by M. S. Parker
“You don’t like being called Alex.”
I couldn’t stop it. I stiffened. Slowly, I sat up, dragging one of the blankets around me as my body chilled. Already missing his warmth, I folded my legs and pondered my answer. Would he think it was petty? Or that I was being overly emotional?
Fear that he would do just that almost locked my throat, and I told myself to just tell him that it didn’t matter, that it wasn’t a big deal.
But it was.
And instead of brushing it off, I found myself saying, “I’m named after my father.”
Roman’s fingers brushed across my spine.
“He was my best friend,” I said, my voice going tight and rough. “I had other friends, did well in school and all, but Dad was my best friend. We understood each other so well, we could finish each other’s sentences. He taught me how to camp, how to fish. I got into forestry because of him – he’d been taking me out into the mountains to camp or hike for as long as I can remember.” Sighing, I closed my eyes against the familiar prick of tears. He’d been gone for two years, and I still couldn’t quite believe it. “He died a couple of years ago. He didn’t even live long enough to see me graduate.”
I sniffed and shifted around until I could see Roman’s face in the dim light. “He was Alex. He started calling me Lexi when I was just a baby. It’s…I dunno, maybe it’s silly, but when people call me Alex, I expect to hear my dad reply.”
He reached out and caught my hand.
I twined my fingers with his and let him tug me down until I was stretched out against him once more.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” he said, voice soft.
“Thank you.”
Nineteen
Lexi
I came awake in a rush, looking around the unfamiliar room while the sound of birdsong echoed outside the windows.
For a few seconds, I didn’t even know where I was.
Hearing a rhythmic thumping coming from outside, I got to my feet, dragging the blanket with me so I could look outside.
There was a set of French doors, and I turned the knob, stepping out into the bright, chilly morning.
The rain had stopped sometime during the night, and I drew in a breath of the cold, fresh air.
Following the sound, I moved through the doors and onto a balcony that ran along the back of the house.
Out in the yard, I could see Roman bent over something.
As if he sensed my attention, he stopped what he was doing and started toward the house.
His eyes came up to meet mine, and I raised a hand, but he looked away before I even had a chance to wave.
That was the first indicator that something was wrong.
The second happened just a few seconds after he passed out of my view – a door slammed shut somewhere beneath me.
Still, I didn’t let it get to me.
Maybe he just wasn’t a morning person.
And I still hadn’t apologized to him.
I needed to do that, first and foremost, before we even talked about what had happened between us.
My knees went a little weak at the memory of last night, but I immediately shoved the thoughts aside.
I had things to do.
I didn’t know where my clothes were – downstairs in a tangle was my best guess.
I spied a black-and-red-checked flannel shirt and moved to grab it. I slipped it on, then went to make the bed.
I could hear the clanging coming from downstairs before I was even halfway down the steps. I was starting to think this was more than him just not being a morning person, but I didn’t let the thought take root. Everything was fine.
Sure, he sounded like a pissed-off bear thrashing around in the back of the house.
But there had to be something else going on.
There was no real reason for him to be mad.
That was what I told myself, and what I kept telling myself, right up until I came to a stop in the kitchen doorway and he caught sight of me.
The look he gave me was lethal, so lethal, I wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and find myself bleeding.
“Hi,” I said guardedly.
He just grunted and turned back to what he was doing. I flinched at the sound of a heavy iron skillet all but slamming down on the stovetop.
“I’ve got shit to do,” he said in a short tone, his back to me. “I’ll make you some breakfast, but then you’ve got to head out.”
I swallowed the knot that had suddenly formed.
“I…” The rest of the words trapped in my suddenly tight throat, and I looked away, staring at the clock hanging on the far side of the kitchen.
“Bacon and eggs are about all I’ve got,” he said, voice still edged and sharp.
I tried to imagine having the conversation with him that I needed to have, when he was in this toxic mood.
No. No way in hell.
A cabinet slammed open, and I drew my shoulders back, staring a hole through him as he grabbed something from inside, then slammed the door with equal force. Something hit the counter. I saw that it was a glass cannister – coffee, most likely. It was a wonder it hadn’t broken.
Taking a slow, calm breath, I told myself I should at least get the apology out of the way.
“Roman…”
He cocked his head, and I waited for him to turn at look at me. He never did.
“Can you look at me for a minute? I need to talk to you.”
He flicked me a disinterested look over his shoulder, then went back to focusing on what he was doing. “I can hear you well enough without looking at you, Lexi. What do you want?”
The admonishment hit me like a slap, and I drew back, the pain I’d been feeling slowly morphing into anger.
“You know what?” I said, pasting a frozen smile on my face. “Fuck it. And I’m not in the mood for breakfast.”
I turned on my heel and strode away.
My head was pounding.
I hadn’t lied when I told Roman I wasn’t in the mood to eat.
But one thing I couldn’t skip was coffee. Sure, it wasn’t the healthiest lifestyle choice, guzzling coffee in lieu of actual fuel, but it worked for me.
I’d been awake for less than thirty minutes when I pulled my Jeep out of the gravel driveway, leaving Roman behind me.
He hadn’t even said anything when I stalked through the kitchen and out onto the back porch. I hadn’t been able to find my keys or my phone and hoped they were there, so I wouldn’t have to keep poking around under the weight of his angry glare.
They were there, my phone in its pseudo-leather wallet case and the keys resting on top of it. Yesterday, I had been so worried about Roman, I had totally forgotten about the keys and phone.
Grabbing them, I strode around the house, taking the path I’d used yesterday as I searched for Roman. Part of me wondered if I shouldn’t have just climbed back into my Jeep after he hadn’t answered the door, but I’d worried that if he’d kept on sleeping, it was entirely possible he’d never wake up. Hypothermia would have killed him.
It was possible that the dumb bastard was alive because of me.
And there he was, acting like a bear with a thorn in his paw.
“Screw him,” I told myself as I unlocked my vehicle and swung inside. My left ankle twinged a bit from the force of the movement, but the brace held firm. Once inside the Jeep, I took one last look at the house, then I started the car.
I needed caffeine before I could even figure out what to do next.
“Hey!”
The bright chipper voice coming from my left had dread curling inside of me.
I grabbed a plastic lid for the coffee I’d just made and turned. Cass Sayer stood there, a surprised smile on her face. “Running into each other again,” she said.
“Looks like.” I made a show of checking my watch, then looked back at her. “I’ve got to get moving though.”
“Of course.”
The line was dragging on insanely slow, and t
here were still four people ahead of me when Cass fell in behind me.
“Did you find the house okay?” she asked softly.
I half-turned to look at her. With a nod, I said, “No problem.” Because I didn’t want her to linger on this discussion, I asked, “How is your arm doing?”
“Healing up, I assume.” She shrugged and glanced at my casted wrist. “I know you got hurt that night. What happened?”
I gave the wrist a look of disgust. “There was a trapper’s snare in the path and…” I sighed, shaking my head. “Anyway, it’s fractured.”
“Can you do your job okay with a casted wrist?” she asked hesitantly.
I shouldn’t have said anything. But I was tired, stressed, and now I had to deal with playing nice instead of just leaving as I wanted to. “For the time being, I won’t be doing my job at all. I’m on unpaid leave.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
Already wishing I hadn’t opened my mouth, I shook my head and looked away. “It’s not your problem.”
“If it has anything to do with the night my plane went down, I’d have to argue,” she said, a line appearing between her brows. She hesitated a second, then asked, “Is it because Roman pretty much conned you into helping him?”
The line in front of me finally moved, and I shuffled forward a whopping foot and a half. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
“So, that’s a yes,” she said, sounding annoyed. “First you get hurt out trying to help me, and now my boneheaded brother-in-law has caused your problems.”
“I caused my problems,” I told her, shaking my head. “I’m the one who made the boneheaded decision to go out with the bonehead.”
“And what else were you going to do? If you left him alone, he would have just gone on his own.”
I sighed. “Look, can we just drop it?”
I finally made it through the line and was almost to the door when Cass caught up with me.
“Did you tell Roman?” she asked, shoving the door open for me and letting me pass first.
“Tell him what?”
“That your job is in jeopardy because he’s a dumbass.”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled a little. But I shook my head. “It’s my concern, not his.”
“If you weren’t going out to yell at him, what did you go out there for?” she asked reasonably. There was a shrewd look in her eyes, and I had no doubt that she had definitely noticed that I was wearing the same clothes I’d been wearing when we ran into each other the previous day.
I opened my mouth, then closed it, trying to figure out the best way to respond to that. I decided, in the end, to tell her the truth or at least enough to satisfy her so she’d let this all go.
“I wanted to ask him for his help,” I told her. Somebody came down the sidewalk, and I stepped aside to let him pass, never once looking away from Cass’s face.
“For what?”
“It doesn’t matter. He seems to be pretty pissed off today, so I’ll just have to handle it on my own.”
I could tell she wanted to ask more, but I wasn’t in the mood for it, so I shook my head. “I need to get going. I’ve got a lot to get done today.”
I headed for my car, not looking back at her even once.
Twenty
Roman
“So. Let me guess…you were a total asshole when Lexi came out here.”
Normally, a visit from Cass was a welcome intrusion. She was one of the few connections I had left of a life when I’d been happy.
But Cass was…well. She didn’t pull punches, and when she was pissed, she let everybody in the whole world know it.
Without even looking at her, I knew that her ire was directed at me.
Again.
I seemed to excel at pissing people off these days.
I glanced at her as I adjusted my grip on the heavy branch that had been knocked down during one of the winter storms. I probably wasn’t anybody’s version of old – at least, anybody over the age of twenty – but the life I’d lived had taken its toll on my body and the last thing I’d wanted to do in the cold and wet that followed one of the storms out here was come out and deal with fallen branches and limbs.
The land I’d inherited from my family had been in our possession for a long time, and any given season brought with it its own share of work. Winter had finally passed, and that meant dealing with the debris from the storms, repairing any of the fences that needed repairing and general clean-up. Not to mention the small garden I was still trying to care for – it had once been my mother’s pride and joy, and Ryan had mentioned that he’d like to get it going again.
I couldn’t care less about the garden, but I cared about my brother, and my parents.
He’d wanted to start a garden like Mom’s, so I’d damn well make sure there was a garden like Mom’s.
I passed on the extra vegetables and fruit to Cass and her aging parents, which made me feel like I was doing something to help them out. Not much, but something.
“Nice to see you, too, Cass,” I said wryly. “It sounds like you’re recovering from your ordeal, might I add.”
“Oh, kiss my ass,” she retorted sharply. “And damn it, drop that branch and look at me when I’m talking to you.”
The rebuke was an echo of what Lexi had said to me not even an hour earlier. I dropped the branch and turned to face my sister-in-law. We were closer than that, really. The three of us, Cass, Ryan and me, we’d grown up together. Cass had known for years that Ryan was the one for her, and the bond the two of us shared was more brother and sister than anything else. I loved her dearly. Although I sometimes questioned my intelligence these days, there was one thing that I was still smart enough to understand – Cass in a temper wasn’t somebody to mess around with.
Unless, of course, I was looking for a fight.
I didn’t often pick fights with my sister-in-law, but some days, I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to avoid them.
With exaggerated care, I dropped the heavy limb and turned to face her. Stripping off my gloves, I tossed them to the ground and met her gaze. “So. What’s the problem, honey?”
“Don’t call me honey, you big ass,” Cass snapped, closing the distance between us.
She reached up and jabbed her fingernail into my chest.
The sight of that pink tip skewering me made me scowl. She hadn’t painted her nails – that I knew of – since right before Ryan’s funeral. Cass was athletic and loved the outdoors, but at the same time, she was innately…well, she’d hate the word girly, but that’s what she was. Or what she had been. She never left the house without some light touch of makeup, and once a week, she’d gone to get manicures and pedicures. Ryan used to tease her about it.
Hoping to distract her from whatever had set her off, I said, “Nice nails.”
“Nice try,” she replied with a smirk. “I’m not getting distracted…honey. So, tell me. When Lexi was out here, did you just fuck her then kick her out of your bed, or what?”
The blunt, curt comment stung.
The truth of it stung even more. Setting my jaw, I caught her wrist and nudged her hand away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” When had she seen Lexi, anyway? How did she know Lexi had been out here?
She shook her head, giving me a look like I was just the dimmest bulb in the pack. “I ran into her yesterday morning – and today. She was wearing the same clothes, both times. Either she’s got a limited wardrobe, or she had some unplanned sleepover.” She batted her lashes at me. “If it wasn’t with you, I’m going to have to find out who it was…you know how much I enjoy gossip.”
I resisted the urge to snarl at her. “Fine. She was here. What of it?”
“I’m just wondering why she looked like some puppy you’d kicked when I ran into her,” Lexi said with an arch look.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I heard the lie as clearly as she did, and she knew
it.
She shook her head and sighed, averting her gaze. “Want to know something?” she asked softly.
Not really, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead, I just waited.
“You haven’t shown any real sign of life for the past few years, Roman. Ever since Ryan died.”
I flinched at the sound of his name. I went to turn away, and she caught my arm.
“I loved him too,” she said, her voice thick.
“I know you did.”
“And I also know that if he knew how we’d both gone and shut ourselves down after he died, he’d come after us and haunt us until we straightened up.” She tipped her head back, staring up at me. Tears glittered in her eyes.
As one broke free to roll down her cheek, I reached up, wiping it away.
I couldn’t tell her that I was already haunted. She’d want to know why.
She surprised me then by lifting both hands and cupping my face, forcing me to keep looking at her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said gently. “I know you blame yourself. But it wasn’t your fault. You both made a choice, a choice to do a very dangerous job that only a few people can do. You both knew that each mission could be your last.” Her voice broke, and she let go of me, using her fingertips to swipe the tears from her cheeks. “You both knew. And sadly, for Ryan, that was his last mission. But he died doing something you both believed in, Roman. Protecting this country. And it’s pretty shitty of you to take from his sacrifice by insisting that you are the only reason he’s gone. Because you’re not.”
She turned away just as I flinched, the impact of her words like salt in an open wound.
And she just kept piling it on too. With her back to me, she asked, “You’ve got a thing for her, don’t you?”
I didn’t have to ask who. But I wasn’t going to confirm her suspicions, either.
