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“Hey, are you two enjoying the view without us?” We hear Lucas from below and we groan in unison. What the hell were we thinking?
“Not much to see up here, Lucas. I’ll be down in moment.” Taking his hand, I lick the fingers he just used to pleasure me with. Roman’s eyes go wide with promise for retribution.
“Damn right you’ll be down in a moment.” Roman pulls me along the deck to a control room of sorts filled with boating stuff I don’t know the name or use for. He bends me over a table and I hear his zipper pull down. Before I can say much, he’s filling me hard and fast as we both come clutching the wall, deeply entwined.
“I’ll go entertain our guests, there’s a bathroom around the corner.” Roman thrusts his still semi-hard cock a few more times before releasing me. My walk to the bathroom is little more wobbly than before and has nothing to do with the motion of the boat.
Chapter Twenty
ROMAN
I wait for Abby to finish in the shower this morning. Yesterday, we enjoyed a jaunt on one of my boats I designed and built for a friend of mine who helped back my original company. It was lovely to finally meet Abby’s sister, Leah, and watch Lucas drool, tripping over his pretentious self several times over. Abby was curious to know what her sister had shared with me, and it’s something I’m still trying to mull over. It would seem Leah knew she was sick much earlier than perhaps she let on, and her secret isn’t something for me to tell Abby just yet, especially just meeting her. Trying to shake off the strange feelings, I put the focus back on today.
Abby and I planned a day to go to a local farmer’s market and pick up some fresh stuff to bring over to Leah’s place later. The girls want to make these vegan green smoothies doctors swore cured everything under the sun. Personally, anything that bright green or made with beets frightened me and would have me concerned with what exactly it’s supposed to clean out in the end process. Since it is important to Abby, I go with the flow.
I decide making a quick carb-laden breakfast before we leave will, hopefully, draw out the inevitable vegetable shake. Collecting the whole grain bread eggs, and almond milk has me preparing a quick French toast. My arms are full as I turn to put everything on her island counter. I feel the eggs slowly slipping from under my arm.
“Shit!” I accidentally knock over Abby’s briefcase and several files and papers spill out. It’s a nightmare of papers now commingled between legal documents and Abby’s scrawling notes on things she needs to do with her clients. I scramble to put them together, unsure of what goes where in her filing system. A town name has me zeroing in right away before I can ignore it and curiosity takes over. The file is from Oregon—Gold Beach, actually—and is dated over a decade ago. I try shaking it off and stick the file back together, hoping it’s nothing at all.
Distracted, I reach into cabinets for mixing bowls and into drawers for forks, placing them on the counter. “Abby, you coming out soon?” The file sits on top, a beacon calling out to me, and before I realize it, it’s between my fingertips. I’m about to put it away when she calls back out to me.
“I’m going to blow dry my hair, be out in a few.”
“Leave it curly. I like it curly.” My voice drifts off, not waiting for her answer as I stare at the file.
“All right.” I put it down and pour myself a fresh cup of coffee, debating with myself. I reason, as a lawyer, Abby works a lot of case with confidential information I’m not privy too. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong. This, whatever it is, has nothing to do with me, I repeat to myself in a useless mantra. I trust Abby implicitly, so why this bothers me I can’t explain.
I listen for the blow dryer to start, and releasing a puff of air from my lungs, I grab the file and dive in, opening it quickly. I’ll give myself ten seconds and then put it down and forget about it. I love Abby, so whatever this file is, it’s clearly none
of my nosey business. I scan the details quickly while sitting down on a barstool. The room seems to shrink and expand dangerously and quickly for me when I read Abby’s scrawled notes.
‘Oscar Campbell, age 47, is charged with drunk driving and hitting a stop sign. Car jumped the curb almost injuring a crowd of pedestrians. Second offense in ten years. Client agreed to twenty-eight-day residential rehab program and car starter breathalyzer. See case file for Gold Beach.’
My mouth drops, followed by the pit in my stomach. It seems impossible and completely unlikely that the events of that rainy night are coming back to me as if it all happened yesterday. Haunting me. Getting picked up by Maddie, seeing the police cruiser with lights flashing and my mother’s car wrecked. Shaking off the anxiety, I open the file labeled Gold Beach.
It’s the closed police report from my mother’s accident. I don’t know how this man is connected to the two. Wouldn’t Abby have told me? I sit at the counter, going back to the file and flipping through pages, small details and things written in the margins by Abby only confirm for me. She found the man who killed my mother, and she’s kept it a secret from me. I feel a ripping pain in my chest. Opened and exposed, the old wound freshens itself and adolescent anger takes over my rational judgement. Why now when I have everything I ever wanted is this ruined in a matter of life-changing seconds?
“Roman, I was thinking after we go to the market we could stop by that pastry shop and… Roman?” Abby rounds the corner, slipping an elastic headband through her hair to pull the curls off her forehead, but stops to look at me. I hadn’t realized it, but in my daze I had begun to line up the papers from the file into several neat piles.
Robotically, I go into survival mode. I need answers and I need to have my feelings disconnect to get through the betrayal. “You didn’t tell me.” I put my coffee mug down on the counter and stand up as she sits down next to me, pushing short locks of hair behind her ears, which only bounce back into her face.
“Tell you what?” Abby wrings her hands together, looking down at the papers. She tries to collect them and put them back inside the folder, wrinkling the bulk of them, but I stop her hands from moving.
“That man…” I ground out, leaning over the counter, my head held low and weary. Dull pain stabs behind me eyes.
“He’s a client. I’m bound by confidentiality,” she whispers between breaths.
“He did it, didn’t he?” I growl, feeling like a wounded animal.
“Roman, I—”
“Didn’t he?” I yell, slamming my hand on the counter, jostling coffee over the edge of the rim and throwing papers and items to the floor.
Brokenly, she looks up from under soaked lashes with guilt. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Or you could bear to lie to me?” My fist is clenched and I want to hit something hard to feel the pain radiate up my arm and give me some sort of feeling back in my body again.
“You’re being irrational; I could lose my job breaking client confidentiality. It was killing me keeping it from you.”
