“Kendall, it’s frigid. Aren’t you homesick in the least bit?” Mom asks. I meet Leo’s eyes and hand him back the cup—fingers grazing his slightly. He refills it and drinks, watching me over the edge. “I miss you and Aidan misses you and your brother misses you. Surely you can take time off work at some point and spend it with us?” She pauses. “I’d go there, but let’s face it, we all prefer the heat.”
“We do.” I lick my lips, watching Leo’s back as he washes the frying pan. “This summer I’ll take my vacation time and come to Bronze Bay. Right now, I need to go to work.”
Magnolia, the gabber, doesn’t hear me. She goes on to tell me how happy she is Coal came home. She tells me about Aidan’s workup schedule and how Weston will love to have a cat come stay for the summer, too. I make noises to let her know I’m still listening, even though my mind is somewhere else completely.
“Weston will try to kill Coal, Mom. Let’s get real for a second. I love the boy, but hasn’t he broken everything in your house? Twice over?”
Mom laughs and tentatively agrees with me. I laugh. Leo smiles as he looks on—a dreamy look transforming his features. I finally get to the point in the conversation where I can tell my mom goodbye and end the phone call. I lean against the counter as Coal weaves between my legs. Leaning over, I pet him. “You have no idea how close you were from leaving us, do you, Coalie boy?”
The cat meows. “I like seeing you like this,” Leo says, pushing away from the counter.
“Like what? Dodging my mom? Hanging on by a thread after almost losing my furry boy?” I pet him one more time for good measure. “Or is the shanty of my marital house a harbinger of joy?”
“Happy. I like to see you happy.”
“I don’t know why you think I’m happy. You are standing in the middle of a warzone.”
He shakes his head. “Simplify it down to this moment. Don’t think of anything that came before this. Exist here. With me.”
I stand straighter, my stomach flips and my body reacts to the authority in his tone. “I am here with you, Leo. But I’m also here,” I wave my arm around the house.
He nods. “Let’s get out of here. Are you ready to go? It’s going to take longer to get in today.”
“Margaret said it was fine if I arrived late. I don’t want to rush. My mom said the news is nothing but car crashes all over the Northeast.”
Leo rinses his mug out, and heads back to the guest room to grab his things. I put enough food in Coal’s bowl to keep him full for six days, and start the bundling process. Leo calls out that he shoveled already this morning and pulled his truck into the driveway. He was parked down the road last night when he was searching for Coal. I grab my things and my cell phone chimes.
“Good morning. Didn’t want to wake you.” The message from Adam reads.
My reply, “Morning…”
“Should we talk tonight then?” is his response.
I know what kind of talk he means and I’m suddenly sweating in my jacket. “I saw the papers on your desk last night. I don’t think there’s much else to talk about.”
“Those were only just in case. Don’t blow it out of proportion.”
How can he say that?
Leo rounds the corner, his snow weather gear on. “I’m going to get the truck started. Give me five then come out. The snow is still blowing around like a motherfucker.”
I force a smile. I meet his eyes. “Such a gentleman.”
“Always,” he tosses over his shoulder before slamming the door. Coal scampers from the kitchen and back into the bedrooms. He’ll never run outside again. That was a lesson learned, at the very least.
My phone chimes again from another text from Adam. “I’m serious. I’ll tear them up if you say the word. I’m tired. I’ve tried everything.”
The keyword there was I’ve. He’s insinuating I haven’t tried. I text back, fingers shaking, “We will sign the papers tonight.” The first affirmative answer without any room for misinterpretation I’ve ever given him.
My heart races when I try to recall the last time I had sex with Adam. Did I know that was the last time? The last time he looked at me with love. Did he know that was the last time? Will my feelings for him always remain embedded in the grief of losing Noel? My mind is racing and I should be going to talk to my therapist instead of getting into a truck with Leo to go to work. Wincing as I open the door and lock it, I make my way to the driveway, my shins sticking in the snow. When I get to the passenger side, Leo reaches over and flings open the door for me.
I close it and shiver as the heat hits me. “Thank you again for last night, Leo. I was a mess, and now that I’m in this weather I know what you must have endured to find him.”
Leo clears this throat, and puts the truck into reverse. “I assure you I’ve endured far worse than anything Mother Nature can pelt me with. Don’t mention it.”
“Don’t downplay it. What you did last night meant a lot to me.”
He looks uncomfortable. “You’re welcome,” he says after a beat or two.
“I found divorce papers in Adam’s office last night,” I deadpan, keeping my gaze straight ahead. “I told him we’ll sign them tonight.”
Leo pauses, his gaze searing into the side of my head. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’d never seen them before, you know? The papers. It was surreal reading through them. So technical for something that began with the best of intentions. The disassembling of a family unit by the use of legal jargon.” I shake my head. “I needed to see them. It made me…realize…my relationship with Adam has only been technical since I lost the baby. A stringing together of motions that resembled a marriage to everyone in the outside world.”
Emotion clogs my throat, but when Leo stays silent, I press on. “No one knows what goes on inside a marriage. Unless you’re in it, the delicate balance isn’t yours to understand. No one can judge it. No one else can tell you how to do it. I have permission to be a wreck and to blanket myself with confusion and uncertainty just as Adam had the right to draft up those papers without knowing if we would make it through this.”
“It sounds like you’ve made a decision. A hard one. I’m sorry you have to go through this.” Leo keeps his gaze on the road, fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel as his truck blusters through the storm.
I shake my head. “I’ve been through it already. I severed my emotions from the marriage in the days after Noel died. Now though? Now I have to cut Adam. The Adam I fell for. That will hurt, but it will also make me happy he has a chance to be that person again. Even if it’s not with me.” The failure I feel at this ending is overshadowed by relief. “I feel bad it took me this long.”
“You can’t feel guilt. Just as no one can judge your marriage, no one can tell you how long something like this is supposed to take. Sure, your therapist can suggest things and give you weak timelines, but even if it took another year, that would have been okay.”
I swallow hard, and pull off my winter hat. “Thanks for being a good friend, Leo.”
He purses his lips. “Anything for you, Kid. Anything.”
Closing my eyes, I blow out a breath. We’re stopped at a red light that takes an infuriatingly long time to change. “Anything, is it? Stop calling me Kid.”
He glances at me, eyes roaming my face, and he nods. “Okay. That all?” A sly grin slides across his face.
“No, if you truly mean anything, then you have to stop being so vain, too,” I say.
His smile widens. “Me?” he places a palm on his chest, “Vain? Hardly.”
I roll my eyes. “I admire your ability to change the subject, but that just proves my point. You’re vain.”
“Self-confidence isn’t vanity. You could stand a lesson or two in that while we’re on the topic. I didn’t change the subject. You did. I’m willing to talk about your marriage for as long as you want.” A moody challenge lights his eyes.
I don’t want to talk about it, and he’s aware of
it. I want any kind of distraction from it, honestly. “Remember the story I told you back in Bronze Bay? How I was the one who found my biological father fucking his mistress on our dining room table?”
“Well, that’s a mental image that’s never left me. I do recall. Go on,” Leo says, slowing down for a snow plow entering the roadway.
“When my dad saw me that day, standing there watching them because I was so shocked, they covered up, and he apologized as the woman rushed out of the house. She was a coward.” I shake my head. “He told me to let him tell Mom. I only agreed because he said he’d tell her that day. I didn’t want my mom to go another second without knowing what an awful human she was married to. On our dining room table.” I pause, recalling the harrowing memory and how everything changed after that day. It was a turning point in my life. We packed up and moved to Bronze Bay almost immediately after. “I was so confused. Mom was so sad. You remember.” I told him everything back then. Things I should have kept to myself. Sort of like I’m still doing right now. “I vowed that I would never be like my mother. In a marriage like that, completely oblivious her husband was in love with and carrying on with another woman.”
“You’re not like your mother,” Leo says, quickly. “You’re not.” He pulls into Harbour Point base and approaches the guard shack. The lights in the small, narrow building flicker. The guard narrows his eyes at the overhead as he asks for our credentials. We both hand over our ID cards and then we make our way to his usual parking spot. A lot of snow has fallen on the lot since the last time they plowed. It’s still coming down fast. Leo puts the truck into park. “You’re not like her,” he says once more.
I nod. “I know.” I bring my thumbnail to my mouth and bite down. “I’m not like my mother at all. I’m like my father.”
A deadly silence fills the truck. “Why do you say that?” he asks, still refusing to look at me.
“I didn’t cheat on Adam with my body. What I did was much worse. I’m worse than my father.”
Leo sighs. “Don’t do this. You’re upset. Don’t blame your past for things that are happening now. You’re stronger than that.”
“You’re not even curious what that means? You don’t want to know who I cheated on my husband with?”
His breathing speeds and he clenches his jaw. “Don’t do it,” he says, shaking his head. “Not now while you’re angry and upset. Not now.”
He makes the mistake of looking at me. Deep brown eyes reflect back at me. They narrow. He blinks, black, thick lashes. I lose my breath. I catch it again. I revel in the way he looks at me. The way looking at him in return makes me feel. “Oh, because it’s not real or true if I don’t say it out loud? It’s better to hide it?”
Leo stays silent, breathing. In and out, dark gaze searing into my soul. “You can’t take it back once you say it out loud. It changes everything.”
Anger laces with my desire and I feel like I might combust. “What is the point of this second. Right now? If we’re not being honest with each other. I would have ended up here. Right here. Regardless of how much time it took for me to get here.”
He lays his hand on the door handle and turns his eyes to the windshield. “Maybe it’s just that we’re here,” he returns, blinking slowly once.
“Together,” I whisper. “It’s that we’re here together.”
Leo’s cell phone chimes a text. He pulls it from his jacket pocket and looks at the screen intently, almost as if he can’t believe what he’s reading. “Security has been breached,” he says, pulling off his winter hat and pulling his uniform cap from underneath the seat. “The power has been off and on, and I guess they don’t think it’s the weather causing it.”
My heart hammers as I balance the moment we almost had with the new knowledge. “Who texted you? How do they know?”
Leo shoots me a look like I should know how they know and shakes his head. “Well, we’ll just approach this like it is a legitimate breach. That means you have to actually listen to me for once.” When I don’t look at him, he says, “Kendall. I’m serious.”
“Why don’t we just leave? Go back home?” My heart hammers. His cool fingers touch my chin and he points my face toward his.
Leo leans in closer, so close that I can taste his breath and see the spiraling shades of brown in his eyes. He has my full attention now. “You have to do what I say.”
“Yes,” I say, aware of how his thumb and forefinger are close to touching my lips. “Should I be scared?”
“No. Of course not. You’re with me.” He drops his fingers, but keeps his face close to mine. “I have you.”
Swallowing hard, I let my face press closer. “Leo.”
He doesn’t pull back. Not this time. His skin smells warm and clean and I can’t help myself. I bury my face in his neck and pull myself into an embrace, his arms circle me immediately. “Let’s pause this conversation for a while, okay? When the dust settles we can have a bog night.” The dust being my marriage, I assume. “No holds barred. We’ll talk about everything.” He pulls away to keep watch out of the snow-washed windshield. “Kendall, we’re going to walk to my office—slowly. You’re going to stay behind me the entire time. Where the cages are, okay? I need to get some of my gear and I don’t want you going to your office building in case there really is a threat. Do you understand? I need you to stay with me.”
I inhale his scent once more and my heartrate responds accordingly, slowing. “Yes. I’ll do what you say. How in the world would there be a threat on base?” Everything is so tight and the processes methodical.
I release him and he keeps a hand on my waist. “This might have been planned because of this snow storm. There is a short delay between when the power shuts off and when the generators kick on.” Harbour Point is right on the beach. The backside is docks and water and I envision bad guys swimming up to the snowy shore. My mind flicks over about five horrifying scenarios in a matter of seconds.
Leo tells me to put my gloves on as he settles his cap on his head. His hand slides over my thigh as he reaches into the glove compartment to pull out a gun.
I close my eyes. “Oh, my God.”
He clears his throat. “A precaution, Kendall. Don’t freak out. You know what I do for work.”
“I’ve never seen it.” I ball my hands into fists.
He chuckles. “Better safe than sorry. Wait there. I’m going to come around and get you.”
The methodical steps he’s taking are making me wary. Did he downplay this so-called threat? He hops out of the truck, and instead of going around the front like I expect, he goes around the back and opens the passenger door. He holds a hand out to help me out. I slide out into the snow, remarking about leaving my laptop bag and purse in the truck. A trivial, stupid worry when the man holding onto me has a gun in his other hand.
He closes the truck door using care so it doesn’t make noise. Letting go of my hand, he spins to face me. Snowflakes are floating down around us. It’s so peaceful. A melancholy perfection that isn’t real. Like our entire friendship, I think. When he’s sure he has my attention, he says, “Step where I step. One set of footprints. Do you understand?”
I nod. He shakes his head. “I need a verbal confirmation.”
“Yes,” I say.
Leo nods, but he’s looking over my shoulder, eyes scanning like a robot, or a trained killer. My stomach sinks. He takes several steps forward toward his building. Small steps. Ones he knows will be easy for me to follow. The wind stings my face, but sweat is coating my entire body. No one is visible right now. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re here later than usual, or because some employees haven’t made it due to the snow, but it’s eerily quiet. The crunch of the snow and the bite of the wind is all that can be heard. Even my breaths disappear and I realize I’ve been holding it.
I clutch the back of Leo’s jacket when he comes to a stop.
His cell phone chimes from his pocket again. With the gun raised in one hand, he slides his hand into his
pocket with the other. He holds the cell away from his body so he doesn’t have to avert his gaze completely from the front, where he’s aiming. “Fuck,” he whispers, dropping the phone into the snow. It disappears into a snow drift, the light still glowing up at us.
“What?” I can’t catch my breath as the panic sets in. This is the reality we live with that every person hopes they never have to encounter. I’m supposed to be safe here. I’m working on a military base. The terrorists can’t touch us here. The terrorists are why there is a base here, I remind myself. They lie in wait to commit heinous acts against Americans. It’s been this way since the beginning of WWIII. You never expect to deal with it, but I know, I just know, that’s what is happening right now. Why Leo is shaken.
He shakes his head, a slight movement, and reaches behind him to pull me closer to his body. “Fuck.” His voice is a gruff whisper. “We’re moving now.”
He steps. Quicker now. With force. Without the care for the distance between steps. I’m jogging to keep up, to keep my feet inside his. He reaches back again and yanks my hand. “Just run. Don’t worry about where you step.”
I cry, terrified tears streaming down my face that feel like icicles embedding into my skin. “What’s happening?” I sniffle once, loudly. “Leo!” I cry out.
We’re close to the door when I hear the shots. Or what I fear are shots. I’ve never heard them in person. Only in movies where they sound like pops. Or on the news when it still holds a Hollywood quality. This sounds like firecrackers popping in quick succession. Nothing like you’d think it should sound like. It’s not as severe in person—it’s more tame.
The second I take the first running step away from Leo, I know it’s a mistake, but I can’t stop the panic driving me toward the double doors of the building. They’re about twenty steps away. It’s not until I pull on the handle that I realize I don’t have the proper badge to get into the building. Leo is screaming at me to get away from the doors. “I can’t get in!” The power is out. Even Leo’s badge wouldn’t work. The realization comes too late. I’m stuck here, away from him.
Lust in Translation (Harbour Point SEAL Series Book 1) Page 13