Before she embarrassed herself by staring too long and waking him, she’d better get up and go make coffee, start breakfast. Careful and slow, she pulled her legs up and crawled over the sofa arm so as not to disturb him, then tiptoed to the kitchen.
Aaron stirred awake to the smell of fresh coffee and bacon.
That’ll work. As his mind regained focus, he stretched into a contented groan, rubbed at the stiffness in one shoulder, and rolled onto his back.
Alex was sitting on the floor beside him, holding two mugs. Two plates containing bacon, fried eggs, and sliced peaches lay on the floor next to her. Sunlight from the kitchen window backlit her in a golden, glowing silhouette.
“Morning.”
“Morning,” he replied, his voice husky from sleep. He rolled to face her, propped himself up on an elbow, and rested his head in his hand. Good morning indeed. “What time is it?”
“’Bout ten thirty,” Alex replied. “Coffee?” She held out a mug.
“Oh yeah. Thanks.” He took the mug from her and sipped, savoring the hot liquid in his mouth. A good roast. She likes quality. When he returned his appreciation to her, he met with the bemused twinkle in her eyes and swallowed. “What?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why you picked the floor. I’ve got a perfectly good bed in there. You could have just taken that.”
He nodded. “I’m good. Didn’t want you to wake up alone and think we just left.”
Alex smiled at him. “I appreciate that. That was really sweet of you.”
Aaron chuckled and gave her an obliging wink. “Well, you’re welcome.” He took another drink and nodded over toward the kitchen. “Thought you were gonna strangle ol’ Care Bear last night over what he said.”
“Oh yeah…” Her lips twisted sideways before she bit the lower one. “That.” Alex tilted her head and gave him a bashful smirk. “About that… you gotta give me that one. I was kinda in the middle of losing my mind at that point. After yesterday? Are you kidding?” Narrowed eyes accompanied a firm repeat of her previous night’s statement. “Oh. Hell. No.”
Aaron laughed softly and moved to sit with his back against the front of the sofa. Not sure what to say in response to her sincere appreciation of their previous day spent together, his simple reply was “Thanks.”
Alex scooted over to sit next to him. “Absolutely.”
They sat there for a time and talked while they finished their coffee and breakfast. He looked over at her and nudged her shoulder with his own. “You ready to get to this?”
“Might as well,” she replied, meeting his gaze. “But first tell me something.” She touched his cheek. “Where did you get this?”
Aaron reached up to cover her hand with his own. His heart-shaped scar. The first injury he’d received from the handlers. How to say such a thing to her? Where to begin? Keeping the most severe parts to a minimum, he recounted the story for her. “Since then, it’s been my reminder of survival. All through that first beating, every time I was about to pass out, thought maybe I’d made the biggest mistake of my life? That maybe my time was up and it was all over? I had the strangest feeling of a guiding light. A guardian angel if you will. A protection and comfort. I’d never felt so alone in my life, and that light kept me going, gave me the strength I needed. This little heart is my connection to that.”
That old hollow loneliness crushed at Alex’s heart, and she could barely contain herself from outright sobbing. What a horror to go through! Thank God he’d had something beautiful to hold on to. She wiped tears just as they left her eyes. What could this all mean?
“Let me show you something.” She cleared heaviness from her voice as she lifted her layered hair to expose the side of her neck. “I fell out of a tree when I was seventeen. Was pretty high up. Got stabbed by a stick on the way down. I woke up on the ground, surrounded by bright light, and I heard a man’s voice say, ‘Don’t worry, everything is all right.’ In the end it wasn’t terrible. Doc said it had to be some kind of miracle that I had no concussion and didn’t break a thing. It did give my parents and brother a scare. Got grounded from trees and, well, pretty much everything for a while.” She sniffed a giggle and cleared her throat again. “I hadn’t thought much about the circumstances in a long time. Until I saw yours.”
Aaron touched the spot—tender pressure, tracing to feel its outline. The small mark so close a match in size and shape to his own. What an amazing synchronicity! His breath hitched, and he put an arm around her, pulled her close and kissed her.
She leaned into him, and he moved his lips to her forehead and pressed them there. A few more sweet seconds before the impending tasks ahead.
“C’mon,” he said. He collected their plates and stood, hand out to help her up.
As she got to her feet and stood next to him, she couldn’t help but smile. A warm shiver rushed through her, leaving her breathless. She averted her eyes. Blushing, she shook her head and ran a hand through her long hair, hugged her shoulders, then looked back at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just really, really glad you’re still alive.”
A soft glow lit his eyes and he gave her a half smile. “Me too.”
“Just keep it to two small bags. We can always get some things along the way. And download anything important you want off your phone and computer. Consider those gone.”
Alex took a break from packing and boxing and dropped into her desk chair. The sleek black face of her Android phone sprang to colorful life as she punched in her lock code, revealing the home screen wallpaper of Aaron resting against a pine trunk that she’d taken the day before.
Loaded with pictures, the phone was something she hated to give up—the camera quality was half the reason she’d purchased it. Damn, this is the coolest phone I’ve ever had. Even though it was a couple of years old now, the thought of having to destroy it and her personal laptop brought a pang. But better that than being tracked. She unwound a USB cable and jacked in. Several minutes later the phone finished downloading to the laptop, and she backed up all the files from the computer on twin drives. She stowed the flash drives in a protective case in her backpack along with her other and the SD card her brother had brought her.
“I know you need to make some calls. Here,” Aaron said and handed her a cell phone. “Don’t use yours anymore. This is yours for the next couple of days. Then we’ll destroy it. Les will have another clean one for you when we get on the road if you want.”
Alex took the phone as she looked up at Aaron from where she sat at her desk. She traded him back hers. “Wow.”
“We just don’t know what might already be monitored.” His thumbnail slid into the edge of her phone’s case, and he pried it open to pop out the battery. “For us, a lot of this will be old school and off the grid for a bit. We’ll use tech sparingly and carefully along with it, till we get where we’re going.”
He left the room and she called after him. “When you said ‘off the grid’ on the ship, I kinda thought you meant something a little different than this.”
“I did.”
Alex finished packing and brought her bags out to the kitchen table. She would miss the cozy one-bedroom, her home for the past year. Most of the furniture would stay as it had come with the place.
Betsy’s tearful hug hadn’t had anything to do with her breaking her rental agreement. The place would rent out in a heartbeat. Betsy would miss her. Alex told her she would drop by for visits after her return, and Betsy had squeezed even tighter.
Her friend Lou would keep her few personal pieces and clothes and things she’d already boxed until she was ready to take them back at a new place. The two cats she kept sometimes, Sami and Mia, belonged to her friend Natalie. Alex wanted her own cats, but not until she had a more permanent place, so she got to cat-sit when Natalie went out of town on her frequent business trips. That worked out very well for the current situation.
The joint checking account she shared with Lou for thei
r art and photography business was already taken care of. Her own personal one and her savings she cashed out and closed. Though she loved to drive, she hadn’t purchased a car in the months she’d been here. She borrowed Lou’s when needed, and Alex lived within walking distance of their shop anyway, so it was never a big deal. Now one less thing.
When she informed her brother of her decision to travel, he was excited for her but not as thrilled that she might be out of contact for so long.
“Enjoy yourself, but call if you have any problems,” he’d said, and she’d assured him she would to ease his mind.
Lou and Natalie came over for a long lunch to hang out with Alex before she left and to hear all about what adventures she had planned for her travels. The suddenness of her trip had thrown them some, but she explained how she just needed the time away to regroup.
Dying to tell Lou the truth of all of it, she’d decided against that conversation for the time being. Too risky. With Aaron’s agreement, she had elected to not mention him or Les to any of them at that point. The fewer details her friends and family knew, the safer they would remain.
Bags ready. Accounts taken care of. People contacted. Utilities canceled or transferred back to Betsy… All squared away, and it’s only four o’clock on a Monday afternoon. So weird! Alex’s imagination worked over what few details she knew, recent events, and what might lie ahead as she now had time to sit for a bit and examine this whole thing. Now it was all up to Aaron and Les. Tomorrow morning they would be on their way… somewhere. Aaron had gone out earlier before her friends arrived for lunch but was back now with his stuff and napping on her bed to recover lost sleep.
What have I done? Mulling over the decision now, in the quiet of her mind, her thoughts drifted to her family, her friends. Her jobs and routines. What had been her life. Her heart ached at the sense of loss and severe change leaving would bring. But she had to go with it. Events had all come together and led to this, and there was no way she was going to just sit back and play it safe. Let life pass her by. He was here. Now. Whatever it took, she had to move forward. She had to make it count.
An hour later, curled up in her oversized chair with the pillow Aaron had used the past two nights hugged against her chest, Alex dozed off. Entranced in his scent, she dreamed of the time when it would be him in her arms as she fell asleep instead of stuffed fabric. A sharp rap on her front door roused her awake.
Gee, thanks for interrupting. She got up and stretched away sleepiness, started toward it to answer, hesitated. Should she? A cold chill slithered down her spine. After what happened the other night, there was no telling who might show up at her door. At least they were knocking and not breaking in. Better check it out first. She tiptoed to a small window that overlooked the porch and peeked from the edge of the curtain.
A neatly dressed, stocky man occupied the exterior entryway. One hand rested on the porch rail. The other fidgeted with the contents of his front pants pocket. The khakis and turned-up collar of his navy-and-white-striped polo shirt gave the impression that he had walked out of a different decade. His short-cropped light brown hair standing stiff as a wire brush against the breeze, he fixated on her door, unblinking.
Crap! It wasn’t some scary assassin type, though by comparison she might prefer that. His polished appearance belying his unpleasant personality, Chip Anders was waiting at her door. A friend of a friend’s brother. Or something like that.
After much protest, she’d consented to the date. Just to be nice. New to her surroundings and trusting a friend, instead she should have put her foot down and stuck to her intuition. This one had been a good choice to stay away from. Self-absorbed and callous, he furthermore formed an instant dogged attachment and refused to leave her alone. Her poor friend even now remained apologetic to her for ever having introduced them, as Chip had become obsessed over nothing. Just that one outing—a strained couple of hours of a blind date with friends.
Really? Now?
She’d actually considered filing a restraining order against him, but he hadn’t shown up in months and her hope was that he’d given up. She backed away from the window, fuming to herself. Maybe he would just go away.
No such luck as he knocked again, louder, and called out to her. “Alex, I know you’re in there! I want to talk to you!”
She didn’t answer. Arms folded across her chest, she gripped each elbow so hard her knuckles whitened. Teeth gritted. A bully and a jerk, his repulsive nature was the last thing she cared to deal with. Same as within the first five minutes of meeting him. Cursing under her breath, she felt her mood shade to gloom. Odds were, he wasn’t going to just leave without a good incentive to do so.
Confirming her suspicions, Chip called out again even louder. “Alex!”
As she weighed her options, Aaron appeared at her side. The comfort of his presence sent a wave of relief washing through her and she filled him in.
“Answer it,” he told her.
She edged the door open an inch. “Chip, what are you doing here?”
“I want to see you. I’ve stayed away like you asked. That should have given you plenty of time to think. To change your mind.”
“No. And I told you, you need to just stay away. Period. Plain and simple.”
Chip’s haughty stare insistent, he planted his feet wide and set his hands on his hips. “I don’t believe you really want that.”
“Well, I do. Nothing has changed, and it never will. You need to go. Now.”
“Aww, c’mon, baby. Let me come in and we can discuss this in detail.” With that he shoved her door open wide and pushed past her.
“So not a good idea…,” Alex muttered as he strode on in. And by all means, just freaking invite yourself! She crossed her arms again and scowled. In the past she would have gone straight to Betsy’s or just plain not answered. Or maybe called the police so she wouldn’t shoot him herself.
Chip strutted around the living area. He stopped next to a stack of boxes, his intrusive gaze coming to rest on the packed bags that now lay beside the sofa.
“Hey, you goin’ somewhere?” A devious smile dimpled his cheeks. “You’ll need some company for a vacation.”
“She’s got all the company she needs.”
Intonation steady and calm, Aaron stepped from the hallway into view to stand between Alex and Chip.
The insidious grin vanished. “And just who the hell are you?” Chip’s voice rose an octave to a near screech. Rapid blinking betrayed his cognitive struggle to retain an authoritarian presence while coming to grips with the unexpected situation of finding another male in the apartment. His mouth hung open a moment before he clamped it shut. He collected himself, squared his shoulders, and took a step toward Aaron.
“Man, don’t. Just… don’t. Really.”
Though he appeared relaxed and his articulation remained civil, Alex noted Aaron’s stance change, a subtle, almost imperceptible shift to defensive. He could convert that in an instant to a frightening aggression if Chip refused to think in a rational manner and attempted something stupid. Which Chip probably would, knowing him.
“What the…?” Chip’s eyebrows shot up and he stopped in his tracks. At the direct challenge to his perceived superiority, a dark red crept up his neck. Fists clenched at his sides. Veins bulged at now crimson temples as he sized Aaron up. Looking past his adversary, he demanded again, “Alex, who the hell is this?”
“Don’t look at her—look at me.” Aaron gave him a flat stare. “It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is you were asked to leave. Politely. Now, if you don’t appreciate polite and sensible, we can always try the hard way. But you’ll be a lot happier and less sore if you go with polite.”
Alex remained silent as the rage grew on her unwanted suitor’s countenance. Oh crap…
Chip looked from Alex to Aaron, back to Alex, eyes gleaming, chin lifted. Lips twisting into lewdness, he gave her an extended once-over, lascivious stare flowing down her body and lingering a bit too lo
ng on places it shouldn’t. Cocky now, he returned his focus to Aaron and snickered, readying for the reaction.
Aaron just crossed his arms and shifted his weight to one leg. One eyebrow lifted, he glanced down at the floor in front of him and pushed at a piece of lint with the toe of his boot.
The expected show of force not materializing, Chip’s eyes widened and his mouth fell slack for a second time. He stood staring as Aaron gazed at him again, the latter’s eyes passive, no trace of aggression.
“What…? Not gonna try to beat my ass? Avenge her honor?” Eager for the chance to prove himself in battle, Chip cut further. “Guess that just shows what kind of man you are. I wouldn’t let someone do what I just did. I’d pound them so bad they’d never look at any girl again!”
Yet you just disrespected her as an example. Nice way to impress a woman.
“I’m sure you would.” Aaron’s initial hope that his presence alone would give this man second thoughts on further advances toward Alex vanished. That, angry or no, Chip would just leave. No such luck. The unfortunate truth was there would be no reasoning with this person.
Keeping his expression unassuming, Aaron couldn’t prevent one corner of his mouth from a slight upturn. He’d seen too many men with this proclivity. An immature obsession with lust and greed. The desire to take by force anything they wanted. What next? That would be up to Chip.
“What a damn coward.” His attempt at provoking a brawl thwarted, Chip chuffed a dramatic shrug at his inability to lure Aaron into a fight by nonphysical means. “No matter.” He snorted and turned his attention back to Alex. “Fine! But this is bullshit! You know it!” He sucked in several sharp, seething breaths. “I’ll be back. You’ll see. And you… I’ll deal with you.” He growled out his threat, pointing a thick finger back at Aaron. In a huff, he pivoted and stomped toward the open door, shoulders slumping forward into a sulk. Chip slipped his hands into his front pants pockets, offering Alex a pout as he skulked past.
Off the Deep End Page 16