by Jove Belle
Yesterday they’d buried Edmund. She’d held his wife’s hand throughout the service and felt guilty the entire time. Edmund had sacrificed his life in exchange for Tor’s, and she had no way to justify that fact in the face of Maureen’s grief. Maybe he did it to save her. Or maybe he did it because he didn’t want to wait for the cancer to kill him instead. Maybe he thought he would survive if he gave the detonator back. She had come up with a lot of maybes, but none of them made her feel any better.
Minnie met her at the front door, a variation on the routine they’d shared for years. She glanced at the elevator as they walked past. A barrier had been set up around it using sawhorses and construction tape, but so far no one was working there this morning.
She tried to listen as Minnie reviewed the day ahead, tried not to focus on Astrid’s desk sitting empty. She needed to make a decision about filling the floor-manager position today. She turned her head slightly and saw Edmund’s desk instead. Replacing him would be much, much harder, and it was something she wasn’t ready to even think about. Unfortunately, she would need to take some sort of action at some point, and it was unlikely she’d ever be ready.
“Good morning, Ms. Jewel.” Bart tipped his cap to her. He’d returned to work the previous day and she’d hugged him for far too long. Today she controlled herself much better. She returned his greeting with a smile but otherwise kept moving.
She made her way up the stairs and to her office without actually realizing that she’d been walking. One minute, she was in the lobby, then next at her desk with Minnie looking at her expectantly. She sank into her chair and rubbed her temples.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” She knew Minnie would understand what she was asking without the need to clarify the question.
Minnie nodded. “Very.”
She’d met with the entire staff, Minnie included, a few days ago to discuss reopening the branch and to reiterate that counseling services were available to everyone. She encouraged them to take advantage of the opportunity to talk to an impartial person, someone trained in grief and PTSD counseling, but she hadn’t gone herself. It was simply too much. The thought of sitting in a room with a stranger and hashing through her thoughts and emotions, reliving the panic she’d felt when she thought Chris was dead in the first explosion, the shock when she’d realized her own bank was being taken hostage, the confusion when she saw Sera among the gunmen, the grief of watching Edmund die, the betrayal of knowing Astrid had plotted to destroy them…She just couldn’t bear it. As long as she kept herself moving forward, her brain occupied, she would be fine.
At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
“Can I do anything to help?” Minnie asked.
“I should be asking you that.” Logically, Tor knew it was her job to be strong for her employees. She was there to set the example. Unfortunately, she had no idea what being strong in the wake of what they’d all been through even looked like. Not that it mattered, because she felt like she was coming apart at the seams most days. Holding it together was the best she could manage.
Minnie reached across the desk and squeezed Tor’s hand. “We’ll figure it out together.”
After Minnie left, the morning passed in a blur. She met with several employees, but she didn’t remember which ones or what they’d talked about. She kept notes, so that helped, but really, Tor was nowhere near ready to be sitting at this desk again.
A knock sounded on the door and Minnie said, “Excuse me, Tor. Someone’s here to see you.”
“Yes?” Tor looked up, expecting to find another one of her employees waiting for permission to enter. They’d never been so timid with her in the past, but today they’d all been reluctant to come into her office. She hoped that wouldn’t last long.
Minnie stood just inside the door, and behind her, instead of another bank employee, stood Sera. She stepped around Minnie and gave Tor a tentative smile.
“I hope this is okay.” Sera looked so different than she had when Tor had last seen her. She was dressed in a generic black suit and wore the same mirrored aviators that Tor had come to hate after spending so much time being questioned by Beth and the other agents. She slipped the glasses off and stepped farther into the room. The side of her face was colored with the faint tinge of a fading bruise covered up with makeup. Tor stared at her, unable to believe she was really there. Yes, she’d hoped to see Sera again, but enough time had passed with no contact that she’d decided it wasn’t going to happen. Finally, she stood and ran to Sera. She stopped short of throwing herself into Sera’s arms, and they ended up sharing an awkward hug.
“I tried to find you, but I couldn’t locate you at any of the hospitals.”
“They checked me in under an alias.”
“Oh.”
All of the easy connection that had been reborn during their hours together the week before gave way to stilted weirdness. It wasn’t entirely surprising, but it still disappointed Tor. Sera reached out and linked her fingers with Tor’s. It was a tiny bond, reminiscent of the beginning of their previous relationship, tentative and hopeful.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner. I wanted to.”
Tor let herself smile at that. Maybe she wasn’t alone in her desire to rediscover them. “I understand.” She didn’t really. She’d called relentlessly for two days trying to find Sera. “Come sit down.”
Her office wasn’t exactly cozy, but she could do better than to keep Sera standing in the threshold. She turned to thank Minnie and realized that she and Sera were alone. The office door was closed.
Sera sat at the conference table, and Tor chose the seat next to her rather than her regular position at the head of the table. As soon as she settled, Sera reclaimed her hand.
“I’ve been worried about you.”
“Me, too.” Tor nodded like an idiot. She wasn’t the same little girl, yet everything about this woman still unraveled her. She didn’t know what Sera’s role in the robbery had been, didn’t know if she was alive, dead, in jail, or what. She’d done everything she could think of to find her without actually calling the FBI. She couldn’t stand the thought of someone there telling her Sera had been placed under arrest for terrorist acts. It would have been too hard to hear. She didn’t know how to say all of that, so she said the same thing she’d already said, “I tried to find you.”
“I’m sorry. I…” Sera looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. Her grip on Tor’s hand tightened. “There’s so much I want to tell you, but I can’t.”
Tor nodded, but she was so tired of that answer. “So, tell me what you can.”
Sera smiled tightly. “It’s not much, I’m afraid.”
“Well, you’re not in jail. That’s a good thing.”
Sera laughed, which had been Tor’s goal. Some of the tension between them slipped away, but not much. “No. I’m not in jail.”
Sera pulled a wallet from her breast pocket and laid it open on the table. Except it wasn’t a wallet at all. It was an ID case. Tor picked it up to look closer.
Special Agent Serafina Andrews, Federal Bureau of Investigation
“You’re with the FBI?”
Sera nodded. “Yes.”
Suddenly it all made sense. Sera’s actions from the moment Tor first saw her in the bank were no longer this confusing jumble in her head. Every action fell in place and Tor could clearly see the woman she loved.
“But…what happened to law school?”
“Do you remember Remmy?”
“Yes.” Of course Tor remembered the woman Sera had moved in with when she left Tor. She wasn’t likely to ever forget her. Sera and Remmy had never been more than friends, of that she was certain, but she still couldn’t help the surge of jealousy that came with hearing her name. She’d shared time with Sera that should have been Tor’s. Marcus had said Remmy was dead, but she had no way of knowing if that was true.
“She was killed the summer after we graduated. It sort of…” Sera shrugged as she search
ed for the right words, “pushed me in a different direction.”
“I bet you’re brilliant at your job.”
Sera’s face clouded with emotion for a second, then transformed into a perfect blank mask. “Mmm.”
Later, after they had a chance to catch up, to relearn each other, Tor would push for more information. For now, however, she let Sera have her silence.
“So how’d you end up in my bank?”
“That’s part of the ‘can’t be shared’ category.”
“Of course.” Tor had hoped for at least a cursory explanation rather than the full shutdown. It didn’t stop her from asking another question. “Can you tell me about Astrid? How did she get caught up in all that?”
“Marcus convinced her to participate. I can’t say more than that,” Sera answered briefly and then asked, “What about you? How’d you end up in your bank?”
Tor evaluated Sera. She understood withholding information about Marcus and the other men, but Astrid had been her employee, part of her family. How had Marcus swayed her to do something so harmful to people who loved her? Sera’s answer wasn’t nearly enough, but she knew by the look in Sera’s eyes that she wouldn’t get anything else out of her. She sighed and allowed the abrupt change of subject.
“I suppose it was inevitable.” When she was younger, Tor had fought her father, tried to establish herself outside of his realm, but when it came time for her to join the workforce, it was simply easier to follow in his footsteps.
“Yes, I suppose so. How is your father?” Sera looked as though it caused her physical pain to ask the question. Not that Tor could blame her. He’d bullied Tor into ending their relationship. Sera couldn’t know that she’d eventually stood up to her father. She’d told him very plainly that she was gay and if he wished to continue their relationship, he needed to accept that. He never embraced that fact, but he’d stopped trying to change it. She wished she’d had that strength when Sera needed her. Given the choice again, she would choose Sera. She hoped to someday be able to share all that with Sera, but it was a little too complicated for the question asked. “He died a few years ago.”
Tor appreciated the flash of sympathy in Sera’s eyes. It could have easily gone the other way, considering how he’d impacted their relationship in college.
“I’m sorry.” Sera squeezed her hand. “Really.”
Tor stared at their hands. Despite all their time apart, she’d never stopped craving this connection. The fact that Sera sat here with her now said she had a reason to hope, but she couldn’t let herself get carried away. Sera could have come simply out of professional courtesy. Or maybe to gain closure for a chapter of their lives that had ended a long time ago.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you.”
Sera smiled, lopsided and flirty, looking more like the woman Tor had fallen in love with years ago. “It’s only been a week.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not every day someone takes me hostage at gunpoint only to rescue me later.”
“You have no idea how bad I felt doing that. All I could think about was getting you down, out of his line of fire.”
“And you decided to accomplish that by pointing a gun at me?”
“In my defense, I didn’t have any bullets in my gun. I couldn’t have shot you even if I wanted to.”
Tor thought back to that moment and the look of absolute panic in Sera’s eyes when she saw Tor standing on the steps. At the time, it had all been too surreal. Her bank was filled with armed gunmen, all wearing masks. She’d thought she certainly must be hallucinating when one spoke and all she could hear was her ex-girlfriend’s voice. When she’d said Sera’s name, she’d expected a denial. Instead, the eyes had grown even wider, and before she could truly process what it meant, she’d been pushed facedown on the floor.
“Either way, I’m glad you didn’t want to.” Tor tried to regain some of the teasing tone Sera had hinted at a moment before. It’d been brief, but unmistakable.
“I could never hurt you, Tor. Not like that.”
“I know.” And she did. Even when she’d been facing down the barrel of Sera’s gun, she’d never felt like she was in danger. That didn’t come until later.
Sera squeezed her hand one more time, then pulled away. “I should let you get back to your work. I just wanted to check in, make sure you’re okay.”
And then Sera was standing, shuffling her feet and slipping her glasses back into place. She was going to leave and Tor might never see her again. She lurched to her feet, her normal composure escaping her completely.
“Wait.” She blurted out the word without any follow-up sentence in her mind. She just knew she couldn’t let Sera leave. Not again.
Sera looked at her over the top of her glasses. “Yes?”
“We should get dinner. Or something. Maybe?” God, she was babbling, but apparently it worked. Sera gave her the brightest smile she’d seen in…years.
“I’d like that. Very much.”
“Yeah?” Tor couldn’t believe she’d managed to ask Sera out this time around. Putting herself out there had never been her strong point, but that was even truer when Sera was around. Sera enjoyed flirting with her, smiling and then laughing as Tor tripped over her words. Every date they’d gone on in the past, Sera had initiated it.
“Here.” Sera pulled a card out of her pocket, along with a pen. She flipped it over and wrote a number on the back. “So you can find me this time.”
“Thanks.” Tor wrapped her hand around the card, trapping Sera’s fingers in her grip at the same time. “Promise you’re not going to walk out the door and we’ll never see one another again.”
Sera edged closer to her, her gaze focused on Tor’s lips. “No, we’re going out to dinner. Or something. Right?”
Sera licked her lips, leaning ever closer to Tor until she was left with the choice of speaking directly into Sera’s mouth or giving in to the urge to kiss her. She chose the latter.
Tor pressed her lips softly to Sera’s. She didn’t want to initiate some powerful display of passion. She was at work. Sera was injured. They were in a weird place between old and new. All she wanted was for the physical connection to convey her hope and excitement. She couldn’t promise things wouldn’t end in heartache like before, but she owed it to herself, and to Sera, to find out. They were older, hopefully wiser. Maybe that meant they could make it work this time.
Sera pulled away with a little hum. “Mmm, that was nice.”
“Yes.” Tor let her hand fall away from Sera’s cheek. She hadn’t purposefully touched her, hadn’t realized she’d done it until the kiss had ended. “I’m really glad you came here today.”
“Me, too.” Sera pulled her into a warm embrace and kissed the side of her head, right at the hairline in that sensitive spot on her temple. Did she remember that spot drove Tor crazy, or was it just luck? She pulled away with a grin, and Tor knew it wasn’t coincidence. “I really do need to get going.”
This time as she watched Sera walk away, Tor knew it wouldn’t be the last. Life had brought them back together and she wasn’t going to give up this opportunity.
Sera stopped at the door and turned back. “See you soon, Tor.”
About the Author
Jove Belle was born and raised against a backdrop of orchards and potato fields. The youngest of four children, she was raised in a conservative, Christian home and began asking why at a very young age, much to the consternation of her mother and grandmother. At the customary age of eighteen, she fled southern Idaho in pursuit of broader minds and fewer traffic jams involving the local livestock. The road didn’t end in Portland, Oregon, but there were many confusing freeway interchanges that a girl from the sticks was ill-prepared to deal with. As a result, she has lived in the Portland metro area for over fifteen years and still can’t figure out how she manages to spend so much time in traffic when there’s not a stray sheep or cow in sight.
She lives with her partner of twelve years. Between th
em, they share three children, two dogs, two cats, two mortgage payments, one sedan, and one requisite dyke pickup truck. One day she hopes to live in a house that doesn’t generate a never-ending honey-do list.
Incidentally, she never stopped asking why but did expand her arsenal of questions to include who, what, when, where, and most important of all, how. In those questions, a story is born.
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Because of You by Julie Cannon. What would you do for the woman you were forced to leave behind? (978-1-62639-199-4)
The Job by Jove Belle. Sera always dreamed that she would one day reunite with Tor. She just didn’t think it would involve terrorists, firearms, and hostages. (978-1-62639-200-7)
Making Time by C.J. Harte. Two women going in different directions meet after fifteen years and struggle to reconnect in spite of the past that separated them. (978-1-62639-201-4)
Once The Clouds Have Gone by KE Payne. Overwhelmed by the dark clouds of her past, Tag Grainger is lost until the intriguing and spirited Freddie Metcalfe unexpectedly forces her to reevaluate her life. (978-1-62639-202-1)
The Acquittal by Anne Laughlin. Chicago private investigator Josie Harper searches for the real killer of a woman whose lover has been acquitted of the crime. (978-1-62639-203-8)
An American Queer: The Amazon Trail by Lee Lynch. Lee Lynch’s heartening and heart-rending history of gay life from the turbulence of the late 1900s to the triumphs of the early 2000s are recorded in this selection of her columns. (978-1-62639-204-5)
Stick McLaughlin by CF Frizzell. Corruption in 1918 cost Stick her lover, her freedom, and her identity, but a very special flapper and the family bond of her own gang could help win them back—even if it means outwitting the Boston Mob. (978-1-62639-205-2)