“Wanna see what’s left of the beach in the meantime?” Jay asked.
Mari nodded and the two of them held hands as they picked their way through the wrecked jungle. They hadn’t made it out all the way to the shore yet and they were both stunned at what they saw. Seaweed and dead fish, coral and algae everywhere. There was even old wreckage washed up. A rusted, hulking hull poking out of the water that they’d been scared was a beached whale from a distance.
They climbed a tree for coconuts and stilled at the view that laid out before them. The ocean stretched on for miles, bright and blinking in the sunlight. At the edge of the horizon a pod of dolphins dipped and danced in the water. Mari grinned at Jay and he found it even more blinding, more dazzling than the sun on the water.
Deciding to head back and pack up to wait for the chopper, Mari and Jay were quiet as they picked their way through the jungle. Were these their last few hours together? Mari wondered.
Were these their last few hours before everything changed? Before he had to tell her how much she meant to him? Jay wondered.
Maybe it was because of this preoccupation of thoughts that they didn’t notice the way the stairs creaked and groaned under their feet. Made of metal, they’d been pretty well rusted before the hurricane. The constant wind and saturation in sea water hadn’t helped matters any in the last few days.
They were on the third floor, and Mari, light and small, was dancing up the side of the staircase, holding on to the banister as she went.
Jay, tired from the sun and thirsty as hell, tromped up the middle of the stairs.
The rusted hole crumbled beneath his foot like he was walking on sand. Suddenly, he was wheeling backwards, his hands struggling for any handhold. But the only handhold he could see was Mari, and he refused to drag her down with him.
So his weight went down on his leg, which went clear through the rusted metal stair, all the way to his hip.
“Jay!” Mari screamed, immediately kneeling beside him, her hands on his shoulders.
Jay wasn’t in pain. He was sort of numb on his right leg where it had gone through the metal. His head felt strange and buzzy. He was dimly aware of Mari speaking to him, although for some reason he couldn’t hear her words.
Bracing his hands on the stair in front of him, Jay attempted to drag his leg out of the hole. And that’s when the pain started.
It was a dull, aching pain. Not too bad, really. And with another tremendous push from his muscular arms, his leg started to pull free. He wondered vaguely why he couldn’t bend it. But he didn’t think too hard on it as he dragged himself up the stairs and out of the hole.
He made it to the landing between the third and fourth floor on what he’d later come to identify as pure adrenaline. Besides being strangely heavy and achy, his leg didn’t bother him that bad.
It wasn’t until he turned back to see Mari’s face that he registered more of the pain in his leg.
She was ash white and horrified, her eyes pinned to his right thigh. For some reason, he found he didn’t want to look down, to see what she was seeing. He stared at her face instead. She was saying something to him that he still couldn’t hear.
And then she was gone, sprinting up the stairs. Seconds later she was back with the first aid kit from his backpack and a small length of rope he kept there. He kept his eyes on her face as he realized she was tying a tourniquet on his leg, taping a towel over the wound. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks and it was the last thing Jay saw before darkness took him.
When he woke up again, it was nighttime. And he was outside. Later, he’d realize that Mari had somehow carried him up all those stairs to the roof of the building. And she’d cleared off all the branches and debris so that the helicopter had been able to land. Later, he would realize that she’d called emergency services, changed their rescue from coast guard to med evac. Later, he would marvel at how the hell she’d done all of that on her own. He was practically twice her size.
But now, he just let his eyes flutter open to look at the deep night, the stars, fuzzy as hell. He felt something cold on his forehead. And then there she was, the woman he loved.
He had no question that he loved her. Not now. He knew. He knew the way you know if you’re hungry or thirsty or happy. He just knew. He loved her. And here she was, touching his face and whispering sweet things to him.
When she saw his eyes had opened she pressed her lips to his.
“You have blood on your cheek,” he tried to say, tried to lift his hand to her face. But he found that he couldn’t. Everything was too hard, too heavy. He was too tired. Maybe he’d tell her tomorrow.
When he opened his eyes again, there were strangers around him. Strangers in uniform lifting him onto a helicopter. He looked around him blearily. How had he not heard the chopper? It was so ungodly loud. How could he have missed it?
A feeling like he was forgetting something tore through him.
“Mari!” Her name tore out of his mouth the second it lanced across his brain. Even though there were hands attempting to restrain him, Jay still managed to sit upright for a moment.
“I’m here, Jay,” she said from right next to him, her cool hands on his forehead and neck. “Lay back.”
Jay looked down for the first time as a paramedic took the towel off of his leg. It was heavy and saturated with blood. Jay could barely believe what he was seeing. His leg was sliced open across his thigh. The gash was at least a foot long and Jay could see the pink of his severed muscle, and something white peeking out at him. Whether it was fat or bone, he’d never know. Dazed and horrified, he fell backwards onto the stretcher.
“Ma’am, you’ll have to wait,” one of the paramedics said above him.
“What?”
“The med evac is only equipped for five people,” the paramedic said to Mari. “Stay on the roof and we’ll radio for the coast guard to come get you. It’ll only be a few hours.”
“Alright,” Jay heard Mari agree and fear and pain whipped through him.
“No,” he groaned. It was the best he could do. In his mind he was furious, words racing through his brain. She only weighs a hundred pounds. What did they mean they couldn’t take her! “No.”
He tried to sit up again.
“Sir!” another paramedic yelled. “Sir! Lay down!”
“Hold on!” Mari yelled. “Let me talk to him.”
She bent down so that her mouth was right at Jay’s ear. “Jay, you have to lie down so they can take you to the hospital.”
“Not. Without. You,” She’d never know how much each pained word cost him.
“Okay,” she nodded, looking up at the paramedics. “I can go, right? I’ll just have to sit in the front, right?”
There was a cough and then a “Yes.”
Mari nodded, her clear green eyes searching him. “See, mi amor? I’ll be going too. But you have to relax and let them help you, okay?” She bent and kissed his mouth. “We didn’t survive a hurricane so that you could bite the big one half a mile in the air between here and Grand Bahama.”
“Okay,” he agreed, falling back, assuaged by her words. “Okay.” He grabbed her hand and let his eyes flutter closed. She was here. Mari was here. She was here.
***
She was gone.
Three days later, Jay stared at the ugly, water-stained ceiling in Miami General and still couldn’t make it make sense. She was gone.
He’d been completely out until just a few hours ago. He’d passed out on the helicopter and they’d kept him under straight into surgery the second they’d gotten him into the OR in Miami. They’d completely skipped Grand Bahama, they explained. And he was lucky they had, considering that he may have lost the whole damn leg if it weren’t for the surgery in Miami.
His mind was slow and syrupy from the anesthesia, but even so, Mari was the first person he’d asked the nurse for when he’d finally opened his eyes. She’d had no idea who he was talking about.
He’d been so persistent t
hat finally the nurse had gone to find one of the paramedics who’d been on the med evac helicopter with him.
“Where is she?” he ground out to the man who didn’t look familiar at all to Jay. The only face he’d been able to see on that roof had been Mari’s.
The man had grimaced and wiped a hand over his short hair. “I don’t know where she is. She, uh, didn’t come with us.”
“What the hell are you talking about? She said she was riding in the front.”
“She just said that, man. To get you to calm down and come with us. We had to leave her on the roof. She knew it. She was fine with it. We made sure the coast guard got to her a few hours later. I was worried about it, so I checked in on it myself yesterday. They got her to Grand Bahama totally fine.”
“She’s not here,” Jay ground out through a mouth filled with sand.
“I’m sorry, man,” the paramedic replied, slipping out through the doors when Jay said nothing more.
He soothed himself in his head. It was alright. He’d just get in contact with emergency services in Grand Bahama. He’d call around to hotels and track her down. It was with a horrible sinking sensation that Jay realized he didn’t know her last name. And she didn’t know his. And she didn’t know he’d come to Miami.
He didn’t have her phone number. Or her email. Or her hometown. She was gone. Thin air. It was then that he finally felt the pain. It screamed up from his leg, threatening to take him under. To drown him. He almost let it.
The pain in his leg echoed into his chest. The empty cavity where his heart used to live. It didn’t live there anymore. He didn’t go under again. In fact he barely slept. He couldn’t let himself succumb to the very thing that had taken him away from Mari. He was going to stay awake and endure this pain. It was the only thing he could do.
And so Jay lay there, trying and trying to think of any way he could have done it differently. If there could have been any circumstance where she’d be at his bedside right that very second.
It was a question he would ask himself for the next five years.
CHAPTER FIVE
Present Day
“Her what?” Jay asked the douche in the suit. He knew he was speaking abnormally loudly, but that was on account of the ringing in his ears.
The douche looked back and forth between Jay and Mari, the crease between his eyebrows furrowing even further. “Her fiancé,” he said again.
Yeah. Still wasn’t computing.
Jay lifted his eyebrows into his hairline and turned to look Mari in the eye. She stared right back at him. Still watery from the crying jag, but just as tough as he remembered. And just as unashamed.
“Fiancé,” Jay repeated in a dumbfounded voice, as if he needed evidence that the word even existed.
“That’s what the man said,” Marcus said from over Jay’s shoulder. “Marcus Marinos.” He held his hand out to this guy, Linc, and then to Mari. “Nice to meet you. And this is Jay Brady.”
Jay’s eyes were drawn to Mari’s like magnets when Marcus said his name.
“Brady,” Mari mouthed his name and then sucked her lips into her mouth like she wanted to savor the sound of it.
It was the first time she’d ever heard his last name. Jay wondered if that little piece of information had tortured her as much as it had tortured him.
“Nice to meet you,” Linc said, tossing a casual arm over Mari’s shoulders.
Jay stiffened and took half a step forward, but he felt Marcus’s strong hand at his back. Be cool, man. After all their years as friends, he could practically hear Marcus’s voice in his head.
“So,” Linc continued, looking back and forth between Mari and Jay still. “How do you two know each other?”
Jay raised an eyebrow at Mari, ducking his head to show her that this was on her to explain.
Mari cleared her throat. “We met in the Bahamas. About five years ago.”
Jay’s eyebrow rose even further. He noted Linc’s bland expression and surmised that she must not have explained anything about the hurricane to him. He obviously thought she’d been there on vacation or something.
However, Jay could feel Marcus and Eli exchanging looks behind his back. Both of them knew all too well what had happened to Jay in the Bahamas five years ago. They knew about the hurricane. About his leg. Shit, they’d been there through the year of rehab it had taken for him to be able to walk on it, and then surf on it. They knew everything about his time in the Bahamas five years ago.
Except for Mari.
He’d never breathed a word to anyone about Mari. She’d stayed locked up tight in his heart. Sometimes even thinking about her had caused searing pain. He’d known better than to risk talking about her.
The only person he’d so much as whispered her name to was the private investigator he’d hired to find her. The one who hadn’t found her.
Jay scrubbed a hand over his eyes for a second. Suddenly he was completely overwhelmed. As soon as his eyes closed, he realized that he could still taste her in his mouth. She’d kissed him back. That much was clear.
Regardless of whose hand she was holding right now, Mari’s fingers had ripped at his hair. She’d dragged him to the ground. Smashed her mouth against his. Jay’s dress shirt was wet from her tears.
He didn’t give a flying fuck who Linc Cavanaugh was. He didn’t care that Mari thought she was engaged. Honestly, he wouldn’t have cared if he’d found out she’d been a porn star for the last five years.
All he wanted was to take her by the hand and lead her off of this balcony. All he wanted was to bring her home. Right now.
He opened his eyes again, immediately searching her gaze. Inwardly, he sighed. Obviously, that was not gonna happen.
She was staring at him, into him, as if she were trying to excavate the thoughts from his brain. He stared right back, trying to implant his thoughts into her skull.
Dump this idiot! Right now! Leave here with me! Let me take you home and do everything to your body that I’ve dreamed about for half a decade! Let me erase these five years between us!
She looked away, up to Linc, apparently the suit was talking to her. Jay hadn’t noticed.
“Cavanaugh, you said?” Eli said as he stepped up to Jay’s elbow.
“That’s right.”
“Any chance you’re associated with Cavanaugh’s Kids?”
A smile spread over Linc’s face. “Yes, of course, that’s the charity that I head.”
Oh. Great. A do-gooder.
“Great! I’d love to talk to you about an idea I had for an after-school center.” Eli took Cavanaugh by the elbow and steered him away from Jay.
Jay had never been more grateful for his friend than he was in that moment. Cavanaugh might not realize, but Eli had probably just saved him from a fist in the face.
Jay was reaching his limit.
“Little advice,” Marcus said in Jay’s ear. “Go slow. Long game, man. Long game.”
And then Marcus was disappearing back into the party, closing the balcony door behind him.
Jay and Mari stared at each other, alone again.
A wintry breeze kicked up and had Mari gripping her elbows against the chill in the air.
Jay shook his head from side to side. “It’s so weird to see you shiver.”
A small smile bloomed over her face. “Yeah, I guess you’ve only seen me when I was sweating my ass off.”
Jay took a step forward. “You’re pretty when you sweat your ass off.” He took a chance and slid a lock of her hair through his fingers. “But you’re pretty now too. All dolled up.”
Mari scoffed and looked down at her simple dress. “You have a low standard for dolled up. I look like I’m going to the gym compared to some of the women in there.”
“I was already comparing you to the women in there,” Jay answered without thinking. “Before I even saw you standing in there, I was already comparing them to you. And they were already underwhelming me.”
Mari’s brow furrowed in
confusion. “You were thinking of me before you saw me tonight?”
Jay let out a humorless chuckle. He knew he was supposed to be going easy. But he found that he simply had no brakes to pump. He’d been waiting five years to say anything like this and he couldn’t pull up short now. “I think of you every day. A hundred times a day.”
Mari pursed her lips, her startling green eyes were worrying back and forth between his. Assessing him for honesty, he knew.
He went for broke. “And you were thinking of me too. Right before you saw me.” He took another step forward. There was barely three inches of chilly air between them. “I know you were thinking of me because you heard the foghorn out on the water. And that means you were either thinking of the first morning we kissed, or when we made love up on the roof.”
Mari’s eyes darted up to his and he knew he’d hit the nail on the head. She’d been thinking of him.
She didn’t step back from him. It was clear that she wasn’t able to put space between them any more than he was. But she did speak.
“I’m engaged, Jay.”
Hearing that dumbass in the suit call himself her fiancé had been shocking, and it certainly hadn’t felt good. But it was also fairly easy for him to dismiss it.
Hearing Mari say it to his face was another issue entirely.
Jay felt a phantom stab of pain in his thigh. It happened now and again. Most of his nerve endings were fairly numb down there. But every once in a while the damn thing started screaming like it was a fresh wound.
Jay cleared his throat. Found that he had absolutely nothing to say to that.
“I, uh, need a breather,” Mari said and finally took a step away from him. She paused, as if it were painful to put distance between them, Jay sure as hell felt like it was. She turned halfway back, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him. “Just, don’t leave, okay? I need a second, but don’t leave the party.”
Jay almost laughed at how ridiculous that was. She thought there was any chance in hell that he’d just leave it at that?
“I won’t leave you, Mari,” he said in a voice so deep and gravelly he barely recognized it as his own.
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