Page 32 of Bad Luck Club

He let out a long, slow exhale, like her words had meant something to him, and she felt his thumb caress her palm, something that sent a bolt of electricity through her. “What came next, Blue? Lay it on me.”

She smiled softly, because this wasn’t as hard as she’d thought. Something about sharing with him was electrifying. Because he understood in a way she hadn’t anticipated—and they were alike in a way she’d never considered possible.

“I went off to college is what happened. I didn’t go far from home—UPenn—but I didn’t live at the house anymore, and he couldn’t control me like he had.”

“Let me guess. You went hog wild.”

He said it dryly, and she laughed a little. “I did. From his point of view. I switched my major from English lit, which he wasn’t too happy about anyway, to art. He stopped paying my tuition, but I was able to get a scholarship. I finally felt free to be myself, and I met a group of friends who liked my artistic side. A bunch of us went to Vegas for a weekend, and I did all the things I could never do around my dad because he would absolutely think it would drive me over the edge—I had some drinks, played the slots…and got married.”

“Ah, we’ve gotten to Husband Number One. Who was he?”

“Will you believe me if I tell you he was someone I met that weekend?”

She felt him cringe a little at that, and part of her couldn’t help but wonder if he thought what her dad had—that only someone nuts would do that. Someone nuts, or someone who was nineteen and drunk on possibility.

“He was there from Philly too, and we had a long, crazy day of connection, and I was a nineteen-year-old who hadn’t been allowed to date. I thought he was the one. And yes, I absolutely realize how stupid that sounds.”

There was that stroking thumb again, and she bit her lip to keep from making a sound that would embarrass her. She found herself thinking of the misunderstanding from earlier, when Lee had asked her if this was a sex thing.

Get it together, Blue. You’re here to help him.

“Radical honesty?” he said. “Yeah, that was probably really stupid.”

Laughter spilled out of her, taking her by surprise.

“But remember exhibit A and exhibit B from earlier?” he went on. “I’m hardly in a place to judge you. Sometimes I feel like I’m missing something when it comes to forming relationships with people. I always seem to choose the wrong person. So when Victoria choseme, it felt like I was cheating on a test. She was beautiful and smart and had it together…or at least it seemed that way, and it was so easy to slide into it and let someone else make the calls about how things were going to be.”

She laughed a little, although this time it wasn’t out of humor.

“Hey, I didn’t laugh at you for the quickie Vegas marriage,” he said, but she could tell he wasn’t really mad. The edge from earlier had gone out of his tone.

“Not laughing at you. Laughing at me. Or maybe I’m laughing at both of us.”

“What do we do now?” he asked, a little playful, and thewestuck out to her. Right now, in this place, in this moment, they were a unit. There was something special about that, something binding—which was why this was a step Bear insisted on before someone was brought into the Bad Luck Club.

“The way you described your relationship with her, it reminded me of my second marriage.”

“Oh, so we’re skipping ahead to Husband Number Two?”

He was teasing again, and some of the tension she always felt when talking about Remy began to slip away. “Yeah, might as well. Needless to say, things didn’t go so well with Husband Number One. Turns out a semidrunken day talking in a casino does not make a great foundation for a relationship. He was jealous and controlling, and I felt like the screwup my dad thought I was. So we got divorced almost as quickly as we’d gotten married, and I moved home for the rest of college. Switched my major to communications.”

“And along came Husband Number Two?”

“Indeed. He was a speaker the school brought in at the end of my senior year. Super powerful. Older. Incredibly driven. What you said about Victoria reminded me of him. He knew what he wanted, and it made me feel like I was special because he wantedme. My father practically shoved me into the relationship. He said Remy was everything I needed in a man—that he’d make sure I didn’t go off the rails.”

“Except it didn’t go down like that, did it?”

“Remy wanted me because I was different from the women he knew. In the beginning, he encouraged my art. He even paid for me to go to yoga teacher training. But that didn’t last. He bought me a lot of expensive clothes. A car.” She angled her head toward the window, and she felt another flinch from him. Likely because of the fender bender earlier. “Trust me. If it’s dented, I’m happy for it.Hedidn’t like anything out of order. He may have been drawn to me in the beginning because I was different, but within a few years, he was doing everything he could to ensure I fit into all of his boxes…just like he boxed up my art because it didn’t ‘go’ with the décor of the huge house he’d picked out. The strange thing is that I didn’t stop him. I even went to work at his company in some puff job he created for me, so his control over me was complete.

“I think part of me still worried that my dad was right—that if I gave in to my own urges and desires, like I had in college, bad things would happen. That I might become my mother. Of course, my dad thought I’d hit the jackpot. I didn’t realize how unhappy I was until my mom pointed it out to me. We’d started to see each other more after I turned eighteen, when my dad couldn’t stop me anymore, and she told me that Remy was doing to me what my father had done to her. Only I didn’t have her sickness, so he had no excuse at all. After that, it was like I could finally see the way things really were. He didn’t love me at all, and I didn’t love myself anymore.”

“Oh, Blue,” Lee said. His arm slid up her side, his hand landing on her breast, and the warmth and pressure of it radiated through her—giving her images of sweaty sheets—and then they both jolted, his hand immediately falling away. He swiveled his head to look at her. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to give you a backwards hug. I swear to Christ, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

His eyes were full of genuine horror. She couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so horrified by touching my boob.”

“Trust me,” he said thickly, still looking at her. She couldn’t lie to herself and say she didn’t see the lust in his eyes. She couldn’t lie to herself and say she didn’t feel a flash of it roiling through her. But that wasn’t why they were here…and she told herself it was just a reflection of the bonding they’d done tonight. It was an artificial closeness, like what she’d felt with Husband Number One, Mike, after that day in Vegas. “It’s not that,” he sputtered. “I just don’t want you to think I’m only interested in…I mean, after what I said earlier.”

Again she had a flash of those sweaty sheets, but she just nodded. “I get it. It’s okay. Thank you for wanting to hug me. I guess maybe I needed one.”

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