“You have got to be kidding me. She tried to set you up with someone during Thanksgiving dinner?” Moreau’s hands were dragging down his cheeks in horror, obscuring his handsome features.
“With his wife and daughter sitting right there, no less!” May cut in, laughing and shaking her head at the memory.
“What happened next?” Moreau looked between them.
Rook grinned. “May marched right up to her and said, ‘Look, Barbie. I don’t know what my aunt told you but Javier Rook isn’t up for sale. So sit down and eat some turkey or get the hell out of here, but if you so much as blink at my husband you’re gonna get a face full of cranberry sauce.”
“Nice,” Moreau grinned at her.
May smoothed her hair. “I might have had a bit of a temper in the old days.”
Rook snorted into his beer and she smirked at him. They both knew her temper was still alive and well.
There was a feminine shout from the water that had all three of them straightening up. Rook was standing, facing the water and May knew for a fact that he was ready to jump into the water and save somebody if need be.
But laughter followed the shout and moments later, the two water-darkened figures tromped out of the ocean. They stopped in the surf, Bex leaping into Atlas’s arms and kissing him soundly.
He walked her up the beach toward the fire.
“Everything all right?” Moreau called to them.
Bex turned, her face golden in the firelight. She looked softer and happier and sweeter than May had ever seen her before. “We’re getting married,” she said on a soft, happy sob, her grin cutting through her tears.
“I just proposed.” Atlas’s goofy smile was offset by his weepy eyes, his arms banding around Bex as he held her even tighter against him.
“Oh, you guys!” May was up and hugging them, not caring that Bex’s swimsuit was soaking her pajamas. “I’m so happy for you. You’re such a good match.”
She kissed Bex full on the mouth and then Atlas.
“Congrats,” May said resolutely. “Now go celebrate.”
She waggled her eyebrows at them and made them both laugh.
“Congratulations, you two. You’re perfect together.” Rook kissed Bex’s cheek and slapped Atlas on the back.
“Oh! I have an engagement gift for you two!” Moreau said, jumping to his feet. “The most amazing French wine. The perfect vintage for a celebration. Come with me to get it and then you can have the whole rest of the night to drink it.”
Atlas, still carrying Bex, made his way up the path to the villa with Moreau on their heels.
“Rook,” Moreau called, stopping to turn around. “Will you put the fire out?”
“You got it, boss.”
Moreau smirked at the nickname and jogged to catch up with the lovebirds.
May sat back in her camp chair and stared at the flames, her tongue in her cheek as she attempted to restrain the smug smile on her lips.
Rook plunked down in Moreau’s vacated chair next to May and stretched his toes toward the fire. A moment of silence passed.
“All right, all right,” he groaned, offering her a fresh beer that she gladly took. “Let’s get this over with. Just say it.”
“I told you so!” she burst out, laughing and thrusting a fist in the air. “I’m the champion. The all-seeing, the all-knowing—”
“We get the picture.” He looked up at the stars. “You’re freaky, May. How you always know stuff like that. Elena told me how you’d predicted her pregnancy.”
May winced. “I actually felt bad about that. She should have had the opportunity to tell everybody in her own way without me opening my big mouth.”
Rook shrugged. “She didn’t seem mad about it. If anything, she seemed amazed.” He paused, and when he noticed that May hadn’t opened her beer yet, reached over and twisted off the top for her. “What else do you see?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re always predicting whose gonna get married and whose pregnant, what other stuff do you see?”
“You mean, like, ever? Or with our group in particular?”
“Whichever way you want to answer the question.”
“Hmmm. Well, I knew that Moreau was in love with Geo for years.”
“Everybody knew that.”
“Except for Geo,” May said with a smile. She rolled her head to one side to meet Rook’s eye.
“True.”
“Let’s see, what else? I could tell that Naomi and Sequence were gonna work things out. The first time I met her, remember? You asked me to come talk to her because she was accidentally pregnant and had no idea what to do? Well, just the way that she talked about him. I was like, oh yeah, these two are gonna make it.”
Rook nodded. “They’re good together. I wonder if they’ll have another one.”
May raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. She was almost positive that they were currently working on getting pregnant again, but she figured it wasn’t her place to talk about it.
“Do you ever see stuff about me?” Rook asked, folding his hands over his chest and rolling his head to look at her.
May took a long drink of her beer and set it aside. “I don’t think my hunches are nearly as accurate when I’m so… close to the subject. I was always totally blindsided where you were concerned. Even that day at school when you wore your suit. I was shocked. I’d thought that you were attracted to me. But I hadn’t realized that you loved me.”
Rook shifted in his chair.
“I was shocked when I got pregnant. Shocked when you proposed. Shocked when you suggested we elope.” She cleared her throat. “Shocked when you told me that you’d enlisted.”
Rook winced. “If I could do it over, I’d make good and sure that you weren’t shocked by that last part. I would have really talked it over with you first.”
The sweet, easy mood that Atlas and Bex had left in their wake quickly dried up. May suddenly felt venomous and wild. After all these years, he still didn’t get it. “Really? If you could do it over again, that’s what you would change?”
She hadn’t meant for her tone to be quite so caustic, but damn, this guy could make her mad.
Rook stayed quiet, but his hands were crossed tightly over his chest, he wasn’t relaxed anymore either. Finally, finally, he spoke. “What are you suggesting that I change, then?”
“Maybe the part where you missed the first seven years of your daughter’s life?”
Rook stiffened like she’d shot him and May immediately regretted her words. But it was too late. Way too late. She’d aimed, fired, and hit her target.
Rook slowly stood up and stripped off his shirt. “I’m going for a swim. Just head up to bed whenever you want and I’ll put out the fire.”
He strode toward the ocean.
Even with regret swimming in her veins, anger still simmered in her gut. It was just so like him to make her stew. To provoke her into saying something awful and then not even have the decency to actually fight with her! This was the way so many of their fights went. With May fighting and Rook leaving.
She tossed her beer aside and strode after him. “Goddammit, Rook, fight with me!” She grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him, halfway down to the water.
“You couldn’t make me fight with you when we were married, May, and you sure as hell can’t make me do it now that we’re divorced.”
“Why?” she demanded, even as he turned back to the ocean and kept on walking. “Why not? You never let anything out, Rook. You always just swallow it down and keep on going and then I’m the bad guy because I lose my temper occasionally.”
He stopped at the edge of the water. “You think you’re the bad guy, May? Then why am I suddenly the guy who missed the first seven years of his daughter’s life? Don’t pretend to think of yourself as the bad guy when you obviously think that I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
He took three steps into the surf and dove headlong into a bl
ack wave.
“Oh, hell no,” she muttered to herself before she stripped off her pajamas and dove into the ocean after him.
They came up for air at the same time and he groaned when he realized that she’d followed him into the water.
“Don’t groan at me. I want to fight, Rook. And you finally said something worth fighting about, so yeah. If you wanna fight while we’re swimming, we’ll fight while we’re swimming.”
She treaded water next to him.
“I don’t want to fight at all.”
“Well, I do. And I don’t think you’re the worst thing that ever happened to me. I think you’re the second best thing that ever happened to me, after Ricky.”
He recoiled from her, the water up to his chin as his arms circled. “Then the divorce was the worst thing that ever happened to you?”
“No,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “Every time you left me and Ricky to go back overseas, that was the worst.”
Rook turned from her and let himself sink underwater. When he resurfaced and brushed water off his face, he turned to her with a fire in his eyes that May had rarely ever seen before.
“I was seventeen, May. I was so ass over feet in love with you. And suddenly I got you pregnant. I was making minimum wage at the mechanic, our families were broke. I had zero marketable skills. And all I really knew was that the army route had worked for my father. He’d had money and steady work and the respect of his peers. Of his w—” He cut off and cleared his throat. “I went and saw a recruiter and sure enough, I’d be able to send home a relatively fat paycheck and qualify for subsidized housing and day care. How could I have passed that up?”
“I would rather have lived in a hovel, broke as hell, and had you home with me.”
He laughed bitterly. “You say that, May. And maybe you even believe that. But the fact is, you and Ricky didn’t have to survive broke as hell. Because I went out and made money for you. In an honorable way. I served my country and provided for my family the only way I knew how.” He swiped water off his face again and May wasn’t convinced it was all seawater. “And don’t you rewrite history and say I wasn’t ever there. Sure, there were terribly long stretches of time that I couldn’t be there. But every single time I had the chance, I was at home.”
He was panting now.
“I know I wasn’t a very good father at first. But I tried. I tried my ass off. I tried even when you’d spend the whole visit punishing me for having been gone in the first place. Even when you didn’t even attempt to teach me how to take care of Ricky. But it didn’t matter that I was trying. That I cared. That I wanted to be a good dad. All that mattered to you was that I was going to have to leave again. I loved Ricky so much I couldn’t breathe sometimes, May. You know I did. From the start. But I’d come home and you’d just be so angry with me. How was I supposed to leave active duty and come home full time to that? With no guarantee that you’d ever stop being mad at me? When I was overseas, I had the respect of my peers and my superiors. I was good at my job. My life had structure. There was no one tearing me down or guilting me.”
He cut off and now it was May who was the one recoiling. “If it was all so terrible then why the hell did you fight me so hard on the divorce?”
He laughed bitterly again and sank under the water. He was under for so long that May started to get a little nervous, but he surfaced suddenly, just a foot or two in front of her, breathing hard.
“Why do you think? Because even when it was hard, I never stopped loving you.”
She scoffed. “And you think I stopped loving you?”
“I don’t know, May. You wanted me booted out of your life for good. What was I supposed to think?” Out of breath, he started to swim back toward shore, she followed him. “You know, I would have understood it if I’d still been on active duty. If I was leaving again and you just couldn’t handle that life anymore. But the fact that you finally called it quits after I’d gotten home for good? That really threw me.”
She felt sand under her feet and stopped, he stopped with her, the waves floating them up a foot or two and then back down to the sandy bottom. “Rook, you’re acting like you came home voluntarily. Like you’d returned to me and Ricky because you actually wanted to be a part of our daily lives. But that’s not the case. You came home because you’d been injured.”
He took a step closer and looked down into her face. Her breath caught at the level of pain she saw in his eyes. She’d never seen him look that hurt before. Not even on the day they both signed the papers. He searched her face almost desperately.
“That’s really what you think?”
The question confused her. “Isn’t that what happened?”
“God. You really think the worst of me, don’t you? It didn’t used to be that way. You used to look at me and think the sun shined out of my ass. But now? You look at me and see the worst possible version of the man I am.”
He turned and started toward the shore again. “Rook!”
She swam in front of him and pushed him back. “If that’s not what happened then tell me what did!”
He dragged hands down his face. “You wanna know what happened? You really wanna know what happened? Fine. I’ve been through half a decade of therapy over it. So, fine. I guess I can finally tell you what really happened. One second I was standing there, gun in my hands, sun in my eyes, and the next second I was flat on my back bleeding out into the desert sand. I looked down and saw some of my organs, May. I was literally torn open. It’s a fucking miracle I survived that. And you know what I thought? I thought to myself, if I survive this, I’m going the fuck home. I’m going home and I’m going to make May love me again. Because I’m not supposed to die here in the desert. I’m supposed to die in my wife’s arms, a very old man. So, they sewed me up, sent me on my way, and a year later, right before you filed for divorce, they gave me the opportunity to go back. And I didn’t go. Because I wanted to be there with you and Ricky. I’d learned my lesson. I was going to spend my days with you if it was the last thing I did.”
May felt dizzy. She couldn’t get enough air. A particularly big wave bobbed her up and over the crest of it and carried her back farther than she’d thought. This time, when she tried to touch bottom, it was too deep and she went under.
She wasn’t even remotely in any danger, but sure enough, a strong arm banded around her waist and she found herself plastered to Rook as his strong legs kicked them to the surface and back toward where they could touch.
She sputtered as she broke through to air and clutched at his neck. As soon as she could touch, she twisted in his arms, but his hot hands spread out across her stomach and sides.
“Dammit, May. Are you naked?”
“I didn’t want to get my pajamas wet!”
“And you just had to follow me into the water, huh?”
“To fight. Not to make love.” She pushed out of his hands.
“With you, baby, it’s always been the same thing.”
He was breathing hard and May figured it was as much because of his confession as it was about her nakedness. Her head was still spinning.
“You’re serious?” she demanded. “That’s really how you felt?”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
He was quiet. “Because trauma like that… it steals your words. Your understanding. It changes who you are, for a while at least. It took me years to even make my peace with the fact that it had happened. Everything that happened afterward is still a blur for me. Because while I was floating out in space, healing and recovering, the world was marching on. Ricky needed dinner and a ride to school. You were in business school and taking care of your mom after her heart attack. I was trying to figure out how to start Rook Securities. I couldn’t have possibly figured out how to explain all that to you. To be honest,” he looked up at the sky, “I kind of figured you knew. I never imagined that you’d think I only came back because I had no choice.”
May had no idea what to do with this information. She felt like her life was a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces with rounded edges and Rook had just handed her a bunch of spiky-edged pieces and told her to make them fit.
How? How was she supposed to reconcile this new truth? She’d been so sure that Rook had preferred his life overseas to his one in Brooklyn. So much of her anger had stemmed from that certain knowledge. But now, the anger was still there inside of her but it was rootless. As if he’d cut it off at the feet and now it floated freely inside of her.
“What am I supposed to do with this, Javi?” she asked, and was dismayed to hear tears in her voice.
“Maybe just think about it. And hopefully stop thinking I’m the worst man to walk the earth, all right?”
“I’ve never thought that.” She tipped her head up to the sky to keep her tears from falling but they just raced down, out of the corners of her eyes and down to her temples.
“We’re not going to solve our problems tonight, May. We just have to get along well enough to make this vacation fun for Ricks. And maybe… now that you know the truth, things won’t have to be quite so hard.”
He moved past her, out of the surf and she followed along. He turned, to make sure she got out of the water all right and his eyes did one quick skate down her naked body.
She wondered if he noticed all the little changes in her body over the years since he’d last seen her naked. She wondered if he liked what he saw. But he turned away from her and tossed her pajamas up from where she’d left them piled on the sand.
She tugged her clothes on while he used sand and water to put out the fire and the two of them trod up the path to the villa side by side.
“I feel like I just got punched in the face,” he told her gruffly.
“Me too,” she whispered.
“Fighting with you always does that to me.” He turned and gave her a small smile. “You really know how to make me hit the gas pedal.”
“It’s a gift,” she said with a small shrug. They padded quietly across the pool deck and into their bungalow.
In tacit agreement, they paused outside of May’s bedroom door. “Thank you for fighting with me,” she whispered.
Rook Security Complete Series Page 109