One Ring (Suncoast Society #28)(12)

The bottom line was nothing could make her happy because she wasn’t a happy person inside.

He knew he should probably feel lucky it was only eight years of his life he’d wasted on her and not more, but it still stung like f*ck.

This place had quickly become a second home to him, with people who were, yes, helping him learn to live again.

Taking a deep breath, he got out and stretched.

“You going to be okay?” Don asked.

“I have to be.”

“You know you have a lot of friends here, right? People who you didn’t know with Maria. People who have your back.”

“That’s damned spooky.”

“It wasn’t hard to connect the dots.” Don headed around to the trunk to get their rope and implement bags. “Try to remember how many new friends you have before you get sucked back down into your own head again. Remember that they aren’t going to screw you over the way Maria did. That it’s a new life for you. Quit thinking about the time you think you ‘wasted’ with her.”

“Seriously, are you like a mind reader or something?”

“No, it’s just really obvious. Common. Again, why do you think I’m not committing until I’m sure I meet the absolute right one? I don’t consider my time with them wasted, either. If I did that, I’d be one miserable goddamned f*ck. I think of what I learned, what I took away from the relationship. The good things. Even the craziest chicks I dated, I still had some fun times, learned something. I was living my life, so that is in no way a waste. You’re only wasting the future by staying mired in the past.”

Carl grabbed his bags from the trunk. “You should go into making fortune cookies.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it.” Don grinned. “You should see what I can do with chopsticks and rubber bands.”

“I’ve seen what you can do with chopsticks and rubber bands. I don’t even have a clit, and it made me cringe.”

“She loved it. That wasn’t a kiss of loathing she gave me when I let her loose.”

“Only you could turn chopsticks and rubber bands into instruments of torture.” Carl headed toward the front door.

Don closed the trunk and followed. “Not only me,” he said. “Hell, I learned that trick from Ross. And I’m damn sure not the first person he taught it to, and he’s definitely not the inventor of that trick. Remember what Tony always says—”

“If you can’t pervert it, you’re just not kinky enough. I know.” He pulled the door open and held it for Don, who had the larger, heavier bags. Carl just had a small carry-on rolling suitcase and a backpack for his ropes to haul his slowly growing implement collection. Some of which were actually flea market or home improvement store purchases.

Jenny checked them in and they headed inside. In one corner, it looked like Crawford was doing a fire cupping demo. They spotted Marcia sitting there as well and suspected whoever the man’s latest victim was, she must be a newbie or a personal friend of Marcia’s.

Marcia always took a special interest in women new to the lifestyle, making it her personal mission to make sure they had all the tools they needed to navigate the kinky waters as safely as possible without them letting subfrenzy get the better of them.

That was something else Don had warned him about, not to jump into a relationship with someone he played with just because of the shiny new relationship energy he felt for them. That it was okay to play and not take it any farther than that.

So far, he’d stuck to that rule.

Even easier now with the emotional dampener of the divorce being finalized.

I should have let Don throw me the party.

Don had wanted to invite several of their friends over, take a copy of Carl’s original marriage certificate, and burn it in the barbecue grill in a symbolic cremation of the marriage.

In fact, maybe he would ask Don to do that after all. He’d nixed Don’s suggestion out-of-hand when his friend had first brought it up the day the papers arrived in the mail from his attorney.

“She looks new,” Don said, nodding toward Crawford’s scene.

Carl looked. The woman was now sitting up, smiling, as Marcia stood ready with her clothes. Then Marcia shuffled her off into the bathrooms. He didn’t get a good look at her, but what he saw he liked, octopus marks or not. She had shoulder-length dark-blonde hair and he couldn’t tell what color her eyes were from that distance. About Marcia’s size, she wore a dazzling smile most often seen on new submissives experiencing things for the first time.

“I’ll have to ask Marcia about her,” Don said.

“Maybe I was going to ask Marcia about her.”

“Were you going to ask Marcia about her?” Going after the same woman had never been a problem for them before. Usually, they were attracted to totally different types.

When Carl turned, Don’s pointed blue gaze had pinned him down.

“Maybe I was,” Carl mumbled.

“Then do it. I’m supposed to do a rope scene with Crissy tonight, if she even shows.” He looked around. “I don’t see her yet, and she can be flakey sometimes.”

Saying Crissy could be flakey was like saying the Grand Canyon was deep, or that Mt. Everest was tall. The only reason Don played with her was because she was happily married, with a vanilla husband who didn’t care what she did to get her kinky fix, as long as she didn’t have sex with anyone but him and she came home to him every night.