Night Shift 2

by Anthology

  “Baby, I don’t blame you…”

  She’d never been this way before—awkward, uncomfortable, almost flinching away from my touch. It felt like a weight had slammed between us, kept us within in inches of touching. That space expanded and filled the air in the room, drowned out the world outside our bedroom door. I wanted that weight gone. Minutes before nothing had been between us but desire and hunger. Now…it felt as though the last few minutes hadn’t even happened.

  “It doesn’t matter if you blame me, Kona.” She turned, curling against her pillow as she looked out of the large window next to our bed. From there I could make out the still, black lake that ran along our property and the small pool house where our son Ransom and his girlfriend Aly were watching over our two youngest, who were now sleeping soundly after a day spent with their cousin in Biloxi. Their low voices had gone silent as the night darkened around us. Now there was no sound at all expect for the constant slap of the waves against the dock and the small exhales Keira made as she tightened her arms closer across her chest. I wanted to touch her, so badly, but sensed that, for some reason, she needed some space.

  “I…I brought him here, in this house.” Her voice was so soft I could only guess at what she meant to say. My fingers ached with the desire to touch her, but she was so closed off just then, seemed so…vulnerable, I didn’t want to push. She grabbed her nightshirt from the dresser and I followed suit, tugging on my boxers without taking my gaze from her. Her eyes never left the lake, even as she climbed back in bed, her back still to me.

  “It doesn’t matter how he got here,” I told her when I sat behind her, inching closer but just keeping from touching her. “He’s gone now.”

  That seemed to satisfy her somewhat, the affirmation that Cass’s drama was over, but not enough to bring her comfort. She reached over, not for me, but to pull a pillow to her lap, and she lay there clutching it to her, dipping her face into the billowing fabric as if she were trying to hide. I let her be. It was my only real choice. The week had been long, the day longer and we’d worn ourselves out first with the tension fighting around us and then with the frantic way we’d loved each other, trying to make up for the time we’d spent apart. I’d allow her little melodrama to play out, give it time to dissipate. I could give her that.

  Before long, Keira fell off into a soundless sleep, her shoulders and arms loosening from their rigid strain. Only then, when she was dead asleep, she relaxed against me, rolling over to curl against my chest. Just as she had every night for thirteen years. Like there was nothing holding her back from me, nothing to come between us.

  Like we hadn’t almost ruined the life we’d built together.

  Hours later, when the sun had already risen, and the noise from the hallway evidenced that our kids were up full of energy, Keira woke. She didn’t say a thing to me as she stirred, pulling back from my chest, her head grazing my chin as she looked up. That face was perfect to me, no matter how many times my wife complained about the barely-there wrinkles around her huge blue eyes. It was those eyes I’d fallen for back when I was barely twenty, back when it took very little for a girl to catch my eye.

  But that long ago Keira had indeed caught my eye, and my ear, and my attention, as she screamed at me because I’d slacked on a joint school project. She’d screamed and raged and had a fine old hissy fit, and the more upset she got, the more eager I was to have her. That had been a lifetime ago. She still had the same fire in her eyes her eyes, and every day I woke I was still eager to have her again, and again. The years had been good to us, until recently. It was high time they were good to us again.

  Keira moved against me as I stared at her and I bit my lip, eager just then to touch and taste and take from that small frame, those thick, luscious lips, that soft pale skin because I needed her. Because she needed me. The need in her eyes was almost desperate. But there was something else in those eyes, something I couldn’t quite define. Something that had me worried. Something that urged me toward quick action and I took it then, with Keira’s surprised expression softening into acceptance. She flinched only a little when I bent toward her, taking a kiss, holding her face still because I knew she’d understand what that meant. No matter what either of us had done or how awkward the distance had made us, I still wanted her. Hell, I’d never stop wanting her.

  She closed her eyes when I kissed her but before we could go any further a soft, perfunctory knock sounded against our door and we broke apart just as Makana, our ten-year-old, popped her head past the frame, her smile widening when she spotted me.

  “Makua?” she said, a question that didn’t need clarifying.

  “Come here, nani.” And she did, followed by her twelve-year-old brother, Koa, who tried to pretend he wasn’t happy to see me. It had been over a week since I’d last seen them. It hadn’t been only my wife that I’d missed. Phone calls and texts just didn’t suffice. “Keikis, come to me.” And just like back when they were tiny, and storms would rage across the lake during hurricane season, they both fell on the bed between us, huddled close for comfort and safety.

  “Are you staying, Makua?” My daughter snuggled close to Keira, easing her back against her mother’s chest as she watched me.

  “Yeah, nani. I’m staying. Always.”

  “Good,” she said, exhaling softly before she elbowed her brother for room as he stretched out on his back between us, trying to conceal the pleased grin that twitched at the corners of his mouth.

  “Good,” I repeated because it was, our family close, sated, content again. As I leaned back, listening to Mack catching me up on the competition routines Aly was teaching her at the dance studio, I watched Keira over our children’s small heads, catching her gaze when I stretched my arm across the pillows to hold her fingers. A smile flirted across her face, and I thought that maybe, just maybe we were back to being good.

  3

  Bobby had warned me about the moment. My old boss had seen the way Kona and I carried on after years apart. It had made her laugh how just Kona’s smile, a single look he threw in my direction, left me a little flustered with the faintest blush working over my cheeks even after nearly a decade together.

  “It hasn’t happened yet,” she’d said the last time I’d seen her, five years back when Bobby ignored the doctors and the pastors and settled back home with her sons in Nashville, waiting on death. Her body had been so frail, and her normally dark skin had gone pale and thin.

  She’d been the only real mother I’d ever had. When I arrived in Nashville I was nineteen and pregnant and heartbroken over what life had thrown at me, but Bobby had opened up her home to me. Nearly as poor as I was, she gave me a job and a room to rent over her small garage until I got on my feet and my stride was steady. She’d always offered advice; most of it I’d taken, but some I didn’t bother with since those bits of wisdom almost always concerned men—a concept I had no intention of revisiting.

  And then, Kona came back into my life.

  “It’s been what, sugar? Going on eight years now that he talked you into marryin’ him?” she’d asked just a few days before she died.

  “Around that, yeah.” There’d been a wicked twinkle in the old lady’s eyes, something I hadn’t seen from her in the two weeks we’d returned to Nashville to say our goodbyes.

  “Hmm.” That little noise always meant something, mainly things she’d keep to herself until the time she knew she could annoy me the most.

  “What?” I’d asked, leaning next to her on her bed. Out in the yard Ransom and Kona took turns slinging Mack and Koa over their shoulders, then spinning them around, pretending to be giants with kid-sized lumps growing out of their backs.

  Bobby watched them along with me, a slow working smile twitching her lips. “Eight years, and the moment hasn’t happened.”

  “We’ve had plenty of moments, Bobby.” She’d waved me off, laughing a little when I waggled my eyebrows.

  “I’ll tell you something straight.”

  “I e
xpect nothing less from you, lady.”

  She’d taken my hand, rubbing her blunt fingernails against my palm, same as she’d done years before when I’d get upset about how miserable it was carrying such a huge baby at only nineteen, or when there weren’t enough customers at the diner for the tips to do more than barely cover groceries.

  We’d sat there next to each other, those faint, slow touches moving over my skin, watching the family Kona and I’d made as if the struggles didn’t matter, because none of them had kept us from that moment.

  “You and Kona have had some worry, there’s truth in that for sure and, I reckon you’ve had even more happy.” I’d nodded, not watching her when my mouth quirked up on one side. But I felt the look she gave me and for a brief second I’d wondered what she’d seen when she looked at me. “Happy is good. Worries come and we all take them as we can, but there’s always a moment, sugar, when a woman and man know each other well enough, long enough that they truly can’t keep anything from the other.”

  “We have that,” I promised her, pulling my attention from the window to watch her shake her head.

  “No, sugar. Not yet you don’t. It’s that moment no one ever really tells you about. When a couple share a look, a feeling and know right in their bones, right to the marrow, that they are set right where they are, that this other person is the one who won’t keep anything from you, who you can’t keep yourself from. They know you, sugar. They know you like the print of their thumbs and the true nature of their own minds. The dirtiest, filthiest, most shameful bits of you, they know it. They know it and they go on wanting you all the same. That moment comes, Keira and you either hold tight or you run like the rip of light at starless midnight.” She moved her head against her pillow, exhaling at the effort before she spoke again. “It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s coming. I see that plain.”

  “Bobby…I don’t understand…”

  “You will, my sweet girl.” She’d slowed her movements over my palm. “Don’t worry over that moment coming, Keira.” Bobby closed her eyes, stifling a yawn and I kept my gaze on her, waiting for her to explain. “You’ll only need to worry if it doesn’t come.” Bobby tilted her head, that small, sweet smile warming my chest as she blinked twice to stare at me. “The way that man looks at you, the way you look back at him, me, I don’t worry so much. That moment’s comin’.”

  But it hadn’t. Not yet. Not five years later. Not in the shift of our lives, the moments that shook us, tempted us to give in. Not even then, the moment still hadn’t come. Now, the moment haunted me, followed me, as Kona and I headed out for a few days away at a familiar retreat in Tennessee. “We need some time alone, Wildcat,” Kona had told me, and he was right, we did. I hoped that the cloud that had covered me earlier would lift once we got to our special place in the mountains, that I’d be able to shrug off the darkness that wouldn't let me go.

  But the tension had mounted with every mile we drove from New Orleans. Kona still kept his hand relaxed, palm open as he drove—an invitation to touch him, show him that I hadn’t forgotten how well we’d always moved together.

  Point. Counterpoint—from the time we were kids just figuring out what we wanted from each other.

  He always had an answer for any complaint I had. He always tried to figure out a problem when it came head on. Maybe that was the issue. Kona had done the one thing he promised he’d never do—he shut me out, tried to fix things on his own. The intention had been good. He wanted to protect us. But not being allowed to help him carry that burden? That hurt more than I thought it would.

  And yet, despite what Kona had done, hadn’t my sin been worse? Hadn’t I been the one courting disaster, letting it live and fester under our roof, letting it convince me my husband was a liar? Hadn’t it been my own weaknesses that had almost brought all our worlds crashing down?

  A small shudder worked up my spine as I stared out of the window, closing my eyes to will away that dark cloud that had descended over me. To my left Kona concentrated on the road, but I caught the slip of his gaze as he glanced my way and I exhaled, knowing what he wanted, knowing he deserved anything I could give and I slipped my hand onto Kona’s palm, fingers whispering against the deep lines of his skin. His hand was warm and when I kept my palm pressed against his, Kona squeezed my fingers and he moved his wide thumb over my knuckles. But I didn’t look at him, or study his expression. Instead I let the silence keep, let it fill the cab of the Denali as I watched the roving mountains around us pass by.

  I’d always loved Tennessee. It had been a second home to me when I left New Orleans as a kid, running from my heartache and my mother’s expectations. But I’d settled in Nashville and as exciting and sweet as Music City was, there was no escape there. Not like the serenity Gatlinburg offered.

  The trees around us loomed on forever it seemed as Kona drove through the tourist traps and the miles and miles of cabins and pancake restaurants. The traffic was thick with tourists’ cars cluttering up the winding roads as we moved through Sevierville, and on into Gatlinburg proper before heading deeper toward the mountains.

  Kona had made the suggestion to get away when Koa and Mack hadn’t moved from within a few feet from him on his first day home. He’d understood. Those kids loved him, had missed him, and didn’t understand that we needed time to begin mending the fractures that Cass had leveled at us. When Mack insisted on Kona and me staying in the den as she and Koa played yet another round of Left for Dead on the game console, my husband had leaned close to me, stretching his arm around my shoulder, trying, it seemed, to keep what he wanted to say out of our kids’ ears.

  “We need some time away.” I’d been unaccountably nervous at his words, still letting the guilt and upset I felt wedge between us. When I only nodded, gaze flicking to our kids who dutifully ignored us as they played, Kona continued. “They’re scared I’m not gonna stick around.” It was his laugh that surprised me, had me jerking my gaze at his expression.

  “They missed you.” He had to know that, to see how they stuck to him since he’d been back at the lake house.

  “I know that, baby. I just…I need some breathing room.”

  Koa yelled at Mack's game play and the sharp shriek of his voice had me leaning away from my husband, my ridiculous worry brimming back to the surface as he continued to watch me. Seconds later, the upset forgotten, Koa and Mack continued to play and I kept my attention on them. Kona stopped staring at me. In my peripheral I spotted the slow movement of his head turning toward the kids and his sharp profile as he watched them. But when he spoke again, his voice was low, directed at me.

  “The things I want to say to you…to…to do to you, can’t be done with them around.” He swallowed and the sound was audible. It struck me as funny, how this big lumbering man, my husband of thirteen years, could seem so nervous even when the meaning behind his words held such promise.

  Again I only nodded, knowing he caught the movement. Still watching the game play, Kona moved his body closer and I closed my eyes as his sweet breath hissed across my cheek. “I want to take you away. Just for a little while. To be with you. Only you.”

  It hadn’t taken much sweet talking to get Ransom to agree to staying with his younger siblings while Kona and I left for the mountains. He had been happy to stay, happy that we were making efforts to ease the hurt and upset of the past few months.

  Kona cleared his throat, adjusting his hold on the steering wheel as he nodded to the right and my gaze went to the side road that would bring us as close to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and the even more remote gravel road that lead to the cabin we owned. It was a quiet place, one that would leave us undisturbed by the tourists, one that Kona and I visited often over the years when we needed to leave the pressures of our respective careers behind us, when the need to be alone grew heavy between us.

  The gravel under the tires popped and shot across the heavy fallen leaves that covered much of the road as we moved along it. We were surrounded by forest
, unobstructed by the industry of tourism or the modern advances that tended to converge and bombard any peaceful hideaway spot in the world whenever commercialism came calling.

  We’d bought this cabin just before our first anniversary, spending a week here, a few days there, rarely venturing beyond the back porch of the cabin that overlooked a small stream along the back of the property. It hadn’t changed much since then with the exception of our adding another small cottage some sixty feet away for when family trips to the cabin had grown too crowded. A local man, Brad, along with his cousins, acted as groundskeeper, keeping the place tidy and handling rentals when we left the cabin available. Driving up, spotting the trim lawn and the landscaped bushes that lined the drive, I noticed they hadn’t slacked in their job.

  “I’ll get the bags and open the cabin. Stay here until I know it’s okay for you to come in,” he said, squeezing my hand before he left the SUV. Still so damn overprotective.

  The last time we’d been here, the trip had gotten cut short because Bobby’s condition had worsened and we were needed in Nashville. Now there had been a less permanent but still stinging disruption in our lives. I sat in my seat while Kona brought the bags to the front of the cabin, watching him—that still-strong back, those wide shoulders I’d held onto so many times before, the small waist that hadn’t expanded much in the years since he’d left the NFL. He was still so beautiful, my perfect fit, the same cocky Hawaiian linebacker I’d fallen for as a freshman in college.

  Kona’s movements were graceful, a fluid mixture of power and strength but behind his expression was a gentleness not many people ever got to see. He was a protector, had a strength I doubted I’d ever see duplicated. He’d touched me more intimately, more surely than anyone ever had before. He knew my body, my mind better than I did and held my heart tight within his sturdy grip.