NightWhere

Chapter Twenty-Two

A Strange Meeting

Days passed, but Mark didn’t tell anyone that his wife was missing. What could he say? “Rae went off to a sex club to fuck strangers and never came home?” It was true, but it sounded pathetic.

They didn’t go out with other couples that much anyway. Most of the couples they knew in regular life were usually too passé for words. All they wanted to talk about was football and their whiny kids. Mark stayed out of that boredom, and when Mark and Rae met sex friends, it was usually within the confines of a club. The doors to those swingers clubs were like walking into another world…and when you walked out, you left that world (and those people) behind. So it was pretty easy for Mark to just ignore the fact that his wife was missing (at least publicly) and carry on with life.

All he hoped was that, after the next NightWhere, she decided to come home.

He watched the calendar and waited. He knew that in three to four weeks, there’d be another iteration of NightWhere.

It was two weeks after Rae disappeared that Mark ran into a familiar face. He was staring at the weathered veins of a jalapeno pepper in the produce aisle and wondering exactly how hot that pepper might really be when she walked up and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, stranger,” she said.

Mark looked at the long white hair and couldn’t help but smile.

“Selena,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ve been called that,” she said. “And worse.”

Mark felt a seed of hope blossom in his heart. At last, someone who might be able to put him on the path. A path that had grown completely cold for him. “Hey, Selena,” he said. “I could use your help.”

She pursed her lips and shrugged. “What do you need?”

“I have to find NightWhere,” he said.

Selena looked instantly nervous. “Let’s talk about this outside,” she said.

Mark could take the hint. You didn’t talk about this stuff in front of pedestrians. He finished throwing a few things into his cart as Selena walked along beside him, clearly happy to talk about breakfast cereals and hair products, but loathe to discuss dangerously perverted sex clubs in public.

Once they got outside with a small cart of groceries, he pushed back.

“Tell me how I can get to NightWhere again,” he said as they walked through the parking lot.

“Get in your car,” she suggested. “Before your ice cream melts.”

“I didn’t buy any ice cream.”

She looked around nervously and then nodded at the car. “Just do it.“

Mark loaded the groceries and got in the car. Selena was the only person he had seen in two weeks who even believed in NightWhere, let alone had been there. He was not going to lose her.

He slid into the driver’s seat and Selena joined him in the passenger’s seat.

“I hope you don’t mind giving an old friend a ride,” she said.

“You’re not old,” he pointed out.

“But I am a friend?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, you have kept me company,” he smiled.

“I’d like to do that some more,” she suggested. When Mark looked at her, she had one blonde eyebrow raised and a hopeful smile on her face. He stared at her for a minute, taking in the pale softness of her features, the gentle slope of her cheek and the ice-blue stare of her eyes. If he weren’t married, he would have thrown himself at her feet begging for any kindness or favor she’d deign to give.

Now…he looked at her and thought she looked amazing…and then reminded himself that he was married. And without Rae participating or condoning, he wouldn’t go any farther. Mark had never been the one who really, really wanted to swap. He knew that was stupid and counterintuitive and all that…guys were always the ones who wanted to play the field, right? But it was what it was.

“So how can I find NightWhere?” he asked again.

“You can’t,” she said. “It only is found by the people it wants to find it.”

“I need to find it,” he said. “I need to find my wife.”

“Let me guess,” Selena said. “She didn’t come home after the last time?”

Mark described how she’d left him out two months ago, but how she’d driven from the club and picked someone up to take back.

“So what did she say about that afterwards?” Selena asked.

“She just said there was a guy who needed a ride, and she volunteered to go get him. And she promised that she’d take me with her to the club the next time we got an invitation. But then two weeks ago I came home and she was gone. She hasn’t been back since. And I found out that the guy she picked up never came home after the night she picked him up.”

Selena leaned across the seat and put her hands on his shoulders. He couldn’t help but see the shift in the milky-white skin of her cleavage as she leaned into him. It made him want to pull her closer…he did intend to stay true to Rae and honor their deal, even if she wasn’t right now…but God, Selena was beautiful.

“Mark, listen to me,” she implored. “If Rae has given herself to NightWhere, then she is damned. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re just torturing yourself if you try to find her. And if you go into the club again, you may not get out of it alive either.”

“I can’t believe that,” he said. “Rae loves me. She’s just been sucked into this club and has lost her head for a while. I need to find her before she really gets hurt.”

“It’s already too late,” Selena insisted. “NightWhere is more than just a club. I think you realize that by now. Once someone enters The Red it’s really too late, but if she’s been with them for two weeks…”

“Help me find her,” he begged.

“I can’t, Mark. You don’t know where they are.”

He looked at her with eyes brimming with anger and frustration. “I need help here,” he said.

Selena touched his face and smiled sadly. “I know,” she said. “And I want to help you. I really do. Let’s go out to dinner or a movie or something. But I can’t lead you to NightWhere.”

“I’m going home,” he said, looking at the beautiful woman in his passenger’s seat. “Where am I dropping you?”

“I’ll stay here,” Selena said. She reached into her handbag and pulled something out. A pen. Finding a scrap of paper, she wrote down a number and handed it to Mark.

“Give me a call,” she said. “I’d like to see you again. Preferably not in NightWhere.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry about your wife, I really am.”

Then she slipped out of the car and closed the door.

She waved before turning and walking away from him across the parking lot. Mark was tempted to call her back. Just the scent of her left behind in the small space inside his car excited him. She had offered herself to him, and he’d said no. The brain in his pants was now thinking of ways to convince himself to call her back, but Mark shook his head. She was beautiful and sexy and nice. But he wanted Rae. And until Rae agreed that he could go sleep with her, he was not going there. He was stubborn and formal that way. It’s what kept him sane when the world grew crazy. Boundaries and rules, even when the rules were about cheating.

He watched Selena wind through the cars and knew that he needed to find another way to track Rae down.

He just couldn’t think of what that way might be.