Jared didn’t agree. He thought I was clumsy, slow, and impatient.
Sleep came more easily than ever. Every night, I fell into bed, my muscles screaming for rest. Dreams of Jack were replaced with calculated moves and steps I would take to get the upper hand in hand-to-hand combat. Jared would tend to my sore spots. Regardless of his efforts, the area would inevitably be a series of purple splotches in the morning.
The weeks passed, and once the trees shed their leaves, Winter wasted no time covering the debris of Fall with a blanket of white. Ignoring Cynthia’s protests, the boys moved the furniture in the Great Room to transform it to a sparring ring.
The target practice, weight training, and sparring was nearly a daily ritual. Jared and Bex were always present. Once Claire caught wind of our new hobby, she came when she could. I always looked forward to the days she would join us.
Claire was more than capable to do everything her brothers could, but I related to her with the knowledge that she had to work that much harder to prove herself. I would never be as fast or as strong as the Hybrids, but I earned their respect with my stubborn refusal to quit or rest. Claire understood my resolve, and when she looked at me, she assumed strength when the boys assumed weakness.
The mirror was proof of not only my mistakes from the bruises, but my hard work. My arms weren’t nearly as tight as Claire’s, but they were taking on a toned look that I was proud of.
The day before Thanksgiving, Jared finally offered his first word of encouragement.
“Better,” he said with an emotionless nod.
That single word gave me the determination to continue. I was only human, but if I could keep up with Jared, Claire, and Bex, I could hold my own with Donovan, or Shax’s other human minions. At least I could try.
Thanksgiving Day arrived. Cynthia attended the Macy’s Day parade in New York with some of her charity chums, and I helped Claire and Lillian in the kitchen while the boys set the table and kept the dishes washed.
Every one of my favorite spices and herbs permeated the air. Laughter was the background music to the busy atmosphere. Lillian noticed a difference in me right away, and wanted to discuss my training. She took a keen interest in it, wishing she had thought of it as well.
Bex set the turkey on the table, and sat beside his mother. Claire grabbed one of my hands, Jared took the other.
“Our Lord in Heaven,” Lillian began. “Thank you for our many blessings. The wonderful food on the table, the health and safety of our family, and that we are all sitting together on this day of thanks.”
“Amen,” Jared said, nodding.
“Aye Men!” Bex said, digging into the various dishes on the table.
Part-way through dinner, I noticed Claire was quiet, thoughtfully chewing and smiling at the appropriate times in conversation. Jared of course noticed when I did, and he watched his sister.
“Claire?”
She met his eyes, but didn’t speak.
Lillian smiled. “She’s fine. Let her be.”
“This is good ladies,” Bex said, his mouth full of food.
“Thank you, Son,” Lillian said. “Jared? Would it be a good time to ask how much longer you’ll be engaged?”
“No,” Jared said, shaking his head with a smile. “I just got her to agree to set a date, Mom. Don’t ruin my hard work.”
I laughed. “She has a point.”
“She does?” Jared said, surprised.
I patted his knee. “My parents’ anniversary is on a Saturday this year.”
Lillian’s eyes brightened. “Oh, it is! How wonderful! June first, then?”
Jared turned to me, cautious. “June first?”
“It’s an easy date to remember,” I shrugged.
“Of this year?” Jared asked, cautiously hopeful.
Lillian and I shared the same boisterous laugh. “Yes, Honey. Seven months from now.”
The smile that crept across Jared’s face was slow, but it spanned from one side to the other. “June first.”
The conversation was monopolized by wedding plans after that, and the afternoon was filled with excitement and anticipation.
We said our goodbyes with kisses and hugs to Bex, Claire and Lillian, and then Jared led me to the Escalade by the hand. Once inside, he leaned over the console, took my face gingerly in his hands, and pressed his lips against mine.
When he finally pulled away, I felt a bit dizzy. A small twinge of guilt settled in. It was so easy to make him happy, and I had grossly procrastinated something so simple.
Jared drove slowly to the house, brushing my hand with his thumb as he held it. A storm had rolled in, and it fed into the new energy that almost crackled in the air between us, as if he couldn’t wait to get home. He intertwined his fingers in mine, kissing each of my fingers. “I feel like you said yes all over again.”
“I told you I would set a date.”
“You did,” he said. His mouth widened to a broad grin. “Man! I feel like I want to stand on a rooftop and scream! This is one of the best days of my life!”
I giggled, nearly manic from the emanation of Jared’s mood. Just as the moment peaked, it fizzled.
“What are you doing?” I said. He slowed the Escalade to a stop. “You’re not really going climb onto a rooftop, are you?”
“No,” he said, his smile fading fast. “I spoke to soon.”
It was then that I noticed the blue and red lights dancing all around us. “We’re being pulled over? But, you weren’t speeding.”
“That’s not what he wants.”
I grabbed Jared’s hand, seeing the dark silhouette of the police officer. The windshield wipers knocked back and forth as we waited for his approach. He knocked on Jared’s window with the butt of his flashlight.
“Officer,” Jared said, pressing the button for the window. The dark glass buzzed as it lowered and then disappeared, revealing a face I had longed to see again.
“Ryan!” I yelped. My mouth fell open in utter shock.
“Good evening, Nina. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.”
“Don’t be an ass. It’s raining,” Jared said.
Ryan nodded. “Just accompany me to the cruiser, Ma’am,” he said, sounding very professional and detached.
I nodded, looking to Jared. “It’s okay. I’ll be right back.” I kissed him, and then scrambled to open the door. I tried to be calm, to preserve Jared’s feelings, but Ryan was just a few feet away. I had been so desperate to see him, and waited so long, any false composure at that moment was impossible.
“Nina,” Jared called after me, but the tires sloshing through the wet pavement as cars passed by drowned out the following words.
It was wrong, but in my haste to speak to Ryan again, I ignored Jared and ran to the cruiser at full speed, paying no attention to the rain.
The air was biting, and the rain instantly dampened my clothes. I yanked open the passenger-side door, assuming it would be as cozy as the Escalade.
It wasn’t.
“Cheese and rice!” I said, crossing my arms and bending at the waist. “You could hang meat in here!”
“Sorry,” Ryan said, turning up the heat. “I keep it cool so I can wear my coat. Can’t really waste time putting it on before I make a stop.”
I laughed once. “A cop?”
“Yeah.” He smiled and looked down. “Yeah.”
“I guess this means you’re not coming back to Brown.”
“Looks that way,” he said without humor.
He was thicker than I remembered, but his face was thin. Lean was probably a better word. A hardened expression replaced his sweet smile. He appeared older; a long, weary line of disappointment and horrendous experiences no man should ever have to encounter reflected in his once bright, green eyes.
By his hesitation alone, I could tell the effort to pull me over wasn’t due to the anticipation of a happy reunion.
“You stopped writing.”
“I did
,” he admitted. “I used to sit on a dune and watch the sun set, thinking about you…writing half of what I wanted. That was my nightly routine for a long time.”
“My postman has some explaining to do.”
“I only sent a few of them. I was in love with you for a long time, Nina.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying the swallow the lump that had formed in my throat. It was pointless to apologize after what I had done to him, but the words fell out of my mouth.
“Why? I’m not the first guy to go war after my heart got broken. Half of my buddies wrote home to girls that didn’t love them back. Some of them had girls that quit waiting. I was one of the lucky ones, even though your smile haunted me for a long time.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“No,” he said, matter-of-factly. “After leaving, going half-way across the world, I still missed you. I didn’t think it would ever go away. But something changed, Nina.”
“Oh?”
Ryan smiled. “I quit loving you.”
I nodded, my feelings conflicted. A small part of me was hurt, and maybe a bit jealous that he had finally gotten over me. The rest of me was overjoyed. “That’s…good? I guess?”
“No, that’s wrong. I still love you. I will always love you as my friend. But I’m in love with someone else.”
A grin streaked across my face for a fleeting moment. “That’s exciting. Do I know her?”
“Actually…I think you do. And I need your help.”
“Anything. I sort of owe you, don’t I?”
Ryan sighed, nodding. “That’s where I was going with this.” He paused for a moment. “You ever get the feeling you’re never alone? I mean, even when you are.”
His words spoke to every moment of my life, but I remained quiet.
Ryan ignored my silence. “Do you remember the night Jared came into the bar? And the last night we were together?”
My heart began to pound. I didn’t know what direction the conversation had taken, but I felt instantly uncomfortable. “What about it?”
“I remember three things about both of those nights: Jared’s sister, how strong she was, and those crazy blue eyes. Everyone else says I’m crazy, Nina…but you…you I know will understand.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I said, feigning bewilderment.
Ryan huffed, frustrated. “The night in your father’s office. You said I couldn’t tell anyone about our plan because Jared would find out. I thought he was in the F.B.I. or something, but it’s bigger than that, isn’t it?”
I touched his arm. “You’re seeing someone professional, right? About what happened to you over there?” The words had to be said to protect those I loved, but the guilt was overwhelming. Ryan didn’t deserve that from me — he had come to me for a reason: because he trusted me to believe him. If the consequences were different, I would have been the friend he’d always been to me, but my choice was clear.
He paused. Anger made the skin around his eye twitch. “What makes you think anything happened to me over there?”
“I uh…,” I swallowed. “I really should be going,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
Ryan grabbed my arm. “I saw her eyes. The day she saved my life, I saw her. No one has eyes like her, and no woman that size could have carried me out of there. Tell me where Claire is, Nina.”
My door flew open, and Jared pulled me to my feet. Ryan scrambled out of his cruiser, desperate. “I just want to talk to her,” he yelled over the rain. “I don’t need to know how she did it. I just…need to see her again.”
Jared glanced at me, and then back to Ryan. “Unless you’re charging us with something, we’re leaving. Good to see you again, Ryan.”
“I’m not crazy!” Ryan said, desperate. The rain was more of a downpour, but he was unfazed.
My steps were small and quick, trying to keep up with Jared as he led me by the arm to the Escalade. Once inside, I turned around, holding the seat with both hands as I watched the stand off between the two men I loved in such opposite ways. Ryan, in his puffy, standard-issue policeman’s coat simply watched Jared glower at him. It was a new side of him, as I half-expected a nasty exchange of words.
Jared slammed the car door behind him before shoving the shifter into gear. The speedometer passed the point of speeding before we were out of Ryan’s radar range, as if Jared dared him to stop us again.
“Okay. Jared? Jared!” I said, fumbling with my seat belt.
“He knows.”
“It certainly seems that way,” I said, bracing myself as Jared weaved through the traffic. “Claire will lay low for a while like you said to. It will be fine.”
“You heard him, Nina. He’s been holding onto this for months. He’s not going to let it go.”
“Okay…so we figure it out. It’s not the worst thing that could happen right now. You told me, and the world didn’t come to an end.”
“Yours did.”
I winced. Jared feeling that way had never occurred to me. “That’s not true,” I said, shaking my head. I rested my hand on his. “Everything before that night was make-believe. This is what’s real.”
Jared pulled into the drive of my parent’s home, and then waited for the garage door to open. “You don’t work for the police department, Nina. The same one that Claire meticulously picked off a year ago.”
“He just wants to know why he saw her in the desert, Jared. It has nothing to do with Graham.”
Jared closed his eyes, exasperated. “Maybe not to Ryan, but for someone that can’t pass his psych eval and is still in physical therapy, he was accepted into the the Providence P.D. without a hitch. It wouldn’t be hard for someone to connect Ryan to you, and anyone who could pose a problem knows you are a direct connection to me, and Claire…and Graham. This is not an innocent oops, Nina. This is a potential threat.”
“Everything is a potential threat to you people,” I grumbled.
“You people? Since when are we not on the same side?” Jared said, taken aback. He shook his head, and then headed to the house without waiting.
I followed in silence, cursing myself. An hour before, we had set the date of our wedding. Now I was getting the cold shoulder.
Bex sat the top of the stairs, cleaning his fingernails with a large knife, nodding to us as we passed. He was less of the boy I knew, and more like his older sister. Even Lillian’s unparalleled goodness couldn’t prevent Bex from losing his innocence.
Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll er…I’ll see you in the morning. I’ve got some things to do.”
“You’re going to find Claire?”
“We need to talk.”
“Okay,” I nodded, wrapping my arms around him. He shifted, uncomfortable in my arms. “I didn’t mean it. I suppose I’m just surprised at your reaction. He’s not in love with me, anymore. I thought you’d be relieved.”
I gripped his t-shirt in my fists, bracing for him to pull away. Instead, he paused in thought, considering my words. “That means Ryan being Claire’s Taleh means something else, and we don’t know what that is.”
I sighed, irritated at his negativity. “Maybe it just means that they are supposed to be together. Like us.”
Several emotions scrolled across Jared’s face, finally settling on a mixture of relief and delight. He tightened his arms around my back. “You think so?”
“What other explanation is there?”
A wide grin spread across Jared’s face. “It doesn’t matter. I like that one.”
Chapter Twelve
The One
“No way.”
“Way.”
“A cop?” Beth said, her voice raised an octave.
“One of Providence’s finest,” I replied.
She took a sip of coffee, and then shook her head. “I don’t believe it. Chad hasn’t said a word.”
“Ryan hasn’t told anyone.”
“He told you.”
My eyebro
ws shot up. An explanation consisting of Claire, explosions, and the ice blue eyes in Ryan’s memory would take the conversation to an unfavorable end, so I kept it simple.“Touché.”
The bell above the coffee ship door chimed, and we both looked up, waiting for Kim.
“Where is she?” Beth asked, disappointed.
“Late.” I knew she was with Jared, but I couldn’t exactly share that with Beth. She was the last bit of normal I had left, and I wasn’t going to share her with the crazy part of my life — even if that meant lying.
“Was Jared just pissed beyond belief?”
“Um…kind of. I guess. But not about that.”
“What about, then?”
“That he pulled us over for no reason, I suppose.” I lied again. For a moment I silently counted how many non-truths I had told her in the span of just a few minutes, and wondered how many more I would have to tell. Beth was my best friend, but it was for her own good. If there was a lesson to be learned in the chaos of my life, ignorance was bliss.
Beth and I chatted about upcoming papers to write, meetings at work, the upcoming Christmas party that Sasha had been obsessing over, and of course, Ryan.
“We’d better get going,” Beth said, glancing at her watch.
“The wind is terrible today,” I said, pulling on my coat, hat and scarf. The snow was falling in large chunks, and the street had already turned into a gray, slushy mess.
“I know, it sucks,” Beth said. “Fall is non-existent here.”
“Oh. Right. You don’t get much snow in Oklahoma, do you?”
Beth laughed once in disbelief. “Yes we get snow. Sometimes a foot or so. It’s just on top of an inch of ice.”
“But…it’s a southern state.”
“So?” Beth said, waiting for more crazy to come out of my mouth.
“Never mind.”
We walked to the Beemer together, trying to navigate the patches of snow that hadn’t been cleared.
“Hi,” a deep voice said, greeting us.
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