Warrior (First to Fight #1)

by Nicole Blanchard

  I nod. “He’ll also win if you aren’t being safe. Were you even going to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now. Besides, this is my decision, not yours.”

  “I’m going to make it my business if your decisions put you in danger.”

  Livvie growls in the back in her throat. “I can’t put my life on hold for things that may happen. If there’s one thing that Cole’s illness has taught me it’s that nothing is guaranteed in our future. We have to live each day to the fullest.”

  “You can’t live it if you’re dead.”

  “I can’t talk to you right now. You’re impossible.” She tosses her uneaten bagel in the trash and dumps her coffee in the sink.

  A desperate feeling claws its way up my throat, but I force myself to calm down, to reason with her. “We need to talk about this.”

  “We can talk when you’re ready to be reasonable about it. Ordering me around isn’t being reasonable. I’m glad you’re back in our lives, but I do have to get back to mine at some point.”

  I swallow my retort. “The point is,” I say through my teeth, “it’s not safe for you to go back to work right now.”

  She acts like she doesn’t hear me. “Okay, then. I should be back sometime this afternoon. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Livvie starts heading up the stairs, but I grab her hand and turn her to face me. “Don’t think that means that this discussion is over, Olivia. We’re going to talk about it when you get back.”

  She waves a hand and I take that to mean that she agrees.

  Cole and I are sitting downstairs watching a movie when she flounces into the living room. I immediately take notice of the tight-as-sin pencil skirt and the white button up. The shirt is hanging from her wounded side and it’s untucked over the skirt.

  Her cheeks are stained red. “Can you help me button, please?”

  I lay Cole down in his vibrating chair and rise to my feet. She can’t look me in the face as I slowly do up the buttons on her shirt. By the time I reach the top, we’re both breathless.

  “Thanks,” she says faintly.

  I lean in, brushing her ear with my lips, then my teeth. “About this conversation that we’re going to have later. If you need extra convincing, be prepared to take it without any lip.”

  “Don’t think you’re going to be able to change my mind with sex.”

  “I don’t think anything,” I say with a smile, having finally gained the upper hand. Her body sways towards me as I walk to the playpen to pick up Cole.

  I’m pleased to hear that her voice isn’t so self-assured when she follows. “You sure you’re going to be okay with him? If you need anything, you can call mine or Jack’s cell. His cardiologist’s phone number is on the fridge in case you have any questions. She’s available 24/7.”

  I rub the back of my hand across her check. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  She releases the breath she was holding. “I know you will. I’m just always nervous about leaving him.” She grabs her purse and gives Cole a kiss on the head. “I should be back soon. Yes—” she cuts me off before I can respond, “I promise I’ll be careful. I’m only heading there and back.”

  “You better,” I whisper to her back as she walks out the front door.

  I try to keep myself busy after Cole goes down for a nap. His third of the day. Unlike a completely healthy child, he tires easily. Which is okay with me, because it’s given me a lot of time to bond with him. My new favorite thing is letting him fall asleep on my lap while I watch a movie or play video games.

  When the door opens and she steps through, the relief is all encompassing. As is the irritation. She bounds into the living room—as much as she can with her injured shoulder—with a huge smile on her face.

  “They said I can come back on Monday. The temp they had filling my class moved to Arizona. I can’t wait to get back to my students.”

  “So you’re still determined to go back, huh?”

  Her smile dims a little. “Yes, and there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind. I’ve been away for far too long as it is. They can’t hold my job forever.”

  “Fine, but I have some conditions.”

  A laugh bubbles through her lips. “You sound like my dad.”

  “The conditions are,” I talk over her, “that someone will drive you to work and pick you up each day. And you’re to stay in public places at all times.”

  She crosses her arms and heaves an exaggerated sigh in my direction. “In fact, I think I had this exact conversation with him when I went off to college. You remember, right? He asked the dean if he could be my roommate in the dorms?”

  Ignoring her, I say, “I’m being completely serious, Olivia.”

  “Yes, Dad,” she answers with a smile.

  I sigh. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “Relax. It will be fine.”

  “I’ll feel better when Logan’s caught the sonuvabitch,” I admit.

  She snakes her arms around my waist and I hope to God that she’s right, because I know just how bad it can be when it goes wrong. And I can’t fail Olivia and Cole. Not this time.

  “THE CARNIVAL?” I say, my voice ending on a surprised note. The bright lights wash over my face. I turn to him and can’t help the slow rush of excitement that buzzes along my nerve endings. “What are we doing here?”

  Cole bounces happily on Ben’s hip, also entranced by the sights before him. “To celebrate you going back to work. Plus, I figured I might as well get started on date number two.”

  “Oh, so you’ve decided that I was right. It is time for me to go to work.”

  He wraps an arm around me. “I’ve decided that I still like fighting with you, Spitfire. Sometimes, I may do it just to see you get all riled up.”

  “I think date two is getting off to a rough start.”

  He leans down to me, his lips whispering across the shell of my ear. “Then wait until you see what I’ve got planned for you later.”

  I ignore the resulting warmth that spreads through my chest as we join the growing lines of people at the ticket counter. Ben contents himself with Cole’s gibberish conversations, and my heart simply melts as I watch them together. Most of the time, it’s like they’re in their own little world and I’m merely afforded the privilege of the show. I don’t mind much. Since they’ve been spending so much time together, I’ve noticed how different he is around the baby.

  Out of everyone, Cole is the only one Ben devotes one hundred percent of his focus to. No matter how overwhelmed he gets or how huge the tantrum is, Ben is ever patient and attentive. They’re inseparable, and I could have never in a million years thought I’d be so lucky.

  We reach the counter and I reach to get my wallet from my purse, but Ben bats away my hands and pays for the bracelets that will serve as our entry tickets. I roll my eyes at his impish grin as the attendant attaches mine.

  The scent of fried food and boiled peanuts permeates the cool night air. We immediately stop to get a cup of the salty goodness, sharing it as we wander through the booths of wares and stalls of games. Ben hoists Cole on his shoulders and grabs my hand so I don’t get lost in the crush of people. For a moment, I forget everything that’s torn us apart—and the things that we have yet to discuss about our strange situation. Relationship? Whatever it is, I vow to forget about it for one night and enjoy it.

  Even though Cole can hardly balance, we help him atop a miniature horse and lead him around in circles. Ben keeps him steady with one strong hand and I stand outside the gate, taking pictures of the two of them. I find myself doing that a lot these days—taking pictures. Ben laughs every time I do, insisting it’s unnecessary. But having no real mementos from my childhood makes me all the more determined to make sure Cole has more than he could possibly need. Overcompensation is the watchword for parenting, I’ve learned.

  The boys return, smelling a might earthier than they did before, but both have identical grins stretched across their faces. “We�
�ve got a happy baby, Momma.”

  I can’t help but smile back. “I see that.”

  Ben straps Cole back into his stroller and turns to face me. His face is awash with the cheerful lights from the carnival rides, his smile easy, free, and unspeakably alluring. It’s the look of the man he was before he deployed for the last time. Before he took on the unbearable burdens he now shoulders on his own.

  “Where to next?” he asks, breaking me from my thoughts.

  There aren’t many places Cole can go, but I spot a carousel across the way and point to it. “How about that?”

  Cole spots the swirling lights and makes high-pitched sounds of excitement as we near the carousel. Ben throws an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close to his side. I turn, lean up and press a kiss to his stubbled cheek. He pauses in the middle of the crowd to meet my lips for a more passionate embrace.

  By the time we make it over to the carousel, I’m giddy with happiness. I lift Cole from his stroller, choose an aquamarine seahorse and strap Cole on. Ben watches from a crowd of onlookers. I gesture for him to take pictures, but he shakes his head. The carousel starts moving, so I gesture more violently. He finally relents and points his phone towards us with a beleaguered expression.

  We go around one turn and make it back to Ben. I manage to get Cole to pay attention for a few seconds while Ben snaps off a round of pictures before we’re out of view.

  The ride winds down to a stop, and I pull an over-excited Cole off the seahorse. We buckle him back into the stroller and set out through the crowds.

  “I hear there’s a petting zoo somewhere back near the horses,” I tell Ben.

  “Let’s grab something to drink first. Those peanuts made me thirsty.”

  Ben deftly guides the stroller through the masses until a loud sound from behind startles the both of us. Ben whirls, throwing his hands up, eyes wide and feral. I flinch at his reaction and turn to search for the noise.

  A couple of kids howl, waving sparklers and fisting handfuls of bottle rockets. Their parents intervene, grabbing arms and jerking them backwards while spewing stern words.

  I slip an arm around Ben’s waist and whisper, “Are you okay?” I can feel the heavy beat of his heart in his chest and his breathing is shallow. His throat bobs as he swallows thickly.

  “Yeah.” His voice is hoarse. He shakes himself then returns the hug. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  We both turn back to the stroller to make our way towards the concession stand. I lean down to offer Cole some consoling words—the noise surely had to startle him, too—but the stroller is empty. My mind blanks and my stomach drops somewhere in the vicinity of my feet. I look at Ben, thinking maybe he somehow grabbed him in the commotion, but he’s looking off in the distance, his jaw tight.

  “Ben, where’s Cole?” I gulp for breath, but it doesn’t help.

  His head jerks to me sharply, and he turns the stroller to confirm that my nightmare is real. I twist, looking wildly through the ever-moving crowd of people, but there are so many around us I can’t even see the edge. The world reels away and the lights are no longer bright and cheerful. The crowd around us is no longer happy and friendly, but terrifying and sinister.

  “Cole!” I screech, searching blindly.

  Ben leaves the stroller and strides away, pushing through the people too slow to get out of his way. His eyes scan the immediate vicinity, but there’s no way he can see through the mass of people.

  I spot a uniformed officer and sprint to him. “Someone took my son.”

  As the officer speaks into his radio, I fumble for my phone. I scroll through, find the photo Ben took while we were on the carousel and show the officer. “This is what he’s wearing. He was in the stroller, but some kids set off some fireworks and we turned away for one second and he was gone. He’s not even a year old yet; he doesn’t even know how to unbuckle the stroller.”

  The officer has me send the photo to his phone and he distributes it to God only knows who. I remember to tell him to get in touch with Logan and then I mentally check out. Fear and hopelessness feed a sucking black hole inside of me where my heart used to be.

  I watch numbly as Ben talks with the officer and a small crowd of them gather around the stroller. I’d fooled myself into thinking the shooting and the break-in weren’t related. I was an idiot to think we were finally safe in our own little family bubble. If nothing else, the catastrophic events of the past year should have taught me to expect the worst.

  I go to Ben on auto-pilot, reaching out for a hold in a world which has begun to spin unsteadily underneath my feet. He turns to me, his face a mask of pain that pinches the areas around his eyes.

  “Anything?”

  I don’t even need to hear his answer.

  The look on his face says it all.

  I let myself into the house. Grimly, I go into my bedroom and unpack Cole’s baby bag. It’s a mindless, numbing task that I do without any real thought. I take my time, losing myself in the motions, hanging what was clean or unused back in the closet and separating Cole’s little clothes into two piles, one to put away and the other to wash. I spend a lengthy amount of time crying into his favorite stuffed dog, the one we found in the dirt ten feet away from his stroller.

  I feed Hank, start a load of laundry, then I call the school. I’m sure someone has already told them, but the empty house feels like it’s pressing in around me and I need something to do to keep my mind preoccupied.

  The receptionist answers, a temp that had started working there a few weeks before I’d taken off. “Lindsey, hi. It’s Olivia Walker. I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be able to come into work this week after all. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “I wouldn’t let you even if you begged!” Lindsey McIntosh exclaims. She’d had her own fair share of drama, I recall numbly. According to the rumor mills, she’d even been married to a genuine rockstar, until recently. “Sweetheart, I’ve been watching the news for the last hour, and I can’t believe you even considered it. No one would ever hold you to that. You don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say. What else was there to say?

  “You don’t have a thing to be sorry about. You don’t worry about any of it. We’ll cover you until things are settled. Get some rest, you sound dead tired. Call me when you have word.”

  “Of course. The detectives on the case were able to get a license plate and they’ve put out an APB and an Amber Alert. Ben, Cole’s father, has some contacts, so he’s doing whatever it is guys do in an emergency…”

  When I trail off Lindsey clears her throat and says with false cheerfulness, “It’s good you have him on your side then. And we are all willing to help in any way we can.”

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am, thank you.”

  With that taken care of, I look around for something else to keep my mind and hands busy. If I had even the barest second to think about things, I would fall into a blind panic. My eyes land on a stack of bouncy toys I had yet to open and put together. Cole would like them when he gets back, I think. He is much more active these days, and I’d been meaning to set the toys up in his room for him to experiment with.

  That’s where Sofie finds me four hours later, except I haven’t managed to do a damn thing other than cry a river of tears as I cling to his toys.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she says, falling to her knees beside me and enveloping me in her arms. “Where’s Ben?”

  I wipe my face with her proffered tissues. “He’s with Logan and Jack and the police, I think. There wasn’t much I could do, they said, so they told me to go home until there’s word.” I hiccup through my tears. “I couldn’t stay there and listen to them talk about statistics and have all their eyes on me, wondering. No doubt grateful they weren’t in my shoes, that their kids were safe. I couldn’t stand to watch Ben shut down right in front of me after we’d finally grown so close. I thought being here would make me feel
better, but Sof, I don’t think anything will ever make me feel better.”

  I SIT ON the couch in a drugged stupor. Sofie had fed me sleeping medicine, but even though she’d passed out hours ago, I wasn’t able to succumb to sleep. So I sit, waiting, feeling oddly numb and my brain is so sluggish I can’t manage to form a coherent thought.

  The door opens and I can see Ben walking in, his head low. If I could feel, hope would have stirred in my chest, but it’s probably a good thing that I can’t, because when he looks up, the ravaged look on his face would have dashed those hopes right away.

  “They’re interviewing all of the carnies now. They’re still working on people that were there or that may have seen something.”

  My voice is raw and scratchy. “So they don’t have anything?”

  “They will, Liv. Logan was still there when I left.”

  “Ben, I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do here? I don’t think I can handle this.”

  He brushes the rain off of his hair and I spot his hearing device as he shucks his jacket and boots. I remember his story about what happened to him overseas, the nightmares he’s prone to having after rough days. He’s been through things like this before. I don’t even know how he’s handling it—if he’s handling it at all.

  He comes to sit beside me, pulling me into his arms. “We’ll get through this together, Liv. We won’t stop until we find him.”

  “He’s out there all alone. He could get sick. I can’t lose him, Ben. It would kill me.”

  “We aren’t going to lose him. I won’t let that happen.”

  I shake my head, because what can he do? “I just don’t—”

  “Stop. You need to get some sleep. We’ve got the press conference tomorrow. They’re going to want to have you say something on camera. They’ve got everyone in the surrounding counties mobilized.” He squeezes me tighter. “We’re going to find him, baby. I promise you.”