Somewhere in her mind, Peyton registered the opening and shutting of the outer door, but she didn’t have the strength to go after him. I don’t think I can marry you. I don’t think I can.
Oh God, what the hell was she going to do?
* * *
Marco tossed back another shot and settled the glass on the table, turning it to look inside. The Fiddler’s Green was crowded tonight, especially this late on a Monday, but everyone instinctively avoided his table, circling wide around him. He was even having a hard time getting the waitress to come over and the bartender refused to sell him a full bottle.
Every time he thought of Peyton, he forced it aside. He wasn’t really angry at her. She’d always been very clear on her priorities – job first, everything else second, but he loved her so completely he couldn’t accept that. He couldn’t accept being second to anything in her life.
She wasn’t second for him. She’d never been second for him. From the moment he’d met her, she’d been his primary focus. So much so that he wondered if it was healthy. Before it had been so simple. His job was to protect her, keep her safe. Then they’d become so much more and his job had shifted. He was her partner in all things and yet, he didn’t feel adequate to that anymore. He couldn’t physically protect her. She’d gone beyond him in her own job. She had new people in her life, leaving him behind.
Whenever he thought of her at work, jealousy raged to the foreground. When he’d seen her with Ravensong, that same jealousy had nearly choked him. He knew that wasn’t good. He knew that wasn’t any way to build a relationship.
And when he thought of the future, he realized it wasn’t enough just to have Peyton. He hadn’t lied to her. He’d never wanted children before, but the thought of a child created between him and Peyton made him long for that very thing. Clearly she hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t even considered it.
Could he give up that dream now? Forget it? Agree to suppress that side of him just to be with her?
He twirled the shot glass. He could if he didn’t also feel like she was moving past him, if he didn’t worry that she stayed with him out of some misguided belief she owed him.
And there it was.
There was no way for him to accept that she truly loved him when he hated everything about himself right now.
Staring into the depth of the empty glass, he curled his hand into a fist. He couldn’t be what she needed because he didn’t know what the hell he was. It was the very psychobabble he hated, but this time it was true.
She was everything to him, but he couldn’t be anything to her because he was so damaged and broken inside.
He tried frantically to work through it, make sense of it, but he couldn’t. Gradually he became aware of someone stopping in front of the table, then reaching for a chair and pulling it out, sitting down.
“You’re a royal pain in the ass, Adonis, you know that?” said Jake, crossing his arms on the table.
Marco looked up at him, his vision blurry, but he didn’t answer.
“I get a frantic phone call from Peyton, she’s crying by the way, and she tells me you broke off the engagement and walked out on her. She doesn’t know where you’ve gone, but she suspects you’ve been drinking.”
Marco studied Jake’s face, his brown hair, his mid-western boyish features. He resented the fact that Peyton had called him for help. It made the jealousy rise up inside of him again.
“Did I mention she was crying?”
Marco still didn’t answer.
“You are a piece of work. You got one of the best girls in love with you and you screw it up. Do you know how many men would give anything to be in your place?” He leaned forward on the table. “I’m one of them, you freakin’ idiot!”
Marco turned the shot glass over and banged it on the table. “I’m drunk and armed, Ryder. Don’t say something like that again.”
Jake gave him a level look. “What the hell is wrong with you? She loves you!”
“I’m a project for her.”
“A what?”
“A project. Like you and Venus and Ravensong. I’m a soul to save.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I do.”
“What the hell, Adonis? That’s a load of bull shit and you know it.”
Marco spun the shot glass around. “You sure of that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I see the way she looks at you. I see the way she’s always looked at you. You’re everything to her.”
“Not enough.”
“What?”
“Not enough.” He pushed the shot glass away. “She’s physically hurt. Did you know that? She got hurt on the job, but when I asked her about it, she told me she couldn’t tell me what happened.”
“Maybe it’s classified.”
“Maybe, but I’m her fiancé. So I asked her how it would work, the job I mean, if we had a family. You should have seen the shock on her face. She never even considered it.”
“Maybe because you’ve always said you don’t want kids.”
“Maybe, but she didn’t consider it. She told me…” He shook his head. “She told me that I knew her job was the most important thing when I asked her to marry me.”
“She doesn’t mean that.”
“She does!” He slammed his hand on the table.
“So what is it you want? You want her to give up the job for you?”
Marco shook his head grimly. “I don’t know what I want. I want Peyton, but I don’t want to be her project, her latest casualty to save.”
“You’re drunk and you’re not thinking right.”
“I want to be worthy of her.”
Jake went still. “And you think you’re not?”
Marco shook his head again. “I know I’m not. Look at me, Ryder. I’m not the same man I was and I don’t know who that man is anymore. I can’t be what Peyton needs. I’m angry and jealous and scared, and I can’t be what she deserves.”
Jake slumped back in his chair. He didn’t speak for a moment. Marco looked away. He didn’t expect Jake to have answers. No one did. Not Dr. Ferguson, not the church, not Peyton. No one could tell him how to recover, how to live now.
“Come on.” Jake pushed himself to his feet.
“Where are we going? I can’t go home drunk.”
“No, you’re right. You’ll come home with me. You can sleep on the couch.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You’re not sitting here all night, drinking, Adonis. Come on.”
Marco reached for his cane and rose to his feet, swaying. Jake started to extend a steadying hand, but Marco gave him a severe glare, so he dropped it.
“I need to call Peyton.”
“The hell you do. I already called her. You need to get some sleep and sober up.”
“Then what?”
Jake drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Then you need to do some soul searching, Adonis. You need to figure out how you’re going to get well.”
EPILOGUE
Peyton struggled with putting on her gun the next morning. She wanted to go back to bed, but she’d forced herself to get up and shower. Radar had already called, telling her he wanted to leave for Sacramento by 9:00. He’d gotten the warrant to dig up the Harwood’s orchard. She didn’t give a damn about the Harwoods, or their orchard, or for that matter, her job. She wanted Marco to come home.
As if he heard her thoughts, the lock turned and the door opened. She stopped fighting the strap on her gun and watched him enter the house. He gave her a look, then closed the door behind him, bending to stroke Pickles’ head.
Then he came forward and reached for the strap, helping her straighten it.
She fought the tears that rushed to her eyes, wanting to be strong right now. After he fixed the strap, he ran his hands down her arms to her hands and then ran his thumb over her engagement ring.
“We need to talk. Do you have to leave right now?”
She shook her head. She didn’t give a damn about
the job. He was all that mattered.
He led her to the living room, guiding her into the recliner as he took a seat on the couch, but he kept hold of her hands. The look on his face scared her. It was bleak and empty, so void of the emotion she’d come to recognize.
Pickles sensed it. He came around the couch and laid down, his head resting on Marco’s shoe. Peyton knew that couldn’t be a good sign.
“Sweetheart.”
Her gaze whipped back to his face.
“I’m sorry for last night.” He ran his thumb over the ring again. “I seem to be saying that a lot lately, and I really don’t have a good excuse.” He focused on her eyes. “I love you, Peyton. I adore you. I always have and I always will. This isn’t a love that will ever go away.”
Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak. Her stomach had twisted itself into knots. She knew where he was going and she couldn’t think fast enough to stop it.
“I love you more than anything, Peyton. I think about you all the time. I worry every day when you leave for work. You are the center of my life. The most important thing in it.”
She forced herself to swallow. “And that’s bad?”
He gave a short laugh and looked at her hands. “Yeah, it is. Because I’m not the only thing in your life.”
“That’s not true, Marco.”
“No, sweetheart, please listen. I shouldn’t be the only thing in your life. I shouldn’t be your everything. That’s not love, Peyton, that’s obsession.” He reached up and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Lately, I’ve been feeling such jealousy that it makes me sick inside. Whenever I think of you talking to another man, I get this rage…” He touched the center of his chest. “I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t control it. It’s there because you’re all I have. You’re everything. People need more. They need to have other interests, other pursuits. If one person becomes the reason you’re living, you start wanting to control everything about that person, you want to absorb them. And…” He released her hands, clasping his before him. “I love you too much to do that to you.”
She tried to process what he was saying. It made sense, but how did they fix it? “So what do we do?”
“We can’t do anything.”
“Marco, don’t say that. We can. We’ve been through so much more than this. We can make this all right.”
“No, sweetheart. We can’t.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it. The tears were coming now, fast and furious. “You can’t mean this, Marco. You can’t walk away from us like this. I love you. I’ll do anything you need me to do. I’ll quit the job.”
He slid his hand under her chin and lifted her face. “I know you would, and you’d be miserable. You’d grow to hate me as much as I’m hating myself right now.”
She shivered as the sobs caught in her throat.
“Listen to me. We can’t fix this. I have to fix it. I have to find out what’s wrong with me and I have to make it right. You can’t do this for me because I’m the one that’s broken.”
“We’ll do it together.”
“No, sweetheart. We can’t do it together.”
“That’s how couples work, Marco. They face the good and the bad together.”
“Not when the problem is one of the pair. When you’re with me, Peyton, I’m fine. I feel like there’s a reason for getting up in the morning, but when you’re gone, my mind conjures up all sorts of things and I think, sometimes that there’s nothing left for me. I know this is so damn cliché, but I don’t know who the hell I am anymore, Peyton. I hate the job. I hate this damn body I’m trapped in. I hate the possessive feelings I have over you and if I don’t learn how to control that, Peyton, if I don’t figure it out, you will hate me too.”
Her phone buzzed again.
“Take the call,” he said, leaning back.
“No.” She reached into her pocket and turned the phone off. “We’ve been through worse, Marco.”
“Yes, we, together, but this isn’t we. This is me. I’m drinking too much. I’m angry all the time. I’m in constant pain and it isn’t just the leg. Whenever you walk out that door, I’m suspicious and bitter, and even as I feel it, I hate myself for it. I want us to be a partnership, Peyton. I don’t want to control you. I want us to have complete lives that we build together, but right now, all I see is you moving forward and I’m…” He shook his head, looking at a spot beyond her shoulder. “I don’t even know where I am, Peyton. I don’t even understand what’s going on inside of me. It scares me and I feel that if I don’t get some help, I’m going to lose you for good.”
The tears rushed down her cheeks. “What are you saying? You want to take a break?”
“No, I’m saying I have to take a break. I have to fix me.”
“So, what? We live here like roommates?”
“No, sweetheart. I couldn’t stand to do that with you.”
Her breath caught and the pain felt as physical as the blow she’d taken from Randall Harwood. “You’re moving out?”
“For a while. Until I can get help.”
She tried to speak, but the sobs were too wrenching. She buried her face in her hands and closed her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be saying these things to her.
He gathered her into his arms, pulling her onto his lap, sliding back on the couch with her. He kissed her forehead and wrapped her in his embrace. “Please, sweetheart, please try to understand.”
Understand? She couldn’t understand this no matter what. If he left, he was taking her lover and her best friend all in one. She loved him. Why wasn’t that enough? Why wasn’t her love strong enough to make this right?
“I need to do this for us, baby,” he whispered. “I need to make things right.”
She curled her hand in his shirt and buried her face against his neck. How could this possibly be right? How could he think leaving her was an answer to anything? But she couldn’t tell him this. She couldn’t get the breath to say any of it.
* * *
Radar stood at the edge of the orchard, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the black FBI-issue windbreakers moving over every inch of the acreage with their high tech sensors. They’d been at it for the last two hours, combing the surface and probing beneath it with ground penetrating radar. Cadaver sniffing dogs meandered back and forth with their handlers. Occasionally the dog would indicate an interesting discovery and the handler would motion a forensic geophysicist to sweep the area.
Glancing to his side, he marked Bob Sharpe crossing over the irrigation channels to get to him. He stopped beside Radar, tilting back his hat.
“Where’s Brooks?”
Radar pushed his sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose. “She had a personal issue come up.”
“Huh, too bad. After today, you’re probably moving on, right?”
“Yeah. If we find anything, we’ll turn the rest of the case over to the forensics team.”
“She’s something, that one.”
“Yeah, well, she’s engaged.”
Sharpe shrugged and rocked on his boot heels. “Yeah, I saw the ring. So, this case is pretty well wrapped up?”
“Except identification of the three bodies and notification of the families.” He jutted his chin out toward the orchard. “And figuring out if there are more bodies buried under these trees.”
Sharpe released his held breath. “God I hope not. If this has been going on as long as you people think, just imagine how many people never got closure.”
Radar nodded.
He saw Tank conversing with a forensics team member, nodding and looking at the display on the GPR. They set up a heated discussion and the geophysicist motioned over the entire acreage. Radar felt his stomach plummet.
Tank glanced back at him, his jaw clenching, while the geophysicist continued to talk and gesture, then point at the display. Tank looked back at the display, then he nodded and stepped away.
With his long stride, he crossed the distance
to Radar and stopped before him, giving a chin lift to Sharpe. Sharpe nodded back.
“What?” demanded Radar.
Tank blew out air, then he turned and looked over the orchard.
Radar fought for patience.
Finally Tank shifted to face him. “Radar, so far they’ve found the distinct remains of twenty-seven people.”
Twenty-seven?
“Are you sure?”
“They seem pretty convinced.”
“Twenty-seven?”
Sharpe made a strangled sound next to him.
“Yeah.”
“Twenty-seven?”
Tank shrugged. “It gets worse.”
“How can it get worse?”
Tank chewed on his upper lip, shifting weight. “They’ve only covered thirty-two acres, Radar. There’s still twenty-eight more.”
Oh shit, thought Radar. Oh shit!
THE END
Now that you’ve finished, visit ML Hamilton at her website: authormlhamilton.com for more information on the Avery Nolan Adventures and her murder mystery series, The Peyton Brooks’ Mysteries. Then check out her fantasy series, The World of Samar, at worldofsamar.com.
All ML Hamilton titles available in ebook and paperback formats.
The Complete Peyton Brooks’ Mysteries Collection:
Murder on Potrero Hill Volume 1
Murder in the Tenderloin Volume 2
Murder on Russian Hill Volume 3
Murder on Alcatraz Volume 4
Murder in Chinatown Volume 5
Murder in the Presidio Volume 6
Murder on Treasure Island Volume 7
The Complete World of Samar Collection:
Emerald Volume 1
The Heirs of Eldon Volume 2
The Star of Eldon Volume 3
The Spirit of Eldon Volume 4
The Sanctuary of Eldon Volume 5
The Avery Nolan Adventures Collection
Swift As A Shadow, An Avery Nolan Adventure Volume 1
Short As Any Dream, An Avery Nolan Adventure Volume 2
Peyton Brooks FBI Collection
Zombies in the Delta (Peyton Brooks, FBI Book 1) Page 25