I’m supposed to be Netflix-binging and eating ice cream in a hotel robe, right now—not learning how to purify water in the middle of the damn forest. How is it fair that I’m here and Brent is probably shacked up with Tony somewhere? He’s the one who cheated! He’s the one who ruined everything. Cockroaches like him manage to scuttle through everything.
The wheezing hurts my lungs and I hack until colorful splotches flash before my eyes. It’s just now hitting me that I haven’t grieved yet. For the town, for the coast, for myself…
It happened. It’s still happening.
Once I open my mind to the memories, they come flooding in like a jumpy film reel. Parking my car in a garage behind the hotel, checking in, completely oblivious to the shifting underground. It was gorgeous yesterday. Maybe a little cloudy, but hey, some sun is better than none at all. Then I decided to walk around, get a feel for the town…
That set everything in motion. I could’ve died in the hotel, or worse, gotten trapped under floors and floors of rubble. I’d have lain there, mangled in suffocating silence, praying for help that would never come.
I wrap my arms around myself, still coughing and choking on my tears. My sobs sound so pathetic out here. I wish I could stop. Memories of the shaking come next, memories so fresh I swear I feel tremors even now. The blurry fire goes wild, and logs start rolling. Vincent’s backpack falls over. No, not memories—an aftershock! Where the hell is he?
My heart hammers out a crescendoing warning as the trees rustle back and forth, struggling to cling with their roots. Everything inside me screams to get down and find something to hold on to, but I don’t. I’m running. Stumbling.
The earth pitches, and I fly forward, scraping against the pungent forest floor. My bandages were filthy before, but now they’re unrecognizable, caked in muddied soil. I register it on some level, but it doesn’t matter. I’m crawling, scrambling to find my footing, screaming Vincent’s name. I don’t know why, but I need him with a desperation I can’t explain.
It’s so dark beyond the fire’s crazed glow. I can’t remember which way he went, which way the road is. The earth rolls in angry waves, and a nearby tree succumbs to its destructive ire. Am I losing it again?
“What part of drop, cover, and hold did you miss?” Vincent’s frustrated voice reaches my ears from within the swallows of darkness.
I reach out my hand, but I’m drowning. The inky depths are pulling me under. Water fills my lungs and steals my gasping breath. I’m choking. I can’t—
“You’re here,” he barks in my ear, pulling me against his chest on the ground, “in the forest. With me. The shock’s over.”
My brain short-circuits, and all of the water rushing around me—rushing through me—dissipates into nothingness. I’m left empty. Spent.
“Shit. What happened to you while we were separated?” he asks above my head, but his voice is still far off. “Are you having flashbacks?”
I can’t answer him. I don’t know. Was it a flashback of the tsunami or another hallucination twisting my mind? Is there a difference? I close my eyes against him, too tired to over-think the implications, and drag in a deep, shaky breath.
“Just keep telling yourself where you are.”
“I went under,” I finally manage. “I don’t know how long. I got hit… a roof hit me. I rafted on it until I heard Gizmo.”
“And then what?” His tone is softer now.
“She was…” The images assault my mind, spreading fresh fire across my broken palms. “She was barking in the window of a house that had gotten swept away. I jumped. Caught my hands on the jagged glass.”
I stretch my fingers, and then curl them into burning fists. “I hung there, over the water, until that statue rammed through.”
“The one from town?”
“Yeah.” My wits return to me, one by one. Suddenly, I’m all too aware of my face against his chest—his warm, rock-hard chest.
“What’s it have to do with the story?”
“It gave me a boost. I climbed in and saw what all the barking was about. There was an old woman lying on the floor, dead. It must’ve been Gizmo’s owner.”
“Oh.”
“The house got caught on the hillside somewhere. When the water overtook the first floor and started flooding the second, I shoved Gizmo in my jacket and jumped into the trees. I climbed until we were within leaping distance of a rooftop and just… went for it. Some guys pulled us down, and that’s all I know. I woke up by a fire in triage.”
“So, you were a hero.”
A dry laugh agitates my lungs as I pull back from him. “Are you serious? I was terrified. The entire time. I thought I was going to die.”
“You think heroes don’t get scared? If you’re not terrified, you’re not risking anything.”
I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and rock back on my knees. “So, why didn’t the aftershock bother you?”
He hikes one shoulder, back to nonchalance. “‘Cause my bogeyman doesn’t live underwater.”
“Oh yeah? Where’s your bogeyman live, Vincent?”
His eyes take on a distant glint as he snatches his thermos off the ground and pushes himself to his feet. “Inside me.”
CHAPTER 13
“Dude,” I start in on him, “you can’t just say that and then change the subject.”
“Watch me.” He holds out a hand to help me up—which I begrudgingly accept—and then treks back to the fire. “Come on. We should try to knock those logs back in.”
I follow suit, even more tired and confused than before. What did he mean by the bogeyman lives inside him—his PTSD?
“You want to grab the pot and a cloth for me?” He’s already squatting beside the flames, situating his mesh screen over the pegs I arranged in a square.
“Yeah.” I hurry over to the backpack and pass him the requested items. If he’s going to trust me enough to open up about this stuff, I’ve got to make myself more of a partner and less of a charge. “So… was that the second or third aftershock?”
“Third. Naveen said you slept through the small one before I brought the dog in last night.”
“Ah.”
Vincent filters his water through the cloth, back and forth, until he finally sets the pot on his makeshift grill to boil. Each movement is measured, practiced, as if he’s done it a hundred times. “What?”
“What?” I echo back at him, caught off guard.
“You’re staring at me like I’m a jigsaw puzzle.”
“You can’t even see my face.”
“I can feel you staring at me.”
“I was… learning.”
“Uh-huh.”
Okay, maybe it’ll take more than usefulness to open the floodgates. What else do men need to feel comfortable—ego flattery? “You… smell good.”
“I smell like a fish taco stand,” he grumbles. “News flash, so do you. It’s called smoke and the ocean.”
“Under that.”
“Soap?”
“But…”
“But what? I’m homeless?” He throws a few more sticks on the fire. “I took my two-dollar shower at the pool yesterday.”
“They don’t have any help for things like that?”
His back tenses.
Ah, yes, the pride thing. Maybe his trust requires more of an ante, a painful confession of my own. “So, I met a woman when I woke up at triage.”
He gives me a quirked eyebrow over his shoulder. “When’s the wedding?”
“Not like that,” I hiss, plopping down beside him. “I’m just saying there was a woman beside me when I came to… Mama Jay. She told me all about what was going on in this thick Southern drawl. Super sweet woman. She…”
My voice wavers, and I pinch my leg to keep my emotions in check. “She really helped me.”
“Lucky you,” he comments, leaning forward over his knees.
The fire crackles and pops.
“Yeah, but the thing is…” Maybe I shouldn’t have started this. I’ve just
barely accepted it happened, let alone admitting it to someone else.
“The thing is?” He turns to face me, his side outlined in glowing amber hues. “What? Are you holding your story hostage now because I didn’t play Dr. Phil with you?”
“No, no, it’s just…” I run my hands back through my hair, getting caught in tangles. “I didn’t think it would be this hard. Mama Jay wasn’t… She had already…”
“What?” I have his full attention now, and it’s unnerving.
“She died.”
“Shit,” he curses under his breath. “Sorry. Did you—”
“No, I mean, she died lying beside me. I was in and out of consciousness. That whole conversation was my brain translating what the triage workers said into a mental pacifier. I was talking to myself.”
“Well, damn.”
“Yeah, then I came across her husband later, after they moved her to Fernwood, and he was calling her Quinn. Quinn! How the hell did I hallucinate a made-up name for the woman, too?”
Vincent ruffles my hair. “Sounds like you’re batshit.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Ah, join the club. As you’ll soon find out, I don’t sleep.”
“Ever?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Unspoken questions creep into the night around us, but I can’t bring myself to break the momentum we’ve got going—so, sabotaging my mission to delve deeper, I break the mood. “You’re afraid I really am going to turn cannibal, right?”
Vincent grins. “Am I that transparent?”
“A little bit.”
We both laugh. I can only assume slap happiness is kicking in.
He spends the next however long preparing his water, while I stare at the flames. I have to admit, he took the whole crazy thing better than I expected. Maybe it’s better to approach him with this stuff when he’s too tired to care or think things through properly, like the money…
I clear my throat. “So, you certainly prepared well for this type of situation.”
“A benefit of my so-called paranoia.”
“And you said you brought some of it, and the rest was paid for with under the table money, right?”
“Yeah… ?”
“Even the cash?”
“Oh, you found my blood money?”
My breath catches.
“How do you function in the real world, honestly?” He shakes his head and uses a knife to pull his pot off the hot surface. “It’s paint, Elena. I painted some guy’s garage and kept the cash back for an emergency.”
I nearly collapse with humiliated relief. Yes, I look stupid, but Vincent isn’t some deranged criminal I’ve chosen to isolate myself with in the forest. Could I be the paranoid one between us? Hmm…
“I’m going to tie up the hammock,” he announces in the midst of my musings. “You sit there and keep making weird faces.”
I’d argue, but he’s probably right. I’m a mess.
My tired gaze follows his every move as he pulls what I thought was a tarp out of his pack. Vincent was the unknown variable in all of this. If it weren’t for him, I’d be dead a dozen times over by now. Am I feeling this dissonance now because I should have?
I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them. Surprisingly, the thought doesn’t bother me all that much. I had a comfortable existence before this, but it wasn’t much of a life. My passing wouldn’t have made a real impact on the world.
Vincent saunters up to a tree and ties a thick strap around it. “You’re not going to lose it and start talking to rocks on the first night, are you?”
“I’m just thinking!” It comes out snappier than I intend, but I’m not in the mood for sorrys.
“O-kay…” He shoves a stick through some kind of toggle and moves to the next tree.
Why didn’t he ask me to help, anyway? Am I just the dead weight errand girl now? He shouldn’t even bother with me. I’ll only slow him down in finding his brother’s family.
“So, I’m not saying you’re having some kind of post-traumatic reaction,” he starts, pulling some kind of cabled sling from his bundle, “but I do know a thing or two about it. I’m just sayin’.”
“I’m not having a reaction,” I grumble. “I’m not even thinking about the quake or tsunami.”
“So what are you thinking about?”
“I thought I was the one who had to fill the silence.”
He holds up his free hand in surrender. “I get it.”
The crackling fire fills my guilt-laden silence. I don’t want him to feel bad, but I don’t want him to witness one of my spirals, either. The last thing I need right now is for him to write me off as even weaker than I already seem. I just want to wrap up in my blanket and disappear into the darkness for a while. A long, long while…
Vincent finishes hanging the hammock, and it looks like a cloth boat suspended in the forest. For some reason, I always assumed they were all made of cargo nets—the kind that cradle you while leaving your squishy parts to fill the gaps. Who knows if that thing will even hold me, let alone both of us.
Wait. Both of us? I understood we’d probably have to sleep next to each other, but in a hammock? That’s as up close and personal as it gets. “Um, why don’t you go ahead and take that… do whatever it is you do when you’re not sleeping. I can just lie here by the fire.”
“On the damp ground? I don’t think so.”
“I’ll put my blanket down.”
“I don’t think you get how this works.”
“I don’t get how any of this works!” I stand up, fists instantly clenched at my sides. “Okay? I shouldn’t be here.”
His brows knit in the low light. “You regret coming along?”
“I regret coming out of the water at all.” It sounds melodramatic out loud, but it’s already out there. I can’t take it back now.
Vincent wipes his hands on his pants and approaches me like I’m about to jump off a sixth-floor ledge. “And why’s that?”
I grab fistfuls of my hair and take a deep breath, putting the fire between us. “You don’t get it. I should’ve died. I’m just prolonging whatever the hell it is I have going on here.”
A deep frown etches into his features. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you been crossing yourself like it’s an antimissile defense shield every ten minutes? I’m pretty sure you’re not ready to meet your maker yet.”
“I’m not a fighter,” I admit, swallowing a lump in my throat. “If it weren’t for you, I would’ve given up by now.”
“I wasn’t even with you when the water hit!”
“You told me to hold on!” Tears threaten to fall again, but I’m too wide-eyed to blink. “You told me, like… like…”
He crosses the distance between us in three steps and cradles my face in his hands. “Like this.”
“Yeah.” My spark fizzles out as quickly as it ignited, leaving me breathless.
“And then what?” His voice is low between us. “Did I pull you up on that roof?”
“No, but—”
“Did I boost you up into that house? Did I jump with you into that tree?”
I sigh, barely letting my breath out in a side wisp. “I get what you’re trying to do.”
“Then why’re you still holding onto those feelings? They’re sure as hell not going to help you out here, and I need you.”
I go completely still. “What did you say?”
The firelight dances in his eyes as he leans in. “I. Need. You.”
Somehow, the closer he gets, the more fragmented my thoughts become. My memories, my panic, my worries—they all fade into static. With no more than a whisper between us, my heart flutters in blind anticipation. Is he… ?
With measured, predatory patience, Vincent heaves a breath of his own, gaze still locked on mine. “I’m not gonna push this, Elena.”
“Why?” My nerve endings tingle.
“You’re vulnerable.”
“And you’re not?”
>
He works his bottom lip. “It’s different.”
The still-functioning part of my brain begs to differ, but my arms have already found their way around his neck. I’m holding on for balance, as my knees have gone suspiciously weak.
“I’m not a good guy,” Vincent goes on. “I trade one addiction for another and bury myself for temporary peace of mind. It’s all I know how to do.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Our close proximity feels more comfortable than it should. It’s not even a bleep on my anxiety radar.
“I told you,” he says, trying to ease away, but I haven’t let go. Him straightening only presses us closer together.
I must be exhausted, because there’s no way I would be this bold in my right mind. I just need to feel safe right now. I just need to feel… something. Anything. “Stop talking.”
“What?”
Straddling lucidity and madness, I kiss him.
His response is instantaneous, crushing his mouth against mine, backing me up against the tree. The impact jars yesterday’s bruises, but it’s a good kind of pain. The sensation reminds me I’m alive and… actually living, for once.
I hiss a stolen breath as he hoists me up against the bark and presses so close that his warmth is the only thing keeping me there. In that second, I go blank. Brent never picked me up like this, like it was nothing. I was beginning to think it only happened in movies. But now Vincent’s gone rogue, and I’ve—
His hands trail under my thighs to bend my legs around his waist. He’s breathing hard now, his movements feverish as he backtracks, carrying me with him. Next thing I know, he’s laying me down in the hammock. It swings back and forth, as he lets go to rip his t-shirt up over his head.
Oh, hell. I see ink. Even in the dark, the symbol on his shoulder stands out. Some kind of military insignia. There’s writing up along his ribs, too. I’d be able to focus more if it weren’t for the flickering amber throwing shadows over every line and contour. Damn.
Is this happening?
Vincent unholsters his gun, sets it on the ground, and then unfastens his jeans. A quick, well-practiced jerk sends them to his ankles. He kicks his boots off next, knife sheaths and all, wasting no time going from fully clothed to standing there, feet apart, in all of his boxer-clad glory. The fire rages behind him like he’s some kind of wrathful warrior, and all my lust-afflicted brain can manage are distress signals.
As We Know It Page 11
