by Serena Bell
He made a rough sound in his throat. “How?”
That seemed to be the only word he could speak. He tried it again a few more times, and then finally managed, “How was that so hot?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back.
His heart was thudding away, a thousand miles per hour. An artifact of the sex, which had stolen his breath and his thoughts, which had made him come harder than he’d ever come in his life, which had squeezed to the surface every emotion he’d thought he’d be able to hold at bay this time.
But he couldn’t, could he? He’d never been able to.
All those years ago, beside the lake, it had been like this. Emotion bigger than him, bigger than his capacity to see or understand, bigger than his capacity to make the right decision. All those years ago, she’d asked him to claim her, and he’d failed her, like he’d failed her earlier in the beach house with his family when they’d asked him if he and Mira were together.
We’ve been spending a lot of time together.
A nonanswer. As telling as his silence had been that night at the lake.
He made the same mistakes over and over, hurt the people he loved most, because love made him stupid, because caring this much about someone was a recipe for the worst possible judgment.
Get up. Go inside. Don’t—
Don’t what?
Don’t tell her.
But the pressure of the words, of the memories, in his head was too much. This raw, uncomfortable, weird, messed-up sex, the sense of turning himself inside out into her, made it impossible to hold anything back from her. All of him wanted out. All of him craved the freedom of her. Even if he regretted it. Even if it laid him bare and tore him apart.
“My best friend died in Afghanistan,” he said.
White words, bolts of lightning, stark against the blackness of the sky, under which the foamy surface of the Pacific was only barely visible.
Her breath whistled inward. Then, “Jake.”
“Don’t.”
“Jake.”
And just like in the car all those years ago, the words spilled out of him, confessional shards. “The story I told you. He was the driver. When I told him to go, go, go, and he froze up? I knew that was going to happen. I’d seen him do it twice before in pressure situations. I’d taken him aside. I was the team sergeant. I took him aside and told him I was sending him home. He begged me not to. Begged. And I caved. If I’d manned up, if I’d done what I needed to do, he’d be alive.”
The Pacific roared steadily on, wave after wave washing up on this shore, on every shore in western North America, in eastern Asia. Touching so many sands, connecting parts of the world that were far away. Echoing the rush of his blood through his heart, the pounding of that stupid, hopeful muscle in his chest.
He waited. He didn’t know for what.
She took a breath.
“Why?”
“Why didn’t I send him home?”
She nodded.
In the dark, she was perfect, as she’d been that first night, her hair glowing like pale gold, slivers of moonlight describing the contours of her face, shining in her eyes.
“I told myself I was afraid he’d kill himself. That if I shamed him and sent him away, he’d put a pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.”
“Because that’s what you believed you’d do. If it were you.”
Something rose up in him, in his chest, and he was drowning, couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t breathe at all. It felt like a ton of ocean water was crashing down on him, a wave curling up and over his head, like he was being being tossed around in the curl and churn and whitewash under the water until he didn’t know which way was up, and he had to hold his breath and pray.
“Does it make it worse? That you didn’t? That you came home and managed to stay alive?”
He hadn’t put a pistol in his mouth or drunk himself to death, and he’d risen to the surface after every wave that had threatened to crush and drown him, and when he’d broken back into the gaseous universe, there had been Mira and Sam and this idea of family. There had been something that mattered beyond what he’d imagined could.
“Because now you have to think about the fact that Mike might have, too?”
She was supposed to say, It’s not your fault. She was supposed to absolve him and forgive him, because that was what kind and good people had done over and over again, uselessly, since the day he’d found out Mike was dead. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Don’t punish yourself; you’ve already been punished enough. No one could have done any better.
He hated her. For being right, for saying what no one else would ever say because no one else would ever see him that clearly. For dragging him down into this muck, this churning sand that was flaying him raw.
He loved her.
“Jake.”
“Don’t. Don’t.”
She touched his face. Stroked her thumbs over his eyebrows, then his cheekbones. Leaned close. Her breath moved across his face like a benediction. Like an invitation. Here is where you can breathe again.
“Mira. Mira.”
She held him tight while the sobs worked their way through him, and when the first wave had broken and he surfaced into the world, she kissed him and he breathed her, and then her hands were on him, sheathing him with another condom, her body over his, and he was sinking, sinking into grief and warmth and comfort. She said his name over and over again, and he clung to it and let himself be washed away, washed clean.
Chapter 25
When they pulled up outside Mira’s house late the next afternoon, there was a car parked outside, a white midsized Chevy that screamed rental. A dark-haired man—around Jake’s age—sat behind the wheel, iPhone in hand, and as they cruised past the car to turn into Mira’s stubby little driveway, he looked up from the phone and waved hello.
“Oh, shit,” Mira said.
“Mommy!”
“Oh, shoot,” she amended.
“Who is it?” Jake asked, just as Sam demanded, “Is that Aaron?”
The look on Mira’s face said Sam was right. Jake’s gut gave a sick squeeze. “What’s he doing here?”
“I have no idea,” Mira said.
“It’s Aaron!” Sam said, bouncing in the backseat. “I wonder if he brought me Legos! Aaron always brings me Legos,” he explained to Jake. “And he helps me put them together.”
So that was where Sam’s twenty-gallon tote of Lego pieces had come from. It figured. Jake had sat on the floor with Sam the day he’d babysat, assembling complicated visions from his son’s imagination, according to Sam’s detailed directions. No, the blue one. No, not there, there.
Aaron had done the same, apparently. Probably many more times. Over many more weeks, months, years, even. And how many times had Mira spent the night in Aaron’s arms?
A lot more than twice.
Jealousy burned in his chest, sending a bile taste to the back of his throat, a testosterone shot to the groin.
As dismissive as she’d been when she’d told him about Aaron, he knew there was history there. Maybe because of how dismissive she’d been. And he knew she’d left Aaron in anger, after he’d hurt and betrayed her, which meant that there was still strong feeling. Which meant that she might be only a sincere apology away from regretting ever leaving.
Was that what this was? Had Aaron come to deliver an apology? To reclaim what was his?
She’s mine now, thought Jake, but then another, deeper and older part of his brain said, You didn’t say she was yours when you had the chance, did you?
The driver’s side door opened and a tall man emerged. The sort of guy who would wear a suit and work on Wall Street or as a lawyer. The sort of guy who could play the leading man in a romantic comedy, opposite Mira, who would be played by Drew Barrymore, maybe, or, in a pinch, Kirsten Dunst.
This was a guy who was committed. Who was in the world. Who had made a decision—I’m going to get her back—and a plan, who had flown across th
e country to claim what was his. He had a job, light behind his eyes. A little swagger, but not so much Jake hated him on sight. This guy had made mistakes in the past, but now here he was, making things right.
And who was Jake? What had he done to rejoin the world? He still had no job. Still hadn’t committed himself one way or the other to returning to active duty, still hadn’t actually signed up for the triathlon he was theoretically planning to do. A guy in limbo. A guy who’d latched on to Mira and Sam because he needed a sense of purpose but hadn’t yet been able to find one of his own. A parasite on their lives, a lurker, a hanger-on.
Aaron had something to give Mira and Sam, and all he’d done, all he could do, was take.
On top of the rest of it, on top of the grief and the longing, on top of that emotion he was too fucking scared to name, the one that had reached out to her last night through the discomfort and the awkwardness, that had connected straight to the center of her through all the messy, uncomfortable meaty bits of being human, on top of all that, he was dying of jealousy. And it was too much. Too much feeling. If there was one thing he knew about himself, it was that he made the worst decisions when he felt the most.
“I’m sorry,” Mira told Jake. “I have no idea what he’s doing here. I’ll get rid of him.”
For a moment, the part of his brain that had cried out She’s mine, now gained the upper hand, and he almost said, Yes—get rid of him. Get him the fuck out of here. But he looked at Sam and he looked at Mira—so beautiful, so smart, so gutsy—and he thought, Do the right thing. For once.
“Maybe you should find out what he came all this way to say.”
She gave him a confused look. “I guess.”
She got out of the car. Jake got out, too, and stood beside Sam. It was still warm and light out, although it was probably close to nine now, and Sam had to be exhausted, ready to drop. Although he’d slept some in the car.
“Hi, Mira,” Aaron said.
He had a low, steady voice, perfect for the romantic part Jake had cast him in.
Mira’s face was all wide-eyed emotion. Confusion, yes, and something else, something open and vulnerable and needy.
She’d downplayed it, but she’d loved this guy once. Maybe still loved this guy.
God damn it.
“Hi, Aaron.”
“Aaron!” Sam said, and catapulted himself into Aaron. And of course, Aaron, being Aaron and having two sound legs, did not totter or topple or have to catch himself by reaching out for Mira’s arm, but instead snatched Sam up with both arms and spun him around and hugged him.
Double God damn it.
“I’m sorry it’s taken me this long,” Aaron said. “I should have come after you right away. But I was—I was doing some serious thinking about my life. I wanted, when I came, to be able to tell you this …”
Jake could step in now. He could say, You’re too late, man.
He could say, Mira, wait. I should have told you I loved you. On the beach. After we made love. Which, by the way, undid me. Turned me inside out. I was too busy spilling my guts, losing my shit, to say what needed to be said. To do what needed to be done.
Why hadn’t he said it after he’d made his confession, when they were making love to each other again and she was wiping the tears from his face; when she was telling him over and over again that it was okay; when she was absorbing his grief and his fear and making it, temporarily, really, truly okay?
Because I suck at this. I suck at feeling too much and wanting too much, and I’ve screwed up so many things that matter …
“I’m interviewing for a job in Seattle this week, and I’m up here to look for a place to live. For both of us, all of us, to live. I came up here—Mira, I came to ask if you’d—”
Aaron reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out a little navy velvet box, because somehow Jake had accidentally stumbled into this movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Katherine Heigl. Jake, it turned out, had a cameo as the rebound guy.
Aaron held out the ring box, open, and something—Jake knew what—winked and flashed. “Mira, will you marry me? I promise, I’ll prove to you that your dad had nothing to do with my feelings for you. Just give me a little time—I’ll prove it.”
The turmoil in Jake’s head and stomach was such that it took him a moment to realize that Mira wasn’t reaching for the box in Aaron’s hand. She had turned, and she was looking at him.
He needed to throw down a gauntlet, fight for her, but he couldn’t fight for her because he wasn’t prepared to hold the territory. He’d be some occupying army that would rape and pillage, and when he was done, he’d have nothing to offer. Not security, not safety, not peace. Aaron—Aaron had come three thousand miles, had planned and executed this, flown across the country with a ring box in his hand, a diamond glittering in the waning sunlight, a man so right for Mira that Mira’s own father had hand-picked him for her.
Jake would make the right decision this time.
“He’s just asking for you to give him a chance,” Jake heard his own voice saying.
“Jake—”
He started to back away. Toward the street, retreating to the bus stop.
She followed him. She stepped away from Aaron, away from the tall, dark, good-looking family guy with the velvet box in his outstretched hand, and followed Jake into the street, taking a step toward him for every shaky, asymmetrical step of his retreat.
“Jake?”
They were far enough away now that their lowered voices were probably inaudible to Aaron, but he watched them from a distance, and Jake could see he was trying to figure things out. Trying to understand what had happened in his absence, trying to grasp what he was up against.
Nothing, dude—I’m no obstacle to your happily ever after. This time, I’m not going to let my emotions get in the way of making the right decision.
Because last time, he hadn’t. Because he’d let his feelings get between him and what he’d known was best for Mike. For the team. Because he’d let love cloud his judgment.
“I’m trying to keep you from making a mistake,” Jake told Mira.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Really? That’s all you’re going to say? You’re going to say, ‘He’s just asking you to give him a chance,’ and you’re going to walk away? I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you walked away too quickly from him,” Jake said.
“Jesus, Jake, stop. Stop with Aaron. We’re not talking about Aaron. We’re talking about you. You and me.”
“We’re talking about you and Sam.”
“And you.”
“No,” he said. “We’re not talking about me. I’m not on the table here.”
She was crying now.
“I can’t give you what he’s offering.”
“I don’t need you to give me what he’s offering,” she said. “I want what you’re offering.”
Her voice, her face, her raised hands pleaded with him, and something cracked behind his ribs, and he wanted to put his hands over his chest to hold the pieces together.
“I told you from the beginning. I can’t give you—” Damn it, his voice was not going to fucking break on him right now. “We talked about this. We said it was about sex and Sam. We’ve known each other, what, a few weeks? The fact that my genes happen to be in Sam—”
Her face shifted, fault lines showing, but he kept talking. “That’s not as important as all the time you and Sam spent with Aaron.”
“You’re talking me into staying with him.”
“I guess I am.”
“You’re telling me what I want.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“God damn it, Jake, I told you not to fucking do that.”
He was startled by her vehemence. Her anger.
Her voice was low, hard. Her jaw set. “Don’t you tell me what I want and what I deserve. Don’t make this about me.”
And he heard it now, the echo of the first night he’d kissed her. Just man up and say you don�
�t want this.
Just man up.
Just man up.
If he’d done what he should have done, Mike would be alive. He’d have two whole legs.
If he had done what he should have done that night at the lake, or afterward, when he’d dropped her off, how would things be different now?
He couldn’t know that. He could only start from here and make the best decision he could, do the best that he knew how by the people he loved.
He steadied his voice and made it hard as iron. “You know what? You’re right. I’m being a wimp about this. I should just be honest with you. This is getting too complicated. We said we’d keep it simple, but we both know it’s not.”
She’d stopped crying. She was pissed.
“That’s right,” she said. “You’ve been honest with me all along. And that’s all that matters, right? You never lied to me in words.”
And her anger was clarifying, like a cool drink of water, like Mike’s anger would have been if Jake had sent him home. He’d been afraid of Mike’s anger but he wasn’t afraid of hers, because it was the price he had to pay for setting her free, for doing what was right for her and for Sam.
He could pay this price.
“Okay,” he said.
He raised his hand and called out to Sam, “I’m going to take off now, Sam—see you around, bud? We’ll do something special soon.”
He felt her there, watching him, but she didn’t move, didn’t say a word, as he started up the street.
“I thought he was going to stay with us?” he heard Sam say behind him, and it felt like someone was ripping his heart clear out of his chest. And he was pissed, so pissed at Mira, so pissed at himself all of a sudden, shocked by the depth of his rage, because no one had ever managed to tell Sam that family hurt you, that family sucked.
She watched him go, watched him trot up the street. The hitch in his step, the slight unevenness, was barely noticeable. So that if you didn’t know how broken he was inside, the way he moved through the world would never clue you in.
Thank God she hadn’t said I love you, hadn’t left her pride scattered all over that beach, although damn, it didn’t matter now, because her pride was scattered all over her street, and Aaron had seen it, too, seen her chase after him. She hoped she hadn’t looked as pathetic as she’d felt, following him up the street, thinking, What the hell just happened here? Because it was one thing for her to hold him at arm’s length, to keep some space between them, to keep things simple, and another thing entirely for him to hand her to Aaron on a silver platter.