It was odd to talk about them with someone she didn’t really know. Someone who didn’t know or remember her brother. “Yeah. Shit happens sometimes, right?” It was glib, but she was already feeling too surrounded by their past. They turned onto E Street and crossed over the train tracks, heading up the steep hill that led to the library.
“It does. My dad committed suicide when I was younger, so I get it.”
Delaney’s heart hurt. “Oh my God, that’s awful. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well. Sorry. I’m clearly not great at small talk, am I? Straight to the whole death-of-family-members thing. I should have started by asking if you like cross-stitch or something,” Louisa said as they reached the top of the hill and a cute yellow split-level set back off the road. The lot was lushly planted with palms and shrubs.
Delaney couldn’t help but laugh. “For the record, no, I don’t. And I don’t mind. I’m a journalist, so I love it when someone cuts straight to the heart of something. Wasn’t this Six’s grandparents’?” Delaney asked as Louisa let them inside.
“It was. Now it’s Six’s. Well, ours. I had a house closer to the city, but it never felt like home quite like this one does, although we’ve done some pretty extensive renovating. I’ll get you a suit. Make yourself at home.”
The layout of the house felt unfamiliar, though she’d been there when she was younger, traipsing after her brother when he’d gone to visit his friend. Perhaps it had been changed in the renovations Louisa had mentioned. One wall of the living room was covered in black-and-white photographs, many, she assumed, taken by Six on his travels. But some were of people, and one in particular caught her eye. It was one of their summers spent camping.
God. They all looked so young. Six had always been the biggest. Even back then he’d been a couple of inches taller than the others. Her brother had long wild surf hair back then. Not quite dreadlocks, but not quite curls. Just always salty and windblown. Just his presence had made her feel safe as a child, and his loss … well, there were days when she wondered whether she’d ever fill the hole his death had left inside her.
Mac had his arm slung casually over her shoulder. It was the summer they’d gotten together, but before they’d kissed for the first time. They’d looked like a couple long before they’d become one. Like they were predestined. Or maybe she was reading too much into a photograph of two horny young people.
“One of Six’s favorites. He always says this was the summer before you all grew up. Here,” Louisa said, handing her a cute blue-patterned bikini that would be perfect under her capris and T-shirt. “You can change in the bathroom at the end of the hall.”
Once she was changed and her underwear was stowed away in her purse, they walked down to the beach carrying a bag full of towels. Louisa told her more about the research facility she was setting up, which required countless permits and licenses, not to mention all the hiring that needed to be done and building work that was still underway. Delaney empathized, her own work often constrained by bureaucracy. By the time they hit the beach, Delaney realized that beneath the cool exterior and sometimes blunt phrasing, Louisa was extremely bright, and considerate, and funny.
“I’m seriously going to test the Count Duckula thing,” she said. “While you were changing, I found this company that makes custom decals. I ordered a whole bunch of Count Duckulas to stick on the windows for when he gets back.”
As they reached the wooden stairs to the beach, she looked out and could see Mac and Six tossing the ball between them. Cabe had joined them. From the looks of a small group of girls setting their towels down near them, they had a growing fan club. She bit down on the little bubble of jealousy, hoping to burst it, but she couldn’t. It lingered. She hated that she felt that way about Mac.
“How do you get your head around Six going away?” she asked. “I mean, my brother was planning to enlist, and I was terrified.”
Louisa held onto the railing as she descended the uneven, sand-swept steps. “I tell him that if he doesn’t come back, I’ll kill him myself,” she said, but the sad chuckle that accompanied her words wasn’t overly convincing. “It’s who he is. And to be honest, I wouldn’t want him any other way. So I just deal with it.”
“Well, I’m no expert, but I’ve known Six a really long time, and I get the impression he’d do just about anything he could to make sure he made it back to you.” Delaney stopped on the last step and took off her sandals. Stepping down onto the sand felt momentous.
“Thank you,” Louisa said, kicking off her own shoes. “You okay, Delaney?”
Was she?
It was all too familiar. Easy breezy days spent together on the beach. The sun reflecting off the water as if someone had tipped a container of diamonds onto the surface. The smell of salt in the air. Sand that threatened to be warm under her feet, and a gentle … energy. Something that made her want to sit down on the sand and just look out over the water for five minutes to find that stillness she’d been chasing since the day she’d woken up in that hospital in Germany.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said, wanting to be as she stepped down onto the beach.
Hoping that one day she really could be.
* * *
The Santa Ana winds were making it tough to play ball, forcing them to pass harder and run faster. Not that it was a problem for the three of them. Mac had played ball on this beach with Six and Cabe since they were kids. Plus, he had Delaney to impress.
Yeah. He’d turned into that guy.
The one who’d do bicep curls before hitting the beach.
His game was on point. He was in the best shape of his life. And Delaney was head down with Louisa, as she had been for the last hour, chatting up a storm.
“Face it. That two pack of yours is not that impressive,” Six said, tipping his chin in the direction of the girls.
Mac laughed. “I’m not sure. That group of girls behind us seem to think it is.”
Six shook his head. “Yeah, but they ain’t Delaney, right?”
“What are you two pussies talking about?” Cabe said as he walked toward them.
Six threw a sweaty arm over his shoulder. It was gross. “Mac’s getting all pouty because Delaney hasn’t been checking him out all afternoon.”
“Am I the only guy who’s still got a dick left?” Cabe asked. “You guys are only half the men you once were.”
“Fuck you,” Six and Mac said in unison.
“Don’t worry, Mac, my friend. I’m your wingman. Watch this.” Six walked toward Lou and Delaney, who stopped talking when his shadow breached their towels. He couldn’t hear what Six was saying, but he could see the girls fall into fits of laughter. The way Delaney looked up at Six, shielding her eyes from the sun, told him she was responding to whatever Six was orchestrating. Why the hell couldn’t she relax like that around him?
“If you guys are doing couple shit, I’m heading back to your mom’s.” Cabe slapped him on the back. “See if I can’t talk her into letting me grill.”
“You know Dad’s not going to let you.”
Cabe picked his T-shirt and towel up off the sand and slipped his sandals onto his feet. “He burns the shit out of meat, Mac. You’d have thought he’d have figured it out after all these years. What kind of American man is he?”
“Says it’s the Irish in him and that he can’t eat meat that looks as if a good vet could resuscitate it.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll let your mom know you’re about half an hour behind me.”
Mac walked to where the three of them stood as Six reached for Lou’s sunscreen, poured some into his hands and began to rub it onto her shoulders. He wondered if Delaney needed any help with hers seeing she had gotten Lou to do it when they’d first arrived at the beach.
As if by magic, Delaney reached for her tube, just as he joined them.
“Will you do my shoulders, too?” Delaney asked, just as Six’s hands started to stray lower and lower, his hands slipping beneath the waistband of Lou’s bi
kini.
“Ask Mac,” Six said as he pulled Lou back against him and playfully nuzzled the side of her neck making her giggle.
Delaney looked away, a grin on her face until she caught his eye.
God, she looked good in that bikini. The way the top hugged her breasts, holding them high and round, had set him off thinking about how much fun it would be to tug on the strings and watch it fall away. Discreetly he adjusted his shorts. When she’d first arrived at the beach and stripped off her clothes, he’d had to dive in the water, which was thankfully the wrong side of warm.
She handed him her tube of sunscreen and he took it from her. The liquid was cool as he poured it into his hands. He flipped the lid closed then rubbed his hands together, his heart pounding in anticipation of touching her smooth skin again. Skin that had always felt so good pressed naked up against his. It was soft and heated as he pressed his palms on her shoulders and began to rub the sunscreen in gently.
It would be so easy, was so tempting, to skim his fingertips down her shoulder blades, to graze the side of her breasts, but now wasn’t the time, no matter how badly his dick disagreed. As he ran his fingertips along the side of her neck, she’d shivered, and for a moment she leaned into him as he pressed his fingers into her tense muscles.
“Mac,” she murmured almost dreamily, then shook her head before shrugging his fingers away.
Six hauled Louisa squealing over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. “Don’t say I never do anything for you, Mac,” he shouted as he walked into the ocean. With a scream, Louisa hit the water, and came up fighting. It was funny watching the shy brunette try to get her revenge on his giant of a friend. He couldn’t help but laugh when Six pretended that she’d landed a shot and fell back into the water.
“They both know she can’t win, right?” Delaney said, a soft smile on her face as she came up next to him.
“No one can beat a SEAL in the water,” he said. “It’s our second home.”
They stood in silence, watching their friends play.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the ocean,” she whispered, almost as if to herself.
“Want to go in?” he said. He wasn’t sure how’d he be able to control his reaction to her if she came any closer to him on land. Subtly, he stepped back an inch. Yeah, the bikini looked just as good from the rear as it did from the front. And, damn, he wanted to drop to his knees behind her, grab her ass, bite it, kiss it, pull those cheeks apart and—
“I haven’t been in the water since Brock.”
The words stopped his thoughts in their tracks.
The coroner had said that the head injury hadn’t been what killed Brock. There had been evidence of salt water in his lungs, which meant he’d been still breathing when he’d hit the water. All because Mac hadn’t got there quickly enough.
He grabbed Delaney’s hand. “I’m sorry, Buttons.”
Delaney didn’t pull away. If anything, she gripped his hand tighter, and he interlocked their little fingers like he used to out of habit. “He’s everywhere, here,” she said. “There are wisps of him wherever I look.” She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Cookouts, parties, early morning swims in the summer.”
Looking back to when his mom had suggested the beach, he should have realized that the look that had passed across her face wasn’t one of reservation. It had been fear. “We can go,” he said, turning his back on the water in a feeble attempt to block it from her view. “Let’s go get our things.”
But she tugged on his hand as he began to lead them back to their towels. “I think I’ll regret it if I don’t at least put my feet in the water that meant so much to him. To all of us.” Her eyes shone with unfilled tears.
“I didn’t bring you here to make you sad, Delaney.” A tear escaped, and he caught it with his thumb as he cupped her cheek. “I just thought you might enjoy a little R and R, given everything else that is going on.”
Delaney shook her head gently. “I know. I even thought to myself when we pulled up in the car that it might be nice to come down to the beach alone for a few minutes to … you know. Talk with him, I guess.”
“You want to walk into that water, I’ll walk with you. You want to do it alone, I’ll wait right here for you. As long as you need, Delaney. I’ve got you. Even though you don’t need me or want me to have you. I’m not going anywhere. Not today at least,” he added, along with a smile that was a long way from genuine. There hadn’t been the shift he’d hoped for in their relationship, and just saying those words out loud to her forced him to acknowledge that their relationship was like the sand shifting beneath his feet.
Her ponytail fell over her shoulder as she turned to look out toward the water. They stood like that for a minute. Then two. He held her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.
“Walk with me,” she said finally.
He gripped her hand more firmly as they walked toward the edge of the water. Being March and the tail end of the Santa Ana winds, there was little real surf and just a whole bunch of choppy swell. As they neared the water’s edge, her grip on his hand tightened. Her fear became palpable … like her legs were trying to carry her forward, but her heart was holding her back.
In his head, he reamed off all the stats he could tell her to reassure her that she’d be safe with him. That it didn’t matter if she got into difficulty because he’d nailed the five-hundred-yard swimming when he signed up to become a SEAL, beating any other candidate by twenty-two seconds. That it didn’t matter how far away from him she got because he’d nailed the two-and-a-half-mile swim of every triathlon he’d ever entered. That it didn’t matter how far under she went because he could hold his breath underwater for almost seven minutes by practicing static apnea. But then he remembered that the very reason he’d been driven to learn all those things was the same reason she was terrified of the water.
Brock.
The memory of not having been quick enough in the water and the knowledge that Brock would never get to live out his dream of becoming a SEAL had fueled Mac, had driven him to achieve a level of performance that few SEALs achieved.
“You want to go a little bit farther?” he asked, their toes inches away from the water. He noticed she’d taken the bandage off her foot. It had to be aching with the walking she’d done and the time she’d spent on her feet. The cool water would help.
Delaney took a deep breath, and he let her lead the two of them into the water until it just brushed her ass. She let go of his hand and wrapped her arms around herself.
“You okay?” he asked. The water was cool, but he was used to it. He looked over at her and saw that she was shaking. Not with cold. It was too sudden, too violent. Without thinking, he stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “You’re okay, Delaney,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s a brave thing you’re doing.”
A splash of wetness hit his arm, and he looked over her shoulder to see tears running down her face. “I miss him, Mac,” she said. “Every single day. We did everything together. He taught me to stand on a surfboard. He let me tag along with you guys even though it irritated you all. He stood up for me when Mom was in one of her moods. I just…”
Mac wrapped his arms tighter around her, hoping that he could warm her up, ground her. He wanted to be whatever she needed because he wanted her back, and because it was his fault she was shivering in the water she once loved, filled with fear of it.
She placed her hands on his arms, forcing him to hold her even tighter, and he felt the jagged sobs as they reverberated through her body.
“I’m sorry, Delaney,” he crooned over and over. “I’m so sorry.”
They stood for a few more moments until her sobs subsided. She gently pushed his arms away and turned to face him. “I know you are, Mac. But sometimes sorry just isn’t enough.”
* * *
The sound of Elvis singing about being unable to help falling in love drifted down the hallway through the wide-open door of her small bachelor
apartment. From where she sat on the floor by the single window in the living room, she could see just about every corner of the room, but she was happy to be in her own space—even though Mac was acting like the host of a home renovation show, first demolishing her doorframe and rebuilding her a new one, and now installing new locks on the door.
He was due to leave directly for the airport shortly, in fact, he should have already been on his way, but he’d pushed back his flight so he could help her.
As she looked past the boxes piled around her to Mac, who was humming along to Elvis as he worked, she felt a huge amount of guilt. Yesterday had been awkward, and when she’d finally stopped crying on the beach and given her eyes thirty minutes to return to normal—because, God knew, she was one of those unfortunate ugly criers—they were late back to the barbecue. Mac’s family had looked at the two of them sympathetically. She hated sympathy more than just about anything else. Mac had tried to distract them, telling his family some stupid story about a training exercise where Cabe had lost his pants. And Cabe had retaliated with a story about Mac involving a pissed-off BUD/s trainer and a day spent being sugar cookied—which she now knew meant running into the ocean fully clothed, only to run straight out and roll around the sand.
Despite his attempts to create a diversion, she still hadn’t been ready when Sylvie had asked whether she should read anything into the two of them being there. Delaney had quickly and vehemently denied it, and when she’d realized that Mac had paused what he was saying to listen to her answer, her heart hurt like she’d stabbed herself in the chest. It was beginning to matter to her what Mac thought. But it couldn’t matter. She’d never survive his permanent presence in her life.
Everybody had been so happy to see her, and for a moment, she’d allowed herself to remember what it felt like to be enveloped in a huge family filled with love. Aoife had sat next to her, begging Delaney to tell her about all the unusual places she’d visited. And Mac had been right about his mom. She’d made Delaney a cake. In a steady hand, she’d iced Welcome Home, DELANEY on the top. Delaney wasn’t sure how to interpret it. Did she mean welcome home from Germany? Because that she could deal with. But if she meant welcome home … well, that was something else entirely.
Final Siege Page 9