Through the Veil

by Kyra Whitton

  She focused on the menu board to distract from the uncomfortable silence and gnawed on her lower lip. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of at least three other young women glancing his way.

  Evie fidgeted, dropping her gaze down to her canvas shoes. Wondered if their first thought was “why is he with her?” She was without make-up, her hair pulled back in a limp ponytail. Her shirt hung loose from her shoulders and did nothing for her unremarkable body.

  Why did he ask her for coffee?

  “Evelyn?”

  Damn, his voice was like a caress.

  “Hmm?”

  “What would you like?”

  She turned her attention back to the college student standing behind the counter.

  “Oh, sorry! Lost in thought. Or something. Just a medium of your Hawaiian blend, please?”

  Alec ordered the same, and they both received black cups with the shop’s logo on it in white. She turned to the little counter holding various milk products and sugars, doctoring the brew up until it was light and sweet, then joined him at the little table he found next to the window. His long legs curled under his chair, his forearms leaning against the edge of the table, one hand wrapped around the cup of coffee, the book resting under his wrist.

  She scooted her chair closer and placed her bag and purse at her feet, squeezing her knees together nervously. “I have to admit, I’m kind of surprised you, you know…” she indicated the shop with her hands. “This.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You mean ‘asked you out?’”

  She frowned. “Yes.”

  He looked amused. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Well, you know, I look and pretty much feel like I haven’t seen the light of day in about six months—which, I might add, is exactly the truth—and I can barely form a coherent sentence. That and on the way over here, I admitted I live with my parents. Why you didn’t suddenly have a work emergency I will never know.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Your eclectic taste in books fascinates me,” he murmured, his chin dipped down and his gaze turned up to hers. “And I see nothing wrong with you living with your parents.”

  “You don’t know them,” she grumbled. “So, my taste in reading material. Is it the fantasy or the mystery?”

  “The history and the romance.”

  “Oh, you saw that.” She wrinkled her nose and sank down in the chair.

  “Why is it such a terrible thing?” He chuckled.

  She waved her hand in the air, refusing to look at him. “You know… it’s just embarrassing.”

  “I don’t see how. It shows you’re a dreamer. That you are optimistic and adventurous and open-minded.”

  She narrowed her eyes and turned her gaze back to him. “You get all of that from a book jacket with two mostly-naked adults on it?”

  He grinned. “Am I right?”

  She shrugged. “Probably not. I am definitely not an optimist, I think I have had my fair share of adventure, and I have completely given up on dreams.”

  “Ah, but you are open-minded.”

  When she offered him nothing more than a wan smile, he sat back and took a sip of his coffee. “The accident?” he asked seriously.

  “I’m not sure it’s really ‘first date’ material.” She then caught herself calling getting coffee a date. “I mean—”

  The dimple winked.

  “Fine, fine,” She sighed. “Short story. My fiancé and I were going on holiday—vacation,” she amended. “Calum was yielding at a roundabout when we were hit from behind by a driver who never applied his brakes. We slammed into a lorry.”

  She tucked a flyaway behind her ear. It sounded so impersonal. Like her whole world hadn’t been destroyed. Like it just… was. “The car burst into flames. They were able to get me out but couldn’t get to Calum. I was in a coma for a couple of months. They didn’t expect me to ever wake up, but, what do you know, Halloween came along and there I was. It had a way of changing my plans. And my outlook on life.” She shrugged and pushed away her cup with an unsteady hand.

  He gazed at her as if he knew exactly what she meant, exactly how it felt. Others always looked at her with pity, their brows wrinkled, eyes wide as they asked her how she was doing. Or the way her parents tried to conceal a mix of worry and relief. Did they think she would break if she saw it?

  But not Alec.

  She shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “So, yeah. My favorite color is purple, I don’t like beets, I could eat a trough of popcorn in one sitting, and I think spring is a waste of a season.”

  The heaviness hovering between them instantly lifted, and he chuckled. “Well, in that case, I have always been partial to blue, beets are delicious, I agree with your stance on popcorn, and give me spring over summer any year.”

  She grinned, glad they weren’t going to pick apart her past. “I would have been persuaded to agree with you about summer, but have you ever spent one in Scotland? It will make you change your mind in a heartbeat.”

  “Will it now?” he drawled as he lifted the cup back to his lips.

  “It’s beautiful. I didn’t get to spend as much time seeing the countryside as I would have liked, but everything is so green and there is something about the sky that makes it feel like it goes on forever. Scotland doesn’t get hot like here, which is part of the appeal, but it gets warm enough. You can lie on the sands and wade into the sea and have picnics on the beach.”

  “It sounds like you loved it.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I never would have come back if it weren’t for… that.”

  “Did you grow up here?”

  “Ha! No, I grew up all over the place.”

  “Army brat, then?”

  “Absolutely,” she said proudly. “I was born in Virginia, but have lived in Washington, Georgia, Germany, Hawaii, Tennessee, New York, Georgia—again—and now here.”

  “Georgia twice?”

  “Yeah. I graduated high school there and then did my undergraduate degree in Atlanta.”

  He relaxed, falling back against the chair. His face softened. “You’re the girl at the door.”

  She blinked. “Excuse me, what?”

  “Yesterday. I almost ran over a dog and I thought it was yours. I came up to the door with the dog. Your house had a college flag flying. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Her jaw dropped, but no words came out. She’d been so annoyed at having been dragged from bed; she hadn’t paid much attention to the captain on her parents’ back doorstep. “No. No, absolutely not. You’re thinking of someone else.” She shook her head vigorously.

  His face split into a grin. “It was you.”

  “You woke me up,” she grumbled.

  His brows shot up. “It was lunch time.”

  “I was taking a very important nap.”

  He chuckled. .

  She screwed her mouth to the side. “You know quite a bit about me now, but I know nothing about you. Other than you can’t properly read the address on a dog collar.””

  He shook his head. “What would you like to know?”

  “Well, what do you do, for starters?”

  “I’m in the Army.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So you—”

  The vibrations of her phone cut her off. Evie pulled it out of her purse to hit ignore, but saw it was her mother and she had already missed two calls. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Do you mind if I get it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Hello?” she answered as she pressed the screen up to her face.

  “Where are you? I told you I needed the car back by—”

  Oh, shit. Evie looked down at her watch and saw she was twenty minutes late getting back to her parents’, and she still had a thirty minute drive ahead of her.

  “I’m on my way.” She hit the end-call button before Laena could pile on any more guilt. She stood up then, bent down to retrieve her purse and the bag from the bookstore. “I’m really sorry, I have to go.”
r />   He stood, too, the legs of his chair scraping against the fake wood tiles. “Could I have your number?”

  She nodded, hiding her pleasure by digging the key fob out of the bottom of her purse. “Of course.” She rattled it off and then fled the coffee shop, calling “thanks for the coffee!” over her shoulder.

  His dimple appeared as he smiled, raising his hand in farewell.

  Lip caught between her teeth and a blush creeping over her cheeks, Evie pushed outside. Could he have been any more perfect?

  She released the door as she rushed away and fell down the only step. She yelped, her repaired leg twinging in pain, and tumbled onto the concrete. Her bag tumbled a foot away as she braced herself, her palms scraping across the rough surface.

  It had been months since she last fell. How did she manage to end up on the ground twice in one hour?

  “You okay?” someone asked from a few feet away.

  “Yeah. Mostly just embarrassed.” She rubbed at her leg before looking up. “Oh. Hi.”

  A familiar face from the night before stared down at her. “Iain, right?

  His lips pinched together tightly, and he held out both arms to help her up.

  “Thanks,” she said as she looped her fingers around her bag’s handle. “I’m sorry. I feel so stupid.”

  “It happens. You’re okay, though?”

  She nodded again. “Yeah. Yes. Thank you.”

  “Evie?”

  She turned as Alec pushed out of the coffee shop. “Are you all right?”

  Blood rushed to her face. “You mean more than one person saw that?”

  He chuckled, but then his attention moved to Iain and his face became stony.

  “Oh, sorry. Um, Iain, this is my coffee date, Alec. Alec, this is Iain. We met last night at a bar… Wow, that sounds bad,” she said more to herself than either of them.

  But they ignored her, instead staring each other down. Alec broke his gaze away first and nodded to her in acknowledgement.

  “Um, well…” She brushed her burning palms down the thighs of her jeans. “I need to go. But, um, thank you for the coffee, Alec.” She smiled up at him. “And thanks for picking me off the ground, Iain.”

  Brushing past a trio of crows pecking the sidewalk for crumbs, Evie left the pair behind.

  Chapter Five

  “I think I am going back to school in September.”

  Laena stopped abruptly and whirled around with an excited gasp.

  Evie nearly ran her over with the grocery cart. She swerved, barely managing to control the heavy metal before it clanged into one of the dairy cases.

  “That’s wonderful. I’m sure Kansas State’s program will be lucky to have you—”

  Evie let out an exasperated sigh and leaned her forearms on the blue plastic handle of the cart. “No, Mom. I am going back to St Andrews.”

  Displeasure pulled Laena’s lips into a tight, straight line. “Don’t be ridiculous, Evelyn.” She turned her attention to the display of yogurt and chose an armful of Evie’s favorite, a German import topped with lemon custard.

  “Why is that ridiculous?” Evie demanded.

  “It’s on the other side of the world. You won’t have anyone to take care of you.” She dropped the yogurt into the basket. “And you should never have gone in the first place.”

  “First of all,” Evie began, straightening from her slouch. “I am an adult. I don’t need your permission. I was just informing you of my plans. And I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she added, under her breath.

  Ready to launch into a tirade, Laena turned, lips pursed, the lines deepening around her mouth with age more pronounced. She opened her mouth but stopped short. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and turned back to the dairy case. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “Why? There isn’t anything to discuss.” Is this really happening?

  “We’ll wait until your father gets home.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Evie threw up her hands and turned on her heel.

  Finishing her degree had been on her mind since her coffee date with Alec, but she came to the decision to return earlier that morning. Evan called to invite her out, again. He apologized for disappearing and promised to make it up to her. She did her best to sound reluctant, but truthfully, getting out of the house became her goal each day.

  She hung up with him and realized she needed to do more than go drinking once a week and buy a few used books.

  A scowl on her face, Evie stalked down the coffee aisle toward the chocolate. Alec never called her, either. And though she kept her phone on her person at all times for a couple of days, by the third Evie gave up hope of ever seeing him again. Clearly she should have been more conservative in what she shared with strangers. telling a date all about her dead fiancé and the car crash that ruined her life was obviously not the way to go twenty minutes after meeting.

  When the disappointment of not hearing from him wore off, there was a thick layer of guilt underneath. It kept her awake at night, and then in bed when the sun rose; more time spent remembering Calum. More time wishing he was still with her. She was ashamed at how eagerly she pushed him from her thoughts, how quickly a handsome face could displace his memory.

  She stopped and stared at the shelves of candy. But, she could admit the hour she had spent in his company had done wonders for her outlook on life, it was like talking about it, even just glossing over the details with someone who wasn’t being paid to listen, had rekindled her will to live rather than just exist.

  She was making the right decision in going back to Scotland. A reply from Sarah the night before confirmed that. Her former roommate acted as if it had only been a week, not months, since their last correspondence, and she demanded to know when Evie would be back. Going back felt good.

  It felt like living.

  Half-heartedly, she grabbed a bag of milk chocolate caramels and turned toward the check-out line. What was her mother’s problem? They had always gotten along well, and Laena had always given Evie the space she needed to make her own decisions. She was supportive. Proud.

  It wasn’t until Evie announced she was going overseas for her graduate degree that her mother’s attitude changed. And it had gotten even worse since Evie came to stay with her parents. Laena seemed to have no desire to get Evie out of the house. In fact, it felt like her mother wanted to keep her there for the rest of her life, for her to never have a life outside of her mother’s home. Hell, it wasn’t even a house she had grown up in!

  Evie still seethed as she turned the corner of the aisle, and tripped over a yellow Caution, wet surface signs propped over the glistening surface. Her heel slid in something slick, and she fell helplessly through the air, head connecting with floor, bouncing twice.

  And then there was darkness.

  ****

  Evie opened her eyes as the glass door slid open. The harsh fluorescent light in the emergency room poured into her cubby hole, and she squinted as pain wrapped around her skull. The ache from the back of her head radiated around her jaw and settled in her teeth. Pulling the blinds shut and closing her eyes had helped, but both were quickly forgotten when her gaze made contact with the intruder.

  Standing at the end of her bed in crisp Army uniform jacket and pants, stethoscope draped around his neck, was Alec.

  “You never called me.” She blurted the accusation before she even realized the words tumbled out of her mouth.

  A look of surprise crossed his face and she could have laughed as his jaw dropped, but a stab of pain kept her in check.

  He recovered quickly, blinking away the initial shock of seeing her spread out over the white hospital sheets. “Oh, I tried. But I was unable to complete my call because I needed the correct country code.”

  Correct country code? Evie frowned until she realized what she had done. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I must have given you my old mobile number.” She’d never given the new one to anyone before. In fact, now that she thought about
it, she wasn’t even sure she knew what it was.

  His expression remained skeptical. “You know, you don’t have to say that. It’s really fine if you don’t want to see me, again.” He looked around the small room. “Well, after this.”

  She gave an apologetic shrug, but inside her heart leapt around her chest, flopping around in an entirely inappropriate happy dance. “No, I’ve been waiting. Well, I was waiting. Not too long. Too long would be pathetic.” Why was she rambling? “It was a non-pathetic amount of waiting. I promise.”

  His right eyebrow shot up and the corners of his mouth twitched. He turned abruptly to the computer monitor mounted to the wall and signed into the system.

  She swallowed, suddenly self-conscious. “You weren’t just saying that, were you? Just to be nice because you really didn’t want to call me? You were just being polite, weren’t you?”

  He shook his head and his shoulders bounced in laughter. When he swiveled to her, he was grinning. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. “I promise. I tried to call.”

  She slumped into the foamy hospital pillow. “Oh. That’s good.”

  The screen changed on the computer and his attention flicked back to it, reading over what she figured must have been her triage reports.

  She shifted in the uncomfortable silence. “You didn’t tell me you were a doctor. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think you told me much of anything about yourself.”

  “You did cut our coffee date a little short.” He kept his eyes trained on the report.

  “Mm, yeah, sorry about that. I had my dad’s car, but he needed it for some work thing. My mom wanted me back with it because she had a very important appointment to keep with the movie theater.”

  He looked up. “Movie theater?”

  She nodded, then winced and wished she hadn’t. “Yup. She had a hot date with a bag of popcorn and a diet soda.” And her favorite actor, but there was no reason to tell him that, even if Evie did find the whole thing ridiculous.

  They grinned at each other and her heart fluttered. She broke her gaze away. She didn’t want him to catch her staring at his mouth or see the red heat rising to her cheeks.