One Ring (Suncoast Society #28)(11)

“Yeah, but at least it’s easily explained.” Mel looked at her. “Tell Mike, if he asks, that we went to a spa.”

“Ah.” She examined the marks again in the mirror. “The sad thing is, he won’t even notice, I’m sure.”





Chapter Five


Carl rode with Don to the club and struggled to pull his mood out of the toilet.

He knew his friend was right, that he needed to move on, but telling his heart that was another thing entirely.

A new direction, a new life lay before him, if he could just work up the gumption to start walking in that direction instead of stumbling around in tiny circles while following his own shadow.

Kind of hard to do when all he wanted to do was collapse, curl up, and go to sleep.

Just a couple of weeks ago, he’d thought he had a handle on this. He thought he was on the road to recovering his self-esteem, his personality.

His dignity.

Seeing eight years of his life dissolved with a judge’s signature had completely upended him emotionally. Yes, he’d known six months ago, from the moment his brain had processed what he was seeing when he opened his bedroom door to investigate the strange noises he’d heard, that the marriage was over.

This made it final.

This meant that it wasn’t a bad dream, that it had really happened.

That the woman he’d loved, who he thought loved him, was actually total stranger.

Hell, there were probably acquaintances and total strangers he could expect more loyalty from than his own wife.

Ex wife.

“Get out of your head,” Don warned.

Carl looked over at him.

“I saw the frown,” Don said. “You always get that frown when you start diving into the depths. Focus. Here and now. Stay in that.”

“Easier said than done.”

“You don’t think I mourn, do you?” Don asked.

“What?”

“When a relationship ends, you don’t think I mourn it. Right?”

Carl shrugged. “Not like you’re married to them.”

“So? It reinforces that I know I need to make sure when I do find the right woman that I don’t f*ck it up six ways to Sunday and back. I’ve cried over relationships, okay? Maybe it looks to you like I’m some callous bastard, but that’s not the case. Only twice have I basically kicked women to the curve without a look back, when their crazy started showing. But even the relationships that have ended that I knew were going in a toxic direction, or were doomed, or whatever, I still grieved. Maybe only a couple of days, or maybe even a few weeks. Still, I grieved, in my own way. We all grieve differently.”

Carl had only been around for two of Don’s latest breakups. For the past month, Don had played with a couple of different women at the club, and was talking a lot to one of them on FetLife.

Carl had a suspicion she would be Don’s next ex.

At least Don was up front with them. Carl would give Don all due credit for that. He didn’t string them along with false promises, or try to juggle several at once in secret.

Carl had to admit that part of the BDSM lifestyle, the easier honesty, was a welcomed change. Especially after looking back through a couple of years’ worth of cell phone records just to realize that Maria had probably been stepping out on him far longer than she admitted.

Fortunately, all the STD tests he made his doctor do came back negative.

And to think I was going to bring up the subject of children with her again.

Thankfully, he hadn’t.

Which sucked, because he’d wanted kids. Until this all exploded, he’d wanted them with her.

Now he might not ever have kids if he didn’t meet the right woman soon enough.

Then again, maybe I’m better off without kids. Or maybe they’re better off without me.

It was a little after nine p.m. when they pulled into the parking lot at the industrial complex housing Venture. In a portable storage unit positioned in front of the neighboring unit, Carl knew they were assembling their supplies for the club’s planned expansion. With the tenth anniversary celebration not far away, once the expansion was completed, there was a large party scheduled to mark the occasion.

In the short time Carl had been coming to Venture with Don, he’d already met a lot of people he was happy to call friends. There were even a few they’d gone out with a couple of times, to a sports bar to shoot darts or watch a game on TV.

He had a social life again. Before, their lives had revolved around Maria and her schedule and the events she wanted to attend, the friends she wanted to see. She’d neatly managed to nudge all of his friends out of the picture, keeping his time occupied to the point that there hadn’t been much time for him with his friends. Any time he’d tried to schedule a guy’s night out, Maria nearly always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t go, usually involving him tagging along with her and other couples to whatever it was she wanted to do.

Any time he did go out without her, he usually faced days of almost complete silent treatment as punishment for it.

Yet she’d had no problems doing things on the side, apparently, when she was supposed to be “working.”

I’m an idiot.

Looking back, he could see it all. At the time, he’d wanted to be a good husband, take care of her, make her happy, do anything for her.