His Last Defense

by Karen Rock

  And clueless.

  “Do you think I care about being ‘safe’? That I want to be taken care of? Made happy?” She held her tongue until the partying group stopped chanting about presents, then continued. “I can do those things on my own, Dylan. I just want you in my life. Here.”

  “I won’t stay in Kodiak. You know that.” Across the table, he watched her with electric intensity.

  “Why? Why would I know that?” Her insides felt like ground meat. Pulverized. Raw. “You’ve been happy in Alaska. Admit it. I saw you on the boat.”

  “It’s not enough. There’s too many bad memories here. Come with me,” he implored. His jittering knee hit the underside of the table. “We’ll make new memories. Wonderful ones. You won’t miss Kodiak. Not much. Promise.”

  “You don’t know me,” she whispered, more to herself then him. Her index finger swept a clear line in the condensation beading on her water glass.

  “Yes I do, Nolee.” He stared down at the table for a moment, then looked up at her. “No one knows you better. You don’t always know when to cut your losses—this is one of those times.”

  Their waitress appeared, dropped the check onto the table and retreated, her smile fading as her head swiveled between them.

  “I don’t cut and run, Dylan. That’s you.” Her voice came out harder than she’d wanted and she swallowed, struggling to ignore her bone-crushing pain. “Do you ever see yourself settling down in one place? Being happy with the same thing day after day?”

  Shock and hurt darkened his eyes. He angled back in his chair as if she’d struck him. “No. But I want you in my life. That’s big for me, Nolee.”

  “It’s not enough.” She dropped her head into her palm and took a deep breath. “I need roots, and you want to wander.”

  “You’ve always been a risk-taker. Fearless.” She felt his fingers brush hers and she pulled back as if stung. “Yet you’re scared to take a chance on me. On us.”

  She lifted her head, opened her mouth to deny the accusation then shut it. A world of experience, her entire vagabond childhood, had taught her to be cautious. “I won’t give up my entire life the way my...the way my mother did.”

  He shook his head slowly after a brief silence. “I’m not like your father.”

  Outside, the sun appeared through a cloud and beamed a shaft of angled light directly at their table. Nolee blinked stinging eyes in the sudden brightness.

  “Yes. You are,” she said, fierce. “He couldn’t settle down. What happens when you get tired of me? Or leave when we have problems? I’d have sacrificed my life to be a part of yours and be left with nothing...nothing of my own...just like my mom.”

  “I won’t ever get tired of you,” Dylan insisted, his voice cracking, splintering, his expression shattered. “I’d never abandon you.”

  “Wouldn’t you? You left your parents without saying goodbye. Haven’t even attempted to keep in touch.”

  His jaw turned to granite. “That’s not the same thing. Not even close.”

  “Your family is the part of Kodiak you can’t deal with.”

  “Maybe once. But not anymore. I stopped caring about them a long time ago.”

  He really didn’t get it. How wrong she’d been to hope this time together would be different.

  “You don’t know anything, Dylan Holt. And you won’t stay in one place long enough to figure anything out—including yourself. What’s that line from that old movie we used to like? The one with the shrimp boat captain...?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Forrest Gump?”

  A thunderous crash of breaking china and glass erupted from the kitchen, silencing them momentarily. A couple of hustling waitresses whisked by.

  “That’s it. Remember when Forrest’s mother said, ‘You’ve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.’”

  He nodded.

  “We can’t have a future until you’ve settled things with them.”

  “They have nothing to do with us, Nolee.”

  “Yes they do. They made mistakes, and someday, I might, too. But people who care about each other stick around. Try to work things out. I understand that you were hurt as a kid. But now you have a chance to make things right. Are you going to see them before you leave?”

  “No.” He ran a hand through his curls and shifted in his seat. “There’s nothing there for me anymore.”

  She let out a long breath and stood. Her hands gripped the back of her chair as she waited for her wobbling knees to steady.

  “There’s nothing here with me, either,” she said over the painful tightness of her throat. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nolee!” He caught her hand. “Stay.”

  She battled the magnetic pull that threatened to sweep her off her feet and carry her straight to Dylan. The familiar scent of him flooded her senses with a longing so fierce it was a physical ache. If only she could dial back the clock and rush into his arms one last time. “That’s what I’m asking you to do, but you won’t...will you?”

  Stay with me, she added silently, studying the ceiling, willing away the wet rushing to her eyes.

  Want me.

  Try for me.

  There was another silence. She felt the hurt in it, and was crushed.

  After a charged moment, she forced herself to keep speaking when all she wanted to do was cry and cry and cry.

  “Please see them, at least. If not for my sake, then your own. Goodbye.”

  * * *

  “I’M PROUD OF YOU, NOLEE. You leaned in when you could have given up and now look at you.”

  Aunt Dai beamed across her kitchen island at Nolee a week later. Her knife slashed through a head of garlic, a flashing silver blur. Behind her, oil popped in a cast-iron skillet atop her gas stove.

  “You’re a captain for some big shot gussuks,” she crowed, using their slang for non-Inuits. She brandished her knife. “Lots of money.”

  At a loud snort across the room, Nolee looked up. Her mother, Kathy, wheeled her oxygen tank to a small bay window. Outside, icicles dripped from eaves and melting snow slid from two snowmobiles parked in front of her relative’s small wood cabin. A midday sun burned through a gap in the fat-bellied clouds blotting out the sky.

  “Thanks, Aunt Dai.” Nolee mustered up a half smile that fell almost immediately.

  “Money is not happiness,” her judgmental parent pronounced.

  True enough, she thought, given her complete and total misery.

  When she’d walked away from Dylan, a part of her had ripped loose and stayed behind, leaving her empty. Hollow. And in that vacuum, she’d caved in on herself, a black hole replacing her heart, the spaces inside her growing denser and heavier by the minute.

  Had he left Kodiak yet?

  By now, he could have signed his papers and transferred thousands of miles away. The painful thought wrapped around her heart like barbed wire.

  It was exactly what he wanted.

  And she had exactly what she wanted, too, she reminded herself firmly. Dunham Seafoods had surprised her by offering her another one-year contract. While she’d fallen short of her quota, she’d still done enough in terms of safety and catch to convince them to rehire her. She’d achieved every last bit of independence she’d craved, yet she’d hardly slept or eaten since parting with Dylan.

  On a mat by the door, her aunt Dai’s husky whined in her sleep, her legs paddling in some unseen chase. Nolee wished she could run from her tortured thoughts, too. Her second-guessing.

  Why wasn’t she happy about her career coup, at least? She twisted the apple she was peeling for tonight’s cobbler and caught her mother’s frown. The hollows in her cheeks look deeper today, Nolee observed, her ever-present worry for her parent rising higher than ever.

  “What will you do with
all that money?” Aunt Dai angled her knife and began chopping in the opposite direction.

  Nolee continued skimming her paring knife around her apple. “I’m going to put down a deposit on a house for Mom and me.”

  “Keep it.” Her mother untangled her oxygen tank’s tube and lowered herself into a rocking chair. “I want no part of that money.”

  Nolee winced. No matter how hard she tried, she’d never, ever be good enough for her mother. Still, she wouldn’t quit on her family. Dylan might be able to turn his back on loved ones, but not her. One of the many reasons they weren’t right for each other.

  So why couldn’t she stop missing him? The ache of it throbbed so hard she had to bite the inside of her cheek to contain herself.

  With a flick of her wrist, Aunt Dai tossed the garlic in the pan where it splattered and hissed. The savory, pungent smell wove through the toasty kitchen. “Ah, Kathy. Get with the times. Stop being so old-fashioned.”

  “The old ways are good.”

  A buzzing microwave dinged and Aunt Dai pulled the door open and spoke over her shoulder. “What can I say, Nolee? Your mother is stubborn.”

  “So am I.” Nolee mindlessly swept her knife around her last apple, the peel curling over her fingers in one long piece. “Don’t you want to settle down, Mother?”

  The diabetic monitor on her hip beeped, and Nolee eyed the pump’s red light. Concern rose. “Blood sugar’s low.” She yanked open the fridge, poured a glass of orange juice and hustled to her mother’s side. “Here. Drink.”

  Kathy’s slim, elegant fingers wrapped around the glass and tipped it up to her mouth. After a long gulp, Nolee stayed her attempt to put it back down. “All of it, please.”

  With a sigh, her mother drained it down to the last drop. “I don’t want you hovering over me.”

  “I’m not!” Nolee cried as she bent over her pale parent. She caught her aunt’s arched brow and dropped into a seat. “Okay. Maybe. But I worry about you. I want you to have the best of everything.”

  Her mother shrugged and plucked a roasted nut from a nearby bowl. “I already have that.”

  “You don’t have a place to call your own.”

  A pulverized shell disintegrated between the metal arms of a cracker. “I have what I need. That’s all I want.”

  Somewhere, a phone shrilled, and Aunt Dai hustled out of the room to grab it.

  Nolee watched her mother chewing a walnut, her expression far away.

  “Don’t you want your independence? You’d never have to ask anyone for help. You’d never feel like less than others.”

  Her mother’s eyes swerved to Nolee. Narrowed. “Less than? You think I feel like I’m not as good as other people?”

  Nolee ducked her head. “You don’t have anything. I mean, we didn’t.”

  “We had—have plenty. Here.” She tapped her chest. “You think money—things—they make you better? A stronger person? No. They make you weak. You become a slave to them, always wanting more, never satisfied. Gifts make slaves as whips make dogs.”

  “That’s not true,” Nolee insisted. “Dad left us with nothing. We struggled.”

  Her mother reached out and smoothed back a lock of Nolee’s hair. “He left me with everything I could ever want.” Her eyes searched her daughter’s. “You.”

  Nolee blinked fast at the sudden, stinging rush of tears. “But I wasn’t enough.”

  “Of course you were. Your father...” Her mother swatted the air with her hand. “He’s the one who’s had to do without. Without you. I pity him.”

  “And I hate him,” Nolee declared, the bitter words dredged from a dark, hollow place.

  Her mother covered her hands with hers. “Seek strength,” her mother quoted. “Not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy, Myself.”

  Nolee froze. “What do you mean?”

  Kathy stared at her wordlessly for a long moment.

  “So I’m my own enemy?” Nolee demanded.

  At the continued lack of response, she bolted to her feet and paced. The husky’s tail thumped against the wood floor as she approached, then stilled when she pivoted and trod away.

  “I don’t hate myself.”

  More silence.

  “I—I—Oh, Mom.” Nolee sank back into her chair and covered her face. Her shoulders shook as she wept because she did, she saw it now. She did think she wasn’t worthy. Why else had she worked so hard to prove herself? Not to anyone else. Not to her mother. No. Not even to her father.

  She’d wanted to prove her worth to herself, she realized, her harshest critic of all.

  A warm arm settled around her shoulders. Squeezed. “You have a right to happiness.”

  Nolee swiped her damp cheeks and blinked up at her mother, her strong, independent parent, who’d never had to depend on anyone else for happiness, for love, because she’d determined the form those took for herself.

  Should Nolee?

  Suddenly she understood the real reason she’d pushed Dylan away. It was insecurity. Not independence. Fear instead of love.

  She shoved herself to her feet and swept her mother into a bear hug. “I love you, Mom. Tell Aunt Dai not to set a place for me at dinner.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Nolee grabbed her keys and jacket and stopped at the door. “To get my head on straight.”

  And her heart.

  Was it too late for her and Dylan?

  16

  DYLAN STOMPED ON his parents’ icy stoop and eyed the doorbell. Funny how it looked lower than he remembered. The door smaller. Even the house astonished him. He eyed the snow-laden roof beneath heavy clouds. Noted the stainless steel pipe belching cedarwood smoke. Once he’d thought this black paper and particleboard house luxurious.

  A paradise...a refuge.

  Especially those times he’d stumbled toward it out of the dark, hungry-thirsty-cold after his father dragged them on wilderness challenges in rugged backcountry. It’d been one of the survivalist exercises comprising his exacting “commando” upbringing. The kind that’d turn them into real men, his father vowed.

  Anger flared in his gut. Shot up in his esophagus and burned.

  What the hell was he doing here after all these years?

  Nolee.

  His jaw clenched so hard his back teeth ached. He forced his balled hands to unfurl. A brisk wind rattled around the house’s northern corner. Glittering snow particles, as fine as crushed glass, showered him.

  She’d challenged him to face his past. Claimed he’d never put it behind him otherwise. Insisted they couldn’t be together until he did.

  All week, he’d thrown himself into his work, flying back-to-back missions, training staff, working out every free moment of the day until his body collapsed. Anything to keep his mind off Nolee. None of it worked.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a deer and her offspring glided out of the woods then froze at the sight of him. He held his breath until they pivoted and leaped away. Their white tails bobbed once in the gloom then vanished, the trampled snow the only evidence he hadn’t imagined them.

  Life was like walking through snow.

  Every step showed.

  What had his time here in Kodiak revealed?

  That he still loved Nolee.

  No matter how far he traveled, he’d never leave his feelings for her behind.

  Sometimes he caught himself staring at her contact number in his phone. He imagined her voice, her smile, the light in her eyes when she’d teased him. He thought about her hot, eager body beneath his, and the way her touch set him on fire and then healed him a moment later, the scars of his childhood smoothing and becoming a badge of ho
nor instead of his secret shame.

  His final conversation with Nolee ran through his brain on a permanent loop. Her wounded face was always with him.

  The thing that plagued him, that left him sleepless and numb, was the way they’d left things. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Damn it. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He needed to compartmentalize. Leave her and his family behind in Kodiak and get on with the rest of his life, no matter how empty the road ahead appeared.

  He pictured the unsigned rotation paperwork beside his bunk. When he got back to base, he’d quit stalling and turn it in. Once this family visit ended, Kodiak and his past would finally release him for good.

  Taking a deep breath, he pressed the doorbell. Waited. Pressed again. His heart pounded in his ears.

  The door lurched open and his mother froze in the entryway. Her hand fluttered to the small, heart-shaped locket he’d gotten her one Mother’s Day. “Dylan!”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course! Come in. Come in.” She jerked back and retreated a couple of paces. “You should have told me you were coming; I would have made a roast.”

  “I can’t stay long.” Uneasy, he slid inside and shut the door behind him. In a flash, he was sixteen again, then twelve, eight.

  Out of ingrained habit, he stepped out of his boots, hung up his coat and followed her past a closed pocket door that now sealed off the living room archway.

  His mother reached for a mug hanging above the stove. “Let me make you coffee.”

  “No need to fuss.”

  “Then what can I get you? Soda?” His mother’s movements looked jerky as she set down the cup, her eyes jumping from place to place, red blotches blooming on her neck. He perched on one of the kitchen’s backless stools and drummed his fingers on his knees.

  This was all a mistake.

  He shouldn’t have come.

  She opened the fridge and spoke over her shoulder. “I just fixed a nice ham sandwich for your father. I’ll make you one.”

  His stomach tightened at the mention of his oppressive parent. “Please don’t bother. I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving Kodiak soon.”