Safe Harbor?

by Wardell, Heather

  “I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do, though.” I sighed. “I don’t want to manipulate anyone.”

  “Not even if they ask you to?”

  I turned to face him, nervousness filling me again. “Are you asking me to?”

  He looked away. “I don’t know.”

  Was I about to lose him now that he knew what I was? If so, I wanted to know how I’d got him in the first place. “Owen, I know why I married you, but why did you marry me? Was it all about the promotion?”

  He gave a grim chuckle. “It wasn’t about that at all. Just a bonus.”

  I waited, too surprised to say anything else, and he said, “The day we met, everyone else was so... sympathetic about Melissa.” His tone made that sound like the worst thing they could have been even before he went on with, “I hate sympathy. Whenever Mom was about to dump one of her boyfriends she got all nice to me and so whenever someone’s overly sympathetic I feel like, ‘Here comes the crap,’ and I hate it. You, though... it was like you understood that it sucked but didn’t think I needed to be babied. I liked it.”

  I stared at him. “You married me for that?”

  He shrugged. “That, and because you were smart and funny and cute and brave enough to suggest we get married. I couldn’t imagine trying to find someone else, and I thought I’d enjoy being married to you so I went for it.” He brushed his fingers over my cheek. “And I have. I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass lately but I have enjoyed it.”

  Delighted by how he’d described me, I said, “Me too, until... why have you been such an...”

  I trailed off, not wanting to say it, and he smiled then sobered. “I was scared, Celia. You were so connected to Austin, and I know what he’s like with women.” He sighed. “When I lost Melissa to Nicholas, it was humiliating but I didn’t really care. But the idea of losing you to Austin... I couldn’t face it.”

  Loving that he felt more for me than he had for Melissa, I said, “But once Corinne showed up, wasn’t it obvious that Austin and I weren’t--”

  His nod cut me off. “But I thought it had just ended between you. And I hated that. And I hated that I hated it because our marriage wasn’t supposed to be like that. I was breaking the rules. And I didn’t know what to do about it.”

  “So you pushed me away,” I said, beginning to understand. “Before I could go on my own.”

  “Like mother, like son,” he said wryly. “That’s Linda’s specialty.”

  “Like with Raul,” we said together, then smiled at each other.

  “But then you knew stuff about Mom, how she was feeling about her leg, before you should have, and I kind of doubted you were having an affair with her.” We smiled at each other again, and he went on. “And then I put all the pieces together and-- wait, I have a question.”

  “Okay...”

  “Why did you want to marry me?” Owen said, almost shyly.

  I took a deep breath and told him how I’d always been an empath but hadn’t known it until that awful near-murder. “I met you right after that, and when I shook your hand, I felt nothing.”

  He frowned. “Odd reason to marry someone, feeling nothing.”

  “Maybe, but... when you feel emotions from everyone you meet, feeling nothing is... peace. Calm. Wonderful.”

  “I didn’t want to feel either,” he said, his voice low. “After Michelle and Melissa, it seemed too painful. I tried to shut everything down. Pretend I didn’t care about anything. But I did.” He brushed my cheek again, with his lips this time. “I do.”

  “Me too,” I whispered, unable to speak louder through the shivers his kiss had sent through me.

  We looked at each other for a long moment and I felt like I was seeing him for the first time. “I want to help you,” I said finally, “but I’m scared. If you have access to all your emotions, and I feel them, then where do I go to get quiet?”

  “Maybe,” he said, “if I’m not freaking out so much I can be a safe place even if I’m not quiet. Do you think?”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly. Even if that didn’t turn out to be true, anything had to be better than the awful outbursts I’d been enduring from him.

  “How do you feel them? Emotions, I mean.” Owen’s eyes searched my face. “Can you feel mine right now?”

  I shook my head. “Pam taught me how to have an energy field up, like a barrier.”

  “So you can bring that down, if you choose.”

  I nodded.

  He waited.

  I loved him, in that moment, for not pushing me. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and lowered the shield as I reached out and took his hands both to make reading him easier and because I wanted to touch him.

  Gratitude hit me first, bright and vibrant, and my eyes filled with tears even before I felt his terror for his mother and his rage at a world that would take her from him and his disgust at himself for what he’d done at work. The emotions came without context, but I knew him so well I knew what they all meant.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said softly, “for what I’ve put you through lately.”

  His emotions echoed his words, flooding me with his regret and a desperate desire for my forgiveness. I’d had no idea how much I mattered to him, but I knew now.

  Just as much as he mattered to me.

  “Owen,” I murmured, so overwhelmed I hardly knew I was doing it. “Owen.”

  He withdrew one hand from mine and touched my face, brushing away the tears I hadn’t known were falling, then leaned in and kissed me.

  With my shield down and his emotions freer than they’d ever been, the passion that had always been between us, present even in our first kiss, swelled in an instant. I gasped as his pleasure fueled mine fueled his fueled mine until I lost track of who was feeling what. It didn’t matter anyhow. We were feeling and that was all that mattered.

  With no discussion, we broke apart and hurried hand-in-hand back to the condo. Even with just our hands joined the fire kept blazing, and once we were safely home we clung to each other and let it consume us.

  “Go change,” he murmured against my lips eventually, “but hurry.”

  I buried my face in his shoulder. “I haven’t been naked with a man since my first time,” I whispered. “Afraid of the emotions. But now...”

  Hope and happiness, his mixed with mine, filled me, and he said, “With me... you would?”

  I nodded against him, and he raised my face and kissed me and guided me to the bedroom without breaking our connection.

  In bed we undressed each other without rushing despite how hungry we were, and I cried with pure joy when our bodies were pressed together and our legs entwined. I could feel his emotions, his happiness and pleasure and care for me, and nothing had ever felt so good.

  He kissed my tears away, which only made them fall faster, then pulled a condom from his bedside table. I wanted to tell him not to, wanted to feel everything there was to feel, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words because I wasn’t sure I was ready.

  When he entered me, his chest skimmed over mine and the feel of his naked skin stroking me drove me wild in an instant. I dug my nails into his back and pulled him closer, gasping with pleasure and connection, and he shuddered and groaned my name and ran his hands over every part of me he could reach, every part he’d never touched before without a barrier.

  There were no barriers but the condom now, and losing myself in his body and our emotions and the sensations made me forget all about that.

  We’d had sex many times, but this time we were making love and every cell of my body knew it. We kissed and caressed and bonded with each other, and eventually we reached the greatest peak we’d ever known together and tumbled over into ecstasy and then into a warm calm quiet place where nothing mattered but us.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I skipped my friend dinner the next night without hesitation, because all I wanted to do was be with Owen. We left work as early as we could and talked endlessly, both of us in tea
rs more than once as he let his emotions out and I picked them up.

  He told me how it had been for him growing up, how Linda’s relationship with his dad had been full of anger and how he’d learned that the only way to handle anger was to bury it away because Linda’s outbursts had scared him so much. He apologized again and again for the coffee-throwing incident, and for shutting me out. In turn, I apologized for not telling him about my empath ability. He understood, and asked endless questions about how it worked and what I could do.

  I asked about him and Kelly at the Christmas party, and he admitted with embarrassment but no defensiveness that he had held her close while dancing because he’d felt like I was about to leave him and he needed the warmth and comfort of a hug from a friend. I told him that Kelly wanted to be more than his friend, and we laughed together at his genuine shock.

  In short, we talked about absolutely anything and everything, and I loved it.

  I hadn’t tried to do anything to control his emotions, though. He hadn’t asked me to and I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to even if he did. What if I hurt him somehow, or changed him? I didn’t know enough about my skills to be sure I wouldn’t. We’d decided that I would keep my energy field up most of the time, as he had the right to his own emotions being private, but that if he wanted to let me in he’d give my hand or arm two quick squeezes and I’d drop the shield if I felt comfortable.

  We spent all day Saturday together, sometimes talking out loud and sometimes just cuddling in silence as we never had before, and on Sunday the entire family came over.

  Owen’s idea, which had surprised me. I’d always felt like he was holding himself distant from them, and he’d admitted that on Thursday night. “I didn’t trust them not to leave,” he’d said. “Didn’t trust anyone not to leave.” The way his arms had tightened around me told me he’d included me in ‘anyone’, and also that he didn’t any more.

  But on Friday, after we made love with the same tenderness and passion we’d had on Wednesday, he’d suggested that getting everyone together to talk about Linda’s upcoming surgery and what it meant for us would be a good idea and further that we should host. Hearing the hope behind his words, his longing to really have a family, the same longing and hope I felt, meant there was no chance I’d refuse him.

  As we did the final preparations for the family’s arrival, I realized that maybe part of Linda’s insistence on everyone attending the cruise was that she also felt her family wasn’t as close as she’d like. Well, maybe we could change that.

  Once everyone was seated in our living room, Austin looked at me with his head to one side. “You look different. You okay?”

  I smiled at him. I knew what he was seeing: while I did my makeup I’d noticed that my eyes looked brighter and there was an ease in my face I’d never seen before. My new connection with Owen was making everything better. “Great.”

  “Yeah,” he said, still studying me. Then he smiled. “Yeah, I think you are. Excellent. You certainly look great. Not that you don’t always, of course. Too good-looking for Owen, I’ve always said.”

  “Don’t be hitting on my wife,” Owen said, faking annoyance but wearing a smile that said he now knew for sure that Austin wasn’t and that even if he did I wouldn’t go for it.

  “Fine.” Austin heaved a huge sigh. “I’ll just hit on mine.”

  “Thanks a lot, Owen,” Corinne said, laughing.

  Linda, curled up in an armchair, said, “Nice to see you all getting along. By which I mean fighting with each other.”

  We laughed and Nicholas said, “That’s what family does, right?”

  We all nodded, and Owen gave my arm the two quick squeezes. I let my field open and felt a deep warm contentment coming from him. He’d wanted us all to be a family, and now we were.

  I smiled at him, and he smiled back, then I closed the field as a wave of sadness and fear rushed at me from Linda.

  “Can we maybe pay some attention to me now?”

  “Don’t we always?” Austin said wryly.

  Ignoring him, she said, “So. Surgery’s a week from tomorrow. You’ll all be there, right? I don’t want to wake up by myself. Or go in by myself, for that matter.”

  “We’ve got it all coordinated,” Melissa said, consulting a printout that I knew was the email in which we’d set things up. “Owen and Celia are picking you up and taking you to the hospital for seven in the morning. My mom is babysitting Nolan and Jenna but she can’t get started quite that early, so Nicholas and I and Austin and Corinne will drop the kids off at her place and arrive while you’re in surgery. But all six of us will be there when you wake up.”

  “Six people to do my bidding,” Linda said, with a faint smile. “Should be just about enough.”

  “Why not seven?”

  Linda turned to Austin. “What do you mean?”

  I could tell from her expression that she knew full well what he meant and didn’t want him to say it, but he raised his chin and did it anyhow. “Raul. He should be there. He’s your husband.”

  “Not any more.”

  “Have you divorced him? Legally?”

  She raised her chin too, looking so much like Austin it made me want to laugh though nothing was funny, and didn’t answer.

  “Thought not. Then he’s your husband. And if he hasn’t divorced you either, then maybe the guy’s insane enough to still want to be with you. You should at least tell him what’s going on.”

  She tried to set her jaw, but her lips trembled.

  “Mom,” Nicholas said, “I think he’d want to know. I really do.”

  Linda hung her head and stared down at her left hand, where her wedding ring had once been, and whispered, “Probably.” Then, as if shocked at herself, she snapped her head up and said, “But I’m not telling him. I can’t face it if he doesn’t want to know, if he doesn’t care. I’ve got enough to worry about without that. Got it?”

  She made eye contact with each of us, making sure we understood.

  “Okay, fine,” she said when she’d checked on all of us. “Good. Now, let’s stop talking about this stupid surgery and talk about the cruise.” She gave me a mock-fierce look. “No art classes to get in the way this year, are there?”

  “I meant to sign up,” I said, pretending to be horrified, “but I forgot. So I guess we have to go.”

  “Yes, you do.” She looked from me to Owen. “And no deals deserting her for the casino every minute, okay? I’m familiar with your work and I don’t like it. And I have cancer so you have to do what I want.”

  “When have we not done what you want?”

  Ignoring Austin, Owen said, “Celia and I did fine when we went to Vegas.” He gave me a sly sideways glance. “Are you okay with repeating how we were there?”

  My mind filled with the memory of making out with him in that bathtub and my body caught fire at once. His eyes showed he was thinking and feeling the same, so I grinned at him and toyed with my horseshoe necklace. “Well, I guess I could put up with that.”

  He burst out laughing, and Linda said, “Share the joke?”

  Owen shook his head without looking away from me. “It’s private, Mom.”

  “Ah,” she said, somehow making the single syllable filthy. “Good.”

  Part of me wondered what the others thought of this, but I didn’t care enough to look away from Owen to find out. He and I were more than okay with it, and that was all that mattered.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  None of us were okay a week and a day later.

  Owen and I picked up Linda right on time, and I’d braced myself to listen to her complaining all the way to the hospital about how it was still dark and she wanted to be in bed, but her terrified silence was far worse.

  I’d insisted she sit in the front with Owen, with her seat pushed all the way back so she’d be more comfortable, and after a few moments I leaned forward from my spot behind her and wrapped my arms as far around her as I could reach. She caught hold of my wrist an
d held me closer. We still didn’t speak, but there wasn’t anything to say anyhow.

  At stop lights Owen rested his hand atop hers, letting his arm lean against mine at the same time. It was the closest we could get to a group hug, and every time he did it I felt her relax a little bit more.

  In the hospital parking lot, when I’d helped her out of the car she glanced at the first hints of the sunrise then took a quick look down at her leg before throwing her arms around me. “God,” she murmured against my shoulder. “I can’t.”

  I squeezed her tight. “You can,” I whispered. “You’re the strongest person I know. We’ll all help. You’ll get through it.”

  She held on in silence for a long moment, as the sky began to brighten around us, then leaned back and kissed me on the cheek. “You picked a good one, Owen,” she said, her voice shaking but a hint of her usual attitude present, especially when she went on with, “Not sure why she puts up with you, though. But you picked a good one.”

  “I agree,” he said, wrapping an arm around each of us. “Both parts. And actually I think she picked me.”

  Linda winked at me. “Smart girl.” She tapped my horseshoe. “And lucky.”

  “Indeed. He’s pretty awesome.”

  “No, I meant because it scored you me as a mother-in-law. Good move.”

  I laughed. “I’ll only say this once, and I’ll deny it if you tell anyone, but yeah. You’re right.”

  She laughed too, and hugged me again, then linked her arms through ours and we walked together to the hospital.

  Once she’d been checked in, the nurse said, “You can have one person with you, if you want, until you go to the operating room.”

  Linda looked from me to Owen and back again. “I can’t split you guys up,” she said, but I could hear in her voice how badly she wanted to. She’d been told not to wear makeup, but no amount of blush could have hidden how pale she’d become at the thought of being left alone.

  “Today’s about you,” I said. “We’re fine. What do you want to do?”

  She swallowed hard. “Can I borrow your husband?”