Secured Sparks

by Charity Parkerson

  Bob stayed seated, staring blankly at her. She would never forget him, but it was truly over and had been for a long time. She just hadn’t been able to accept it before now. She had finally said her peace, so she left him sitting there and made her way outside to her car, driving away before she allowed her tears to fall.

  ***

  Between the two of them they had managed to get Kyle fed and down for a nap, but it had been a lot harder than Kera had ever dreamed possible. She had no idea how Bob had done this for so long by himself. A sharp pain shot through her chest, stealing her breath, and she glanced across the room at Weave. She couldn’t let him know anything was wrong, and her mind raced for an excuse to leave. An idea popped in her head, and she jumped in feigned surprised, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. Weave watched her silently as she pretended to press buttons and spend a few moments acting as if she were reading.

  “Well it looks as if I’m going to have to go to work.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was fooled. “But you just got back,” he said quietly.

  She moved to where he sat on the couch, being careful to take it slow in case she went down and caused him to ask questions he didn’t want the answers to. She couldn’t let him know just yet how bad things were becoming. She straddled his hips, wrapping her arms around his neck. As she stared down into his eyes, she searched for the reason for his worry before responding, “I’m coming back,” she told him forcefully. “I’ll be gone maybe two hours, tops.”

  Weave closed his eyes, as if he were in pain. “Every time you leave my sight I worry that it will be the last time.”

  “Not today.” She promised. “I’m not going on any more assignments, and I am officially dedicating what is left of my life clinging to your side.”

  “So you intend to stalk me then?” he asked on a low chuckle.

  “Oh yes,” she agreed heartily. “I intend to come back here and set up camp in our front yard until the neighbors start to complain and you are forced to either keep me or throw me from the front yard.”

  Weave laughed at her description, easing some of the pain in her chest. “It’s a good thing that I’d already decided to keep you.”

  “I’ll be back just as soon as I can. Are you going to be here when I get back?”

  “Of course, and I really wish you’d hurry.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to get back to you as soon as I can.” Leaning forward, she pressed her lips against his. She tried to infuse as much emotion into their kiss as possible in hopes of staving off any further doubt. She loved him. She just needed him to feel it too.

  ***

  He searched the club from top to bottom looking for Lily, but she was nowhere to be found. Everything was so very, very wrong, but he couldn’t figure things out until he talked to her. How could she drop such a bomb on him and then disappear? All these months he’d been angry with her for not trusting him, then refusing to let him go if she couldn’t love him any longer, and it hadn’t even been about him. Giving up, Bob popped into Shannon’s office. “When is Lily scheduled to work again?” he asked.

  Shannon stared at him blankly for a moment before answering, “She’s not. Yesterday was her last day.”

  “What?”

  “You know she finally managed to get her Physical Education Masters two weeks ago, right?”

  When Bob nodded, Shannon added. “Well, she accepted a job in Louisiana at the gym that her dad trains in now, and she was set to leave today. As far as I know, she’s already gone. She was packing up her car this morning.”

  Bob thought over his visit the night before and realized there had been boxes sitting all over the place. He’d been so furious and exhausted he hadn’t thought anything of it. Shannon was waiting on him to get on with it so dredging up a smile he didn’t feel, he said, “She’ll like that. She always did want to move closer to her parents,” and it was for the best he realized as he said the words. There was too much pain on both sides, and they had become poisonous to one another. Despite that, he still drove in a shocked haze all the way back to Weave’s house, and it wasn’t until he was putting his son’s coat on that he turned to Weave. “Did you know that Lily had quit the club?”

  A look of confusion passed over Weave’s face before he answered, “I hadn’t heard that, but I don’t really keep up with club gossip since Bryant kicked me out of his program.”

  Bob immediately felt like shit for being so insensitive; he’d been so caught up in his own shock that he hadn’t been thinking clearly. “I’m sorry man. I didn’t think before I spoke.”

  A humorless smile touched Weave’s lips. “You know you don’t have to tiptoe around me.”

  Well now, he just felt even more like shit, but since he had already stepped into a minefield he asked, “Why don’t you reapply for admittance now? We could start going together again like we used to.”

  “I have my own gym now so there’s no reason for me to subject myself to that sort of humiliation. But if you wanted, you could join me here every now and then. I could use a sparring partner.”

  Bob felt his heart swell with hope that his brother was going to be okay. “I’d like that.”

  ***

  Kera rushed to her truck and pulled out her emergency medicine kit before bothering to back out of the driveway. She popped two pills and prayed the tightness would ease and she wouldn’t pass out behind the wheel as she drove. She drove straight to Caleb’s apartment in hopes of killing some time before heading home again. She needed to tell Weave soon that things were getting worse, but she had just returned home from her last assignment, and she needed some time with him first. She made her way slowly to the elevator and used her key to unlock the top floor. She knocked a few times on Caleb’s door. When it finally swung wide, he took one look at her haggard face and stepped back to allow her to pass. He watched her worriedly as she made her way to the couch, but he had learned long ago not to ask after her health. She fell across the couch in an exhausted heap. “Would you wake me in two hours, so I can get home?”

  “Sure thing,” he told her before leaving her alone to sleep off the worst of it.

  ***

  Manhattan-

  Weave felt his pockets before cursing loudly and pulling the door back open. “I forgot my keys.” He froze at the sight of the open prescription bottles lining the countertop and eyed Kera warily. The last thing he needed was a drug addict staying under his roof. Did Jacob know? “It’s not what you think,” she blurted out.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Weave leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. “What should I be thinking?”

  Kera dropped her chin and took a deep breath before meeting his eyes once more. “It’s heart medication.”

  Confusion crowded Weave’s brain. “Heart medication. Why?”

  “Because I’m dying,” she answered.

  “You’re dying,” he repeated numbly, half expecting he had heard her wrong. “How can you be dying?”

  “Valvular Disease.”

  “And there is no cure for that, no treatment?”

  She shook the pill bottle she was holding at him then shrugged. “But it’s not working like it should any longer, and I’m out of options so I’m kind of coasting along now.”

  “How about a heart transplant or surgical repair?” he knew he was grasping at straws. Obviously she had already thought of all those things since she wasn’t the kind of person who would go down without a fight, but he needed to hear her say the words.

  “I’m not considered to be a good candidate for those things. I’ve been through all the possibilities.”

  He was trying to wrap his mind around what she was saying, but so many emotions were crowding his brain, and shock was trying its damndest to set in. Why hadn’t she told him sooner? He was trying hard to beat back the anger. Why had she come here and made him love her if all along she had known she would be leaving him alone? The reasonable part of his brain acknowledged that it wasn’t her fault
she was dying, and that he had been the one to invite her into his heart as much as she had burrowed her way forcibly in, but another part of him wanted to punch a hole in the wall. A tear rolled down her cheek and she whispered, “I should have told you right from the very start, or better yet I shouldn’t have wanted you so badly.”

  It was her tears that broke through his haze of impotent fury. She wasn’t dead yet; he still had time. He crossed the room, pulling her into his arms. She buried her face into his chest and her tears seeped through the shirt he was wearing. “You should have told me from the very beginning,” he agreed, “then I wouldn’t have wasted a single moment of time with you.”

  He tilted her head back so that he could see into her eyes. He brushed her tears away with his thumb and decided it would start right now. “I love you,” he admitted. “You don’t make me feel like I’m lacking, the way everyone else does.”

  Her tears slowed at his words and were replaced by a look so fierce he almost took a step back. “Nobody thinks that you are lacking.”

  “I do,” he told her truthfully, “because I am. I don’t deserve to be with someone as wonderful as you, and I know this, but when I’m with you I don’t feel it, and I don’t care because I can’t let you go even if I don’t deserve you.”

  She sniffed and a bubble of laughter escaped her lips. “I was standing right here the entire time and I still don’t understand how you just managed to make me go from being ready to leave in order to save you from me, to making me determined you won’t ever get rid of me.”

  He felt himself smiling despite the situation. She was everything, and it had snuck up on him, changing everything in the blink of an eye.

  Weave didn’t give her time to knock, since he’d realized while she was gone that she didn’t have a key—as soon as he heard her pull in the driveway he pulled open the door. She smiled at him radiantly when she spotted him waiting in the doorway, and his breath caught at the sight. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he couldn’t get enough of simply looking at her, but once she cleared the door he tugged her into his arms. Without even a hello, he kissed her deeply, and by the time he pulled away, his breath was coming out in harsh gasps “I missed you.”

  “It’s only been a few hours,” she sounded as breathless as he felt.

  “It was a long few hours.”

  “Is Kyle still here?” she asked, trying to see over his shoulder.

  “You just missed him.”

  “So we’re all alone. Whatever shall we do?” she asked with a hint of humor in her voice.

  “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully as he moved to box her in with his arms and he crowded her with his large frame “we could go to dinner or the movies.”

  He felt her fingers creep beneath the hem of his shirt. “We could do that,” she curled her fingers beneath the waistband of his jeans, jerking him forward before rubbing herself seductively against him, “or we could stay in tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” he told her, filling his voice with mock remorse, “I might get bored being stuck in the house all night.”

  Manhattan-

  He watched as the candlelight flickered across Kera’s eyes making them shine even brighter. “What do you do for Safe Haven? I’m guessing babysitting me is not part of your regular job description.”

  Kera’s tinkling laughter filled the room. “No, not usually. I work in consulting.”

  “Hmm consulting,” he repeated absently. “Now tell me what you really do?” he asked and held his breath. Her honesty in this would determine their future together. They could have no real chance if she couldn’t tell him the truth now.

  “Really, I work in consulting.” She paused as if weighing her next words. “I’m psychic.”

  He chuckled lightly before realizing she was serious. She glanced away and crossed her arms over her chest. Reaching across the table, he pried her hand away before linking their fingers. “Tell me what you see when you look at me?”

  She sighed irritably, but he continued to hold her gaze. He recognized the moment she understood what he was really asking. “I see only a man who loves me,” she whispered.

  Keeping a hold on her hand, he stood. Moving to her side, he dropped to his knees beside her. He couldn’t think of any romantic words that would adequately describe how important she was to him, so he only said what was in his heart. “Will you marry me?”

  Kera’s mouth fell open before she barked out a laugh. “You don’t want to marry a dying woman.”

  “I want to marry the woman I love,” he told her. “I want to marry you.”

  She looked past his shoulder, chewing on her lip. When she met his eyes once more, he felt a surge of hope at her look of determination. “Do I not get a ring?”

  “Um, I kind of screwed this up in my nervousness.” Digging around in his pocket he pulled out a small box and handed it over. “See I had a plan.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kera dug through the bag of toys and found a toy cell phone that beeped when you pressed the buttons. Sticking her tongue between her teeth in mock concentration, she dialed a set of random numbers then put the phone against Kyle’s ear. “Daddy’s on the phone and he wants to talk to you.” Kyle froze at the word Daddy, and after a moment of listening he began to babble “Dada dada.”

  Kera chuckled at the sight while Weave recorded the image over her shoulder on his cell phone then sent it off via text to Bob “There, that should help pass the time while daddy is working.”

  The mention of Bob working while Weave wasn’t gave Kera the opening she’d been searching for. “So Shannon and Bob didn’t have a problem covering everything themselves when you told them you were going to need to be off for a while?”

  “Nah, I’ve become more of a third party investor over the past year and a half as it is, plus there are plenty of people out there needing a job so it’s not hard to find someone to fill my spot,” he paused as if hesitant to say more, and she prayed he would finally admit the truth. He didn’t disappoint. “Also,” he added haltingly, “I’ve been thinking about selling out my part of the business.”

  “And do what?” she asked as if the answer wasn’t really that important to her, while inside she was mentally poised on the edge of her seat.

  “I want to go back to fighting,” he answered in a rush.

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

  “You do,” he asked skeptically. “You aren’t worried that I’ll go back to my old ways?”

  “I know you won’t,” she answered immediately. “You’ve seen what lies down that path, and you know the high price because you’ve paid it once already. You won’t make the same choice twice.”

  Bob’s phone buzzed across the top of his desk, and he snatched it up. He watched the short video clip of Kyle with a half-smile playing across his lips. He felt a sudden surge of gratefulness for his brother. It hadn’t occurred to him that Weave might be willing, much less wanting, to take Kyle for a few hours here and there to give him a much-needed break. He had a girl that watched him when he worked at night, but during the day when he worked at the office, he normally just brought Kyle with him. He loved his son more than anyone, and without him he might have eventually been lost down the same road Weave had been, but every day Kyle gave him a renewed sense of hope and somehow he carried on, but he couldn’t deny that having a few hours to himself every once in awhile had been a nice change.

  He prayed he didn’t lose Weave again when Kera passed on. It had come as a huge shock to find out that Weave was married, but to find out on the heels of that, that Kera was dying—they had all been blown away. He was proud of Weave, however, for choosing the path he had. It showed a level of strength that Bob didn’t think he himself possessed, much less Weave who had already withstood so much. If it had been him, he would be raging against God for bringing him Kera only to snatch her away again. Bob knew first-hand that it was much worse to know what it's like to be loved only to be
left alone in the end. Weave was spending every waking moment at Kera’s side, trying to soak up as many memories as possible, but what would happen when she was gone? Lord, please don’t let him slip away again.

  His fingers hovered over his phone and he debated, once again, texting Lily. The more time and distance that came between them gave him the space he needed to consider everything that’d had happened. He’d been more at fault than he cared to admit, and he could have walked away at any time during the past months but his love for her kept him going back. He’d wanted to hate her, he’d wanted to rage against her, but it had all been just cover for his pain. The more he thought of Lily and the good times they’d had together, the more a plan began to grow inside his mind.

  In flight to Jackson Station (Kera’s hometown):