Free Taydelaan by Rachel Clark

phone in the console. She was about to call David’s number when movement caught her eye. Twisting awkwardly, Kayla couldn’t quite comprehend what she was seeing.
    David and Jessica walked arm in arm to the van they’d hired to move Kayla’s stuff. Both of them looked happy and relaxed as they climbed into the vehicle and drove away.
    David didn’t look ill.
    What the hell was going on?

    * * * *

    “She’s not here,” David said as they entered the empty house. “Call her,” he said urgently. He knew Jessica was reading his emotions correctly when she ran to the house phone and dialed Kayla’s number.
    She tried several times but didn’t get an answer.
    “Where the hell could she be?” Jessica asked as her panic leaked into her voice.
    He wanted to hold her but found himself pacing agitatedly back and forth across the room instead.
    “I scared her. I scared her badly.”
    “No,” Jessica said, shaking her head sadly. “She wouldn’t run, not for that. She’d want to know, want to help. We know her. She’d give us a chance to explain.”
    “Would she?” David asked unable to control the slice of anger cutting through him. “How much do we really know about her?”
    Jessica looked shocked by his words, but he knew she could sense the confusion behind them. They knew Kayla—the woman they loved, the woman she was now—but they knew very little about her past. Did they really know what might motivate her actions? She’d stayed last time and waited for them to explain, but this time was different. This time she had to know they were keeping secrets from her even after they’d promised not to.
    “Goddess, we’ve really fucked this up,” David said quietly.

    * * * *

    Ancient hurts and old wounds opened, and Kayla found her mind flooded with painful memories of her past. Was it happening again? Had she once again placed her trust in people who didn’t deserve it?
    Emotion squeezed her chest. It couldn’t be true, couldn’t be the same. The day she’d discovered her ex-boyfriend was married, she’d tried to leave him, but he’d convinced Kayla his marriage was over, and she’d foolishly believed him. Kayla had swallowed all of his lies, all of his excuses, blindly believing in a man who’d never told her any truth.
    The most devastating blow had been when she found out his wife had known all along. The woman had actually encouraged her husband to take Kayla as a lover and used Kayla as an unwitting pawn in their kinky sex game. His wife had gotten off on watching her husband fuck a woman she considered fat and ugly, and they’d used Kayla without the slightest bit of care or remorse.
    When she’d discovered the video files on his computer, she’d been violently ill, even more so when the naked wife stepped out of the closet and laughed in her face. The cruelty and the taunts rose up in Kayla’s mind, and she closed her eyes against the remembered pain.
    Surely, Jessica and David were nothing like the other couple. But she sat in the car long after they’d left in the van and worried for her naïve heart.
    It couldn’t be happening again. Jessica and David weren’t that cruel, but they were hiding something from her, and she needed to know.
    But did she have the courage to find out the truth?

    * * * *

    “ Anything? ” Jessica asked her husband telepathically. It was a stupid question. They were still close enough for her to sense his every thought and emotion, and she would have known if he’d found Kayla. David answered her anyway.
    “ No, I’m almost back at Kayla’s apartment block and still no sign of her .”
    They’d taken separate cars, traveling different routes from their home to Kayla’s apartment in the hopes of finding her somewhere in between. So far they hadn’t had any luck.
    But then she felt the hopeful spike in her husband’s emotions and almost missed the right-hand turn into Kayla’s street. “ She’s here, ” David said telepathically, no small amount