by Raven Scott
Erik
“Yeah, Dad, I’m on the highway right now. We’re about to pass into Pennsylvania.” The line crackled loudly against the seats of my car, and I glanced into the back seat while Natasha stared out the window. She really knew how to ignore what she thought didn’t involve her, which was as nice as it was infuriating. Not to mention the whole conversation this morning.
“I just wanted to call and make sure. Cathy’s here. She wants to talk to you.” Biting back a groan, I frowned as I flexed my fingers around the wheel, and my dad chuckled knowingly. “She’s not so bad.”
“I don’t know whether or not to dispute that.” My sister’s voice started a far-away muffle but grew in clarity, and I clenched my jaw shut when she obviously took the phone from my dad. “Hey, Erik! Long time no talk. You didn’t send me any letters during my deployment. I had to find out through Dad on the way home from the airport that you flunked being a cop.”
“Believe it or not, Cathy, but my life doesn’t revolve around your deployments. How long are you here for?” So I can plan a party when you fucking leave. My sister, man, she was a piece of work, and not a good one. She was average at everything, but she succeeded at most things and thought she was awesome. Christ.
“Six weeks. I’ve been meaning to talk to you, actually. You know, while I was overseas, I met this girl, Maya, and she lives in the same town as you in New York. I invited her to this thing this weekend so you could meet her.” My brows shot up, a disgusted, sharp bark of laughter bursting from my throat, and my sister’s frown rippled in her voice. “What? I thought you’d like her, and she liked you, or the idea of you, anyway.”
“You’re a terrible judge of character, Cathy. Just because Jason and Mary met in Afghanistan when she was a war reporter doesn’t mean that’s the only place to meet women.” Rubbing my jaw roughly, I shook my head, and I could practically see Cathy pouting when I blinked. Flicking on my blinker to merge into the cruise lane, I inhaled deeply before Natasha’s eyes bristled the hairs on the back of my neck. “Anyway, are you staying with Mom and Dad, or at your boyfriend’s place? He’s not back yet, right?”
“Nope. He comes back in two weeks, though. Ben’s only staying for two weeks before getting reassigned. Speaking of Jason, he’s not happy that Uncle Mike is gonna be at the party tomorrow. It’s gonna be awkward again.” Snorting roughly at that, I exhaled a gruff breath as I gripped the wheel tightly. “He’s a creep. I know he gets invited to be polite, but it’s not like his kids would know why he didn’t go one time. Mom says he has to come because she doesn’t want to listen to it.”
“Yeah, fuck him, though. Seriously. I gotta go, though. We’re about to hit the exchange on I-95.” Even if my sister was average, she stuck to her guns— literally— and I smirked when she scoffed loudly. “I’ll see you when we get there.”
I hung up before she could even take a breath to protest, and I settled into my seat to clear my throat roughly. The music we’d been listening to filtered through the speakers, and I flexed my fingers to get rid of the stiffness. We were going to be on the highway almost the entire way down, and my brows furrowed sharply as I tried— and failed— to calculate how far my three-quarter tank of gas would get me.
“They have kids?” Speaking up from the back seat, Natasha turned her body to me, and I nodded as I licked my teeth. “Is that why they got married?”
“Uh, no. They’re happy together, I guess. My aunt doesn’t care about us kids’ opinions, so anyway, yeah, they have two kids. A set of twins and then a third who was part of a trio that didn’t make it.” Catching Natasha’s eye in the rearview mirror, I frowned at the disturbed expression on her face. Oh, shit, her mom miscarried. Fuck. “Ah, I’m sorry. They got together about fourteen years ago, and they’re happy, so I guess that’s all that really matters.”
“It’s okay. Your sister doesn’t know you very well, does she?” That surprised me, and Natasha’s pretty face lightened a little as she smiled knowingly. “That you’d hook up with another soldier.”
“Oh, yeah. She’s fucking stupid sometimes.” The flippant dismissal earned me a little giggle, and I scratched my jaw and tugged my goatee as I inhaled deeply to get rid of the muck coating my ribs. “They’re all the worst. I stay really far away from that shit.”
I didn’t really know what else to say about the subject— fucking another service member was a no-no, and it was too much work anyway. Plus, there was a high chance shit would go sideways, being around each other, and it was a huge-ass mess.
Natasha laid down on the back seat, and I twisted to watch her stare at the passenger seat with longing in her eyes. She fingered the lip of the pouch on the back, and her lip disappeared between her teeth as we fell into silence. Focusing on the road, I silently debated pulling over so she could climb up front if that was what she wanted.
But if I put her on the spot, she’d feel pressured, and I wanted to avoid that.
“You know, Natasha . . .” Speaking up, my voice cut through the soft music, and Natasha rustled a little behind me as I trained my eyes on the road. “You got fired, right. What are you doing for money? You never seem worried about it.”
“Carlyle found out who was responsible for the bomb a couple days after it happened.” My brows rose, and my throat tightened as dread flooded the pit in my stomach. I wasn’t going to like hearing this. “He works fast. He brought the guy in, the big boss, and was all like, ‘why do you have all these houses you don’t even use, and they’re homeless because of you’ so the guy got bullied into giving up all his nice properties. Valerie didn’t want any of them, so I took them and do Airbnb. It’s all pretty remote, though. I only schedule the cleaners to come in, make sure things don’t overlap, and the website does most of the work.”
“What the fuck?” My slur bounced off the front windshield, and Natasha giggled a little. She’d laughed twice now, and we were only two hours into our fourteen-hour journey. Warmth in my chest combatted the cold in my gut, and she inhaled deeply, loudly, before sitting up in the center of the back seat. For the first time, she wasn’t hanging on the door, ready to jump out, and accomplishment tightened around my heart.
“It’s a weird story. Basically, the guys that were after us got this other guy to build the bomb who really worked for this other guy, and Carlyle’s really scary when he wants to be. No one wants to get on his bad side, so . . . I guess when you’re that rich and powerful, you know some, um, less than savory characters.” Pursing my lips thinly, I only nodded. The more I learned about Carlyle, the more Remmy seemed to be onto something. Maybe Remmy was spot-fucking-on about Carlyle, and no one believed him because they didn’t want the hassle.
Of course, I wasn’t gonna think too hard on it. Carlyle seemed to truly worry about Natasha despite what he’d said so long ago when he ambushed me at the precinct. Everything she told me may have raised my suspicions, but she never alluded to anything outright illegal.
Well, unless I counted that shit about her mom and the beasts who abused her, which I didn’t.
“Carlyle’s involved in the hunt for Baron Ninety-Nine members in Dallas, isn’t he?” The question slipped out and Natasha tensed, confirming with just her pause that my suspicion was true. I never had enough pieces before, but now? “He did it for you two, or it was just part of his crusade?”
“He did it for himself, yeah.” Flexing my hands on the wheel, I nodded curtly, and she slumped back to twiddle her thumbs out of the corner of my eye. Her sour frown took over the whole reflection in the mirror, and my heart beat a little harder. “Okay, I mean, Valerie is an adult. I made us go to separate colleges because I needed to learn not to be her mom, and she needed to learn some independence. I don’t think he has a right to come in and take over just because he’s a little pissed. Carlyle didn’t right those wrongs on our behalf. Valerie doesn’t even know those guys are dead. He did it all for himself, and that’s why I can’t stand him. You know he legitimately dug up my dad and asked me ab
out him? Like, what the fuck?”
“Wasn’t your dad in Witness Protection?” My probe earned me a huff, and I frowned as I tried to think of a way to change the subject. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. The point is that you don’t need anyone in your life that’s going to make your past about themselves. At least you got something out of it that helps ease the stress.”
“I don’t consider changing my lifestyle to fit how much money I make. It just makes problems. When I was a teenager, I learned the money is only based on what you deem valuable. Money only makes practical problems go away— it can’t fix what’s wrong with my head, even if it does help other parts of my life. I lived expense-free, basically, for months. I saved a lot. I don’t really buy much.”
“You buy a lot of wine.” Her eyes narrowed on me, and I smirked slightly as I twisted to shoot her a wink. Natasha flushed pink, and she ducked her head to hide in her lustrous hair— despite ripping some out, it wasn’t very noticeable. “I drank so much in the military. That’s the one thing they teach you, how to develop an iron gut. If you can’t keep up, you’re gonna die of alcohol poisoning.”
“Where’s the craziest place you drank?” The slight tension in the air dissipated, and I inhaled deeply to hold my breath as I thought about that. There’d been so many places, so much beer, but I now limited myself to two beers at a time.
“Ah, I was in Egypt once and got railed at a Pizza Hut in the shadow of the Great Pyramids. That was wild. I think my favorite place that I ever had a beer was in Germany. I was still a Navy sailor at the time, and we were going on tours. We went to the World War Two Memorials in Germany and France and all that. There’s something insane about it— it was like I was sharing a beer with those ghosts. I don’t know how to explain it, like I was connected to so many people who were just like me, soldiers fighting for reasons they didn’t truly comprehend until the last seconds of their lives.” My mouth dried a little, and I licked my lips as somberness gripped my heart in a vice. “Being there was surreal. You see pictures of it, but it’s. . . it was intense.”
Natasha was quiet at that, and I flexed my hands around the wheel as memories floated behind my eyes. Even now, eighty years later, the suffering seeped up from the empty graves, and, at the time, it changed my entire fucking life. I realized suffering wasn’t uniform or unique— everything I went through on the battlefield, someone else had already gone through. No one was unique in the pain they endured, only the way they handled it.
29
Natasha
“You said your parents didn’t make a lot of money, and you had a rough life, right? But you grew up in the same house?” Curiosity couldn’t explain this burning need to know about Erik’s home and childhood, and I leaned forward as he pulled in front of a gas pump. He put the car in park, twisting to release the tension of driving for hours from his spine, and a thoughtful expression drenched his features as he shook his head firmly.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. The kid to income ratio was super off. I have four brothers and two sisters. My older sister, Lisa, lives in Hawaii and studies volcanos and stuff, so we never see her. Anyway, I mean, it was really because my mom popped out too many kids, and my dad was the one working.” A soft ‘ah’ escaped me, and Erik popped open his door before I followed suit. Down so far south, the air was warm if a bit nippy, but the sun was still out even though it was nearly four p.m. “Both my parents come from big families, so it’s not something they didn’t know how to cope with, I guess is the best way to explain it. They knew from their own experiences how to get by.”
“Did you want to go into the military?”
“I never considered anything else.” Climbing out of the car, I stretched my arms high above my head, and Erik’s t-shirt covered my shorts almost completely. Flexing my toes in my sneakers, I took a huge breath, and he rolled his shoulders before continuing. “I was going into the military. There was no doubt about that. Even if I only did my four years and left, it was just going to happen. It wasn’t about wanting to or not. Now, though, thinking back on it, I wish I had done something else after those four years that could’ve benefited me as a civilian.”
“Yeah. They’ll pay for your college, right? You can’t do that?” He shrugged carelessly, and I couldn’t help but smile as he rubbed his head and neck in discomfort at the very idea of it. “College isn’t for everyone.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I do know that even if I was going to get a job, it wouldn’t be behind a desk. When you went, how’d you like it?” Humming softly as Erik sauntered to the pump, I leaned on the back passenger door to cross my arms. The smell of gas and fried chicken mingled in the air, but I had to work to remember college. All the drama of being without Valerie aside for the first time, college sucked.
“It was awful, to be honest. Valerie and I had scholarships collected from a survivor charity, but I had so much catch-up to do. I barely passed high school because I had a hard time reading. My teachers fudged my grades to get me the credits I needed to pass, but that was because they believed in my potential, not what I was showing. Even the judge who presided over our family court thing after we were rescued contributed to the fund.” Inhaling deeply through flared nostrils, I stared dazedly at the concrete ledge of the pump’s plinth as my thoughts raced. “He presided over our emancipation. He saw us stand up and signed it before we were even in front of him.”
“Did you ever see him again?” Shaking my head, I lifted my face to the warm sun. We were so far south that sunset wouldn’t come for another hour or so. “It’s always a toss-up with old people. Either they’re amazing, or they’re nasty old hags. There’s not much of an in-between.”
“Yeah. I once had this ancient old lady tell me I was holding up the line at the coffee place because I asked for extra caramel drizzle. She spent ten minutes trying to get the barista to accept her two-year-old coupon.” I couldn’t help but smile now at that scenario, but at the time, it’d been frustrating as all Hell. Erik snorted, and I pushed myself off the side of the car to round the back. “I’m gonna get a snack. Want something?”
“Yeah, a couple granola bars and some water. Thanks.” Wandering my way to the station, I pulled open the door to get blasted with thick, greasy air from the fried chicken place attached. Wandering down the first aisle, I gazed at all of the options, but nothing made my mouth water. Chips, candy, more chips.
“Ugh.” I hadn’t eaten a chip of any kind since I was in college. The stench made my stomach queasy. Turning to the next aisle, I slowed my pace to pause, gazing at the peanuts and cashews and little boxes of Goldfish. Picking one up, I rubbed the milk-carton-shaped cardboard with my thumbs.
“You like Goldfish?” Shaking my head automatically, I turned away from the shelf and a hand landed on my shoulder to stop me. Tensing, I gulped down the sudden tightness in my throat, and that deep voice sounded closer to my ear. “I heard from Jose about you. I’ll get you a couple boxes if you do something for me.”
“They’re my favorite.” My murmur echoed in my ears, and I blinked hard, and I set the box down to such in a shaky breath. “They were.”
“Natasha?” Jumping at the soft call, my head whipped up, and Erik cautiously stepped forward. “You alright? You’ve been in here for almost ten minutes.”
“I changed my mind. I don’t want anything.” Erik’s cheek twitched in a slight smile, and my eyes widened when he held out his hands for me. The flatness in my own voice rang in my head, and I cupped my forehead as a raspy, shaky sigh concaved my chest. “Shit.”
“Do you need a minute, sweetheart?” Shaking my head furiously, I inhaled shallowly through trembling lips, and I covered my mouth to hide it. My heart squeezed in my chest, and I wheezed as my vision doubled. “Natasha, look at me, sweetheart.”
Burning. My throat was burning, and I wrapped my hands around my neck to use my forearms to stop my heart from leaping out of my chest. My lungs were on fire, and they refused to fill even a little bit
, even a few of the smallest sacks. Erik’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him above the blood roaring in my ears. The shimmering of worry and uncertainty in his eyes was too bright, and I crouched down to cover my head.
A strangled whimpered ground from between my clenched my teeth, and a beat of sweat trailed down my neck. Panting harshly, I rocked back and forth as Erik slowly weaved his fingers between mine. Squeezing my eyes shut tightly, I scrunched up my nose as my nostrils dried to the point of stinging.
“Natasha, just breathe.” Erik’s garble swaggered into my ears leisurely, casually, and my body broke out in goosebumps under his borrowed shirt. “Yeah, it’s alright. It’s alright, sweetheart.”
“Listen, okay, either you take her to the car, or I have to call an ambulance, man. That’s policy. You can’t just sit on the floor in the middle of the aisle.”
“Kid, put the wet floor sign up or something and go away.” My heart throbbed painfully, and I clutched my chest even as my vision went from doubled to plain red and watery. Squeezing and releasing my hands gingerly, Erik murmured over the sound of footfall and grumbles. “It’s okay, Natasha. Breathe.”
Shit, shit, shit! “Erik—” Croaking hoarsely, I leaned forward to rest my forehead on Erik’s hard, tense shoulder, and he cupped the back of my head with a strong palm. Rubbing my scalp gingerly, he sucked his teeth softly, and I focused on the even, stable sound. “It hurts . . . my chest.”
“It’s alright. I’ll get you some water, Natasha.” Falling back onto my butt, I gasped for air, and Erik rushed from my side as the pressure slowly seeped from my ears. Pushing my clammy palms into my eyes, I ground my teeth as I struggled to get my heart to calm down. Cracking my eyes open, I stared blearily at the worn tiles on the floor, but they were a sea of white, indistinguishable from each other. Crouching down next to me, Erik pressed the cold bottle to my cheek and neck, and I slumped a little as frigid ice prickled down my chest in waves.