by Anne Leigh
I was taken aback, that’s for sure.
I pushed on his chest gently and pulled myself to a sitting position. The past hour and a half, or was it two? I don’t know, I’d lost track of time. I watched the teeniest expressions on his face go from happy to sad to forlorn to annoyed. Webb’s face had never been animated. He could be the angriest person in the world and I wouldn’t know it just by looking at his face. That was before.
Now, I could tell when he was troubled or irritated with the inflection of his voice, the slightest mannerisms, the way he moved his shoulders or the way he flexed his jaw. It’s what happens when two people become closer, more intimate, as we had. It’s what occurs when he’d started to open up with me.
I didn’t want to force him to tell me everything. It should come voluntarily. But when he’d said that he wanted me to meet his mom, I’d decided right then and there that I wanted more. I wanted to know more about his life and I’d wanted him to tell me.
He still hasn’t said anything else after he’d revealed that he had a son.
He didn’t have to.
“Webb, it’s okay…” I hoped to convey the conflict I was feeling inside of me. I wasn’t sure what to do with the fact he’d just revealed.
I moved my legs to his lap, reached for the short hair on his head, and started to knead.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say more,” I said, feeling the knots forming on the back of his neck as my hands moved further down.
He moved his head so our eyes were on the same level.
The pain in his beautiful blue eyes robbed me of air. I’d heard before that a person’s eyes were the windows to their soul.
If that were true, then Webb’s soul was filled with unresolved rage, and a lifetime of anguish.
I was accustomed to pain. I was familiar with it myself. I’d seen it in the faces of the children who were sick with unknown diseases that took the very life out of them. I’d seen it in the faces of doctors, nurses, and medical providers who had to deliver bad news.
But the worst pain I’d seen were in the eyes of parents – that of my own and other children’s.
It’s the kind of ache that you don’t forget. It’s a combination of hopelessness and anger. It’s a fusion of agony and resignation.
And it was being manifested in the eyes of the man I’d grown to love.
“Ryder.” His face was stoic yet the way he said his name was filled with reverence…and love.
“That’s a beautiful name,” I whispered as my nose touched his, my hands falling to his shoulders.
“Thank you,” he said, the burden of his past weighing on his every word. “He was a beautiful boy.”
I nodded, waiting on him. If he wanted to tell me more, he would. If he wanted to stop, I’d respect that. Webb had used was to describe Ryder. Being around sickness for half of my life, I’d learned to decipher the meaning of words.
When someone was freshly grieving, they used the present tense to describe the loved one they’d lost.
When the grief stayed on and somehow they’d reached acceptance, they used the past tense to talk about them.
“I’m here,” I assured. “When you’re ready to tell me more about him. I’m here.”
He stared at me for one, two…ten heart beats, his hand touched the side of my face, and I saw the contention in his features. Should I tell her now? Is it the right time? What do I tell her?
I wasn’t a pyschic or a telepath, but I could often read people. It was a gift that I’d been given. Often times, I’d know what the doctors would say even before they opened their mouths. Or what they didn’t want to say even when they’d said all the words.
My father tried to shield me from bad news.
When a treatment didn’t work, he often focused on what could work. It was as if he didn’t want me to lose hope. What he didn’t know was that hope was the only thing that kept me alive. It was the thread I held on to when the effects of the drugs that the doctors had infused in my system felt as if they were burning me alive. It was the cord I’d latched on to when my playmates didn’t wake up after a surgery or a procedure.
And it was the wire that I’d preserved when my assailants had left me like a piece of garbage in the trunk of a car.
Without hope, I would be nothing.
Hope was equivalent, if not stronger, than faith.
Faith relied on something, someone.
Hope was internal, it was the expectation of something great to happen.
And right now, hope was springing in my boyfriend’s eyes as he reached for my hands and placed them on his chest.
“I’ve never told anyone this –“ He prefaced, the jaw muscle on the right side of his face clenching, “I’ve never had to. My closest friends know the facts about Caterina and the general details about Ryder. You’re the only person I’m sharing this with.”
A slight tilt of my head acknowledged his statement.
“I want to tell you, babe, not because you’re forcing me or anything.” As if anyone could push him into doing anything he didn’t want. “I’m letting you know because you’re very important to me, Athena.”
He then kissed my fingers and continued, “Sonnenschein, I hope you understand that I tried to do everything that I felt was right at that time because even now, I’m not sure if I did the right thing.”
There it was.
Regret.
For a man like Webb, a man who held honor with the greatest value, regret would be the only thing that could bring him down.
I pressed my finger to his mouth, “From what I know of you – you’re an honorable man. If you’ve done anything, it was to the best of your judgment. I’m not sure of what I’m going to hear. How horrible it will be. How painful bringing everything up will be. I just want you to know that I love you.”
He pinned me with a look then opened his mouth but stopped.
When he started again, he said, “You might change your mind about me after this.”
“Try me,” I said, reaffirming the strength of my feelings for him. If he couldn’t see how much I loved him, then he needed x-ray vision so that he would see that his name was plastered in the middle of my heart.
His eyes vacillated between proceeding or putting a brake on all of this, but I gripped his hands. He’d given me a warning so now there was no choice but to keep going.
In surrender, he said, “I was on a vacation with two of my friends, Markus and Viggo. It was the first vacation I’d had after an eight-month long deployment. My friends and I – we’ve always loved surfing. I told you earlier that I grew up in La Jolla... I’ve always found comfort in the water. I think that’s what attracted me to the Navy. I could’ve entered the Marines, but I changed my mind and at the last minute, worked my ass off to get into the SEAL.”
His hands moved to my head and gently he pulled me to rest on his chest. He’d always looked after me. He could probably tell by my pronounced wince that the right side of my body was hurting. I followed his command and rested my cheek on his hard chest that had a smattering of dark blonde hair which was lighter than the hair on his head.
His voice created vibrations through his chest and I savored the feeling.
“Anyways, we’d always wanted to go to cool surf spots all over the world. We’d gone to Hawaii, Peru, South Africa to name a few. That time, Markus had showed us pictures of the gorgeous beaches of Brazil. Those pictures kept me going when I was too tired to open my eyes in the Afghan deserts. Us soldiers hold on to memories or images of why it’s worth to be alive when we’re in the middle of sun, enemy, and shit.”
He paused and asked, “You okay, babe? You comfortable? Do you want anything?”
I shook my head to the negative and said against his chest, “I’m cool.”
He kissed the top of my head and kept on, “The three of us were on this surf kick so we’d gone around Brazil to catch big waves. My favorite was in Ceara, it’s between Natal and Fortaleza, and it had the best ti
dal bore waves in the world. There’s a lot of bays and rivermouths that’s fed by the North Atlantic, but shit, those waves were cranking. There were a couple of times all three of us almost wiped out because the waves were that epic.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Webb spoke like a surfer and it was cute and adorable and funny all at once.
“What is it?” He wondered, I looked up to meet his eyes.
“Nothing...” I said, then changed my mind, “It’s just too cute to hear you speak like Kelly Slater.”
“Kelly Slater? What the fuck?” He complained though his face held a grin. “Babe, you really got a thing for older guys.”
I pinched his nipple. Hard. And he let out a welp.
“He’s an 11-time World Champion. I’ve watched him on TV before. One of my hospital friends had a big crush on him. And he’s not that old.”
“He’s like over forty.” Webb intoned, “Tsk.”
“Shush,” I pretend-scolded him. “He looks way too good for forty, plus age has nothing to do with hotness.”
“Oh really?” Webb countered, his eyes turning bluish-green, the shade turned up when he was amused, “So you’ll think I’m hot when I’m like eighty?”
“I know you’ll be hot when you’re ninety.” I giggled and patted his six-pack. “You might get a little flabby, but I won’t mind.”
His fingers lowered to my sides and that’s when the tickling started.
After a few minutes of kissing and tickling and lots of second bases, he asked, “You want to hear the rest of it?”
I was glad for the reprieve, it allowed him to let a load off and now his voice held a dash of optimism in it.
“Okay where were we…” He asked rhetorically. “Ah Ceara.”
I switched to resting my left cheek on his chest and got comfortable, I wanted to hear more about him and get to know the man I’d come to love.
“I loved hanging out with my buddies. It was like old times. Only this time, we were on a part of the world that way back when I was a kid, I could only dream about. Viggo and Markus, one day you’ll meet them, they’re serving our country right now. SEAL and Air Force. Great friends.”
He paused as if recollecting the memories of him and his friends, “Anyways, two days before we were going to leave Brazil, Viggo hooked us up to a party in Fortaleza. Fortaleza has wild parties and since we were all young and free, why not?”
My stomach flipped, thinking of Webb with other women. I knew he had more experience than me and ugh, I hated feeling jealousy. It wasn’t right and it didn’t settle with me.
“Hey babe…” He said, sensing my uneasiness, “All of this happened before you, okay?”
He lifted my chin with his hand and pressed a kiss on my lips, “It’s all before you.”
“Okay,” I said, willing the irritation away. “Go on.”
He waited for a second, checked my expression, took a dip in my mouth, and started again. “I wasn’t looking for anything. My life was the military. I couldn’t afford to be in a relationship or anything remotely close to that…but then she came into my life.”
It’s a scissoring, uncomfortable, gnawing pain in my heart.
It’s a heavy weight that’s unsettled in my chest.
But I had to remind myself that this was all before me.
I listened for it.
I extended my neck to view his expression.
I palmed his chest.
He was remembering her, but her memory wasn’t eliciting any exagerrated response from him. Knowing this, I had no doubts that his love for her would remain but the embers had burned out.
“Keep going, Webb…” I encouraged him, who knew when we’d have this time again? Tomorrow was another day. We had this moment and I wanted this moment to be about him.
“She didn’t look like a local girl. I don’t know how but I just knew. She had long dark blonde hair and she’d refused a drink I’d sent to her table. At the end of the night, I knew I had to meet her.” His hands caressed my back, coccooning me in the comfort of his love. “Eventually my buddies and I were introduced to her and two of her friends by the bartender. Her name was Caterina. She had an English accent, but she spoke Spanish to her friends. She didn’t know it then, but I understood every word that came out of her mouth.”
He pressed another kiss on my forehead. “I left with her that night and when I’d gone back to the States, we kept in contact. She was a year younger than me, and she was going to school at the University College London. Five months after we’d met, I had another break and I visited her in London. Every time I had a four day weekend, when I could, I went to visit her. Months later, she texted me and said she was pregnant and that she was going back home.”
Webb took a deep breath, “I’d felt helpless because at that time, I was stationed in Colombia. We were on a special mission. Every one of our missions was considered top priority. But this one was high up there. Anyways…Caterina had said she was going home. It was sad and comical that I’d never really asked her where her home was. I’d just assumed she lived in England. Imagine my surprise when she’d texted me back after I’d asked where she was going and that I wanted to be there for her – she’d said she was going back to Colombia.”
“She went to school in London, spoke with a British accent, and her home’s in Colombia?” My surprise came out of my voice. “Wow.”
“I’d learned later on that her mom was an English lady who’d gone to Colombia for a medical mission and there, she met the love of her life.”
“That’s…something,” I gasped, my eyes must’ve been bigger than saucers. “The world is really small.”
“Oh it is.” The chuckle that came out of him wasn’t the funny kind, it was sarcastic and cutting. “It got smaller when one of my S.O.’s asked me to team up with the local DEA since I spoke Spanish.”
I had no idea where this was going, but I could tell from the sudden shift in Webb’s expression that it was about to get rough.
“I wouldn’t have messed with her if I knew,” he confessed, his hands were heavy on my back but I kept still. “We were there to aid in the counter-narcotics mission. During one of our intel-sharing sessions with the locals, they had a picture of El Padre. El Padre was and is the king of the Colombian cartel. He was rarely seen and there weren’t many photographs of him lying around. He was very elusive. Still is. It was said that he lived with his wife in a mansion somewhere, but they never came out.”
He gripped my hands and with a hard voice, he said, “The picture shared during intel? I’d seen it beforehand. It was on Caterina’s phone, she’d shown me a picture of her parents one time when we were having lunch.”
I gasped, “She’s the daughter of a Colombian drug lord?”
“The only child.” Webb sighed, “I revealed the information to my S.O. as soon as I learned it. I loved her, but I wasn’t about to betray my country.”
His honor was his downfall.
“Caterina went home to Colombia once she learned she was pregnant. She cut off all communication with me. It was only after she’d delivered the baby when I’d gotten a text from her, she’d named him Ryder. The thing is - I’d never told her I was a soldier. To this day, I’m not sure if she knew. All she knew about me was that I was a surfer and a college student. Both were true. I loved surfing and I was continuing my education while I was in the Navy. I’d asked her, pleaded with her to see my son, but she never relented. So when I was tasked with infiltrating El Padre’s compound while posing as a businessman, wanting to invest in local properties that were all under El Padre’s hooks, I took it as a sign – that I would be able to engage with Ryder and even see Caterina.”
There was a catch in his throat that he’d cleared by taking a gulp of water. “Once I’d gained access to El Padre’s compound, I’d gotten a chance to see my son. I caught glimpses of him and there were even a few times when I’d gotten to interact with him because he was there during El Padre’s parties. He was always with a
nanny. I didn’t see Caterina with him. Ever. I still got texts from her, random texts with his pictures and finally, when Ryder was about eight months, she’d agreed that I could see him. She had no idea that I was already in Colombia. Like I said, she never appeared during business functions that El Padre had.”
I kept my hand on his chest and waited for him to go on, and a forlorn look passed his eyes when he continued, “Looking back, I know that I loved Caterina because she carried my son. She’d arranged the meeting between me and her. At a local park. It was the first time I held my son in my arms. He had my eyes and I could tell he got my personality too. He was just so chill. You know, when she’d told me she was pregnant, I never for a second doubted he was mine. But then, seeing him in person made me realize that I wanted him to be with me. That even if his mom and I didn’t see each other eye to eye, I would always love him. Caterina – she was a beautiful woman on the outside, but I’d started listening to my gut more and I saw that she didn’t want him. We barely talked during my meeting with my son, but I could tell that she saw him as a nuisance...”
How could a mother see a child as a nuisance, an inconvenience? I didn’t say it out loud, but Webb pulled my head tighter, closer to him.
“I demanded rights to my child, Athena. I was his father and I wanted him growing up in the States, away from the sins of his grandfather. I wanted to do everything for him. Give him a good life as my parents had given me. Have him meet my mother who hadn’t even heard of him. Caterina and I argued about it. She didn’t contact me for a month, but I was okay with it because unknown to her, I was still able to see my son because of my business with her father.”
Webb’s voice now had an odd catch. “Caterina arranged for another meeting and during that time, she’d said that she wasn’t going to give me Ryder. That he would stay with her parents while she went back to school. We argued again and I’d left that meeting livid. I’d also started thinking of how to get my son out of that goddamned mess. I was in over my head so I’d asked my closest friends to help me out…They were willing to commit a crime for me, Athena. That’s how much they valued me. But I didn’t want them caught up in my shit and to ruin their careers. I had a plan…It was a good plan. I’d had the ball rolling in taking Ryder out of the country. Three days before I was to take Ryder, without Caterina’s knowledge because by that time, she cut off all communications with me, there was a shootout between El Padre and the local DEA. This brought on a full-scale war between El Padre and the government officials who weren’t on El Padre’s payroll. A day before I had my son ready to go, there was an explosion in Carulla, a chain of local supermarkets… It was a hot summer day.”