twenty - two

up at the pit, jane was moving fast through her bedroom. opening the closet's double doors, she started pulling white shirts out and throwing them over her shoulder onto the bed. in her haste, hangers flipped off the rod and bounced on the floor, or twisted around and got pinned at the back of the closet - and she couldn't have cared less.

there were no tears. which she was proud of.

on the other hand, her whole body was shaking so badly it was all she could do to keep her hands corporeal.

as her stethoscope slipped off her neck and landed on the carpet, she stopped only so she didn't step on it. "god ... damn it - "

straightening after she picked the thing up, she glanced at the bed and thought, right, maybe it was time to quit with the white shirts. there was a mountain of them on the black satin sheets.

backing across the room, she sat down next to her mount hanesmore and stared at the closet. v's muscle shirts and leathers were still all arranged; her side was a train wreck.

wasn't that a perfect metaphor.

except ... he was a mess, too, wasn't he.

god ... what the hell was she doing? moving down to the clinic, even temporarily, was not the answer. when you were married, you stayed and worked it out. that was how relationships survived.

she left now? no telling where they were going to end up.

god, they'd had what, all of two hours of back-to-normal? great. frickin' great.

taking out her phone, she called up a blank text and stared at the screen. two minutes later, she flipped the cell shut. it was hard to put everything she had to say into 160 characters. or even six pages of 160s.

payne was her patient, and she had a duty to her. vishous was her mate, and there was nothing she wouldn't do for him. and v's twin had not been prepared to give her any time whatsoever.

although apparently that was something she was willing to grant her brother. and obviously, vishous had gone to their mother.

god only knew what was going to come of that.

staring at the mess she'd made of the closet, jane ran through the situation over and over again, and kept coming to the same conclusion: payne's right to choose her destiny superseded anyone's right to trap her in her own life. was that harsh? yes. was it fair on those who loved her? absolutely not.

would the female have hurt herself worse if there hadn't been a humane way of doing it? one hundred percent, yes.

jane didn't agree with the female's thinking or of her choice. but she was clear on the ethics, as tragic as they were.

and she was determined that vishous hear her side of it.

instead of running, she was going to stay put so that when he came home, she would be waiting for him and they could see if there was anything left of their life together. she wasn't fooling herself. this might well not be something they could work through, and she didn't blame him if that was the case. family was family, after all. but she had done what the situation had called for according to the duty she had to her patient. which was what doctors did, even when it cost them ... everything they had.

getting up, she picked hangers off the floor until she got to the closet. there were a lot of them in and around the boots and shoes, so she bent down, reaching into the back -

her hand hit something soft. leather - but it was not shitkicker.

sitting back on her heels, she brought whatever it was with her.

"what the hell?" v's fighting leathers didn't belong shoved behind the shoes -

there was something on the cowhide - wait. it was wax. it was black wax. and ...

jane put her hand over her mouth and let the pants slip out of her grip.

she'd given him enough orgasms to know what they looked like on his leathers. and that wasn't the only stain. there was blood. red blood.

with a dreadful sense of inevitability, she reached into the closet once more and patted around until she felt a shirt. pulling it out, she found more blood and wax.

the night he'd gone to the commodore. it was the only explanation: these were not ancient, forgotten relics, the dusty remnant of a life he'd previously led. hell, the scent of the wax still clung to the fibers and hide.

she knew the instant vishous walked into the doorway behind her.

without looking up, she said, "i thought you weren't with anyone else."

his response was a long time coming. "i wasn't."

"then can you explain these?" she held up the leathers, but come on, like there was anything else in the room?

"i was not with anyone else."

she threw them back into the closet and tossed the muscle shirt in there as well. "to coin a phrase you yourself have used, i have nothing to say right now. i truly don't."

"you honestly think i could fuck something on the side."

"what the hell are those clothes, then?"

he didn't respond. he just stood there looming over her, so tall and strong ... and strangely foreign, even though she knew his body and face as well as her own.

she waited for him to speak. waited some more. and to pass the time, she reminded herself that his upbringing had been a bitch and that remaining stoic and unyielding had been the only way to survive.

except that rationale simply wasn't enough. at some point, the love they had deserved better than silence that was grounded in the past.

"was it butch?" she said, hoping that was the case. at least if it was v's best friend, she knew that any release had been incidental. butch was a totally faithful guy to his mate and he would do any doming only because it was the strange, dark medicine v needed to keep level. as bizarre as it sounded, that she could understand and get past.

"was it?" she said. "because i can deal with that."

vishous seemed momentarily surprised, but then he shook his head. "nothing happened."

"then are you telling me i'm blind?" she croaked. "because unless you give me a better explanation, all i have are these leathers ... and the pictures in my mind that are making me sick."

silence, only silence.

"oh, god ... how could you?" she whispered.

v just shook his head, and said in the same tone, "right back at you."

well, at least she had a reason for what had happened with payne. and she hadn't lied about it.

after a moment, v stepped into the room and picked up a duffel bag that was empty of his gym clothes. "here. you're going to need this."

with that, he tossed it over ... and walked away.