by J. K. Hogan
Chapter Twenty-One
Missing. Lost at sea. Those were the kinds of terms Justice heard bandied about as he sat inside the Seattle Harbor Patrol building, waiting for news on Nic. Each time one was said, there was an unspoken ‘presumed dead’ tacked on the end.
Justice could hear what wasn’t being said. They talked about search and rescue, but he knew damn well they were considering it search and recovery. He knew they didn’t expect to find Nic at all.
The story was that Nic had taken the Galeocerdo out for a solo cruise four days ago. He’d checked in with Sam when he passed through the Ballard Locks, the passage that separates the freshwater shipping channel of Lake Washington to the saltwater of the Puget Sound and the ocean beyond.
When the freak storm cell came through and Nic didn’t check in, Samara got worried and notified the Harbor Patrol. Thus, here they all were, sitting around impotently, wringing their hands and crying. Okay, Justice admitted, maybe he was the only one crying.
So Justice and his entire crew had descended upon the Harbor Patrol headquarters like a flock of angry seagulls, squawking and flapping about, getting absolutely nothing done.
Finally, they were shepherded into a drab waiting room by a woman dressed in civilian clothes, a secretary, maybe, and told that “the search was ongoing” and that they would have to wait.
Justice sat on a stained couch with his head in his hands, shoulder to shoulder with Rory. Lara was on the other side of him, rubbing his back. Samara paced the floor in front of them. Amelia, who’d flown to Seattle with Justice, was back at the San Valentino, cleaning and stocking the galley; generally fussing as mothers were wont to do when their children were hurting. Surprisingly enough, even Rich was there with them in the waiting room.
Huffing out a breath, Justice tried to focus on Sam’s fretful movements. “Does he do this often? Go out to sea by himself?”
Sam shrugged and kept pacing. “It’s not unheard of. He’d usually take a one or two man crew with him, just to help him run the lines, but he’s gone out alone before. He usually doesn’t go through the Locks alone, but he’s been feeling rather solitary lately.”
There was no accusation in her words. There didn’t need to be. There was enough recrimination in Justice’s own mind to account for everyone else’s. He was the reason Nic had gone out alone. J'accuse, he thought to himself.
A uniformed officer walked by, giving them a look of frustration. They’d been told multiple times to go home; that there was nothing they could do. But Justice figured they’d try just that much harder if all of Nic’s grieving friends were staring them down.
Honestly, Justice had lost count of how long they’d been waiting. He was beginning to go stir crazy. He tried making small talk to break up the monotony of watching the policemen go back and forth.
“Where’s Maia?” he asked, turning to Rory.
Rory shrugged one of his gigantic shoulders noncommittally. “Portland. Some work thing. I dunno.”
Justice narrowed his eyes at Rory. Trouble in paradise already? They’d been married for like five minutes. Okay, it had been about two months, but still…Rory didn’t seem all that broken up that she wasn’t around. Whatever. He’d have to deal with Rory’s shit once Nic was back safe, preferably in his arms.
Samara stomped back over to the administration desk in her blood-red heels, and loomed over the poor, mousy woman sitting there. “What’s going on? Have they expanded the search area?”
The woman looked at Samara from head to toe, taking in her tight fitting polka-dot dress, her suicide rolls, tattoos, and stilettos, and then returned bored eyes to her face. God knows, she’d probably dealt with this same situation countless times. “I’m sorry ma’am, I haven’t heard anything new since the last time you asked. Fifteen minutes ago. Have a seat and we’ll let you know if there are any developments.”
Justice couldn’t take it anymore. He thought about all he’d gone through to get here; all the therapy, officially coming out at home, reconciling with his mom; all so that he could be the man Nic deserved. They’d been through all of that, only to have their chance at happiness ripped away from them in a cruel twist of Fate. He thought about what it might have been like for Nic, trapped in that storm, slipping away into oblivion, alone, never even knowing that he had the love and support of the man he loved.
Justice crumbled. His head sank down on his knees, buried his hands in the hair at the back of his neck and gripped tight enough to hurt. And he wailed. And he sobbed. He unleashed all of his frustration, his longing, his pain, his fury into the air around him. He screamed and screamed until he thought he’d die, and then he screamed some more.
When he no longer had the breath to scream, he subsided into rib-cracking, shuddering sobs, until they were nothing but gulps for air through the constriction of his chest. His friends had immediately crowded around him, wrapping him up and clinging to him; they shielded him and let him come apart in a safe place. As the sobs finally slowed enough for him to be able to get oxygen back to his brain, he looked up at the merry band of misfits surrounding him. Well, look at that, he thought. A family. Home.
Completely worn out by his crying jag, Justice drifted in and out of consciousness, floating in blissful oblivion, where he didn’t have to think about the fact that Nic was most likely lying in a watery grave.
He’d been sleeping; dreaming, in fact. He was awakened by a commotion in the next room. All they could hear was shouting, the shuffle of feet, and the rustle of clothing and equipment. Moments later, a group of officers in foul-weather gear came rushing through the waiting area. None of them stopped to speak to Samara or Justice, they just jogged out of the building.
Sitting up from where he’d been slumped against Rory’s shoulder, Justice’s eyes darted back and forth as he followed their movement. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, not really expecting them to answer.
He rose on shaky legs and walked over to the secretary’s desk. He smiled emphatically at her. “Did they find something? Are they going on a rescue?”
She looked at him, obviously taking in his puffy eyes and hollowed cheeks, and he was sure she’d heard every bit of his meltdown. She seemed to take pity on him, probably a momentary lapse on her part. “A marooned vessel has been spotted. They’re going out to check for survivors.”
Justice choked back another sob. He should be encouraged by that news, but he was getting hung up on the “check for survivors” bit, as if surviving wasn’t likely. At a loss for words, he returned to his seat and sank down bonelessly between Rory and Lara. It seemed, though the search was making progress, that they were doomed to ‘hurry up and wait.’
* * * *
The frantic radio jibber-jabber that Justice just couldn’t quite understand was making him feel a little —okay, a lot homicidal. He’d fucking had it. He’d been patient. He’d been respectful. But now, he wanted some goddamn answers.
There had been a shift change, so there was a different secretary-looking-woman sitting at the desk. Fucking super, Justice thought. He tried to smooth out his features as he approached, so that he didn’t look quite so much like a nut job.
He went for a sweet smile, but it probably turned out more like a pained grimace. “Hi,” he said, making direct eye contact with mousy secretary number two. “Could you possibly tell me what’s happening with the marooned boat they found? We’re all really anxious to hear about our friend.”
The woman’s mouth pinched into a scowl and her small eyes narrowed, as if she’d heard the same song and dance a thousand times. “Sir, someone will be out here to speak with you as soon as possible. Please, have a seat.”
Justice’s hands curled into fists inside his jacket pockets, and he entertained a brief but satisfying fantasy of wringing the woman’s scrawny little neck. He bet she’d squawk like a chicken. Shaking himself out of his reverie, he tried again.
“I understand, ma’am. But there’s been a lot of radio chatter, so I was hoping
you could just tell me if there was news.”
Oh, bad form. He was apparently interrupting whatever soap she was watching on her phone, and she was not happy about it. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t have any official news to report. You’re not helping your friend by lurking around here, getting in the officers’ way, so I suggest you go home. We’ll call you when there’s anything you need to know.”
Justice saw red. He just lost it. “Just a goddamn minute. You listen to me. The man I love is out there somewhere, lost at fucking sea. Do you know what that fucking means? It means he’s probably dead. He probably died alone, miserable and scared.
“So pardon me for interrupting your trash TV, but I happen to think the status of the search and rescue of Nic Valentine is more important than Luke and goddamn Laura, or whatever the hell.”
The woman, her nametag read Misty, shrank away from him, her face registering shock, then fear. The couple of officers in the room touched their sidearms in an unconscious defensive move. Rory came up behind him and placed firm hands on his shoulders. “Dude —”
“No, goddamnit. She wants me to go home? To go home? Let me tell you something. That man out there, on or in the water somewhere, that you don’t seem to give two shits about…he is my fucking home. He’s it. He’s the only home I have, so if you want me to go home, then y’all better goddamn motherfucking find him!”
“Justice.”
He’d been screaming by the end of his tirade, so he almost didn’t hear the softly uttered word in the sandpaper-over-gravel voice; a voice that caused his heart to leap into his throat.
Justice whipped around and saw Nic, flanked by two harbor patrolmen and a Coast Guard officer. He was soaking wet, his lips were blue, and his hair hung in limp, dripping ropes. They’d wrapped him in a heavy duty wool blanket, but Justice could still see that he was shivering.
Nic had a cut above his right eye that had been treated with a butterfly bandage, and he had a few serious looking bruises, but he was alive. That was all Justice could think about. The man he loved was alive, and he was getting a second chance. He hadn’t run out of time after all.
Justice charged across the room and, without hesitation, gathered Nic into his arms and fused their lips together. Nic’s lips were cold at first touch, but then the inherent heat of his body, heat that said he was blessedly alive and relatively well, began to permeate the kiss, and Justice’s own body.
He forgot about who might be watching, about what he should or shouldn’t do in public, about anxiety and fear. He forgot about all of his nonsense, and kissed the man he loved. He kissed the man who was his home. He kissed him breathless.
When they finally parted, because goddamnit, the man needed air, Justice leaned his head back to look into Nic’s eyes, and it was like drowning. Justice was drowning in the blue that he never thought he’d get to see again. He stroked a shaky hand across Nic’s cold cheek, and then smiled so broadly that his jaw cracked.
“Oh my God, I never thought I’d see you again, never thought I’d get to tell you how much I love you.”
Nic’s chapped lips broke out into a brilliant smile. “You came home.”
Justice gave him one more brief but heated kiss before pulling away again. “I sure did, baby. And I’m never leaving again.”
Epilogue
Justice straightened his lapels in the mirror, in the parlor of his mother’s townhouse. He grinned at his reflection, because he looked pretty spiffy in his tux. He’d gone with a simple black Ralph Lauren three-piece, with a black mandarin collared shirt. He thought about cutting his hair shorter to tame the curls, but Nic had put the kibosh on that under threat of death or dismemberment.
So much had happened in the almost nine months since Nic had been rescued. Nic was knocked unconscious during the storm, so they were never able to fully piece together exactly what happened or how he survived. From what they could tell, a lightning strike had taken out the main mast, and the engine had blown while Nic was trying to power through the storm without sails. He’d been left adrift in the hurricane force winds.
His boat had run aground, and gotten hung up in the rocks on Skull Island. Nic was injured and stranded with no way of calling for help, his cell phone having been surrendered to the waves early on. He’d been barely hanging on to consciousness when the Coast Guard response boat had spotted him.
Justice shuddered, hating to think back on the time he almost lost the love of his life. He absently twisted the titanium ring on his left ring finger. He’d been an idiot to ever leave Seattle, but with the way things worked out, Justice thought he’d probably needed to take those steps; to find himself so he could come back and love Nic how he deserved. And that’s what he tried to do every day of their lives.
The parlor door opened, and Justice smiled at his mother when she entered the room. She looked like she’d gotten back some of the years she’d aged in the time they’d been separated. While her hair was still threaded with gray, it shone in the wavy coif the stylist had given her. Her skin was flushed with health, and he’d like to think with happiness as well. She was a woman with a new lease on life. Amelia gave him a shy smile. “How’s it coming?” she asked, her eyes shining.
“Almost ready.”
“Here, let me help.” She stepped up to him and ran her fingers underneath his collar and lapels, fixing it as he’d failed to do. Then she pinned the single, red rose boutonniere onto his jacket pocket, and brushed imaginary lint off of his shoulders. “There, perfect.”
He chuckled and took her hands to still them. “You can stop fussing, Ma. I’m ready.”
“Oh, hush,” she said with a sniffle. “It’s not every day my baby gets married.”
It was true. On December sixth, two thousand and twelve, marriage equality came to the state of Washington. Lucky for him, because that meant Justice could marry his man today.
After the momentous rescue, Nic spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, recovering from his ordeal. Justice never left his side. He’d only meant to come to Seattle to wait for news of the search, and then to beg Nic to take him back. He figured he’d still have to wrap up loose ends at home.
Justice was wrong. Once he had Nic back, he couldn’t bear to leave again. Amelia flew back to Charleston, packed Justice’s things and then her own. A week later, she was settled into her new townhouse and had joined a knitting circle, and Justice was firmly ensconced in Nic’s life. He even moved onto the yacht.
Living on the boat did wonders for his anxiety. He still had flare-ups, but being on the water all the time was so peaceful, and he was so happy with Nic, Justice found far fewer things to be anxious about.
Justice had always worked remotely, so it was easy to move his business wherever he decided to live. Their life wasn’t without its snags, and Justice still occasionally had problems with public displays of affection, but overall, they couldn’t be happier.
Two months ago, Justice had asked Nic to ‘take on his neuroses’ permanently. Nic chastised him for making fun of himself, then accepted his proposal. After that, he proceeded to show Justice just how happy it made him —repeatedly, without clothes.
“It’s time, love.” Amelia’s voice shook Justice out of his musings and brought him back to the present. He smiled, because the present was exactly where he wanted to be.
* * * *
Nic waited impatiently in front of the makeshift altar at the same lakeside park where he’d met Justice for their sailing date, all those months ago. He laid a hand over his stomach to calm the happy butterflies that swirled inside.
Any minute now, his man would step out of one of those cars lining the street, and walk down the aisle they’d created with a white fabric runner. Not wanting to conform to traditional heteronormative gender roles, Nic had tried to convince Justice that they should walk down the aisle together. But Justice had insisted on walking down the aisle to Nic. To his future, he’d said. He also thought it would be a good bonding experience to let Amelia escort
him.
Nic was helpless to deny that gorgeous man anything he wanted, so he’d agreed, and now he was as nervous as a whore in church. He discreetly wiped his sweaty hands on the sides of his jacket. Nic knew he looked good in his steel gray three piece tuxedo. He’d chosen a simple white shirt and a gray striped tie to top it off. The color brought out his eyes, and Justice could never resist his eyes.
Yeah, he knew he probably looked good, but he might as well have been in pajamas for all he cared. As long as Justice showed up, took his hand, and said those words, everything was all good.
A large black sedan pulled up to the curb and stopped, right at the end of the aisle. Nic was fairly sure it was the car Amelia had rented for the occasion, and he swallowed convulsively. This was it.
Nic watched with single-minded intent as a foot stepped out onto the curb, followed by another. Justice slowly unfolded himself from the backseat, stretched a little, and straightened his suit jacket.
Justice turned around to say something to his mother, who’d gotten out on the other side of the car. Nic’s heart flipped over in his chest when Justice looked back towards him and their gazes collided. Justice’s eyes went wide as he took in the scene before him, as if what was about to happen had finally just sunk in.
His expression softened infinitesimally and he broke out into a broad grin. Nic couldn’t help but smile back. Maybe it was trite, but it truly was the happiest day of his life, and he knew it would only get better from there.
Justice waited for Amelia to join him, and he held out his elbow for her to take hold of and together, they made their way down the grassy aisle to Nic. Until this moment, Nic had honestly never understood why people cried at weddings. Weren’t they supposed to be happy? But as he watched his man approach, his eyes grew misty, and he had to swallow past a lump in his throat.
When Justice finally reached where Nic stood, Amelia turned and kissed him on the cheek. Then she reached over and tugged Nic down so she could do the same for him. With one last sniffle, she took her seat in the front row. Attached to her seat was a memorial sash for Nic’s dad, representing the presence of his memory that would always be in Nic’s life.
