? Which words in this language were sufficient in addressing Angus's reign of terror? I'd yet to find them.

Like these walls, the only avenue available was to keep on standing, silently holding it all up. That was the only secret to our survival, and it was what I had to do now. Even if my body wasn't cooperating, even if my sperm was worthless, even if I couldn't give Tiel the babies she deserved, I was going to keep on standing.

We'd survive. We always did.

J
une

I
f I didn't know better
, I'd believe Sam was cheating on me. He was being sneaky and strange, and a touch irritable, and he was distracted. But it wasn't another woman. Not with the way he scooped his arm around my torso each morning and dragged me to his chest, squeezing and holding and loving harder than any one person could ever deserve.

But he'd been coming home
very
late every night this week, and couldn't conjure a decent excuse for it. Then he begged off sex, claiming he was tired and coming down with something. He rolled away when my backside wiggled up against his morning erection with a mumbled excuse about getting to his jobsite early today. These were lines that I didn't want us crossing again, and not simply because I couldn't tolerate one more day of being treated like a porcelain doll.

All of my insecurities and abandonment triggers were on blast, and when he was more than an hour late for the Walsh Associates gathering at Eastern Standard tonight, I was nearly unhinged.

Everyone was at the Kenmore Square location to celebrate Patrick's assistants, Dylan the Girl and Lissa Wynn, lasting longer than any of his previous assistants in the entire history of the firm.

Everyone except Sam.

He'd sent a few texts earlier in the afternoon suggesting that he was tied up with one of his new projects and would be running late, but failed to respond to any of my recent messages. To make matters worse, his siblings were equally curious about his whereabouts, insisting that he wasn't in the weeds with any of his properties.

My brain was howling at me with every awful explanation and sordid scenario, and getting louder with each passing minute. I was on the verge of tears at all times because
what the actual fuck was going on in my marriage this week
, but all of those wobbly anxieties had to stay in my back pocket until I could get Sam alone.

That left me forcing a smile on my face and sipping a glass of wine while Shannon, Matt, Andy, Riley, and Tom reminisced about Patrick's penchant for firing assistants.

"He's worse than Miranda Priestly," Riley said, his pilsner glass aloft. "You know, that boss from
The Devil Wears Prada
. But worse, like if Miranda Priestly was also a warlord."

"You know
The Devil Wears Prada
?" Lauren asked.

Riley's eyes crinkled shut as he smiled and shrugged. "Of course. I'm all about the
DWP
," he said. "Don't forget: I served under the Lord Commander until he fired
me
."

Patrick shook his head with an exaggerated sigh. "I didn't fire you. I reassigned you to Matt because—"

"Because you don't like when people ask you questions," Riley interrupted. "Or breathe, or eat."

Patrick threw up his hands. "Yeah, fine. If I can hear you chewing or swallowing, I've imagined killing you at least once."

"And these two" —Shannon gestured to Lissa and Dylan— "are wasting away because of it. Remember, Patrick, we
like
them. We want to
keep
them. Please don't starve them."

Lissa waved off Shannon's comment. "We're good," she said, laughing. "No starvation here."

"Yeah," Dylan added, "we eat when he's out of the office."

"To Optimus Prime," Riley said, raising his glass. "And the Autobots who follow him."

Our glasses clinked together when I spotted Sam walking down Commonwealth Avenue, his eyes lowered as he studied his phone and his Wayfarer sunglasses propped on his head. I jumped up as he approached, and getting out from this corner of our long patio table meant climbing over Andy, shoving Lissa's chair in, and leaping off an empty seat. The entire table stopped to stare.

Grabbing his wrist, I towed him deep into the restaurant. I was desperate for a quiet corner, or an alleyway exit, but the best I could manage was the blessedly empty ladies' room.

"Tiel," Sam started, warning heavy in his voice as I locked the door behind me.

"Are you having an affair?" I asked.

He blinked at me, and his face registered no alarm. Only mild confusion, as if I'd asked him to go line dancing tonight or help me spit-roast a pig. "What?"

"Are. You. Cheating. On. Me," I said, and the velocity of those words propelled me across the small room until we were standing a breath apart. "You've been so strange this week! You're shutting me out and coming home at weird hours, and you didn't want me to touch you this morning, and we're not having sex, and I have no other explanation than you cheating on me but that isn't the explanation I'm hoping for because I love you and trust you, and don't understand any of this. So, please. Tell me what the fuck is going on."

"It's not that at all," he said. He exhaled and rubbed his forehead. "I don't want to talk about this right now, Tiel. I haven't eaten today. My sugar is low and I need to get some food, and—"

"Why the fuck not?" I cried. "Why would you do that to yourself?"

Sam leaned back against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed as he blew out another breath. "I'm trying to figure some things out, and I've lost track of other things in the process. It wasn't my intention. I forgot to eat, and when I noticed it, I also noticed I was late for this" —he waved toward the door with a grimace— "thing, and I'd missed nine messages from you. I didn't stop to eat, or call. I came here because it seemed like the right solution to my immediate issues, but I've obviously fucked up. I'm sorry. I've had a rough couple of days, Tiel."

"I've noticed," I said. "What I don't understand is why you haven't told me anything. That's only making it worse, Sam."

"I'm just…I'm not cheating on you. That's the hardest of our hard limits." He held up his left hand and pointed at it with his right. "And I take this ring really fucking seriously."

The door handle twisted, followed by three sharp knocks. Scowling, I hollered, "In a minute."

I took his hand and pressed it to my chest, schooling my impatient expression. "Then tell me why your week has been so difficult, Sam. I need you to climb up that trust tree right now."

Sam's eyes fell shut again as he deflated. "I went to a urologist, and I had a semen analysis."

"
That's
what you've been keeping to yourself? That's why your week has been rough?" I asked. "You should have told me. I would've gone with you, and
helped
."

He didn't register that innuendo at all. That set off all the crisis mode alarms.

"I went back for a follow-up visit this afternoon. My sperm count is on the low side. It's good, but there wasn't a lot of it."

I reached for his other hand. "Where have you been since then?" I asked, my voice soft.

"Walking in circles around my new project in the South End," he said. All that secrecy and indifference I'd been reading on him morphed into discomfort and embarrassment. "And Wellesley. Just…thinking."

Oh, my prepster.

"Okay, so…it's a little low." I squinted at him. "Then what have I been swallowing? There seems to be plenty. And those times that you go all Jackson Pollock on my tits, it's not an insignificant amount. We always need two or three washcloths."

"I love that you find so much humor in this," he said, his sour tone laced with a laugh. "I'm sitting here, telling you I might not be able to give you…to give you any of the things I'm supposed to, and you're fucking laughing about jizz."

"Would you rather I laugh about blow jobs? Because those are funny, too."

"Tiel, I'm not feeling any fucking humor right now," he snapped, but he couldn't stop the laugh from piercing his words. "The only thing I could think this week was that I didn't know what I'd do if I was the issue. Think about it, sweetheart. When we met with your doctor, after we lost the baby, she said all of your tests looked normal. You're fine.
It's me
. I'm the problem."

"Sam," I sighed, pressing my forehead to his. "Don't you remember how I found you?"

"You hypnotized me with that ankle bracelet, the one with the little bells, and you forced me into a malfunctioning elevator," he said.

"That's right, and that's because I was meant to find you. Fate, gravity, divine intervention, jingly ankle bracelets—whatever you want to call it—put you in that elevator with me," I said. "When we are meant to have a baby, we will have a baby. It might not be this month or next, or even this year, but when it happens, it will be right."

"What if we're meant to have that baby
now
, and my short sperm count is getting in the way?" he asked.

"Then let's figure out which weird-ass juices you should drink to get some action down there," I said, and his brow arched at my endorsement of his raw juice fanaticism. "Or maybe I should massage your balls but I really don't like the idea of sucking them. Oh, and Andy likes an acupuncturist in Framingham, although she says he yelled at her in broken English the whole time she was there. Maybe that's part of the treatment."

Sam pressed his fist to his mouth, but it didn't stifle his laughter. "That's it?" he asked. "I have weaksauce sperm, and you're going to massage my balls and hope for the best?"

"Yeah," I said slowly. "I want us to have tiny humans, and if your balls need some extra love and attention, I'll happily provide it for them. But…" I paused, and looked up to meet his eyes. "I don't want this to be the only thing in our lives."

"Really? I've seen your tablet, sweetheart," he said. "All the earthy-crunchy natural pregnancy books. The prenatal nutrition ones. I've even read a few of them."

"You creep on
all
my stuff, don't you?"

"I would
never
do anything like that," he said. "But let's go back to the total honesty for a minute. What if it doesn't happen for us?"

I stared at his gingham shirt. I didn't want to think about that. It was easier to believe that we would have a family, but that we weren't among the ones who got lucky on the first few tries.

A knock echoed through the little room, and Sam yelled, "In a minute."

"What if we give it a year?" I asked. "One year, and if we haven't had any luck on our own, we go back to the doctors. We explore fertility treatments, and adoption, and all the other options."

"Really?" he asked. "Just wait and see?"

"Yeah, we need to wait and see," I said, "because you were stressing about this so hard that you went to a urologist on your own and spent the week beating yourself up about your lumberjack sperm, and that meant I spent the week imagining all the terrible things that could be going on, and all of that hurts my heart. We can't do that again."

Sam cupped my face and tilted me up to meet his eyes. "I'm really thrilled that you didn't say beating myself
off
."

"I thought it," I said.

"Oh, I know you did." Sam laughed. He brought his lips to mine for the first real, non-forced kiss we'd shared all week.

"I hate that you were struggling and you didn't tell me," I mumbled against his jaw. "You should have told me about this. I would have gone with you."

"No," he cried, rearing back and pinning me with wide, alarmed eyes. "
No.
That's not the kind of appointment a husband and wife should share. And you would have tried talking me out of it, and we never would've known that the lumberjack sperm were in limited supply."

"But you're not allowed to keep this shit to yourself, Sam. Look what happens. You get all dark and moody, and fail to eat for an entire day." I pulled his blood glucose monitor from his pocket and scowled at the low reading. "This is not okay."

"I know that I violated the laws of the trust tree. Believe me when I say I didn't enjoy keeping it from you. And now that we've dealt with the issues I didn't want to discuss" —he looked down at his lap and gave his crotch a pointed frown— "we're going to deal with the issues
you
don't want to discuss."

Oh, shit. He knew. I'd been off my 'pretend everything at work is great' game since the end of the semester brought a flood of grade-grubbing undergrads to my office, and my department chair had been dropping none too subtle hints about my dearth of published papers, and now Sam knew all about my failure, too.

"What would that be?" I asked with all the innocence I could muster.

"You hate your job," he said.

"No, I don't," I said.

Another knock at the door. Simultaneously, we called, "
In a minute
."

"Yes, Sunshine, you do," he argued. "You might be the only person who doesn't know it. Now, I was surprised when you picked that gig last summer. You've never loved academia, and you had incredible offers to work directly with special needs children, and I still don't understand why you passed them up."

"Because those weren't responsible jobs," I said, exasperated. "Those were short-term fellowships or experimental initiatives, and it was time for me to have a stable job. The kind that came with health insurance and retirement plans and growth opportunities, and…important shit like that."

"Why?"

I rolled my eyes at his question. "Because you've always had a real, professional career, and I didn't want to be the same old flaky grad student girlfriend anymore. I wanted to be taken seriously."

"You are serious as sin, Tiel. You are too fucking brilliant and talented to be taken any other way," he said. "And yeah, things are going well for me, which means you have even more reason to take on the experiments and short-term programs."

"How?"

"How are you still asking me that?" he said. "I want you to lean on me. I don't want you to worry about money or health insurance or anything other than doing things that give you joy."

"You secretly crave a 1950s housewife, don't you?"

"But sweetheart, how can I not? You are fucking hot in those vintage dresses." Sam laughed, but his expression quickly turned stern. "Is it possible that you swung a little too hard on the stable job side?"

I nodded. "I guess so."

"Fuck stable. Do what you love, and it will work out. Maybe then, when you aren't up to your elbows in whiny undergrads and college politics, your body will be happier about my lumberjack sperm."