by Anne Leigh
Denton called out, “Hey.”
And Liam, as if on cue, stepped in.
He was carrying a two-tiered cake that looked like it was going to topple over in his hands.
Then the singing started.
“Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you…”
My eyes teared up because there were no words for this.
If you told me, ten years ago, while I was lying on my hospital bed, readying myself for another round of treatment, that I’d make it to now – I wouldn’t have believed you.
Not because I wasn’t optimistic.
But simply because when you’d given the last drop of your energy and you had to do treatments over and over again, life got to you. Life broke you down.
Then again, if I could have foreseen my future and saw this moment…
The man who saved me looking at me with loving eyes.
My friends singing off-key with the nurses who came to help me day in and day out.
Liam who was attempting to not ruin the cake before it got to the bedside table.
I would have told my future self –
It was all worth it.
All of it.
Worth it.
“This is the best I could do,” Webb said softly as he sat by the foot of my bed, while he gently rubbed the soles of my feet.
I gave him a big smile. “It’s more than I ever wanted.”
The TV screen in front of me was showing Th
he Notebook and on the small table beside him were four shot glasses. Two still had liquid inside them.
“I can’t sneak in alcohol –“ Which he’d never do, especially since I was still on meds. “So kale, passionfruit, and banana bits it is.”
It actually tasted great.
After I’d shared the Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake with my friends and the hospital staff, Liam had brought in a cooler filled with these small yummy drinks.
I thought there were fifty of them, but now we were left with four since everyone had three of four shots.
The glasses had the numbers 21 imprinted on them and a big letter A for my name.
“Today was perfect,” I said, his hands were soothing and the rubbing motions were making me feel sleepy. “Thank you for bringing my friends over.”
They’d left two hours ago and promised to visit again in the next few days. I’d told them that I hoped to be discharged soon.
“Not a problem, babe,” he mused, his large hands gently kneading my legs, and I realized that his large body was almost falling to the floor.
“Move up here,” I commanded, he couldn’t really fit comfortably on the bed, but I didn’t want him injured if he fell.
“Babe, I’m fine. Get some rest.” He shook his head and continued to massage my legs. For a bulky guy like him, he had the most gentle hands.
“Do you think I’m going to be able to go home soon?” I’d been able to get up without much help. I walked twice around the unit yesterday without relying on the IV pole to support me as much as the first few times I walked. My body still hurt, but the pain was becoming less and less. “I heard Dr. Simms talking about discharge plans.”
“I think so,” he answered, taking his eyes off the movie playing on low volume. He’d thought it was corny before, but after watching it three times, he was getting conditioned to tolerate Ryan Gosling without throwing an insult or two about his lack of backbone. I argued that Ryan had a backbone, it was just the way Nicholas Sparks wrote the novel about a man who experienced the forever kind of love.
He continued. “Dr. Simms is ninety percent cool with you leaving here in two days.”
“Two days?” My voice hitched in excitement. “I get to go home very soon then.”
His hand movements on my bare legs paused, his eyes turned darker blue, and he asked, “Where’s home, babe?”
“Wherever you are, Webb.” I didn’t even hesitate to answer. It was what’s in my heart and my mind reconciled with it. “That’s where home is.”
A saw him take a big gulp of air, his Adam’s apple visible, his shoulders relaxed. “Good.”
He hadn’t said that he loved me, but I didn’t need the words because he wasn’t a man who let his words speak for his actions.
His actions were loud, deafening, and certain.
I felt his love everywhere –
The soft brush of his rough hands on my cheeks before I went to sleep.
The tired look in his eyes because he’d spent another night talking to Tony or to Liam or to the FBI or whoever was on the phone, trying to stop the bad guys from hurting me and my dad.
The weariness that he hid when he spent another day with me here in the hospital rather than in the comforts of his home.
The control that he displayed whenever he got the call asking to describe what happened to me, to explain the events that occurred, and to relive the pain that he went through to get to me.
Love, in words, was the easiest.
I could say, “I love you” and that would be the end or the beginning of it.
But love in action was harder –
It meant spending time with your woman, watching a movie that you didn’t like on her 21st birthday.
It meant hanging out in a hospital room rather than being out there, enjoying a nice day out.
It meant being present for me, when I struggled with the pain in my body and feeling the hurt when I screamed at night because I was scared that they would take me away again.
“Webb…” I didn’t see color around me anymore but I could still smell the lingering aroma of the yummy cake and the scent of his natural manly scent.
My eyelids were heavy and I’d spent all of my energy, but I wanted to get the words out.
“I know,” I whispered, as my right hand fell on my chest. “I know.”
I did.
Even my subconscious tendered no doubts.
He loved me.
All of me.
“What do you have for me, Tony?”
“Eighty five percent of the comms are rooted in Miami.” As Tony’s voice came through the line, I stopped myself from doing more reps. Being in the same room with Athena had been good for my sanity but not my cock.
Every time she shifted on the bed, I got hard.
When she put her arms around me, my dick became steel.
She breathed, and I was ready to drill through diamond.
So I’d grown another pair of muscles on my body because of my sexual frustrations. My regular routine now included jacking off twice after getting up in the morning and once before going to bed. Even that couldn’t curb my need for her.
Carpal tunnel would soon become a problem for my left hand.
I just knew it.
“They’re no longer from Colombia?” I asked. Before Athena’s kidnapping over fifty percent of the emails and texts within El Padre’s group were coming in from Colombia. The sudden shift made me uneasy.
“No,” Tony confirmed. “I traced them and they’re from a beachfront property in the metropolis.”
Metropolis? Who the fuck talked like that? Tony did. I didn’t even ask because I had no doubts that he wouldn’t go into a long-ass explanation of why he was using that word. It probably had to do with some comic book character.
“Any new information from the comms?” So far there hasn’t been any new development or new orders from El Padre that we know of. Granted we were definitely blindsided when he’d hired Sven, an outside contractor, to grab Athena from the airport.
“Not much,” Tony answered. “I set up a twenty four hour surveillance on the house, boss. There’s a lot of people coming and going, and they’re all crooks based on the facial recognition.”
Of course they were, but they didn’t remain in jail because of El Padre’s hooks in the local police department.
“Who have you identified?” I doubted that there was anyone of significance. El Padre’s highly valued personnel were everywhere else except that house.
&nbs
p; “There are lots of girls who frequent the house, boss. I traced them to a stripclub. The men there definitely need nighttime entertainment. I checked the blueprint for the house and it could house fifty people with lots of room to spare.”
El Padre didn’t own anything less than 10,000 square-feet. The luxury of being a crime lord.
Tony went on, “There’s not much activity in the morning, but the house lights up at 1 AM and there’s a lot of music blaring til around 5:30. I checked why the two houses beside it never filed a police complaint. Apparently they did and a week later, the home owners found their pets shot. From then on, it’s been silence.”
I gritted my teeth, “El Padre’s goons aren’t the pet-loving types.” As a matter of fact, they were born cruel. What they did to humans, they did worse to the non-humans. The blood that ran in their veins didn’t contain a drop of humanity. They were scums of the worst order.
I stretched my legs on the floor, it helped relieve the pain of doing repetitive motions for long periods of time. Lauren had prescribed it as part of my treatment early on after my injuries. “Just continue surveillance, Tony.”
“Okay,” he replied. “You know what’s kinda strange though?”
“What is?” My legs used to cramp a lot, but now that I got into the habit of stretching, they hardly ever did. Time had made them better and so had Lauren’s interventions.
“A few days ago, about a week after Athena’s kidnapping,” Tony said, I heard the trepidation in his voice. “I didn’t tell you because it’s probably nothing.”
“Go ahead, Tony.” Sometimes the nothings were actually somethings.
“The men looked like they were cleaning a lot. Usually after parties, they left all the mess outside. I’m talking about shit everywhere. Bottles, cans, clothes – they’d just left it all outside. By the pool, by the patio, even by the beach. But that day, the men, and I saw a few women, cleaning the place and it’s been spotless ever since.”
“Hmm,” I said, I could hear someone moving in the kitchen. Athena must be up from her nap.
“It’s like they’re preparing for someone to arrive, boss,” Tony surmised. “You know how when an important person’s coming and peeps try to make everything look good?”
“Yeah,” I said. My mom used to clean the house a lot when she knew that dad was coming home. One time Dad surprised her and she got mad at him, for a few minutes, because she wanted a spic-n-span house everytime he arrived. Fun times.
“I haven’t seen anyone arrive,” Tony said in a serious tone. “My drone has been monitoring the place and it’s surrounding areas and I haven’t seen anyone coming in that would make these lowlifes behave, but the partying has significantly decreased and the outside of the house has remained clean.”
“Good observation, Tony.” He didn’t cease to amaze me. He even planted a drone? Who the fuck did that outside of the intelligence community and the fact that the drone hasn’t raised the hackles of the NSA was even more impressive.
“De nada, boss,” Tony spoke in broken Spanish. For a guy who grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, he could barely speak the language. De nada sounded like De-nayda.
My chuckle came through the line, “Don’t even try, Tony.” The few times he spoke in Spanish, I ended up in a laughing fit. Tony had strung up a couple of sentences that translated to a fat goat who fucked a pig in a headless chicken. Where he got that was just astounding to me.
Learning new languages was easy for me. It was a skill I didn’t take for granted. My mother had spoken to me in Swiss German ever since I was a baby. By the time I graduated high school, I was fluent in Spanish and Chinese. I was lucky to have the classes offered at my high school. Italian came easy after I learned Spanish. I’d actually done an online language course while I was in the Navy. It was a skill that came in handy especially during military operations.
I laughed at Tony because he’d told me that he could care less about speaking Spanish like his father, but now he was really regretting that he didn’t have the inclination to learn it especially because the women he’d dated or tried to date thought that men who spoke another language were sexy.
“You’re not gonna up your game in that language, Tony,” I offered my advice because really, he was just setting himself up for failure. It was fun hearing him butcher it though.
“Whatevs boss,” Tony replied, I could almost see his eye roll. It’s probably went as high as his forehead. It reminded me of a certain woman… A woman who never found shame in showing me when I was being ridiculous in her eyes.
The thought of her made my cock hard again.
Shit.
I needed to get a grip on myself.
Athena wasn’t ready for it. She was still recovering and I wasn’t going to push her into anything. Just having her by my side was more than enough.
“Let me know when something pans out, okay?” I told Tony. “We need to know who they’re prepping for. I doubt El Padre will be coming overseas soon.” If he ever set foot in the US, he’d never be able to go back to Colombia. The crimes that he’d been accused of spanned continents and the last thing he’d ever do was breathe American air because it would be the last breath of freedom he’d take before jail.
“Okay.” Tony replied, “How about this, boss? Entiendo.”
He sounded like he was trying to swallow helium, but I couldn’t fault him for trying. “Perfecto amigo, Perfecto.”
He might not know the language of his roots but I knew for sure that I couldn’t do this without him. He was one of the best decisions I’d ever made outside of the SEAL life. I knew that he could command hundreds of thousands for his skills outside of the company I was just starting to build, but he chose to remain employed by me.
He understood when and what kind of intel I needed.
He was perfect for the job.
I’d been discharged for a week now and I was feeling antsy.
Being secluded inside a house would do that to anyone.
Years of being in the hospital should have cured me of it, but apparently cabin fever was a recurring disease. Once you had a taste for the outdoors, being out of it for even a few days became a burden.
Adding to my itch to go outside was being confined in tight spaces with a very attractive male specimen who refused to touch me. Oh he touched me. To give me soft massages and give me comfort, but I could tell that he needed me on a visceral, intimate level, but he was painstakingly careful with me.
Even the way he kissed was guarded and the hugs were so controlled.
God, I missed him.
So today, I put my foot down and whether he liked it or not, I was going to get my way.
With him.
I wasn’t a hundred percent physically and mentally; I’d say I had a lot to go. The muscles in my arms had gained strength but I still felt the weakness. It was getting better, but I didn’t expect miracles to happen. I had to give my body time to heal.
Mentally, I was glad I didn’t have nightmares. After being locked in a car for as long as I was, the hospital therapist had told me that it was normal for me to exhibit post traumatic stress. There were certain times during the day when I would be doing something and I’d blank out and I felt panicky. During those times, Webb was always nearby and he’d hug me until I got through the seconds, sometimes minutes of anxiety. I knew that I could talk to someone about it if it hindered my ability to function, but for now I was able to manage it with meditation and constant reassurance from my guy.
Meditation was a gift that I’d learned from my younger years. It’s what kept me calm whenever the doctors told me that they were going to try another procedure. Procedure meaning more pain, less sleep, and added stress.
“Athena, are you ready?” Webb called out from his living room. He’d been waiting for half an hour and I could hear the agitation in his voice.
Funny how before he could wait for hours and now, half an hour was too much.
“Gimme a few more.” I checked
my reflection on the bathroom mirror. Curled hair, hazel eyes outlined with gold and bronze eyeshadow swept across my lids creating an ethereal effect, and my lips were painted red. I usually went for lipsticks that had earthier, subtle undertones, but tonight was special. The shade of red was shocking and alluring.
I applied Coco Mademoiselle on my wrists and checked my back for the second time. My little black dress had a crisscross open back and I loved the way it looked. I could go without the bruises on my arms but they were fading by the minute and I forbade any more thoughts of my abduction to ruin my night.
My voice was loud as I called out, “Fine. I’m coming…”
I grabbed my shoes from my side of Webb’s closet.
Yes, you heard that right.
He’d made room for me in his closet.
I could’ve kept my stuff in the guest room, but ever since we’d arrived from the hospital I was ordered, not even asked politely, that I stay in his room, in his bed. That I occupy his bathroom and share his closet.
Webb was far from secretive about our current arrangement. My mom was thinking that it would be good for me to stay with her in her new place in Edmonds, but Webb had stated his case that I had to recover from my injuries and it wasn’t safe for me to travel that far.
I could have argued that Seattle was only a couple of hours by plane, but I could tell from his expression that he would have moved mountains for me to remain in LA with him so I acquiesced. Due to extenuating circumstances, my father was able to talk with the Program Director so I could be granted two and a half weeks before I started classes. I had a lot of catching up to do but I was extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to allow my body to heal.
There was no way I would be able to stay with my dad because while he had two homes, they were both bachelor pads and they were both on the top floors of high-rise buildings which would be not be a good place for convenience and my recovery.
I emerged in the living room and saw his back facing me. The TV was on, but he was on his phone again. He was constantly checking security feeds and communicating with Liam, Tony, the FBI, or members of my father’s security detail.