Wet

by Angel Payne

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” Since her hand was still curled under his elbow, he pressed his opposite hand atop it while continuing to walk toward what appeared to be the temple itself, a modest stone building with a pedestal in front that supported a large carved black bull. “Tell me about all this,” he appealed.

  Kellan looked on, also interested. On his friend’s face, Tait recognized the visual form of everything he felt: wonderment, gratitude, peace. And as sunlight broke through the trees, comprehension pierced his senses. Being here with the two of them, even after what they’d shared last night, didn’t seem weird or wrong. It was a perfect completion to the magic they’d created. Did Lani know that when she insisted on driving across the island to get here? He received a big chunk of that answer in the meaningful glance she lifted before fulfilling his request.

  “The tourist guide answer for that is that the church and monastery have been here since the mid-nineteen seventies, and things have grown from there. People make pilgrimages from all over the world to come and experience this. I’m sure you can simply feel the reasons why. There’s a special energy here. I wish I could explain it better than that.”

  She shook her head as if rebuking herself for telling a silly joke, but Kellan leaned over, securing her other hand beneath his. “Don’t know if I could’ve said it any better, sweetheart.”

  Tait gazed up at a crew of colorful birds babbling happily to each other as they constructed a nest in one of the trees. “There are probably a lot of great memories for you here too. Did you come a lot with your parents and Leo?”

  Her eyebrows bunched again, as if that perplexed her. “The first time I came here was a little over six months ago.”

  Tait almost stopped in the middle of the path. Her confession swiped a strange scythe of awareness through his gut. He forced his voice to stay on an even keel while replying slowly, “Six months ago?”

  “Yeah.” Lani’s voice still resonated with bewilderment. “It’s kind of weird, I guess. Mom and Dad raised Leo and me to have a deep grasp of our spirituality and how our energy contributed to the universe as a whole, just like the Hindu concept of karma. And the Polynesian gods are similar to the Hindu ones, with multiple deities that support one main creator through their unique powers and virtues. But we were always so busy keeping the ranch going, especially during the busy seasons for the B and B, that setting aside the time to come here just never happened.”

  He almost swallowed back his next question, but holding it in was a worse option. He simply had to tell himself that the answer would lead nowhere, which made him grateful for the stone bench they arrived at, atop of a scenic hill beneath a sprawling kapok tree.

  He sat, planting both elbows to his knees and sucking down air with long, steady care. “So what changed your mind six months ago?”

  Kellan sat down next to him. Lani chose to stand. That was so okay with him. As if put in place by a photographer wanting a shot of an exquisite island beauty, she stood in a shaft of sunlight that haloed her hair and bathed her features in deep gold. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I hadn’t planned on it, but I was in Lihue, wrestling again with the business-permits office about reopening the main house as a B and B. As you can guess, it didn’t go well. I remember walking out of the office in a puddle of self-pity. But it was a few weeks before Christmas, and the rest of the world was prancing in tidings of comfort and joy.” She folded her arms and poked a toe at the ground. “I tried opting for some retail therapy, but when I actually snarled at a Boy Scout for offering to open my car door for me, I knew something was wrong.” She glanced up at them, lips twisting. “I sat in the jeep and lost it. Melted down. I felt so dead and defeated, like I’d never be happy again. It was like—”

  She interrupted herself with a frustrated grunt. Tait clenched his fists to fight the assault of memory but racked up a massive fail on the effort. He saw it all over again. Luna, limp and lifeless in his arms. Her hand, still resting on his neck after using her last breath to kiss him. The candy canes and tinsel at the nurse’s station, blurred by the haze of his tears.

  “It was like what?” He managed it on a rasp.

  Her face wavered like she prepared an apology instead of a confession. “It was like…I cried for more than just me.” He watched the mental whack she gave herself. “Agghh. This sounds so stupid.”

  “Man purses are stupid, okay?” He latched eagerly on to the relief of the humor. “Flavored mayonnaise? Stupid. You are not stupid.”

  “You forgot Twitter accounts for dogs,” Kellan added.

  “She has the picture.”

  Lani beamed at them both. “Yes, she does.” With a sigh, she spread her arms. “I’m not sure how else to express that moment, except that my tears felt…bigger. Heavier. I’m not one of those people who can read people’s auras or ‘sense’ when some crazy world event is going to go down. But that moment, in the jeep, I had this feeling that something had happened beyond my understanding. Something tore into my heart and ripped it open.”

  Another breeze kicked across the hill. Clouds drifted. Leaves rustled. Birds sang. Squirrels scampered across the grass. Movement and life, in so many places…

  Except Tait’s heart.

  When his chest slammed his lungs against his ribs again, he dropped his head. His vision was filled with the white-knuckled union of his hands while his soul and sanity grappled at each other.

  Ask her.

  Ask her!

  Are you kidding? You’ve started to look at the world with a jar full of whole cookies again. Forget this is happening. Stick to the plan. Hands off Hokulani Kail—and that includes her mind. Especially her mind.

  “Was it a Wednesday?”

  She didn’t say anything right away. But Kellan did. “Fuck.” He felt his friend swiveling a glare on him. “You had to, didn’t you?”

  “I like broken cookies.”

  “What? Good Christ, Tait, what the hell are you—”

  “Yes.” Lani cut him off with a whisper that exploded like a bomb. Tait jerked up his head, his heart clenching to a stop again, as he met her gaze. Another detonation. Her eyes, silvery and sunlit and boundless, spilled over with tears. Her lips trembled. “Yes,” she repeated. “It was a Wednesday.”

  Tait surged to his feet. Jammed his hands across the top of his head. This time, he simply didn’t know what the hell to do with them. He laced his fingers at the back of his skull and did a feverish lap around the bench. Another.

  Thank fuck for Kellan. His buddy, also standing, held out both hands in a smoothing motion. “Okay, kids. Everyone’s skewing a little too Andrew Lloyd Webber here, and the last time I checked, nobody packed a mask or a cat costume.”

  Tait shot him a sardonic glance. “That’s because none of us are John Franzen.”

  The levity helped a little. Kellan walked over to Lani and gently tucked her head against his chest. “What’d you do after the meltdown?” he queried.

  “She came here.”

  The interjection came from a new visitor to their knoll. The woman was hard to miss in her long Indian sari of bright yellow and blue but would’ve snagged their attention without it due to the lyrical power of her voice. Though her headscarf didn’t hide all her gray hair and her pace was more a shuffle than steps, she carried herself with such regal grace that Tait was prompted to rise a little and then bow to her. She patted his head and murmured something in Hindi, which he painstakingly translated to “you’re a good boy,” though he was rusty on everything from that region except Pashto and Farsi. Nevertheless, he looked up to give her a smile of gratitude—and only then realized the woman was blind.

  “I’m sorry,” Lani said, pushing from Kellan to approach the woman, “but how do you know that?”

  “Because I saw you, my dear.”

  “You…what?”

  “You think we’ve only been given eyes with which to see?” The woman slipped her hand into Lani’s while shuffling toward the bench. Though Kellan stepped over
to help her, she shooed him away before sitting, pulling Lani down next to her. Right away, she raised a hand to Lani’s head, running fingers lightly over her hair and shoulders. “Ahhh! Your energy is different today. So different from that first day. Both beautiful sights, but that day”—she sighed, folding her hands back in her lap, Lani’s still pressed between them—“imparted a memory I shall truly carry beyond the veils with me…and, if lucky, into my next existence, as well.”

  Tait leaned forward. “Why?” It blurted out as a demand before he could help it. The woman’s wisdom and experience were imprinted in the lines on her face, yet she spoke of the first day she “saw” Lani as if it rivaled a journey to the summit of Everest. Her excitement injected his own blood with a crazy blend of awe and excitement compelling him closer to her.

  Her next action shouldn’t have stunned him but did. She lifted a hand, bidding him to crouch on the ground in front of her. When he did, she repeated the same exploration of his head that she had of Lani.

  “Told you the Sunday School hair was worthless,” Kell mumbled.

  He let the comment pass. It was pretty damn easy. The woman’s touch was like a rain shower of peace, pelting him with warmth, opening him without judging him. He swayed from the bliss of it, trying to steel himself for the loss and pain that was sure to follow. Women of quality, especially one able to bring him a feeling like this, didn’t stick around for long after seeing his fucked-up soul.

  “Ssshh.” The woman pressed her fingertips into his scalp. “Be still. Let the fears rest.”

  “I know how to be still,” he growled.

  “No.” Humor danced across her face. “You do not.” She leveled her face with his, and for a long moment, her eyes widened as if a miracle had restored her sight. “Outside, you are a windless ocean, but inside, you keep running, fighting. You have declared war against your own beauty and the unique truth of this moment. Why? There was a time that you didn’t fight destiny. That you believed in magic. The time has come for you to believe again, warrior. And you can. You are safe here.”

  He clenched his jaw until it ached. Battled to pull away from her. He had to escape before it was too late and she took him into canyons of his soul he’d vowed never to visit again.

  You are safe.

  No. That was something he guaranteed for others. A net he assured for submissives. It was a luxury he couldn’t afford to indulge—and this encounter, now eerie and bizarre, was vivid proof.

  “Damn.” Kell’s voice was gruff with new solemnity. “She really does see you, man.”

  “Shut up.” His lungs pummeled the crap out of every breath he took. His mind sizzled and his pores awakened, sensations he hadn’t felt since the morning they’d called from the hospital to tell him Luna had awakened from her coma. Three days later, every angel that had lifted him was all too eager to jump to the dark side, dragging him to a grieving hell.

  He had to escape. Had to shake this woman’s eyes and words and fingers. Why couldn’t he move? She barely touched him, yet her face held an intensity that bewitched him, a tenderness that humbled him. He’d seen expressions like it before, on the faces of the wives and mothers who greeted the boys at the base, returning from their deployments. But when a guy worked Spec Ops, he often arrived home like he’d left: in subterfuge and silence. Didn’t matter much in his case, anyhow. If they threw him a parade down the center of town and dumped five tons of confetti on it, Mom wasn’t coming out of hiding, and Luna wasn’t rising from the grave.

  This is insane. Kellan was right. Where are the phantom mask and cat costume?

  “So lost. So confused. So afraid.” The creases in the woman’s face deepened as she kept exploring him, though she released one of her hands to reach again to Lani. “This was exactly how you looked that day, my dear.”

  Lani followed her lead and lowered next to him. “I imagine I did,” she murmured. “I thought I was going a little insane.”

  As if he wasn’t in enough torment, Lani pressed one of her hands around his. Tait jerked, but she held fast. Fucking great. Fate’s torture chamber of an afternoon was more fun by the minute.

  He gave up staying balanced on his haunches and dropped fully to his knees. They hit the ground hard, making the moisture from last night’s rain seep through his pants. “I’m not insane,” he snarled.

  The old woman laughed. “But why not?” She persisted with her fingers against his head. “‘Breaking down’ is simply breaking free, my friend.”

  Lani laughed. Not just a giggle but a full and melodic laugh. As Tait gave her the only reaction he could summon, a stunned gawk, she declared, “Yes. That’s it. That was what I felt that day. It was like a mountain had collapsed on top of me. I was trapped and had no idea how to move the damn thing. And then I arrived here…”

  “And you walked down by the water,” the woman filled in. She closed her eyes again, finally freeing Tait from the stare that saw nothing and everything.

  Lani’s laugh faded, though the enchantment on her face remained. “Yeah,” she rasped, “I did.”

  “And what of the mountain on your soul?” the woman prompted.

  Lani swallowed hard. She let her gaze trail toward the river, but that meant including Tait in its path. Before she spoke, she looked back to him. “It was lifted. Completely.”

  She spoke only four words. Followed them with the equally simple beauty of her stare. Then why did the moment feel like so much more? Why was there a downpour in Tait’s spirit that started with the silver salvation of her tears? And why did his three words of response feel like opening a gate that would turn the torrent into a flood?

  “Lifted by what?”

  His answer came from the old woman. “Not what,” she whispered. “Who.”

  Lani blinked at her. Her face was a sunlit portrait of awe. Her fingers twisted harder against his. “Yes,” she rasped. “You’re right.”

  Kellan grunted. “I’m glad to hear that, sweetheart, because I’m in the wilderness without a compass here.”

  “Me too.” Tait peered more intently at both women. If Lani had come here seeking answers that day and one of the monks or fellow worshippers had helped her, that was awesome—but certainly not a cause for acting like she’d been visited by an angel. “What are you trying to say? She’s right about what?”

  The woman dipped her head toward Lani. “Tell him, dear one. Tell him about the voice you heard. The voice that belonged to the energy that I saw.”

  As her voice again turned each word into poetry, it also transformed the hairs on his neck into spikes that could cut diamonds.

  Visited…by an angel.

  On a Wednesday.

  Six months ago.

  Suddenly, he longed to be anywhere but here. Just as suddenly, he knew if the whole hill caught on fire, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lani slammed her eyes shut. Tears soaked her lashes and then tumbled down her cheeks. She heard Tait’s breath freeze in his throat and was certain hers did the same thing. She’d never told anyone about those bizarre moments on the riverbank during that day filled with so much loss, anger, and confusion. It had been so easy to write the experience off to the power of her emotions, mingled with the transformative magic of the monastery.

  This special woman, with her all-seeing soul, had shown her otherwise. Beseeched her otherwise. Called the truth out of her soul again.

  She had to obey.

  “I thought I was going crazy.” Her voice was barely a crack on the air, though the wind held its breath in consideration. “At the same time, it was the most wonderful crazy in the world.”

  Tait squeezed her fingers again. “I understand,” he whispered. “I do.”

  More tears stung her eyes, which were filled with gratitude for his thick, sincere words.

  “I thought it was just a trick of the wind at first, that maybe I overheard somebody else’s conversation. But—but she repeated herself until I listened.”

&n
bsp; She heard Tait’s rough gulp. “A little husky?” he asked. “And a lot bossy?”

  As she giggled, the salt of her tears tickled her lips. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Shit.” The astounded blurt came from Kellan, who instantly ducked his head and cowed his voice. He mouthed his next words. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  Tait cupped his hand to the side of her face. “What did she say, Lani? It’s okay. Please tell me.”

  She gave him a shaky nod. “‘Don’t give up, goddess.’ That was all it was…at first.” She smiled a little. “It took a few minutes to ditch the tricky wind excuse and buy into the I’m officially going crazy one. After that—”

  Her mind chopped into her voice. Was she really about to do this? To say this? Suddenly, the bridge between remembering the moment and recounting it out loud was enormous and terrifying.

  “Lani.” Kellan appeared again. He dropped to his knees alongside Tait, taking her other hand in the unshaking strength of his own. “T’s right. It’s okay. We’re both right here. Let it out, sweetheart.”

  She wound her fingers just as tightly through his. It didn’t help her careening balance or erratic heartbeat, but she finally sucked up enough courage to give a what-the-fuck to her qualms. So what if the two of them wrote her off as a whacko after this? It wasn’t like she had to worry about running into them at the grocery store or seeing them at all in another week.

  “She told me that life wasn’t always going to be so hard. That all the bullshit and the struggle were going to be worth it. That sometimes, walking through fire is good because it strips your spirit to be replanted with better things. Then she said—” Another stupid cry burst out. Shit! Why was she giving this such importance? It wasn’t like they would, despite their comforting touches. “She said that those new things were coming soon. That they were both being prepared for me.”

  The guys went still, palpably considering her statement. Even lost in the whirl of her memory, she could discern how the words must be hitting them. They were both being prepared for me. Crap. Could it have sounded any more Biblical and pretentious? Yet neither of them snickered. Neither of them moved.