I shoved my expanding emotions into a box. Sealed it shut.
I grimaced and shook my head. “I can handle it.” I worked the wrench with trembling hands. I couldn’t loosen the nuts on the sluice. My hands were cold and trembled.
“Here,” Ben took the wrench. “Let me.” In a few swift cranks, the first nut came loose. He worked through the next one. “Seems kind of early to be shutting it down for the season.”
Out on the Bering a few larger dredges worked the grounds despite the chop.
I unfolded a tarp from the bin on the deck. “I’m selling the dredge.” I wanted no pity. I only wanted him to know he was no longer needed. Whatever our relationship had been, the diver-tender relationship had ended. Kaput. Done.
Ben paused. His back was to me. “Oh.” Then, he again worked the wrench. Barely skipping a beat. “I see.”
“To be honest, I thought you’d find another outfit by now. Sorry I didn’t make it clearer that I’d shut everything down.” I made note of a few other bodies on the docks in case something went awry. He’d murdered someone. No matter the circumstances, I couldn’t put that thought out of my mind. “I can give you some recommendations. Good captains. Fair treatment.”
“Guess I’m glad I came by.”
“I was going to tell you.” I couldn’t be honest with Ben or I’d have to admit he scared me. I wanted to forget we’d ever slept together. Huge mistake. Reminded me how desperate I’d been for male attention. Pathetic, really.
“I’m sure you would’ve eventually. Or maybe you were going to wait until I noticed your dredge had disappeared.” He smiled tentatively. Testing me out. Looking for something I didn’t know I could give.
“I sort of came to this decision suddenly.”
Ben set down the wrench. “Rory, you can let me in. You don’t have to do everything by yourself.”
I avoided his gaze. “The dredge is my responsibility. My family’s business is my responsibility.” I shook out the tarp and refolded it. “Yes, I kind of have to do everything by myself.”
Ben caught me by the shoulders. “Stop it, Aurora. Stop it.”
My stomach fluttered.
“I didn’t come to Nome looking for this.” His thumbs brushed my collarbone. “I actually came here to get away from thinking too much, feeling too much. I wanted to get away from people staring, asking, wondering. And now I see it in your eyes, too. I see the fear.” His face tightened. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. And then when I knew I had to tell you—that night in the cabin—I couldn’t. I chickened out. After everything that had happened I wanted to hold onto something good for once, you know?” He traveled from my shoulders to my face, caressing my cheeks. “And now that I found it—you—us, I don’t want to let it go.” He drew closer. “It feels too damned good, too damned right.”
He kissed me hard.
It took my breath away.
Deep down inside the sadness that had crept into me over time melted away. That feeling of aloneness drifted. I leaned into him. I wanted Ben to stay. I didn’t want him to leave.
He enveloped me in his arms and whispered in my hair, “Don’t push me away. I need this. I need you.”
My shell cracked. “I need you, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We sat on the love seat in the wheelhouse and looked out at a perfect day for mining: no wind, blue skies, clear water.
“Have you ever felt betrayed?” I asked, not really intending for Ben to answer. I wanted to understand how I could love and hate my father all at the same time. How I could find myself in the same exact place I’d been twelve years ago when my mother had left. Alone. Confused. A victim of someone else’s lies.
“Yes.” Ben spoke the word bitterly.
“Was it her? Laura?” I didn’t even mean to ask. The words slipped out without me thinking. The whole murder thing hung between us like a dank, dark cloud. “Tell me about her. Tell me what happened.”
I needed to hear the story, no matter how ugly, no matter how terrible. I’d been screwed over before by people I loved—or thought I loved. I couldn’t handle one more person turning on me. Lying to me. Leaving me. I needed to trust Ben one hundred percent. My belief in my ability to judge character had been ravaged. I wanted to know it all. Because if I couldn’t handle those facts now, they would only destroy our relationship later down the road.
“When I came back from my deployment to Afghanistan, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake—the engagement.” Ben threaded his hand with mine and squeezed. “The fun loving, happy person I thought I’d gotten engaged to didn’t exist. She was a drug addict. I’d been stupid not to see it before. She met me at the base, and I could see it in her eyes. Even though she’d been sending me emails, Skyping with me, making me think we were together, she’d been shacking up with random guys she met. Out partying.”
“Oh my God. That’s terrible,” I said.
“But I was too much of a coward to confront her. I hoped she’d come back to me somehow. Be the girl I remember from before. And I felt guilty, as if I had caused some of what had happened because I was overseas and out of touch, I let things spin out of control. We fought more and more. I waited for her to be something she’d never been. And I paid the price for that.”
“You were in love.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “You were trying to help her.”
“The addiction got worse and worse. I mean really bad. She begged me to stay.” He gritted his teeth. “I thought if I left she’d have no one but these creeps she’d been hanging out with. Instead of saving her, I let her drag me down into her world.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“The night she died. We fought worse than ever. She was high and incoherent and crazy. The neighbors all heard us. I knew someone would call the police again. I tried to find her stash, flush it, get rid of it. As if that would fix it all—but I knew she’d be right back out there tomorrow, buying more.” He let out a ragged sigh. “She went nuts. Scratching, smacking, clawing. Like a wild animal. I was in the bathroom, dumping her shit. She came at me, I jabbed her with my elbow. Must’ve caught her in the face. I knew what it would look like if the police showed. I got most of her drugs in the toilet. Flushed. Then I got out of there. She screamed and ranted. The last thing I heard from her was screaming.”
His grip on my hand tightened.
“I spent the night in my car, parked in some neighborhood. When I got back to the apartment the place swarmed with police. And I knew. I had this feeling. I knew she was dead.” He took a long pause. “The neighbors had called. Heard a ruckus, screaming. I gave my story to the cops. No one believed me. The paper loved it. Splashed it everywhere. Former Navy sailor and his beautiful fiancée—they claimed I had PTSD, that I had a drug problem, that I’d beaten her up in the past.”
“Oh, Ben…” I wanted to spare him the hurt of remembering. I wanted him to stop. “And they thought you’d murdered her.”
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “She OD’ed. They didn’t figure it out until the tests came back. That warrant? It was an old one. Still not cleared out of the system, I guess. Her family still doesn’t believe it. They think I beat her to death.” He cupped a hand over his mouth. His eyes widened. “Oh, God.”
Men cry differently than women. Their sorrow seems to come at them like a physical attack. A brutal blow to their gut. Buck had never cried. Not once. I’d only heard my stepfather cry when my mother ran off. That one horrible day of realization that she’d never be back. Never wanted to be part of the family they’d created.
I climbed into Ben’s lap and looped my arms around his neck. I bent my head to his and felt his tears on my cheeks. I soothed with my presence. “You asked me once when I was going to stop living the life my father wanted me to live,” I started quietly. “When are you going to live the life you want to live, Ben? When is that going to happen? Never? Hiding in a cabin in the middle of
nowhere isn’t going to change what happened to you. Running away from something won’t make it disappear.”
I stared out at the remaining jumble of belongings on the dredge I needed to pack up. My mind an equal mess of emotions. I wanted everything to be simple again, to stay in its neat little place and follow the prescribed formula of my life: dive, gold, eat, sleep. Although I hadn’t experienced the same sharp tragedy that Ben had, I understood his pain. My life had been upended when Buck had his accident. The ugliness underneath had been exposed. The ugliness I’d been ignoring. What a fool I’d been.
*
“Do you want to take it out one more time?” Ben asked.
The sun shone coolly in a white-blue sky. A distant wall of clouds gathered at the horizon, but they would take hours to arrive.
“Yes.” The weight of failure lifted for a moment.
Ben smiled.
I got up to start the engine.
He automatically headed aft to untie the dredge from the dock and coil the rope.
I backed out of the docks and aimed for the open water. He joined me in the wheelhouse. I set aside everything I’d been thinking about. The uncertain future, the loss of my father’s dredge, the end of my diving and gold seeking, the map I’d left for Kyle at the police station. I let it all go and focused on the sun and water. The smell of the tides. The slap-slap-slap of the waves against the side of the Alaska Darling as she made her final voyage. I was transported back to that very first summer when I was twelve. When I’d known nothing about gold dredging and had played the sidekick. I hadn’t a care in the world. All I wanted was for my father to love me. And now all I wanted was Ben.
Ben swept the hair off the back of my neck and kissed the exposed skin.
I shivered.
“What do you want, Aurora?” Ben said in my ear. “What do you really want?” He wrapped an arm around my middle, and my stomach trembled.
I leaned into him, my back curved into his torso. “You.”
He kissed down the side of my neck and lingered at a spot on my shoulder. The plaid shirt I loosely threw on over my tank top slipped. He tugged at the strap.
I steered the dredge around the jetty.
Ben palmed my breast.
I gasped. My legs grew unsteady.
Ben settled his hand on mine and took the dredge out of gear. The engine rumbled.
We drifted back toward the harbor.
“We’ll crash,” I protested weakly.
“Then we’d better be quick.”
A rush of adrenaline and desire settled in my core.
He scooped me up as if I weighed no more than a feather and set me on the love seat. I kicked out of my shorts and panties. He unzipped his jeans. I straddled him. Our bodies met in an explosion of heat and need.
“Aurora,” Ben breathed. His eyes so blue.
I kissed his neck and rocked in a slow rhythm, wanting it to last. Wanting the feel of him inside me to never end.
His hips raised upward. He shuddered to stay in control. He pushed up my tank top and rested his hand on my naked breast. My nipple hardened in his hand.
A wave hit the Alaska Darling crossways, and my torso tipped into Ben’s face. I steadied myself by putting both hands on the back of the love seat. Our gazes met. I saw a new color in Ben’s eyes. A deep electric blue. Desire. Intensity. Joy. All wrapped into one hue.
“I love you, Ben.” The words escaped my mouth and blended with the soft sounds of the sea.
“And I love you.”
We kissed and continued the motion of our bodies. The world outside forgotten. Everything I needed was right here, in this moment. And nothing else.
*
Ben and I stood on the bow of the dredge. We charted a course along the coastline, away from other miners. We enjoyed the cool breeze and the vast expanse of the water. Ben rubbed a hand across my back. Hard to believe the man I’d first perceived as ‘the Beast’ had been so gentle with me. I flushed at the recent memory of our lovemaking. I wanted more of it, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit it. I leaned into him and took the warmth and strength he offered.
“You do have the skills for this, you know,” Ben said softly. “You’re not the cheater, your father is.”
“How do you know?” A week ago, I might’ve bristled at the compliment. “I thought my father showed me how to dredge, but now I don’t think I learned anything. He deceived me.” It hurt terribly, but the only way I’d overcome it would be to deal with it, not hide it. I’d hidden the pain my mother caused for years, and it had only created a divide between my sister and me. “The things he told me about how to read the bottom, where to find the gold. He never knew a thing. He stole a map from an old man. The food I’ve eaten, the apartment I live in, the clothes on my back—all a lie built on someone else’s hard work.”
“Wait, Rory, that’s not true.” He took my hand and kissed it. He spoke deliberately. “The other day, when all those dredges were swarming, we found our own path, remember? A path you tracked on the GPS. That wasn’t from any gold map. That wasn’t anything your father had given you. That was you and me working the ground, looking for the clues, finding the gold through hard work. Not through cheating.”
“That was pure luck.” Knowledge of the map had knocked me down quite a few pegs. I’d been so confident the Alaska Darling was the best dredge on the water. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“You have to believe in yourself, Rory. You have to believe you’re capable. You can do this. Despite what your father and Nate did to get ahead, you weren’t complicit in that.” He captured my chin. “You didn’t know what they were up to. Can’t you see that?”
I shrugged.
“Come here.” Ben led me to the wheelhouse and turned on the GPS. He clicked to the saved tracks. The purple track we’d started ourselves. “That is you and me, Rory. Nobody else. Just you and me. Don’t ever let someone tell you differently.” He traced the purple dots we’d plotted. “You and me.”
I stared at the purple dots. My pulse beat slow and calm. A peace came over me. “You’re right.” To say the words took away the tension and stress that had rested on my shoulders. “We did make it happen.” Even though my father had cheated his way to success, I’d uncovered my own instincts. My own knowledge boosted with the help of Ben.
“You said there was a mother lode out there,” Ben remarked. “I’ve got some money saved. What if we partnered up, started our own operation and kept looking?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that, Ben. I can figure out something else.” I hadn’t thought much beyond selling my father’s dredge, giving Nate his half, and taking care of the financial burdens that remained.
Ben unzipped his backpack. He pulled out the carving he’d been working on when I’d been at his cabin. I’d thought he’d crafted a single owl, but he’d made a pair of owls next to one another on a branch. “We can figure out something else, you mean.” He put an arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head.
I picked up the carving and ran my thumb over the details. In my mind, I roved over the bottom of the Sound. The gravel, the cobble, the sand, the rocks. I knew the terrain. I knew what to look for. All I’d needed had been the confidence to believe in myself.
“Yes,” I blushed. “We.”
No longer Rory Darling, daughter of Buck Darling, I’d become Aurora, Finder of Gold, Dredger Extraordinaire.
We cruised along the shoreline. Ice season would arrive soon, and Ben and I could start again. I connected my phone to the GPS and downloaded our purple plot points. Our work, our future. Together.
The End
About the Author
K. J. Gillenwater has a B.A. in English and Spanish from Valparaiso University and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara. She worked as a Russian linguist in the U.S. Navy, spending time at the National Security Agency doing secret things. After six years of service, she ended up as a technical writer in the software industry. She has lived
all over the U.S. and currently resides in Wyoming with her family where she runs her own business writing government proposals and squeezes in fiction writing when she can. In the winter she likes to ski and snowshoe; in the summer she likes to garden with her husband, take walks with her dog, and explore the Big Horn Mountains.
Check in with K.J. at her blog: kjgillenwaterblog.blogspot.com or visit her website for more information about her writing, her books, and what’s coming next. www.kjgillenwater.com
If you enjoyed this book, K. J. Gillenwater is the author of multiple books, which are available in print and in eBook format through Amazon.
The Little Black Box
When thoughts can kill.
After the suspicious suicides of several student test subjects, Paula Crenshaw, research assistant in Paranormal Sciences at small town Blackridge University and budding telekinetic, suspects they may be connected to a little black box designed to read auras. Professor Jonas Pritchard, the head of the department and renowned paranormal expert, doesn't believe his precious experiment could be causing students to drop like flies.
Haunted by memories of a childhood accident, which she believes she caused with her untamed psychic abilities, Paula finds herself lured to the black box and its mysteries. But when her best friend, Lark, comes close to death after her encounter with the black box, Paula realizes her investigation might endanger the people she loves most. As the suicides stack up, she convinces her fellow researcher, Will Littlejohn, to help her solve the conspiracy. The closer they get to the dark truth behind who might be financially backing the project and why, the more dangerous—and deadly—it becomes.
The Ninth Curse
His blood for a cure. It’s a cruel and deadly bargain…
Nine curses. Nine weeks to live. Joel Hatcher has inherited more than a family legacy. It’s a time bomb that’s ticking down to the inevitable: his own death. But the curse won’t die with him. Unless he can find a way to break the cycle, his younger brother becomes the next victim.
Aurora's Gold Page 24