by Kara Braden
She heard the rattle of the desk chair. Then long, cool fingers closed around her hands. She took deep breaths and tried to ground herself in the present, telling herself that she was safe and Ian was here, and that was all that mattered for now. Distantly, she felt him leading her through the living room before giving her a little push toward the sofa.
Realizing just how shaky her legs were, she sat and tried to relax her death grip on his hands. He sat down beside her and quietly said, “I’m not going anywhere, remember? Not without you.”
Her heart thudded into her ribs, but she pushed away the reminder. She let go of his hands and said, “You’ll have to, though, one day. If you—”
“Don’t.”
Ian’s arms came up to circle her body tightly, and it was a measure of how far she’d come—how much she trusted him—that the panic was barely a whisper in the back of her mind. She let out a shaky exhale and got one leg over his, holding him more tightly. They both shifted and leaned back into the cushions until they couldn’t get any closer together.
“Whatever you decide, I’ll be right there with you,” he said, stroking his hand down her back. “I came this far for you. I’m not leaving you.”
“You came to get away from Manhattan,” she said with a little smile. She lifted her head from his chest, and warmth curled through her at the way he smiled back at her. “You didn’t even know I existed until you first saw my death trap of a plane.”
“Either way, I found you, and now you’re stuck with me.” He kissed her forehead and dragged his fingers up her spine to tease at her nape, making her shiver. “But I think you might be more ready than you think.”
“What?”
“Hear me out.” He turned slightly, so they were sitting sideways on the couch, facing each other. His hand slid from her nape to her shoulder and down her arm. “We’re humans—creatures of habit. It could be that you’re wary of leaving simply because you’re used to being that way. It’s a pattern of behavior you’ve created.”
“Is this something you learned from your addiction counseling?”
“No. Well, yes. Sort of.” He gave her a wry smile. “What I actually learned was that even the experts don’t have all the answers, and what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. But look at me. All the programs helped, sort of, until I returned to work. Then I was right back at it again.”
She frowned, sitting up a bit. “What happens when you go back this time?”
“I’m not worried about it,” he said reassuringly. “The circumstances are completely different. I’ve had time to physically recover, which was half the problem. The painkillers were masking what I was doing to my body before I was fully healed.” His grin flashed to life as he added, “I plan on being able to keep up with you on your morning jog by summer.”
She couldn’t help but answer with her own grin. “It’d be nice to have company,” she admitted. “But—”
“But,” he cut in, “I had habits. Going to work too early, staying too late, ignoring when my body needed rest. Once I broke those habits by changing the circumstances—by leaving the city—everything changed.”
“And you think my”—she faltered, unable to articulate her fear—“this is because…what? I’ve made isolation my habit?” It sounded ridiculous.
“Exactly.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “For me, it meant walking out of rehab early. It meant not going back to what I was used to. The city. My job. My apartment. It meant coming here, somewhere completely new, somewhere I had no chance to fall back into that habit. Break the habit, Cecily.”
The warmth of Ian’s touch disappeared under a cold chill at the thought. Her cabin was safe. No one came here. She wasn’t in danger of being hurt—of hurting someone else.
But safety was a trap. Safety meant isolation. Not being with Ian.
To live—to love—meant taking a risk, and the woman she’d once been had never backed away from a risk.
“All right,” she said, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. When Ian’s eyes lit up, she couldn’t help but smile and repeat, “All right. Let’s give it a shot.”
***
Cecily wasn’t one to wait. Once a decision was made, she acted immediately. No dithering, no backpedaling. She got up to start packing, pausing only long enough to put a pot of leftover stew on the stove to reheat. Then she went back to tearing through the living room, bedroom, and bathroom, occasionally throwing things onto the bed.
For Ian, packing was easy. He folded a mix of dress clothes and winter clothes into his one suitcase, packed away his laptop, and was done in under an hour. After he moved his carry-on into the kitchen, he went into the bedroom, where he found her crouched in front of the open gun safe. The drawer was open, and she had a stack of file papers on the floor beside her.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I can’t bring these to New York”—she gestured at the guns with one hand, never looking up from the papers—“and I can’t just leave them here.”
“Preston can help. He’d probably be willing to—” He cut off, realizing that while Preston would probably be happy to buy the whole collection, Cecily might not want to sell them. “You can probably store them in Virginia.”
“And how do I get them there, from here? Do you know international firearms laws?” she snapped, firing a quick glare his way. “I’d probably have to find a licensed dealer to take delivery in Virginia.”
Surprised by her sharp tone, Ian said, “I can find out—”
“Right.” She nodded, swept up the papers, and stood. A hard kick closed the drawer, and then she slammed the safe door shut, engaging the lock. The papers went onto the bed.
Somewhat taken aback, Ian went into the living room and sat down. He was tempted to use her laptop, which was still out, but hers was intolerably slow. Maybe he could talk her into leaving it here so he could buy her a new one. If nothing else, it would save on luggage space.
He got out his own laptop instead. By the time he’d sent off an email to Preston, Cecily was in the living room, back to searching the papers she’d taken from the gun safe. Ian considered asking what she was doing, but her frown of deep concentration changed his mind. Instead, he decided to book plane tickets. Meanwhile, Cecily found whatever she was looking for and headed for the kitchen. The basement door creaked open, and Ian turned to look over his shoulder, listening as Cecily went downstairs.
Flights could be problematic. Assuming they were leaving tomorrow morning and not tonight, they’d get to Little Prairie by midday. They might make it to Calgary by nightfall, but the weather made scheduling unpredictable, and Little Prairie wasn’t exactly JFK. Ian could all too easily imagine the airport closing down because the cows across the road got loose when high winds blew down their fence. Better to book a hotel room in Calgary and plan to fly out the next morning.
“If you’re showering, do it now,” Cecily said out of nowhere, her voice uncharacteristically tense.
Startled, Ian spun the chair around. Dust muted the colors in her fiery hair and turned her navy blue sweater to dark gray. “What?”
“I have to drain the pipes.” She let out a huff and looked around. “Shit. I have to purge the gas lines.” She crossed the living room and snatched her parka from the hook by the front door, only to stop again. “Shit. And I have to deal with the generator. And all the meat.”
Ian stood, taking note of the tightness around her eyes, the sharp edge in her voice. She wasn’t panicking, though; this wasn’t a potential PTSD blackout.
“How can I help?”
“You can’t.” She snapped and glared at him for one brief, fierce instant before she turned away. “Okay, no. Sorry. There’s too much to do. I can’t do this.”
Disappointment hit Ian like a punch, but he hid it. “Cecily, you’re getting caught up in details that�
�”
“I’m not.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, scattering dust from her hair. “There’s too much to do, Ian. I can’t just…pick up and leave.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she was just making excuses, but he caught himself. Instead, he went to her and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. She stared up at him as if braced for a fight.
Calmly, he said, “Okay. Then we don’t go. What do you need?”
Her shoulders relaxed. “I’m not saying no. But I need time.”
“Cecily—”
“This isn’t about habits,” she interrupted. She shook her head, and dusty hair wisped over her eyes. “I just need a plan.”
Ian nodded, lifting a hand to brush the hair back out of her face. “Okay. Let’s come up with a plan.”
She smiled wryly and asked, “When’s the last time you had to winterize a cabin in the middle of December while still living in it?”
He laughed and rubbed a finger over her nose, cleaning off a spot of dust. “Never. But I’m very good at taking notes and scheduling. You talk; I’ll type.”
***
By the time the to-do list was complete, they were both hiding yawns. “We’re done,” Ian said, flexing hands that ached from the chill that had fallen. The fire had died to embers.
“There’s so much to do,” Cecily said, raking her hands through her hair. “We won’t make it back by Christmas. You can go. I’ll meet—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he warned, giving her a smile. “I’m happy to spend Christmas here with you, draining pipes or boarding up windows.”
“You really are crazy, aren’t you?” she muttered, smiling back at him. Then her eyes went to the laptop, and she thoughtfully said, “I should go over the list one more time.”
“I’ve seen my brother do this, and even he admits there comes a time when you have to stop refining the plan and just execute it. And the middle of the night isn’t the time for either one.”
She drew a breath to protest but apparently thought better of it. “He’s right. You’re right.” She got up off the sofa and raised her arms, turning the motion into a full-body stretch. Ian couldn’t help but smile and think just how lucky he truly was that she’d chosen him, of all people. When she lowered her arms, she met his eyes and gave him a curious little smile. “Let me just put everything away, or we’ll be eating paper for breakfast.” She brushed a kiss against his forehead and headed for the kitchen.
He got up from the computer desk, back aching. For once, it wasn’t psychosomatic, and he felt no guilt in taking a couple of ibuprofen before he went to shut down his computer and the satellite modem. He’d been trying to wean himself off the pills, thinking that if he could do without even over-the-counter painkillers here, in the cold and damp, he’d be just fine in Manhattan. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that the morning exercises and gentle stretches seemed to be helping, too.
He went into the bedroom and built up the fire, listening as Cecily finished up in the kitchen and went into the bathroom. Once the fire was going strong, he stripped and got under the blankets. The sheets were like ice, and he curled up to try and warm the bed with body heat. If she wasn’t ready to leave for good, maybe they could go somewhere for a vacation. Someplace with central heat. He could call Preston’s travel desk and find an isolated cabin with proper heating, electricity, and amenities. Hell, he’d charter a damned plane to fly them directly, so Cecily wouldn’t have to put up with being locked in a metal tube full of idiots for hours.
When she came out of the bathroom, she sat on the edge of the bed and set her gun on the nightstand. She stripped without hesitation and got under the blankets, avoiding his eyes. Usually, she curled up against his side, but this time, she lay down on her back and folded her arms under her pillow.
“You should know,” she began quietly.
He rolled onto his side and rested his head beside hers, a careful inch between them. “Whatever it is, I probably already do.”
She exhaled, a sound that might have been humor or irritation; it was too soft to decipher. “I need to say it.”
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”
“I do, though, don’t I?” She sighed, and he slid his hand onto her chest, between her breasts, to feel her heartbeat. She covered his hand with her own, stroking down to his wrist and back to his knuckles. “I’ve wasted seven years of my life here, Ian. I’m not going to waste seven more years—of both our lives.”
“If you hadn’t, my brother wouldn’t have sent me to you,” he pointed out quietly.
“You’re here now. That’s what matters. But that’s also why you should know…”
She fell silent, and this time he waited, feeling the unusually fast beat of her heart, at odds with her slow, carefully controlled breathing. The line of her back was rigid against the firm mattress, and her fingernails scratched short lines over his hand. The fire’s warmth slowly stole over them, and he relaxed a bit more, easing his foot against hers to get that much closer.
“They had me for five days,” she said softly. “At least, that’s what they told me—the soldiers from Samaritan. I only really remember three, I think.”
Heart pounding, Ian shook his head, suddenly wanting to find a way to silence her. In his career, he’d heard all manner of horrors, but this…this was too much. He’d seen the video. Bad enough that his imagination had filled in what might have happened before and after. He wasn’t certain he was strong enough to hear it in her own voice.
“You don’t have to go through this,” he insisted.
“It’s all right,” she said, voice strained, making her words a lie. “They didn’t have much in the way of medical treatment. There were three of us, all wounded. They stopped the bleeding, but that was about it. Then they—the video.” Her fingers clenched tight around his hand. She stared up at the ceiling, expressionless. “I’d seen it happen before. We all had. Sometimes they’d release hostages—usually the journalists or contractors—but a lot of them ended up dead. Beheaded, mostly.”
His heart leaped into his throat. “Cecily,” he whispered.
Her hand held his even more tightly. “They usually filmed it. So when they pulled us in for the video…I thought that was it. I didn’t know that much Arabic, so I didn’t know what the hell they were saying. Then they shut off the camera—” She cut off, her inhale sharp and jagged.
“Did they…”
“No.” She shook her head and met his eyes.
Guilty relief crashed through him. She’d suffered terribly at their hands, but at least she’d been spared the horror of sexual assault. He took a deep, shaky breath and tried to find something to say, but the words weren’t coming to him.
She turned back to look up at the ceiling. “After the video… That’s when this started,” she said, gesturing at the blanket—at the scars hidden under the blanket. “I never figured out why. Ackerman and Dowd… None of us spoke Arabic worth a damn. We never knew what they were saying—what they wanted.”
Ian went cold, rubbing his fingertips over the blanket as if he could erase the scars below it. She hadn’t been interrogated. She’d been tortured, for no reason. They’d made their video and documented their brutality, but the torture had continued, possibly up until the moment the rescue team had arrived.
It was no wonder she hadn’t healed after seven years. There wasn’t a shred of logic for her mind to use, to rationalize the reason behind what had been done to her, except for the senseless cruelty of war. She couldn’t even feel pride in her ability to resist them because they’d made no demand of her.
“You survived,” he said, his voice rough, strained with the effort to sound comforting. “That’s all that matters.”
“I know.” She sighed again and whispered, “I keep telling myself that.”
Grief
tore at him, though he tried to hide it. He let go of her hand because he needed to hold her. But just as he moved, so did she, thrashing at the blanket to roll over and face him. He ended up on his back, holding her close against his side, her head resting on his shoulder.
Cecily needed him. She needed him to be strong, not furious that she’d been targeted and hurt for no reason, not bleeding inside at the thought of what she’d endured. But he couldn’t find the cool distance that had helped him through all the fights with his parents and the trials of college and law school. She’d slipped right through his defenses, and it felt as if he were sharing every one of her wounds somewhere deep inside, unseen.
Somehow, he kept from asking her what he should do. He couldn’t put that burden on her, because she wouldn’t have an answer. Maybe there wasn’t any answer at all, except what he was doing now. “Being there for her” seemed a poor solution to Ian; he was accustomed to actively taking charge and doing something in the face of a problem. For now, though, it would have to be enough.
So he held her, patient and silent, and listened to the sound of her breathing for hours that felt like days.
Chapter 22
December 29
“You shouldn’t need to do anything,” Cecily said, a tiny frown drawing her brows together as she stared across Marguerite’s kitchen table. “We’re coming back for a couple of weeks next summer, and if not, I can probably get someone from town to check up on the pipes and things.”
Lunch had come and gone, starting with the venison roast she had cooked last night and ending with a pie Marguerite had baked. Outside, the weather was still cold but felt balmy in comparison to the long winter. The midday sun was painfully bright in the cloudless sky.
Last night, Cecily and Ian had driven the snowmobile to Marguerite’s house, towing the trailer of luggage and essentials that would travel with them back to Manhattan. Ian had spent an hour carefully cushioning the precious antlers that had resided in a place of honor on the living room fireplace mantel. She’d insisted upon bringing her old manual typewriter.