Chapter 9

Six months of physical therapy took its toll on Leigh Anne. Besides her weekly visits to Corey, her physical therapist, Theo would have his turn torturing her. He seemed to think it was okay to reward her good work with “treats.” Yeah, no, it still hurts.

Corey relocated from San Francisco to Santa Monica two years ago. But he goes back and forth between the two cities for business. They’ve grown close over the last six months. He told her stories about his family, especially the stories he has of his sister-in-law, a bestselling author.

“Oh my god, yes! I love her! I’ve only read her first book a thousand times!” Leigh Anne couldn’t stop fangirling. “I only had to replace my old copy five times!”

“Wow, that’s love for ya!” He quipped, tossing Leigh Anne a towel. “You did a good job today.”

“Thanks! Theo has been training me too...” She could feel her cheeks flame, remembering the last time Theo trained her. The heat and pulsing got worse when he strolled into Corey’s studio.

“Yeah, I’m sure he went hard on you.” Corey made her fluster even more as he nodded and greeted Theo. “Hey, man.

Perfect timing.”

Corey put the equipment away as he mentioned his weekend plans. “You know, since you love my sister-in-law more than life itself, you both should come to her latest book signing at my friend’s parents’ vineyard. It’ll be great fun, food, and even better booze!”

Leigh Anne’s face lit up, and she whipped around to beg Theo to take her on the trip of a lifetime!

Theo couldn’t bear to say no to her. He cared for her too much to deny her anything she wanted or needed. Looking down upon his sweet lover’s face, Theo tilted her round chin, lowered his lips to hers, and nodded just once. But what was behind the nod made her heart flutter, and her knees buckle.

“When is this shindig, Corey?” Theo asked without taking his intense stare off hers.

“This weekend. Am I adding two more guests to my list?”

“How many guests are you allowed to invite?” Leigh Anne added as she attempted to maintain composure.

“None, but they don’t expect me to follow the rules, so why start now? I’ll text you the details, and will Connie add you to the VIP section?”

“VIP section?” Theo and Leigh Anne asked in unison.

“Yeah, my section—sheesh. See you there. Oh, and they put the VIPs up in the cottages, so pack for the weekend...” Corey left with a pep in his step and a song in his voice.

Leigh, Anne, and Theo tossed confused glances but decided to head home. But to whose home? In Theo’s car, the ride was silent. Without even a conversation about what they are to each other, only a few non-date dates, and the random sleepovers, Leigh Anne shifted her eyes to a sensation on her thigh. Just above the knee, Theo’s diligent fingers brushed against her scantily clad flesh—a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a few years, if ever.

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” Theo broke the silence as his talented digits strummed her sensory stings that were just beneath the surface.

“Would we be sleeping much?” She was having difficulty focusing, and she hated feeling out of control of herself. This part of Theo frightened her. She gave too much power to Ethan, and we all know how that ended. Theo still didn’t know everything. He was letting her open up at her own pace.

“That depends on you, baby...” he squeezed her knee.

Perhaps tonight, they could finally figure out what they were. Making a move, Leigh Anne didn’t even know what she was about to do would change—everything. It was as if her hand moved on its own accord, lacing her slender, bitten-to-the-nubs fingers through his own. Theo glanced down to look, ensuring his heart didn’t just skip a beat over nothing. Then, looking back to the road and watching traffic, he wasn’t sure he was breathing until she clutched his fingers with her own.

“I’d like to tell you a story...”

Once Upon  a Time

They both stayed in Leigh Anne’s tiny house to drive to Sonoma in the morning. Leigh Anne planned to take Gretel with them. Tonight, they had pizza and beer outside under the stars. Joining them was a small, weathered, leather-bound book filled with someone’s memories—fond and not so fond.

The temperature was cooling, but she had the travel-sized electronic fire pit keeping them warm. Theo’s embrace was doing a pretty good job, too. Wrapped in his arms, Leigh Anne motioned to the small outdoor table on her small patio space. Theo grabbed it and looked for permission to open to the first memory—her parents.

“You look like her.” He stroked her cheeks, feeling a faint trace of moisture. “Are you crying?”

She didn’t answer for what seemed like hours—when it was mere seconds of her trying to compose herself.

“Moira and Roman Livingston. Also known as Mother and Father Livingston.” Her voice trembled at the mere recognition that they were even related. Theo waited for more about them, but she didn’t have much to say since she didn’t know them as people.

“Is that all?” Theo asked. She assumed he must have great stories about his parents, family vacations, holidays, and inside jokes. But that’s not her experience.

“There’s not much to tell. I didn’t know them very well.” She doesn’t want to look at them anymore. So, she turned the page to a fresh memory. A warmer smile graced this page. “Eugenia Travis, my housekeeper. And I guess if I had to consider anyone my mom— it’d be her.”

Eugenia Travis was an understated yet powerful figure in her life. She taught her how to sew, cook, clean... love. She had an elegance her birth mother would never have. Her elegance was in the way she cooked with every ounce of love she had. She made nearly every stitch of clothing Leigh Anne wore because her mother never spent a penny on anything Leigh Anne needed.

“If it weren’t for my school uniform, I would have gone to school in rags or my birthday suit.” These were supposed to be happy memories she was showing Theo. Now, she’d be lucky if he wanted to be her friend. Let alone someone he kissed from time to time. “She stood by my side for three nights straight when I nearly died.”

Without warning, Theo made her straddle his thighs. “Hold that thought—what?” His eyes burned with rage. “You nearly died?”

Leigh Anne sheepishly nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck, heaving as hard as she could to get out the raw emotion she had kept bottled up.

“I-I-I had a burst appendix for at least forty-eight hours without knowing, and it was poisoning my blood. My mother couldn’t be bothered to leave the luncheon she attended to be by her child’s side as she clung to life. And my father was away on business. But she was there. Eugenia was always there.”

“So, is this why you never talk about them? Why is there no relationship with them at all?”

“Yeah. Well, and other things.” Leigh Anne lifted her head, and he dried her tears. “I probably seem like I wanted for nothing growing up. They had four homes scattered all over the world. They took lavish vacations, made and spent bucket loads of money, but ask me if they ever gave me a dime, took me with them on any of their trips, bought me anything more than the bare necessities?”

Theo’s heart broke the more she spoke about her childhood.

“Even if they offered, all I would have wanted would have been their acknowledgment of my presence or their love and affection.”

He was speechless as she turned another page of a milestone, her high school homecoming game. She was queen, head cheerleader, an honor student, and student class president in her junior year. Were there any photos of her scholarly achievements? No, no, they were absent. But there was only one constant presence: Eugenia.

“Who’s that?” Theo pointed to a page that she was quickly trying to flip. “Leigh Anne, come on, you promised me honesty.”

Breathing deeply, she knew she had to say his name. “Ethan.

Ethan Klein, my ex-husband.”

Rocky Roads Ahead

Leigh Anne didn’t cry because of Ethan anymore. She cried enough for herself. Now, she was just numb to the idea of Ethan Klein. She wanted to move on from the only man she had ever loved.

“What happened between the two of you?” Theo didn’t mean to pry or push, but he wanted to know if he had anything to worry about.

“Our families were friends. We started dating as freshmen in high school. He was sweet then. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism when we were married a year ago. That’s when it all changed.”

“So, did your parents want you both to date and eventually get married?”

Leigh Anne choked on their story. She didn’t want to dredge up the past, but she knew he deserved to know the sorted tale.

“My mother was a bitter, hateful wench of a woman. She thought all I was good for was to be someone’s wife—a breeder—and silent. After I graduated, she made fun of my academic achievements. She discouraged me from attending college. She would say, ‘How would it look if Ethan needed me to support him and I wasn’t around because I was working or earning another prestigious degree?’

She cringed as she got more agitated because she could hear her mother’s abuse in her voice.

“So, she wanted you to become a Stepford wife?” Theo’s hands ran up and down her arms to console her. He knew that was no way to live.

“I was top five in my class! Damn it, I wanted to be a veterinarian! Something more than what she wanted for me.”

“What did Ethan say about all of this?”

She removed his hands from her shoulders and walked to the edge of her tiny house, leaning against the hatch of the building. She stared into the starry-lit sky, waiting for her shoulders to sag in disappointment.

“I expected so much more out of him. Year after year, he’d promise me that after his graduate program, his first MBA, and his first raise and promotion in the family firm, he’d let me go to college...” Theo thought he heard her voice crack as she gasped. She was placing a hand over her mouth to stifle the sobs.

“But he broke that promise...” Theo finished her sentence. “Oh, Leigh Anne...”

“No! No, don’t you dare feel sorry for me? I’m not telling you all this shit to make you pity me. You wanted honesty! Well, here it is! Theo, I am broken! I’m a fake. I’ve built this wall to be impenetrable, and here you come, waltzing into my life, demanding to know why I’m so closed off.”

Theo approached her cautiously. “I never wanted you to feel like I demanded anything from you, Leigh Anne, but if we...” he motions his hand between the two of them, “if we want to continue dating, sleeping together, eventually having sex, we need to know one another.”

The word sex made her cringe. They’ve already done more than she ever did before, even while married, but sex—with him—made her anxious.

Leigh Anne swallowed the lump in her throat hard. Theo gave her a bottle of Lambic, and she nearly drank it in one gulp. Theo stood behind her, holding her, as they continued down the rocky road of Leigh Anne’s life.

“After ten years of marriage, I found out Ethan was cheating on me—with someone I later found out was a woman our mothers liked better for him. By that time, I had lost three pregnancies to miscarriage, and we had exhausted all IVF options. Our mothers didn’t approve of surrogacy or adoption, so they thought the next best thing for him was having an affair.”

Theo’s arms wrapped around her like a vice grip.

“Your father. Please tell me your father stepped in and helped you.”

Another blow to his gut came when she shook her head. “No. No, he let it happen. He had his own extracurricular activities. He didn’t have time to raise me. Why would he have time or care to see I was hurting at the hands of my mother?”

“After the divorce, I left, and as I went on my adventures, I bought and renovated this house with the hush money Ethan gave me, took Gretel, and we traveled the country. Five years ago, I settled here because I liked the Ferris wheel.”

They stood in silence for the rest of the night. Heading inside, he climbed the ladder to her loft bedroom. Gretel gave them privacy and slept on the window seat at the back of the tiny house. A few minutes later, Leigh Anne joined him under the covers. He was so tall that his feet hung over the ledge of the loft. It was the first time that night Leigh Anne giggled at the silliness of them sleeping at her place.

“Next time, we’ll sleep at your house,” Leigh Anne curled up under the crook of his neck.

“Is that right? I think this is quite cozy.”

“I never thought I’d share my bed with a giant.”

“Ho - ho - ho, I’m a giant.” He chuckled. The vibration of his laugh made her chest jiggle. Leigh Anne had missed this feeling— falling in love. They weren’t strangers anymore. He knew her story, carried her baggage, and hadn’t left. “So, you can’t have children?”

Clearing her throat, she shifted her body to face him.

“It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult. I’m taking medication now that helps my thyroid work better, but the doctors have to play with my medication quickly to make sure I hold on to the pregnancy. And I’d be on bed rest. So, no, it’s not impossible to get pregnant, but it’s not one hundred percent possible to be considered viable.”

Theo’s face looked devastated, not for him, but for her. Leigh Anne should have the opportunity to have a baby. She’d be a wonderful mom.

“Don’t do that to me, Theo. I’m fine. I’ve made peace with it.” But the truth was, she hadn’t. There was something she told no one. It was all set in stone the day her divorce was made final. She’d take that secret to her grave.