by Skye Warren
He tilted the stick a few degrees. He preferred to change his aim rather than angle his head, he’d found. Now it appeared as though the cue would hit the eight ball dead-on, sending them both in a useless arc across the table. He pulled back and made the shot.
The cue brushed the eight, changing its course enough to head for the middle. The eight ball rolled slowly into the side pocket and landed with a clink against the other balls.
“Good game,” Evans said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I mean that. You’re welcome to come back and kick my ass anytime. At pool, that is. I’ll wipe the floor with you about Knossos anytime.”
Blake chuckled. “I have no doubt.”
They’d had something of a debate about the ancient Greek citadel. Blake had been less informed than his opponent, and it had felt damn good. Evans had given him a few recommendations for journal articles to read as well. There was something exhilarating about talking with someone, the connection. The energy in the room.
Evans brushed the chalk from his hands. “I’m going to head out, actually. Don’t know if the missus has been calling while we’ve been down here. There’s never any cell coverage down here. I should probably head home either way.”
Blake waved him off but stayed near the pool table instead of joining the other men for a cigar. Something about Evans’s words niggled at him. What if Erin had called him? He pulled out his phone, relieved to find the screen blank. No missed calls.
Then he noticed the bars were missing. No signal either. Don’t know if the missus has been calling… Damn. These old buildings had horrible reception to start with, and they were in the basement. For all he knew, this was some sort of old bomb shelter.
He ignored the men in the corner and took the stairs up to the building.
Still nothing, and he didn’t stop walking. Pushing outside, he waited impatiently for his phone to regain signal. Like the piece of dumb machinery it was, it continued to show no signal, and like the dumb outdated guy he was, he didn’t know how to tell it to check again.
A sudden sense of panic overtook him.
Irrational. Erin knew where he was tonight, and they already had a plan to meet tomorrow. Still, he couldn’t deny the warning bells going off inside his head. Instinct had kept him alive and relatively safe all this time. Even the painful scars were a blessing when he considered the alternative.
He’d learned to trust those damn warning bells.
He pressed the button to restart his phone, but he didn’t wait for it. He strode in the direction of his car. It was late anyway, time to go, and he would apologize to the guys later for leaving so abruptly. He needed to check on Erin, to make sure she was okay. Because the bells told him something was wrong.
He was halfway to her apartment when his phone decided to buzz and beep at him. His heart dropped from his chest. Thirteen missed calls. An unlucky number, he thought uselessly. All from Erin. What could have happened? He’d missed her. He’d failed her. Grimly, he pressed the voicemail button to find out exactly how.
Chapter Seven
Erin
Erin woke up with her heart pounding.
She turned to her mother, who was sleeping peacefully, the machines beeping in steady reassurance. Someone had dimmed the lights since she’d last been awake, leaving only a soft lamp above and a soothing blue from the machine monitors. Squeezing the limp hand she held, Erin turned toward a soft scuffing sound.
A nurse gave her a sympathetic look. “I have to kick you out before the nurse shift changes. You can come back in after she’s been seen by the doctor.”
“Oh. Right.” They had snuck her in against the official visiting hours. She was so grateful for the nurses’ tired smiles and gentle words. The doctor, too, seemed kind and knowledgeable. Even the room was welcoming, more like a modern-styled bedroom than a hospital room—if she didn’t count the bed. At least her mother was receiving excellent medical care. Her pallor still scared Erin. Blue veins whispered beneath her skin. Her mother’s eyes had fluttered open for a few minutes in the middle of the night.
“Erin,” she’d murmured. “You came.”
Desperate, Erin had spoken urgent words of love and apology, of regret and promises, but her mother had drifted back to sleep without another word.
Erin stood, wincing at the twinge in her back. The metal and plastic chairs were not the most comfortable for sleeping, but she wasn’t about to complain. She forced a sleepy smile as she gathered up her purse and luggage.
Doug was propped up against the wall, an empty cup of coffee dangling from his fingertips. He straightened as she came out, rubbing his eyes.
“How is she?”
“I told you to go home and get some sleep,” she scolded softly. “But she seems well. Stable, they said. Right now it’s just the medicine keeping her sleepy, but they said it’s best she doesn’t move around too much anyway.”
His expression was sympathetic. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.”
He studied her. “No offense, but you look awful.”
“Now why would that be offensive?” she asked, her voice dry.
“Sorry,” he said with a small, repentant grin that had gotten him out of so much trouble. It was what had endeared him to her once, a way of making light of life. She still appreciated the sentiment, the escape of it, even if it wouldn’t ever be real. Her life was about struggle and about courage—the same as Blake’s. Thinking of him made her heart clench.
“It’s okay.” She scrubbed at her face.
Surely he was right anyway. Worry and lack of sleep probably imprinted dark shadows under her eyes. Her hair felt unruly and knotted to the touch.
“You really should head home, though. I can take it from here. You don’t have to wait for me either. In town, I mean. You can get back to your friends in Tanglewood.”
“And leave you stranded? Again? Not likely.”
She waved a hand. “I’ll figure it out, now that I have time. I’m not sure how long I’ll need to stay here, so there’s no point in you hanging around for this. And wouldn’t you miss work? You’d better drive back today.”
Doug had sped on the open night roads, pulling into the hospital at four thirty in the morning. She glanced at the clock now, surprised to see it was already eight.
“No, I—” He paused, seeming at a loss for words and unusually sincere. “I want to be here. To help you, if I can. I’m not asking to start anything right now. I know it’s not the time. But if sometime in the future, you and I were to be together again…”
“Doug, what about the girl you were with?”
“She’s just a friend,” he said. When she raised an eyebrow, he amended, “With benefits.”
She shook her head. He would never change—not that she’d been waiting for that. She doubted they would have worked in the long term, even if there hadn’t been the horrible situation with her mother and his parents.
He seemed to follow her line of thinking. “I’m sorry about what happened when you came. I had no idea there was a connection. And then when I found out, I panicked.”
She stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “I understand. I did my share of panicking. It was a bad situation.”
He looked away. “I know your mom didn’t steal,” he said tightly.
It was as close to a confession as she would ever get, and more than she deserved, really. It wasn’t their fight. It never should have been their fight. It was their parents. His father and her mother. A terrible heritage that had been passed down.
Maybe they could fight it—fight the precedent, she thought, the way Blake taught in class—except they weren’t together anymore. Never would be again. What she had with Blake was so much deeper than anything she’d experienced before. Deeper than she knew was possible. She wanted Doug to find that with someone else.
Neither of them deserved to settle for each other.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That won’t happen.”
; His expression was earnest. “You don’t have to decide now. I just wanted to tell you—”
Whatever he was going to tell her was cut off by sharp footfalls and a commanding masculine voice. She looked up at the counter, and like a dream, Blake was there. He spoke quickly to the nurse on duty, who pointed in Erin’s direction.
Blake turned, his gaze burning bright with concern and love and something else. Something territorial that made her heart skip a beat.
“Blake,” she whispered.
The space closed between them. His gaze never left hers.
“Ah,” Doug said from beside her. “I see my position here has been made redundant.”
Only then did she realize that her hand was still on his arm, how it might have looked as they sat close together. How it might seem that she had accepted help from Doug.
For a bleak moment, insecurity overtook her.
Until Blake gave Doug a brief nod of acknowledgment. A sort of proprietary thanks for helping her when he’d been missing in action. It meant that she was still his.
Relief swept through her, warm and sure.
She fell into Blake’s arms without understanding the mechanics of it. One moment she was sitting on the hard-backed chair, the next she was encased in a warm, solid hug and this, this was what she’d so desperately needed last night. Almost as much as, even more than, the ride to her hometown. She had needed his strength, his support.
“Is she okay?” he asked against her hair.
“Yes, I think—no, but there’s—” And then all semblance of composure crumbled under the onslaught of his kindness. Tears sprang to her eyes, thick and hot. They wetted her cheeks and his shirt. Her breath couldn’t find a rhythm; it jumped and froze in erratic disarray. The sounds she made scared even herself—choking, gasping, sobbing and helpless with it.
Helpless, like she’d never wanted to be. Like she was. Like she wasn’t when he was near, because his broad embrace sheltered her. He steadied her.
It wasn’t the four-hour drive that had confounded her last night as she’d frantically roamed the campus in pursuit of Blake. It was the knowledge that her mother was sick and she could do nothing to fix it. That hadn’t changed when she’d arrived at the hospital, and it didn’t change now that Blake was here. But he made the helplessness more bearable.
Her life was filled with opportunity, with joy.
Her research and her study. Her love for Blake. Her few but close friendships.
But even the happiest song had a low note. And in deep, rumbling disquiet, she held tightly to him, finding refuge and temporary silence in his arms.
Blake
They weren’t sure what her mother would be up for eating, so Blake grabbed five different options, along with full meals for Erin and himself. All of it balanced precariously on the two-foot cafeteria tray. He stood in line behind a heavyset woman with short grey hair. When the person in front had finished paying, they both shuffled forward. The grey-haired woman set her salad bowl down beside her plastic container of pudding and a bottle of water. She fumbled in her coin purse as the young, bored-looking lady at the cash register rang up the total to just over eight bucks.
More fumbling. “I forgot…ah, something on my salad. I just need to—”
As if realizing her excuses were falling on deaf ears, she quickly piled her items back into her arms and stepped away from the cash register.
The lady at the cash register gave him an expectant look. Blake slid forward and began to lay out his items for the lady to ring up, but he kept an eye on the grey-haired woman. She did return to the salad bar and added a spoonful of ham, as if committed to the lie now.
It was clear to the cash register lady and to himself that she hadn’t had the right amount of money. She surreptitiously returned the water bottle and the pudding to their proper places before returning to the end of the line.
He leaned forward and spoke to the cashier in low tones. “I’d like to leave money for the bill behind me.”
Understanding lit the young woman’s eyes. “I can do that.”
“And if you could…” He grimaced, trying to think of a way to make it less like charity. He didn’t care; he wished he could leave more, but he suspected the grey-haired woman would mind. “If you could say it was a chain, all morning, people had done it, one after the other.”
The corner of her lip tipped up. “That’s sweet.”
He shook his head but didn’t answer. It wasn’t sweet or special to give away what he had in spades. It was a trust fund. Even what little he had earned as a soldier and his short stint as temporary professor was built on the back of a wealthy upbringing and no student debt. He understood his privilege, and though he enjoyed the finer things in life—like brandy and a game of pool, for example—he wouldn’t make a mockery of it.
Piling the bags and drinks in his arms, he passed the gift shop.
Balloons. Damn it. Or flowers, at least. He should have brought some.
It was the hospital smell. No, just being in a mile radius. His body had broken out in a cold sweat when he’d arrived in the parking lot, and a vise had clamped his throat when he’d walked inside. Still, his step hadn’t even slowed. He’d known Erin was inside. He would walk through the halls of hell for her, and he figured a hospital qualified as such.
Gritting his teeth, he took the elevator up to the seventh floor.
It had been a relief to leave for a little while. He’d driven Erin to her mother’s apartment so she could shower and pick up a few necessities. The apartment was small, modest. Erin’s room still held swaths of pink reminiscent of a happy and hopeful teenage girl.
It was the kitchen that had struck him most of all. His own kitchen was ridiculously large with an island and a wine fridge. This kitchen had been barely able to hold two people standing side by side. The small wedge of a countertop was covered with mail and keys and pens. There was no microwave. Whether in his family’s expensive home or in the bachelor pads of his Army buddies, there was always a microwave. Here there was simply no room for one.
No TV dinners. He imagined a teenaged Erin cooking something small and light on the stovetop—soup or noodles. Not a bad life, but it was a splash of cold water on his face to see how differently she’d grown up.
In the hallway, the ceiling was weighted down by something unknown, turned yellow and black. The toilet in the bathroom actually tilted at an angle. The whole apartment was falling down, in shambles, but his thoughts kept returning to that kitchen. An old magnetic picture frame held a picture of a childhood Erin with a huge grin and no front teeth. He imagined her pride in her home, her mother. He imagined someone ridiculing her, finding that weakness and using it to twist the knife.
He understood better why she had doubted them as a couple, what she’d doubted in him—and herself. She might judge you, Erin said about her mother, but what she’d really meant was that she herself had judged him. Ironically, his biggest fear, his face, his scars, had been nothing to her. Not even a hurdle. She’d been worried about status, about money, and he couldn’t care less. He’d rather give it away, give it to her, than let it stand between them. The barriers keeping her from him were crumbling now, slipping under their own weight.
After she’d had a chance to shower and change, they’d returned to the hospital, where she had rushed upstairs and he’d lingered downstairs to grab lunch. His footsteps slowed as he approached the hospital room. Nervous about something? he mocked himself. It appeared no matter how old he got, meeting the parents would always hold uncertainty.
And, he had to admit, these were hardly ideal circumstances.
Knocking shortly on the door, he pushed inside.
The woman who must be Erin’s mother struggled with a pillow, sitting up in her hospital bed. Her skin was dark with age spots, lined from smiling and frowning and living, but she looked so much like the woman he loved he felt sure he could have recognized the relation if he’d passed her on the street.
Erin w
as nowhere to be seen. After a moment’s hesitation, he set the food down and went to help her. Making a small soothing sound, he tucked the pillow behind her and helped her lean back. She calmed under his slight touch, and he withdrew quickly. Not quickly enough.
“I remember you,” she said without opening her eyes. Her voice was thick with exhaustion and probably pain. She was still alert enough to remember him.
Then again it was hard to forget his face.
Her hair was darker than Erin’s, her face more weathered, but he could see the resemblance in the shape of her nose and the set of her mouth. He could see the woman that Erin would become as the years passed like pages in a book.
“We met earlier. I’m Blake.” Erin had insisted on introducing him this morning, but her mother had been too drowsy from the medicine to register much.
“You’re her boyfriend. The one she didn’t tell me about.”
Boyfriend. Is that what he was? The word felt too youthful for how he felt about Erin. Too temporary, as if they might break up. Though isn’t that what happened? They had been apart for weeks because he wanted it that way. Because he wanted to do the right thing. Now he cursed himself for making them separate. “That’s me,” he said.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Oh, he had plenty of guesses and none that he would say out loud. Starting with the age difference between them and ending with the fact that he was the professor in her final summer semester. “We haven’t been seeing each other that long.”
“Long enough. I saw the way you looked at her. You love her.”
His chest panged. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me. You’re too old for that, and I’m not old enough.”
He allowed a small smile. The habit came from the military, not as any particular thought about her age or his. “Sorry.”