Chapter 29

Monday evening, September 25, 2028

I drove home from the airport with one hand on the steering wheel. Addie had a death grip on my right hand with both of hers. I didn’t complain. I couldn’t stop glancing over at my wife, just thankful that she was home. To put it bluntly, God, I was relieved!

After we got home, Addie read a couple of stories to Katie and Kevin: Winnie the Pooh and Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, two of the kids’ favorites. Usually, that time of night, they’re wound up and wanting to play, but tonight, they just wanted to sit with their mom. Watching them, I was kicking myself in the ass for putting what we have at risk for virtually nothing and vowed that it wouldn’t ever happen again. Well, there was still Tanner and Tanya to throw a little fuel on our flames.

We tucked the kids into bed, then tucked ourselves in right after. It had been seven weeks; forty-nine days; 1,176 hours, since we had made love. But who’s counting? My whole body was literally shaking when we undressed each other. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, but oh my God, when I slipped inside her, it was like our first time all over again, except maybe even better. Both our emotional relief that we were still there for each other made the physical act about a hundred times more powerful!

That’s not to say that there wasn’t physical pleasure ... and a whole hell of a lot of it. Addie’s pussy had never felt tight like it did that night and I hadn’t ever felt the physical squeezing, release and squeezing over and over again while we were making love. When I was groaning and commenting about how tight she was, she reminded me of the heavy Ben-Wa balls she’d had inside of her over the last month.

God, she felt good. I’d love to say that Addie and I made love for hours before I exploded inside her. I might be prone to exaggeration a little here and there, but in this case, anything that implied more than minutes would be an outright lie. Maybe even ‘minutes’ plural was stretching the truth. I think my spasms lasted longer than the lovemaking leading up to them.

I think Addie came, with her vagina spasming around me and her body violently shaking, but after what I’d witnessed the night before, I don’t know how she would have with the comparatively little man inside her. I sure as hell did, though, like not in a long, long time.

Afterward, we lay in bed naked, snuggling and kissing. I couldn’t help but notice the hickies on Addie’s neck and tits, a reminder of what had happened the night before, then later.

“Samuel,” I said, “tell me about last night.”

I watched Addie when I said it. She flinched, I was sure of it. Then she took a long time before she said anything. “You saw us, I know you did. Then I called and left the phone on for you.”

“It died. He just started talking about your family when the battery went dead...” I sheepishly added, “then the rest of the phone died, too ... it sort of got itself killed.”

Addie raised her eyebrows, silently asking me, ‘what the hell?’

“I kind of got frustrated and dropped it ... maybe pretty hard. It broke.”

She laughed, “New phone?”

I nodded, “Yeah, new phone ... but what was said?”

“Samuel just said ... that he knows I have a family ... and that he loves me ... but admitted that maybe it’s a bit more of lust, and he doesn’t want to break up my family.”

I realized I’d been holding my breath. I was relieved! But then wondered, “But what if ... what if ... he’d asked you to stay?”

Addie kissed me and hesitated before answering me, “Honestly? ... at the time I don’t know what I’d have said. That scared me later what I might have done at that moment ... but when he said what he did, it was the right thing to say and ... I gave myself to him the rest of the night. We talked, a lot; and made love, a lot; I learned a lot about Samuel.”

I wanted to know, “Like?”

She took a deep breath before answering me again, “His wife, I wondered why a guy like him is raising his daughter alone. Where’s his wife? Did she leave him or what?”

“And? He told you?”

She nodded that he had, “He said she was in the Navy, too. As a matter of fact, he said she was one of only eight female fighter pilots the Navy has ever had on an aircraft carrier.”

“Wow, she must be something pretty special,” Then I wondered about the significance of the word ‘was’ and asked Addie, “But?” There had to be lots more to the story.

“They met in the Navy. He had just applied to be a Seal and she was a pilot. They were both on leave in San Diego and met at the USO.” She smiled, “He saw her on the other side of the room and told me that he decided that instant he was going to marry her. By the time he’d walked to the other side of the room to introduce himself, he was already in love. He said they saw each other off and on for a year, then got married on the happiest day of his life. He showed me her wedding picture. It’s still on his dresser. She was beautiful.”

She hesitated, “What happened?” I asked her. Somehow, this didn’t sound like it was going to end well.

Addie went on, “Tthey had a baby girl. Leah, that was his wife’s name, was on limited duty until after Lily came, then shortly after she was assigned back on a carrier and the baby lived with her parents.”

“During a lot of that time, Samuel was training to be a Seal. He said there were seventy-eight guys and four made it through. While he was doing that, Leah was promoted to Lieutenant Commander.”

I was still confused, “So what happened?” I asked her again.

Addie faltered before she started again, “They were both home on leave at Christmas. Lily was two. They had a little house off the base. He said their garage door opener was broke so his car was in the driveway and hers was parked on the street. She needed some groceries and pull-ups for Lily, so went to Walmart. When she got home, she parked in the same spot on the street-corner.

Addie was trying to talk, her voice was so quiet, barely a whisper, I took her hand in mine. Whatever she was telling me was obviously difficult. “She was getting the groceries out of the trunk. A car ran the stop sign, hit another car, and knocked it into the back of theirs.”

Now Addie was crying and I was horrified at the picture she was painting in my mind. “She was dead before he could get to her. He said there couldn’t have been more than a split second that she could have even known there had been an accident ... he didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.”

We were both quiet for a long time, except for Addie’s soft crying. Then she started again, “After he told me that, and I saw you and the kids at the airport, it really came home to me what I could have lost,” and she wrapped her arms around me, holding me tightly to her and lay on our bed shaking and sobbing.

“What about the other two cars?” I asked her, “They hurt?”

She shook her head trying to talk between her sobs, “Both their airbags went off and neither got hurt at all.” She paused, then went on, “The car that ran the stop light ... it was a young mom driving, married, three kids, grade school and kindergarten. She’d been at a Christmas party and drank a little too much wine. She pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter. Samuel said he testified at her sentencing hearing that she’ll suffer from remorse the rest of her life and that prison time wouldn’t help anybody. The judge disagreed. He gave her the maximum four years, ‘the consequences of drinking and driving’ he said. She was paroled after two-and-a-half years in a minimum-security prison.”

Oh God, what a tragedy! I was horrified; a woman killed, another normal, law-abiding mom in prison. My body shook with the realization of how easy it could happen to any of us.

“Samuel said he went to visit her in prison and told her that he forgave her, that he knew it was just a freak accident. He said they spent most of the afternoon crying together and they were both better afterward.”

“He told me that he told her something he never told anyone else ... until me. He still feels like the accident was his own fault. Leah had been asking him to fix the garage door opener ... if he had, she wouldn’t have been in the street getting groceries out of the trunk.

Addie took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. “After the accident, he resigned from the Navy. Said his work was too dangerous and he didn’t want Lily to grow up without either of her parents. It was after that that he went to work for Jonah. He said he really owed Jonah, because Jonah took a chance on him in the athletic club. He didn’t have any experience managing anything.”

I guess that kind of explained why Jonah was so thrilled with fixing Samuel up with a good woman. Too bad it had to be my wife.

Addie and I held each other and slept the rest of the night, then tried to resume some semblance of normalcy in our lives, again. Addie’s tummy was starting to show a little growth. If you hadn’t known her, it wouldn’t be noticeable, but we did and it was exciting. She still wasn’t feeling any kicks, though.

Addie and I met for lunch Tuesday and she told me, “Chocolate. I’m craving chocolate.” I guess that’s fairly normal for a pregnant woman, but Addie took it one step further, “I want to sell chocolates, good, hand-made chocolates.” Who am I to argue with her. She’s the one with the business sense that built the four stores from the ground up. I just follow along and help with the grunt-work.

That afternoon, after I picked up the kids, Addie came home and said she talked to Kayla about it and Kayla’s all for it. “We even talked about where we could put a candy counter,” then she laughed and said, “guess all I need is to find our supplier.”

“We talked about something else, too,” she said, “you haven’t forgotten, have you? Yours and Kayla’s night together?”

I sat with my jaw working up and down, no sound coming out. Forgotten? Hell yes, I had. Crap, I didn’t know what to say, “What? Yeah. No.” I was stammering. “With everything else, I thought...”

“You thought what? That we wouldn’t do it?”

“Well, yeah, kind of, guess I did...”

“And disappoint my manager? I suggested this Saturday and she’s all for it.”

My cock grew at the thought of spending a night with Kayla. I thought about how she looked in that nightgown the other night when she backed out. But I didn’t know if I could, thinking about Addie crying in my arms the night before and that last weekend.

But shit, thinking about that weekend just made my cock that much harder. Addie noticed, smiled and said, “I guess that’s a ‘yes’?”

I guess I nodded because Addie giggled, then started looking on the internet for ‘Boise hand-made chocolates’ Talk about changing the subject!. I kind of wanted to talk to Addie about Sunday night ‘inside the cage’ and this night with Kayla, but she was intent on scrolling the internet when her cell phone rang. She grabbed it, and without thinking or even looking at it, said, “Hi.”

Addie listened for just a moment, her expression changing completely, “Yeah, this is her,” she said. Then Addie’s eyes became alert, her mouth began moving like mine had earlier and I wondered, ‘what the hell?’.

“This. Is. Amber? That Amber?” she excitedly said, “Michelle is your real name?” She started grabbing at my arm, her face a model of excitement, mouthing to me, “It’s her, it’s her!” and pointing to the phone. “Oh My God, Oh My God,” she was shouting, “we’ve wondered about you for the last twelve years!” I listened to the silence of Addie listening, wishing I could hear the other end of the call, too. Addie was too excited to think about putting it on speakerphone. “Tanya ... and Tanner. They’re married,” she told ‘Amber’.

Addie wasn’t even beginning to calm down, “Jeremy? He’s married too, to that waitress ... thanks to you! She’s a nurse now ... he works for a big aircraft company, Martin-Lockheed.”

“Kirk? I don’t know, we haven’t heard anything about him.” Addie was finally starting to calm down a little.

But not much, I guess, “Can we see you? Sometime, I mean?” She listened briefly, “Saturday? Oh wow! Yeah, we can do that.” A little more listening, then, “Okay ... no, you can stay here!”

“I’ll text you the address ... yeah,” then a long wait and, “bye.”

After Addie put the phone down she looked at me and excitedly said, “Do you know who that was?”

I laughed, “No, no idea!” and rolled my eyes at her.

She hit my arm with her closed fist.

Then Addie grabbed at her phone again and started frantically punching in numbers. After listening for a few seconds, she excitedly said, “Tawns, you know who just called? It was her, Amber ... yes, THAT Amber ... but her name’s not Amber, it’s Michelle.” Addie stood and walked in the other room, her voice getting softer the further away she got, until I could only hear voices, not what she was saying.