And the release I felt at the end was life-changing.
Walls broke within me. I had not only shared my secrets with Robbie that night. I had shared my soul―my being. For the first time in years, I was truly connected to someone. Looking into his eyes as his face hovered over mine, our naked bodies still touching, I could see that he felt the same way.
The question that remained unanswered for both of us was how we would proceed.
“So that was a bit unexpected,” he drawled, smiling down at me before he kissed the tip of my nose gently. “If that’s what I get for cooking, consider me your personal chef from now on.”
“Or at least until you have to go back to sea, right?” I asked, cautiously feeling him out. I knew he loved the sea from the passion with which he spoke of it. But being at sea meant he would be far away from me for weeks, maybe months, at a time. Even though I knew what his time at sea meant to him, I selfishly wanted him to stay back on the mainland with me.
He cocked his head to the side, assessing me in the way only he seemed to be able to.
“Such a loaded question to ask a sex-clouded mind,” he said, his brow furrowing slightly. “I like to cross bridges when I get to them, Cris. We’re not there yet. And, besides, you might hate me by then.” He failed miserably in his attempt to keep a straight face.
“Listen, I am far from the clingy sort. I think my past speaks to why this is pretty clearly, but I’m not one to spill my secrets and sleep around. There’s a reason I’ve managed to stay hidden this long, and it doesn’t involve establishing bonds with those around me.”
“I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
“But, for whatever reason, I can’t seem to shake you.”
“I am a bit of a barnacle, aren’t I?” he joked, smiling down at me.
Damn him and that smile.
“Exactly. So now I’m wondering just what I’m going to do with you.”
“Well, what you just did was pretty awesome. I’m down to do that again.”
And sure enough, it seemed pretty apparent that he was.
“Do you take anything seriously?” I sighed as he dropped his head down to kiss me.
“Oh, I take sex very, very seriously. Make no mistake about that.”
All I could do was laugh. His charms, amongst other things, had penetrated me, leaving me a girly mess of hormones. The morning would likely bring about a clarity to my thoughts, but, for that night, I just wanted to live in the moment. The one thing that Robbie could appreciate nearly as well as me was that tomorrow was never guaranteed.
With that thought fading from my mind, I gave into the moment.
chapter 6
Robbie
Wrapped tightly around me, Cristina fell asleep in my arms that night, looking so placid and serene. After what she had told me earlier that evening, I doubted she slept that way often. I, however, couldn’t sleep at all. Wide awake in her bed, all I could think about was how stressful and frightening her life must have been for her after years on the run. And she was still running.
She may have thought that Anchorage would be the final place that she would call home, but I was less convinced. I’d known my share of felons; crab fishing was a fresh start for many of them. For others, it was a way of avoiding temptation. What I’d learned from my countless hours on deck was that ninety-five percent of the men on the crew never changed. The drive to do the things they had done was still within them. After hearing about Mateo’s clear obsession with her, I knew that he would never give up.
The crazy ones never did.
With that thought plaguing my mind, I laid there and contemplated all the ways I might be able to keep her safe. Two dates into our not-even relationship and I was already internally vowing to protect her. She must have done just fine on her own in order to have stayed out of his reach for five years, but everyone’s luck ran out eventually. I knew a lot about that truth as well.
Mine was running out with the owners of the vessel. If I wasn’t ready to ship out on the next crabbing expedition, they had made it clear to me that I would be out not only a job but a career. And now, with potential ties to the mainland, I was less inclined to leave for Dutch Harbor on my scheduled return date, which happened to be in two days. Another voicemail from the owners confirmed that they had moved up their timeline, and I was to be back by then or be unemployed. I hadn’t mentioned my seemingly imminent departure to Cristina yet because she had never asked and I had never seen us going anywhere, so why would I have brought it up?
It was clear that I was going to have to bring it up now, though, after all that had changed that night, but how I could do it without making everything seem disposable remained unclear to me. I knew her secrets, but I didn’t know exactly how she operated. I could read people and profile them with ease, but that hardly meant I knew how they would act or react in all situations. And telling her that I had to take off in a couple of days was not something I was looking forward to doing. It required a degree of tact that I was unsure I had. I needed to sit her down and do it properly, maybe over dinner. I hoped that she would take it well and not read too far into it. I also hoped I wasn’t overreacting myself. I just couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I wanted her.
I needed to make sure I didn’t lose her before I had her.
chapter 7
Cristina
“So, we agree? I’ll see you after your shift tonight?” he asked me, his mischievous grin in full force. His smile undid me every time. Since the moment I’d met him, my resolve had never really stood a chance.
“Will you leave me alone if I say yes?”
“No . . . well, maybe. Do you mean for now or for always?” He furrowed his brow in mock concern, but I knew it was all show. That boy had a way of burrowing under your skin and making a home there. He knew damn well that I wasn’t getting rid of him, or at least I thought he did.
Even if I should have done precisely that.
“Yes, I will see you tonight. I’ll meet you at The Crab Shack—if they let us back in. Don’t be late,” I warned. “I don’t do late. Ever.”
“Never late. Got it,” he nodded, pretending to make a mental note of my pet peeve. “Unless you’re debating the notion of standing me up, right? Anything else I should know about now? Dealbreakers and such, I mean, other than the obvious psycho ex-boyfriend thing. I’m pretty clear on that one, and, thankfully, I don’t have one.”
His comment, though funny, only illustrated that he didn’t get really understand the severity of the Mateo situation. If he had, he not only wouldn’t have been making a joke about it but he also would have been getting dressed, leaving, and never looking back.
I was being selfish by not reiterating how dangerous all of this was, and I knew it, but I reminded myself that I had trusted Robbie enough to fully disclose my past, something I had never done before. If he wanted to stay, that was a choice he had to make for himself. For once, I had found someone I was willing to tempt fate with.
I hoped it wouldn’t be the biggest mistake of my life.
“I have to go,” I told him, backing out of the bedroom. “Feel free to stay and get some actual sleep if you want.” I shot him a playful wink as I turned to walk away. I smiled to myself, thinking he wasn’t the only one with game.
“I might just do that,” he seamlessly replied. “I have to prepare for tonight. You’re so demanding.”
“Some of us don’t need preparation. We’re just that good.”
I closed the bedroom door behind me on my way to the bathroom and leaned against it for a moment. I was playing with fire, and I knew it. Some idioms were popular for a reason. It made me wonder just how long I had before playing with that fire got me, or both of us, burned.
chapter 8
Robbie
No answer. That’s what I got every time I tried the number she had given me before she left for work, and she hadn’t messaged me to let me know she was running late. I sat in my rental car outside The Crab Shack, but I cou
ldn’t see her waiting in our spot―the table I’d specifically requested, where we’d had our first date. Her car wasn’t parked outside, either. Something in the back of my mind wrestled with these details. It was easy to try and blow it off like she was a normal chick who got caught up with her choice of outfit for the night, but Cristina was anything but a normal girl. And, by her own admission, she didn’t do late.
I tried to keep my spiraling mind occupied by calling the hospital. It wouldn’t have been completely out of the question for an emergency to have required her to work longer than expected without access to her phone. While I waited for someone in the Imaging Department to pick up, I fiddled with the fraying wrap on the steering wheel, plucking minute pieces off. It was a nervous habit of mine.
“Radiology, Pam speaking,” a voice said flatly on the other end of the phone.
“Pam, this is Robbie Townsend. Is Cris there?”
“She isn’t here, Robbie. She left before the end of her shift. She looked upset.”
“Okay, thanks, Pam.”
I hung up the phone while my mind reeled. She left early . . . looked upset . . .
Something about those words didn’t sit well with me. There was something in her voice the previous night—even that morning—and I had recognized it when I heard it. Doubt, it was creeping in. She had tried to keep me at arm’s length until she let me in the night before, shedding her hardened exterior, if only for the night. She had let me into her mind and her body. And now, I feared, she was shutting me out.
Or at least she was trying to.
I was born and raised to be a stubborn ass. I’d spent my adult life honing that characteristic. No little fiery Puerto Rican chica with a shady past was going to get rid of me that trait easily. If she wanted me gone, she was going to have to stand her ground and debate the issue to my face.
I had no intention of making it easy for her, either.
Pulling out of the restaurant parking lot, I made my way to her apartment. The one I’d left only hours earlier. I played different scenarios over and over again in my head so that she couldn’t blindside me. I was prepared for any shenanigan she might sling my way.
It didn’t take long before I found myself in front of her downtown apartment building, looking up at her living room window. The lights were off, which I did not take to be a good sign. I couldn’t tell if I felt angry, irritated, or resigned to the direction my night was taking, but it didn’t matter. I knew I was going to get out of my car, walk into her building, up the stairs, and knock on her door regardless of which emotion ultimately won.
So that’s exactly what I did. Two minutes later, I was staring at a slightly askew number three on her apartment door, preparing to knock. I lightly rapped on the wooden door, not wanting to appear aggressive. I may have been irritated, but showing her that by pounding on the door hardly seemed the best course of action. When she didn’t respond, I knocked again, only harder. Then I waited, leaning into the door to listen for any noise that might have come from within.
I heard nothing.
“Cristina,” I called. “We need to talk about this.”
Nothing still.
I knocked harder.
“Cristina, don’t do this. Don’t shut me out without giving me a chance first. A real chance.”
After a long pause and a heavy sigh, I turned to leave, feeling both neutered and defeated—a combination I wasn’t a fan of. Just as I took my first step away from her door, I heard something from deep within the apartment. It was a faint, nearly indiscernible noise, but I knew my ears weren’t deceiving me.
I had heard a muffled cry.
I turned back to face her door and called her name a third time, trying to door, which, to my rising irritation, was locked. The jig was up; I knew she was there. Unfortunately, knowing that she was purposely trying to evade me tipped my mood further in the direction of anger. I pounded on the door, insistent that she let me in. I may have been a lot of things in my time, but a chump wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t going to be played like that, not by her. Not by anyone.
“Open it, Cristina,” I yelled at the door, the sound of my own voice loudly reverberating against it. I continued to rattle the handle, hoping that I could wrestle it open. The sound the door handle made was distracting. I almost missed her reply because of it.
“You need to leave, Robbie. It’s over. We’re done,” she called, still deep within her apartment. “Whatever you thought was going on isn’t.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s not bullshit,” she replied, hesitating slightly. “That’s just the way the wind blows sometimes.” I stopped short, every pore on my body instantly sweating. “Do you hear me?” she continued, her voice more calm and eerie than before. “You need to go.”
“Fine,” I bit out, trying to keep hostility in my voice to cover my rising fear. She had said that Mateo was like the wind, that he’d find her one day. She was right. He clearly had.
Fumbling to get my phone out of my pocket, I stepped down the stairs just far enough to be out of earshot. Once the dispatcher came through, I gave the most hurried description of the situation and location before putting my phone down and creeping back up the stairs to her apartment door. I figured if I disappeared from the call, they’d be more concerned and put a rush on it, though telling them that a multi-felon stalker had his ex-girlfriend hostage in her apartment might have gotten their attention, too.
Staying low, I maneuvered myself into the corner, with my ear pressed against the wall that featured the front door to her apartment. I needed to buy time until the cops came. Cristina had said Mateo was violent, and the thought of him hurting her had my balls in my throat. What kind of man just sat by idly while a woman’s life was in danger. Especially a man who may or may not have been falling in love with that woman.
Unacceptable.
I needed to act, foolish though I knew it was. Nobody had ever accused me of thinking things through, at least not when I was off-deck, but I was always loyal to a fault. My friends and family knew this about me, and I would be damned if that asshole harmed one hair on Cristina’s head so long as I had air in my lungs and a beat in my heart.
There was no time to form a plan of any sort. I didn’t know where he was, if he was armed, or what exactly he was capable of doing. If I took Cristina at her word, there was little Mateo wouldn’t do. I needed something—a distraction—to take him off guard. I looked across the hall to see a fire extinguisher staring at me from the opposing wall, and I risked being heard in order to sneak over and pull it from its mount. It would serve two purposes really: it was a great substitute for a flashbang and it was heavy as shit. If I had to hit him with something, the fire extinguisher would pack a punch and then some.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I stood up and, throwing the entire weight of my body behind it, I kicked the apartment door down, fire extinguisher at the ready. As soon as I saw him round the corner from Cristina’s bedroom at the far end of the apartment, I let the foam fly. Unrelentingly, I unleashed the compressed contents throughout the room, moving laterally while I made my way into the living room. Mateo wouldn’t have been able to see me, but he knew where I’d just been standing, which was precisely why I didn’t want to just stand there and wait for him to come to me. My goal was to get to Cristina as quickly as possible. The Cristina that was screaming wildly from the bedroom in the back of the apartment.
“Gun!” I finally heard her say, her words penetrating my adrenaline-soaked mind. “Get out! He’s got a gun.”
A blast echoed through the tiny home, filling the space.
Cristina didn’t make a sound after that.
“Cris!” I shouted, storming through the cloud I’d created in an effort to get to her as quickly as possible. My progress was quickly brought to a halt when I was met with a wall of muscle and the butt end of a gun.
“I’m going to make this hurt,” his gruff voice growled, wrestling me to the ground and pinning me th
ere. He punctuated his menacing statement with a crushing blow to my temple. My left ear started to ring immediately.
In my struggle to escape Mateo, I realized that the screen of fog that had only moments earlier been advantageous to me was now anything but. I couldn’t see my surroundings or the gun I knew he likely still had in his possession. Worst of all, I couldn’t see where Cristina assumedly lay bleeding, possibly even dying. The cops may have been on their way, but I began to believe that they were going to roll up on little more than a double homicide if I didn’t find a way out of the mess I’d made, and fast. But it was infinitely hard to think when that thug kept raining punches down on me.
I needed to secure an advantage against him.
And that’s when I remembered the canister. I had dropped it when Mateo initially took me to the ground, but I knew it couldn’t have gone far. Still on my back, I wriggled away from him, frantically reaching around on the floor for the heavy piece of metal.
“Bingo,” I whispered to myself before another punch snapped my head to the side. “My turn,” I yelled. Getting a good hold on the grip of the extinguisher, I swung the heavy barrel wide in order to gain maximum momentum. The sound it made when it connected with Mateo’s head was sickening, but satisfying all the same.
I scrambled to my feet, hoping to see where the gun had gone. I’d heard it fall when I hit him, but I still couldn’t see well due to the remnants of fog I’d created with the fire extinguisher and the blows to the head I’d sustained. When I heard him rustling on the floor, I blindly swung it again in the direction of his rustling. The barrel of the extinguisher connected hard with the thick side of his abdomen. I heard him exhale sharply as the strike knocked the wind out of him.
Still unable to see things clearly, I got down on my hands and knees to search for the gun as I made my way to Cristina’s room. I needed to see if she was okay. She still hadn’t made a sound since the gunshot. Frantically, I called to her, shouting her name over and over again, but the response was the same: utter silence. With my pulse beating loudly in my ears, I came upon her. She wasn’t moving. I could see there was blood, but I couldn’t tell where exactly it was coming from.
Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction Page 51
