His Temporary Fix

by Sofia Grey

  Zack fiddled with his wristwatch. “Any idea when Sam is coming?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll ring him.” Standing up, I caught sight of another vehicle pulling onto the flat patch of ground next to the cottage. “Actually, here he is now.” He was with someone, a young guy who he helped out of his truck and then led to the door. Someone else to offer his condolences?

  Zack looked out of the window and froze, his stance going immediately into a deadly watchfulness. “What the fuck?” His buddies went to look, too, and then he suddenly darted at the door and ripped it open. Charging over the wooden deck, he launched himself at the guy with Sam, driving a solid fist into the stranger’s face. “You bastard. You fucking bastard.”

  I froze. Confusion turned rapidly into horror. Had Sam brought Marnie’s boyfriend here? Dear God, what was he thinking? I had to stop Zack. Stop him before it was too late.

  “Stop him. Please.” The two men with me hesitated. The guy was already bent double, Zack raining blows on his head, his stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I might have been paralyzed for all the good I could do. “He’ll kill him.”

  They stampeded outside, but Sam had already intervened. When I stumbled out on shaking legs it was to see Zack’s friends holding him by the arms, talking him down, with Sam tending to the other guy. Zack’s face was twisted with pain and anger, and he jerked and struggled. “Let me go. Get the fuck off me.” He slipped one side free and lunged at the other guy, but his mates hauled him back.

  Blood oozed from his fists, but Sam’s companion had come off much worse. He sprawled on the sand, tears and blood mixing on his face. He might have been handsome at one time, with corn-yellow hair and pale blue eyes, but fat softened his jawline, and he looked puffy and out of condition.

  Sam appeared unruffled, as though he hadn’t just thrown a bottle of petrol into an already smoldering fire. He gave me a steady smile. It chilled me to my core. “Holly. Would you get me some water for Barry, please? He has a story to tell us.”

  …

  We retired to the table and chairs on the deck. Zack had snarled at Sam’s suggestion that we go indoors—“I’m not letting that fucker in my house”—even though technically it was Sam’s place—and the outside seating seemed safer. Zack sat there breathing heavily, stony-faced and furious, with his friends flanking him on either side. Sam stayed with Barry, now dabbing his bleeding nose with a wad of kitchen paper. I hovered on the edge of everything.

  I desperately wanted to comfort Zack, but I don’t think he remembered I was there. From the second he set eyes on Marnie’s ex, he focused on nothing else.

  I’d never seen Sam angry or upset. His gray eyes were calm, his expression neutral. He radiated confidence. His shoulder-length hair was tied back today, and his beard looked neater than usual, but otherwise he’d not changed his appearance in years. He’d found Barry, but was that a good thing? Or was there even more pain in store for Zack?

  “I want to bury you in a hole where they’d never find you,” snarled Zack. “If I can’t do that, I’ll make sure you face justice.”

  Barry’s eyes filled up again. “I loved her, man. I really loved her. I didn’t do anything.” He slurred his words, and I wondered if he was drunk. The combined stink of stale sweat and alcohol turned my stomach, and I inched farther away from him. His hoodie and jeans were scruffy and lined with dirt. He looked as though he’d crawled out of the gutter.

  Zack leaned forward, was dragged back by his mates, and swore under his breath when they restrained him. “You hit her, Barry. You hurt my baby sister. So help me, I’m gonna make you pay for that.”

  Sam slapped the table with his palm and everyone fell silent. “Zack. I didn’t bring him here for you to threaten.”

  “So why the fuck did you?”

  “You asked me to find him. You need to hear what happened.” He held up his hand to forestall Zack’s angry reply. Leaning back in his chair, he gestured toward Barry. “I’ll ask the questions and Zack, you’ll stay quiet.”

  I couldn’t stay apart from my lover any longer. I stepped behind him and rested my palms on his rigid shoulders. He flinched, then let out a long breath, and nodded to Sam.

  “Barry, when did Marnie move out?”

  Barry rubbed at the surface of the table with his thumb and then cleared his throat. His gaze stayed fixed on the wooden patina. “A couple of weeks ago. I kept thinking she’d come to her senses, you know, and come back.” Zack growled, but subsided at a sharp glare from Sam. “I didn’t tell anyone. I thought she’d come back, and we’d forget all about it.”

  “Tell us what happened on Monday morning.” The day Marnie died.

  He let out a long, juddering breath and rubbed his eyes. Tears continued to well up. “I saw her walking up the drive and thought she was coming home. I was boozed, man. I’d not slept, and I was trying to get my head together to go to work, and then I saw her. And yeah, I thought she was coming back to me.” His thumb continued to work the tabletop. “I ran outside. And then I realized she was looking for that dumb cat. She was calling the stupid furball. And I walked up behind her, and she said, she said…” He stopped and swallowed hard before continuing. “She said she wanted to take it home—to her new home, and that’s when it hit me. She wasn’t coming back at all.”

  I dug my fingers into Zack’s shoulders. He sat like a statue, cold and unmoving.

  “Go on,” Sam encouraged him.

  “I wanted to ask her why. I mean why would she go in the first place? She was happy. We were happy.” Zack tensed even further under my palms. “So when she went in the cellar, I followed her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  You could have heard a pin drop. We all stared in total silence at the broken man crying at the table. My stomach churned like a washing machine on the spin cycle, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be sick. I wasn’t leaving Zack, though.

  Barry sobbed in earnest now, great washes of tears cascading down his face, and he made no attempt to wipe them away. “I stepped onto the stairs just as she was coming back up. She held that damn cat, kissing its head. A fuckin’ cat for Chrissake. And it saw me. It fuckin’ hated me.” He bowed his head and scrubbed wildly at his eyes with a stained sleeve. “Do I have to?” He appealed to Sam.

  “Yes. Either you tell them, or I do.”

  “The cat flew out of her arms when it saw me. And she… She fuckin’ lost her balance and went backward. Hit the floor.”

  I clung to Zack, willing him to stay still, to not make another lunge at Barry. I needed to touch him for my own sake, too. The story had a ring of truth. The smell of cat piss in the cellar, for one thing. Zack trembled. I felt the ripple through my hands and up my arms, but he stayed in his seat. Stayed quiet. Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked them away. I wasn’t letting go of him.

  There was a long pause before Sam spoke. “What did you do?”

  Barry dropped his head and mumbled something. I didn’t catch it.

  “Speak up, Barry.” Sam’s voice sounded hard.

  “I left her. I grabbed my car keys and went to work.”

  Oh my God. I couldn’t hold back my gasp of horror. Zack erupted, launching across the table. For a minute it was chaos. Barry scrambled out of his seat and ended up lying on the deck, arms over his head, with Zack shoving and pushing to get at him. “You left her,” he yelled, almost incoherent. “You fucking left her. She might have just been hurt, did you think of that? You killed her. Doesn’t matter whether you pushed her or she fell, her death is on your hands.”

  Anders and Petey finally subdued him and dragged him back to his side of the table, and this time I wrapped my arms around him. He refused to sit down. He stood there, lungs heaving, his spine rigid and his gaze fixed on Barry.

  “She didn’t move, man. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t fuckin’ move.” Barry sobbed, but I couldn’t find any shred of sympathy for him. He was toxic. I felt even more nauseated the more I thought about it.

 
“You left my sister and went to your fucking job.” Zack’s voice was colder and harder than I could ever have imagined. A muscle flicked in his cheek, but otherwise he was motionless. “And then you came home and pretended you knew nothing about it.”

  I’d had enough of Barry’s hysterics, but something else made sense now. “You said nobody knew she’d left you, so nobody thought it odd that she was still there. At your house.”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t stand to go back. I couldn’t face it.” His head lifted and he stared at me, as though noticing me for the first time. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Sam moved this time, dispensing a rapid, blunt kick into Barry’s side. “Oops. Foot slipped.” Bending down, he grabbed a handful of Barry’s hair and raised the man’s head again. “Apologize to Holly. Now.”

  “I’m suh-sorry,” he stammered.

  Zack shifted position to tuck me into his side. “If you ever see Holly again, even across the other side of the street, you go the other way. Understand? Otherwise I will make your life a living hell. You’ll beg me to put an end to it.”

  “What happens now?” I addressed Sam from the safe circle of Zack’s arms.

  “We’re on our way to the police station where he’s going to revise his statement.”

  “I should be going with you. She was my sister.” I felt the tension vibrating through Zack’s body when he spoke.

  “You can’t go AWOL,” Petey muttered. His words struck a chord with me, reminded me of something that lay tantalizingly out of reach, but I couldn’t grasp it.

  “One thing.” Zack’s voice rang out. “How can you be sure he’s telling the truth?”

  Sam’s face was impassive. “You’re a soldier, Zack. You know there’s more than one way to get information out of somebody.” I shivered at the menace in the words.

  We stayed silent as Sam hauled the weeping man to his feet and shoved him toward his truck. There were no words. Nothing was appropriate. I thought I’d seen death and destruction when my parents died, but this was different. This was horror on a whole new scale. Would Zack ever get over this?

  It was as Sam’s truck bounced over the sand and away from the cottage that I remembered the thought that’d eluded me. “What time is it?”

  Zack stared blankly at me, but Petey groaned and slapped himself on the forehead. “Fuck, man, she’s right. You’ve got a flight to catch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Zack held me close, his arms tight around me. I don’t know how long we stood there, entwined on the deck, but it wasn’t long enough.

  “Uh, dude. I hate to interrupt, but…” Petey nudged him with his elbow.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t move. “How soon until we leave?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “I need to shower.” He dropped a delicate kiss onto my forehead and then disentangled himself. I sank into the nearest chair. I felt raw, as though my skin had been peeled off, and I was left to stand naked, vulnerable to every speck of dust and gust of wind. My mind whirled, a crazy kaleidoscope of disturbing images. Barry’s tears. His callous behavior. The way Zack had laid into him, fists pounding. The fact that Sam had found him at all, and then delivered him to Zack. The very real possibility I’d never see my soldier again.

  His friends pottered around, drinking water and chatting in an undertone. I was glad they ignored me. Should I even still be there? I hadn’t said good-bye to Zack. I couldn’t go yet.

  My stomach clenched at the prospect. How could it be that my heart was still beating? I pressed one hand to my chest. Yes, the steady thump-thump continued.

  A fragment of conversation filtered through my brain, and I listened. Anders had said something about Zack not needing to go back. “Excuse me.” They both paused and stared at me. “What you just said, about Zack. He doesn’t need to return to Afghanistan?”

  Anders cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah.”

  My throat tightened. I whirled my fingers in the air for him to continue.

  “He, uh, was given the option of staying here. We don’t normally continue with a deployment after compassionate leave.”

  “So why is he?” It came out as a whisper.

  Anders blew out a short breath, his fingers rising to fiddle with the neckline of his T-shirt. “He, uh, insisted. Said there was nothing here to stay for.”

  Oh God. I was right. My proud, beautiful warrior thought nobody cared about him. I wouldn’t let him continue to think that.

  …

  I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for Zack to emerge from the en suite bathroom. I had to tell him what he meant to me, risk my heart and my battered self-confidence, and be honest with him. The way he behaved with me, kissing me in front of his friends and family, the multitude of little affectionate moves and gestures… they had to mean something. I refused to believe I was just a one-night stand.

  It was more than sex.

  The shower went quiet and my heart rate increased from a jog to a full-scale sprint. He’d be out in a minute. My palms were damp, and I placed them flat on the bedcover. I’d never been so nervous, and I still didn’t know exactly what I was going to say to him.

  The door opened on a wave of citrus-scented steam, and there was Zack, a white towel cinched around his waist, wet hair stuck to his head. His face lit up when he saw me, lips curling, and eyes crinkling in the corners. “Hol.”

  I pushed myself to stand up, even though my knees were trembling, and I tried to find my voice. My tongue was thick and useless. The best I could manage was a wobbly smile. It didn’t matter. He looped one warm arm around my middle and pressed a heated kiss on my lips. “I wish we had more time, baby. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  He ran his knuckles down my cheek and then buried his hand in my hair. All of a sudden, he looked serious again. The smile was gone and a wariness had taken up residence in his eyes. “I don’t have any right to ask you, and fuck knows, I’ve been an asshole today.” He paused, and swallowed. “When I’m back from deployment, maybe we could meet up again? I’ve never felt this way about a girl before, never wanted more than a couple of nights. You make me want more, Holly. You make me want everything.”

  He wanted to see me again. Delight stole my breath, and I stared at him, dumbfounded. I’d been going to ask him the same thing. He wants me. My heart danced and leaped in my chest, and I’m sure a big goofy smile was spreading across my face.

  Not quick enough, though. Zack grimaced and dropped his hand from my hair. “Yeah, I get it. I’m sorry. I just thought—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted. “Yes, I want to.”

  “You do?” Hope shone in his eyes.

  “Yes. God, yes.” I gazed at him, my eyes wet, but with relief. “It’s all happened so quickly, but you, we…us,” I hesitated, tongue-tied. “It feels good, Zack. Very good.” The words finally came into my head. “You mean a lot to me. Already.” I refused to think about my career, a mere twelve thousand miles away. This felt too right to lose. “I’ll wait here for you. Until you get back.”

  He looked dazed, as astounded as I felt. “Are you sure? I’ll be gone for months.”

  I buried my face against his naked chest. “Try keeping me away.”

  We emerged from Zack’s bedroom and interrupted a heated discussion between his friends. They quieted and turned to face him. Anders shoved his hands in his pockets and lifted his chin. “We’ve got a suggestion. You need to listen.”

  “Sure.”

  “Going back to Afghan now, it’s not right. You need to stay here, at least for the moment. Make sure that fucker gets what he deserves.”

  “Tell me.” Zack blew out a harsh breath. “I was thinking of asking for an extension, but I don’t know what the protocol is. Who the fuck do I talk to?”

  “The RSM.” Anders glanced at me. “The Regimental Sergeant Major at Linton,” he explained. “He can make the calls for you, lodge a request with Joint Forces HQ.” He paused. “You can ask to cut the deployment short.”<
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  “I could ask for more time, but I’m not going to leave the unit a man down.”

  “I’ll volunteer in your place.”

  Zack opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again. A moment later, he shook his head. “No. I won’t let you do that.”

  Anders shrugged. “You can’t stop me.”

  “Dude, you don’t know what it means for you to offer, but no. You didn’t volunteer for this one with good reason.” Stepping forward, Zack and Anders bumped fists. “Thank you. I mean it.”

  “Okay then.” Petey bumped fists with them both in turn. “Let’s go find the RSM.”

  Zack bent down and picked up his rucksack, swinging it over one shoulder. “Yeah. You go on, I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He waited until his friends had gone outside, before he spoke to me. Pulling me close, he ran one hand through my hair before pressing a fierce kiss on my lips. “I’ve no idea what’s going to happen. If the RSM says yes, I might get another week here, maybe two. If he says no, I’ll be on the next transport out of Wellington. I might not get to see you again, Hol. Not until the deployment finishes.”

  “Will you be able to call me? Tell me what’s going on?”

  “As soon as I know, I’ll be on the phone to you.”

  Thoughts spun and danced in my head. We were out of time, but I had another thing to say. “If you don’t have to leave right away, you can always come and stay with me. And Jas. If you want to.”

  The love in his eyes was unmistakable. “Try keeping me away.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ten days later, Zack’s extended leave was over. Once again, Anders and Petey arrived to take him to the airport, but this time we left from Jasper’s house.

  Anders rode shotgun in Petey’s Land Cruiser, while Zack and I sat side-by-side in the back, our legs pressed together from the thighs downward and our hands tightly linked.

  So much had happened in the past week. A full inquest had been opened into Marnie’s death, and Barry had been charged with perverting the cause of justice, as well as damaging property in the pub. He’d broken down when requestioned by the police and had admitted to assaulting Marnie, and I hoped he would end up in jail.