“Yeah, she is,” he promised, running his hand down my back in sweeping motions. “It’s okay to plan, you know. To look ahead to what life will be like for the four of us once she’s healthy. It’s okay to believe in good things.”
“I’ve been stuck for so long. Just living scan to scan, chemo to MIBG. We didn’t even buy presents until the week before Christmas because I couldn’t see that far into the future. And now I can see a couple of months out.” Sure, there were weekly scans, but a couple of months felt like an eternity, a gift of the one thing we’d been denied—time.
“We’ll just enjoy it and take advantage of every minute she feels great.”
“Right,” I agreed with a nod, but with the word “remission” being tossed around like a beach ball at a concert, I felt the gut-wrenching longing for more. I’d always pushed thoughts of Maisie dying to the side, but I also hadn’t thought about her living. My world had narrowed to the fight. My infinity existed within the confines of her treatment, never looking too far ahead for fear it took my eyes off the battle of the moment. “I think I’m getting greedy.”
“Ella, you’re the least greedy person I know.” His arms tightened, grounding me.
“I am. Because I’ve been begging for weeks, and now I see months and I want years. How many other NB kids have died while she fought? Three from Denver? And here I am seeing this light at the end of the tunnel and praying it’s not a freight train coming our way. That’s greedy.”
“Then I’m greedy, too. Because I’d give up anything for her to have the time. For you to have it.”
We headed home with Maisie singing along to Beckett’s playlist. Her earlier worries shoved aside for another day and another test.
My worries lingered. Wanting something that was so out of reach had been a distant thought, and now that it was a real possibility, that want was a screaming need that shoved everything else aside and demanded to be heard.
I didn’t just want these few months.
I wanted a lifetime.
For the first time since Maisie was diagnosed, I had real hope. Which meant I had something to lose.
…
Two weeks later, my back hit the wall in my bedroom, and I barely noticed. My legs were around Beckett’s waist, my shirt lost somewhere between the front door and the stairs. His fell somewhere between the stairs and the bedroom.
His tongue was in my mouth, my hands were in his hair, and we were on fire.
“How long do we have?” he asked, his breath hot against my ear before he trailed kisses down my neck, lingering on the spot that always brought chills to my skin and fever to my blood.
“Half hour?” It was a rough guess.
“Perfect. I want to hear you scream my name.” He carried me to the bed, and a few seconds and some shedding of clothes later, we were both blissfully naked.
We were experts at quiet sex, the kind where mouths and hands covered the sounds of orgasms, where you stole showers or middle-of-the-night sessions to avoid the inevitable kid interruptions. We’d long since moved the bed’s headboard off the wall.
But having the entire house to ourselves for a half hour? It was an excuse to be downright hedonistic.
He moved over me, and I cradled his hips between mine as he kissed me to oblivion. No matter how secretive he might be about his time in the military, he was an open book while we were in bed. Our bodies communicated effortlessly, and we somehow managed to get better at it every time we made love. The fire I’d half expected to fizzle out only burned brighter and hotter.
“Beckett,” I groaned when he took a nipple into his mouth and slipped his hand between my thighs.
“Always so ready. God, I love you, Ella.”
“I. Love. You.” Each word was punctuated by a gasp. The man knew exactly how to bring me to the brink with nothing more than a few—
Ring. Ring. Ring.
I forced my head to the side, where I saw Beckett’s cell phone illuminated on the floor next to his jeans.
“That’s. You.”
“I don’t care,” he said before he kissed me. Between his tongue and his fingers, I was already arching up to meet him, desperate to make the most of our time alone. These were the moments when nothing else mattered, where the entire universe melted away and nothing existed outside our bed—our love.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Damn it. I looked again and made out the letters on his screen. “It’s the station, and if they’ve called twice…”
Beckett growled his annoyance but leaned over the bed to retrieve the phone. “Gentry.” He put his mouth to my belly, and I ran my hands over the broad expanse of his shoulders. “Don’t care. Nope.”
His tongue trailed back up to the curve of my breast, then abruptly stopped.
He sat up on his knees, and I knew before he said a single word that he was leaving, because he was already a million miles away.
“I’ll be there in ten.” He set the phone down and gave me the look—the one that said he wouldn’t go if they didn’t need him.
“It’s okay,” I told him, already sitting up.
He put his hand on my knee. “I wouldn’t go if they didn’t—”
“Need you,” I finished for him.
“Exactly. There’s been a rollover near Bridal Veil Falls, and a ten-year-old girl is missing. She was thrown from the vehicle. It’s…it’s a kid.”
Kids were the one demographic he never turned down. Even if he wasn’t on call, if it involved a child, he went in.
I leaned forward and kissed him softly. “Then you’d better go.”
“I’m so sorry.” His eyes raked down my body. “So. So. So sorry.”
“I know. I love you. Go save someone’s little girl.” I shooed him out the door with Havoc, and five minutes later, I stood fully dressed in my bedroom.
With an empty house.
The options were endless. I could read a book. I could watch something I’d DVR’d months ago. I could even take a bath. Sweet, blissful quiet.
Instead, I chose laundry.
“I’m going to start a nudist colony,” I muttered as I grabbed Maisie’s basket and headed down the steps.
My phone rang midway, and I did the basket-to-hip shuffle to get it answered. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Gentry?”
As lovely as that sounds— I shut that thought down.
“No, I’m Ms. MacKenzie, but I do know Beckett Gentry.” I made my way to the small laundry room and tossed the load in. If we ended up living here after Maisie was cured, then the first thing on my list was to ask Beckett to install a new, bigger washer and dryer.
Holy crap, I’d just made plans not only for Maisie to live but for Beckett to still be with me. Wasn’t I just the optimist today.
“Ms. MacKenzie?”
The optimist who had completely ignored the phone for her daydream.
“I’m here. I’m so sorry, what were you saying?” I poured soap in and hit start, then got the heck out of the laundry room so I could hear the woman.
“My name is Danielle Wilson. I’m with Tri-Prime.” Her tone was all business.
“Oh, the insurance company. Of course. I’m Maisie MacKenzie’s mom. How can I help you?” Man, those dishes needed to be done, too. What the heck had the kids concocted with Ada this afternoon?
“I’m calling in reference to the letter I sent to Sergeant First Class Gentry’s commanding officer. The same one copied to you as well.” She was certainly annoyed.
I thought of the small stack of insurance envelopes on my desk that detailed the paid claims. “I’m so sorry, I actually haven’t opened those in a couple of weeks. I’m usually way better about it.” But knowing we had a couple of months off treatments made me feel all reckless about not opening cancer-related mail. I felt like Ross in that episode of Friends, telling the mail
that we were on a break.
Then what she said hit home.
“His commanding officer?”
“Yes. Captain Donahue? We sent him the letter last week as well, in way of notification.”
Beckett was out. He said he was on terminal leave when he got here in April, and it was already the first week of March. I didn’t know much about the army, but I didn’t think terminal leave lasted a year. Oh God, had he lied to me?
“I’d like to schedule a time to come out for a preliminary interview. Next week is available. Say noon on Monday?”
“I’m sorry, you want to come to Telluride?”
“That would be best, yes. Does Monday work, or would Tuesday be better for you?”
She wanted to come to Telluride in two days.
“Monday is fine, but can I ask what this is about? I’ve never had an insurance company visit before.”
What she said next stunned me to silence. It kept me motionless until the kids came home with Ada. Then quiet through dinner and baths. My mind went in ten thousand different directions as I got the kids to bed…and didn’t stop for hours.
It was after ten p.m. when Beckett walked through the door, using the key I’d given him seven months ago.
He was exhausted, with streaks of dirt running down his face. He stripped off his Search and Rescue jacket, hanging it on the rack by the door, and Havoc stopped by for a little rub before she headed toward her water dish.
“Why don’t I have a key to your place?” I asked.
“What?” He stopped abruptly when he saw me sitting at the dining room table amid the open insurance papers.
“I gave you a key to my place, and you sleep here most nights now. It just seems so symbolic, you know? I let you all the way in, and you keep everything locked up so damn tight. I only get to visit when you open the door.”
He sat in the chair around the corner from mine. “Ella? What’s going on?”
“You still have a commanding officer? Donahue?”
The way his expression faded to blank told me that answer. Ryan got the same expression whenever I’d asked him something about the unit.
“Were you going to tell me that you didn’t get out?”
He took off his ball cap and pushed his hands through his hair. “It’s a technicality.”
“I kind of view being in the military as a pregnant thing. You are or you aren’t. There’s no halfway technicality.” The dark, angry doubt I’d kept at bay started to cut through my chest, working its way to my heart. “Have you been lying to me this whole time? Are you still in? Are you just waiting until I don’t need you anymore to go back? Am I still just a mission to you? Ryan’s little sister?”
“God no.” He reached for my hand, but I pulled it back. “Ella, that’s not what’s going on here.”
“Explain.”
“Someone showed up right after I got here, asking me to return, and I declined. After what happened, I wasn’t really fit for returning, anyway, and Havoc might obey you guys, but she won’t take working commands from any other handlers.”
“Ah, another woman you’ve ruined for any other man,” I said, saluting him with my bottle of water.
“I take that as a compliment.” He leaned over the table, resting his elbows on the dark, polished wood.
“Don’t.”
“This…guy offered me a technicality, to take a temporary disability. It would allow me to keep everything army-wise the same without actually showing up. I could go back whenever I wanted if I just signed a set of papers that started with a one-year enrollment and could be renewed up to five. He completely worked the system, doing whatever he could to give me an easy way back in.”
“And you accepted.” I couldn’t even look at those eyes. The minute I did, he’d convince me he was staying, when all evidence proved to the contrary.
“I declined.”
My eyes shot up to his.
“But the night I realized I could put Maisie and Colt on my insurance, I knew I had to sign it. It was the only way to get them covered at 100 percent.”
“When did you do it?”
“The morning I went to see Jeff. It was exactly one day before the offer expired.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” A tiny bit of my suspicion faded.
“Because I knew you hated everything that we did, the lives we led. That you’d see me signing those papers as my getaway car for when I was done playing house here in Telluride. Am I right?” He leaned back and lifted his eyebrow in question.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Can’t blame me, though, can you? Guys like Ryan, and you…and…” Chaos. “You all have the constant need for the rush. Ryan told me once that the time he felt most alive was in the middle of a gunfight. That everything in those moments happened in vivid color, and the rest of his life faded a little because of it.”
Beckett played with the brim of his hat and nodded slowly. “Yeah, that can happen. Once you have that level of adrenaline rushing through your system, that heightened sense of life and death, the normal day-to-day stuff feels like it’s just a little below. Like life is the monorail at Disney, and combat is the roller coaster—the highs, the dramatic lows, the twists and turns. Except sometimes people die on the coaster, and it makes you feel even luckier to get off, and a hell of a lot guiltier.”
“Then why wouldn’t I expect you to go back to that? If we’re the monorail, you’ve got to be bored, and if you’re not, then you’re going to be.”
“Because I love you.” He said it with such incredible certainty, the way someone said the world was round or the oceans were deep. His love was a foregone conclusion. “Because kissing you, making love with you? When we’re together, you eclipse all of that. It’s not even in the background, it just doesn’t exist. Combat never bothered me before because I had nothing to lose. No one loved me, and I cared only about Ryan and Havoc. I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t go across the world and worry about you, about the kids. I couldn’t go into combat with the same effectiveness because I’d know that if I died, you’d be alone. Get it?”
“I’m your kryptonite.” That didn’t sound so flattering.
“No, you gave me something to lose. Other married guys, they’re okay, but maybe it’s because they didn’t come from such messed-up childhoods. Love for them was the monorail. You are the first person I’ve ever loved, and the first woman who has ever loved me. You’re the roller coaster.”
Well, if that didn’t just pop a pin into my anger bubble and burst it.
“You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you. But we were getting so close back then, and I wanted you so badly that I didn’t want to risk it.” He sat up straight and took my hand, looking into my eyes with such an intense expression on his face that chills ran down my spine. “If I ever hide something from you, it’s because I’m terrified to risk losing you. That whole roller-coaster thing? I’ve never felt like this. Never had my heart leave my body and belong to someone else. I don’t know how to have a relationship, and I’m bound to screw this one up.”
I brushed my thumb over the underside of his wrist. “You’re doing fine. We’re doing fine. Come to think of it, this is my longest relationship, too. Just don’t keep things from me, okay? I can always deal with the truth, and lies…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Lies are my hard limit. I have to be able to trust you.”
And I still did, even though he’d hidden this detail from me.
“There are things about me that would change the way you look at me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He was so certain.
“Try me.”
The muscle in his jaw flexed, and he looked like he just might—
“How did you know about my commanding officer?”
Or not.
&
nbsp; Disappointment flooded my stomach. “The insurance company called. They’re sending someone out on Monday to interview us.”
“What? Why?”
“I guess the amount of Maisie’s bills tripped some internal alarm with her recent enrollment. They’re investigating us for insurance fraud.”
His eyes closed slowly, and his head rolled back. “That’s just fantastic.”
“Beckett…”
He pushed back from the table and took his hat, tugging it on. “I think I’m going to sleep at my place tonight. It’s not you, just the rescue, and I need…”
“Did you find the little girl?” I asked, shame lowering my voice because I hadn’t thought to ask before now, too consumed with my own drama.
“Yeah. She should make it, but it was close.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then I’m glad you went in.”
How different this conversation was from the one we’d had a few hours before when he’d left.
“Me, too.”
“Stay. Please stay,” I asked softly. “I know sometimes you get nightmares after you do rescues. I can handle it.” If I wanted any future with this man, I had to prove to him that I wouldn’t turn away when he showed the parts he purposely kept hidden. “I told you, there’s nothing that would make me look at you differently.”
“I killed a child.”
He said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him, but I knew he wouldn’t repeat it even if I asked. So I sat as still as possible and simply watched his face.
“It was a bullet ricochet. She was ten. I killed her, and our objective wasn’t even at the location we’d had intel for. I killed a child. Still want to sleep next to me?”
“Yes,” I answered quickly, tears prickling at my eyes.
“You don’t mean that. She had brown hair and light brown eyes. She’d seen us coming and was trying to get her little brother out of the way.” He gripped the back of his chair. “I still hear her mother screaming.”
“That’s why you go for every child rescue, no matter what.”
He nodded.
Maybe it was part of the reason he was so determined to save Maisie, too.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
The Last Letter Page 29
