And even though it still feels like a spilled beaker full of acid in my chest at times, I know it’s possible. And at least I know that I wasn’t cheating Stella out of that by not trying to rekindle what we might have had.
When I pick up the camera and turn it on, I’m surprised that the battery is still charged enough that when I click over to the slide show of pictures, it responds. The first image that pops up causes a lump to form in my throat but also a smile to come to my face. Stella has her arm around me, a silly cone-shaped party hat on her head, and her tongue stuck out at the camera while I’m beside her, an exasperated look on my face but a smirk on my lips. And of course the first picture captures us perfectly – our friendship, our partnership, everything – so much that it’s just what I need to see to know I’m right and at the same time to be able to say good-bye.
I flip through the rest of them quickly. Pauly dancing on the tabletop, Bob’s Pee-wee Herman dance that I’ll never forget, the shots lined up and down the bar top, the disaster of a birthday cake they made me, but none of them compares to the one time that Beaux stepped out from behind the camera for the picture of the two of us.
Feeling less burdened, I stare one more time at the image of two people lucky in friendship, carefree, and lost in the moment before I look up to catch my own reflection. The lines around my eyes are a little deeper now and my eyes a lot more weary, the curve of my mouth still holding on to the bitterness some. Reflections don’t lie. They magnify the truths you want to hide from, the reality you don’t want to face, the shit you need to get over.
They also make you want to punch the mirror so you don’t have to see anything you don’t want to.
Well, at least I’ve dealt with one of the two women who fucked me up. It’s still best if I don’t think about the other one too much.
Restraining order, my ass.
Chapter 29
W
hen I enter the conference room, I’m already late. My plane landed on time but then was delayed on the tarmac due to airport traffic. Once I make it through the security checks at the meeting facility, sign my life away to confidentiality, and open the door, I’m not quite sure what to expect. The tiered room is medium in size, with the back portion filled with people sporting their press credentials and the front of the room a sea of military uniforms ranging from fatigues to dress blues to the more subtle suits and ties usually typical of intelligence officials.
I work my way as close to the front as I can, but since the press person leading the meeting is speaking already, I don’t want to draw too much attention my way. The whole flight here, I questioned the justification of this meeting, its overall purpose, and then as I’m seated and tune in to the speaker, I realize it’s just what I thought – a dog and pony show. A propaganda fest promising numerous embedded missions to ensure that we report in a positive light all of the action that we will see once we get boots down on the ground.
I’m not a rookie. I’m irritated that I have to even be here when I’ve proven time and again that I’m not going to bad-mouth U.S. military tactics for the sake of television ratings. I could be on a plane right now to ensure I’m the first one at the scene instead of here wasting my time.
My head’s down as I doodle on my pad, taking the names of the people who are speaking although I’ll never use them when I’m in the middle of dirt and dust and gunfire, but it’s something to do rather than let my mind run away with thoughts of once again touching down without a photographer.
Especially the one I want the most.
The speaker begins to finally talk about the one thing I have interest in, the terrorist bombing at the embassy. And as explanations begin, I look up to the screens flashing images of the on-site devastation: twisted metal, concrete rubble, smoke, and dust. Then she moves on to the deaths incurred. When the image changes, everything in my body freezes as Beaux’s image appears on the screen.
The image changes before I can process it fully. Before I can believe it. I laugh out loud like this is some kind of joke, my eyes looking around for the hidden cameras, but as I meet the appalled gazes of those around me, the bottom drops out from under me. All I can do is look back at the screen in front of me and wait for the image to appear again in the series of photographs.
I’m staggered. Confused. Broken. Disbelieving.
I struggle to draw in a breath, fight incoherency as I try to process thoughts, wince as the pain in my chest constricts so tightly, I feel as if someone is pulling my heart out and not letting go of it all at the same time.
There’s no way she’s dead. Can’t be.
My thoughts run rampant as I slide to the edge of my seat, willing the picture to appear again. And when it does, I blink my eyes rapidly and wish the image away.
Because it’s Beaux. There’s no denying it. The picture may be older and of Beaux dressed in a business suit, but it’s her, the woman I love, raven hair, green eyes. I hear her laugh, see her smile, smell her perfume, and miss the sound of her voice.
The projector turns off, the screen goes black, and yet I still stare.
This can’t be happening. Fractured thoughts break free and crash around in my head, but the one that sticks the most is that I’m too late. Through the fog of emotion, that’s the only thing I can process right off the bat. I never even had the chance to fight for her again, win her back, tell her I love her… Once again I’m too late.
The vise grip of disbelief squeezes tighter as the speaker drones on, and I hear nothing, see nothing, except for the look on Beaux’s face the last time I saw her. Conflicted, compliant, flushed, beautiful, and still mine despite being married to another man.
Shock numbs me at first. Doesn’t allow me to accept the truth of what I just heard, that Beaux’s gone. That I’ve lost yet another woman to this violent lifestyle I’ve chosen to live.
And even though it feels like a lifetime, I’m sure only seconds pass as the second what-the-fuck moment hits me like a wrecking ball. Only tiny slices of reality are able to slip through at a time, but all of a sudden I realize that I didn’t lose her because she was a photographer in the wrong place at the wrong time. No. I lost her because she was with the CIA, an intelligence officer, Special Agent BJ Croslyn.
Disbelief wars with grief, and a whole shitload of confusion in a matter of seconds as I realize Beaux was a spy. A fucking spy. At first I reject the idea despite where I’m sitting and what I’m hearing in the briefing, because there’s not a chance in hell that she was an agent. She was small and naive and didn’t even know how to shoot a gun for Christ’s sake.
But as soon as that thought hits me, a dozen others flicker and fade in my mind’s eye and neutralize the bitter taste of rejection on my tongue: her fluent Dari, the pictures she’d take at night when she’d sneak out time-stamped for proof, secret phone calls in the hallway, keeping her past a secret, so many things that appeared unrelated at the time. But now this common denominator blinking like a huge arrow overhead makes the truth seem so obvious.
But more than anything is the feeling that from day one I was being played somehow, some way. That notion she wiped away with her defiant nature and addictive body. The one she made me forget all about with words like I love you and I can’t. She used me, used false emotions in a real world.
Except my emotions weren’t fake. They were real. Still are real.
She’s gone.
This can’t be real.
But they are saying it’s real. The woman at the front of the room is telling me she pretended she couldn’t shoot a gun when I knew her. That she was faking it and used it as a perfect way to play someone like me and make sure that I believed she was this naive little thing in this big bad far-off land.
I’m completely disengaged during the rest of the briefing, overwhelmed with memories that won’t release me. With feelings on my end that were one hundred percent genuine that now make me feel so ridiculous and yet hurt nonetheless. She wasn’t some little inexperienced freelancer.
She was a spy who came overseas, used me for cover, and then when she was done, came back home to her husband and everyday life until it was time for her to leave again on another mission.
An agent who was playing me at every turn. And I had no idea.
I thought I knew her. Thought the love I felt in her touch and saw in her eyes was real. How did I misread every single fucking moment when they were so damn perfect, so sincere, just so much more than I’ve ever allowed myself to feel before?
Dropping my head in my hands, I try to comprehend how I was willing to go back on every single principle I’ve ever held. How was it just hours ago I was more certain than anything I’d ever felt in my life that she was the one? When I got back from this assignment, I was planning to show her I was willing to give up my career for her, take a chance at getting arrested considering the restraining order, and fight like hell to prove that even though she was married, I was the right one for her. Not John. Not anyone else. Just me.
Because it was that fucking real.
But obviously I don’t know shit, least of all what real love is, because every single thing was a lie. A big fat lie.
Why couldn’t she have done her job and been my partner without luring me in? In time I’m sure I’ll understand that maybe she was protecting her family and John back home by saying she wasn’t involved with somebody, but why do this to me too?
But she’s gone. I wish I could ask her, wish I could shake her shoulders and demand an answer, and then I wish I could kiss her senseless and feel her pulse race beneath mine. I’d give anything to get the chance to be mad at her, fight with her, tell her how much I hate her for putting me through this and then leaving me to sort through it all, but I’ll never get the chance.
Rage burns through my veins, leaving ash piles of heartache and disbelief behind. That staunch determination I walked in here with to get the story first, then get the girl and make a life with her is gone just like she is. I have nothing left to hold on to, least of all confidence in my own judgment.
I don’t know how long I sit in the meeting room with a broken heart, an aching soul, and a damaged psyche, but when I break from my thoughts, I realize the conference room is almost empty with a line at the door as people wait to file out. And I really don’t care, because a huge part of me that prefers the dark places I’ve learned so well to hide in after Stella’s death knows that the minute I leave this room, I fear she’ll cease to exist. As much as I’m hurt and angry and devastated, the notion still stabs deep within me because fuck yes she played me, made me fall in love with a woman who didn’t really exist, but the emotions I felt for her were incredibly real to me.
So a small part of me worries that if I step out of this room, I’ll then have to admit it was all a fake, and I can’t do that just yet because, call me a fucking sap, but I still love her. None of this takes that away.
The hand on my shoulder startles me. I’m on my feet and turning around in an instant and without a second thought when I see John’s face before me, my arm is cocked back, my fist flying. I connect with his right eye with a satisfying reverberation traveling up my arm and into my body but abating none of the emotional distress I feel.
“You son of a bitch!” I yell as bone meets bone again, every ounce of emotion I have fueling the impact of the punch. I hate him. I hate him with everything I have because he didn’t protect her. He had her when I didn’t, kept her when I couldn’t, and he failed as a husband to do the one thing he was supposed to do, keep her safe. And I know I’m being irrational and there’s no way he could keep her safe when she was off doing God knows what, but it feels good to unleash my confused fury on someone else for a change rather than let it eat me apart.
“You didn’t keep her safe! I loved her! I loved her!” I shout as flesh gives way to force, my voice breaking, my body vibrating with everything that I refuse to accept.
People in the room move, gasp, and I can’t even process how many punches it takes for one of their hands to grip my shoulders and pull me off him at the same time I realize that John isn’t resisting me. He isn’t even flinching with each punch I land, and all of a sudden it registers that he might be in the same boat as I am. He may have never known Beaux was a spy. He may have just lost the love of his life too.
I can’t hold on to the thought for more than a second because all I can hold on to is the grief that owns my every action and reaction right now, robbing my breath, stealing my tears, and annihilating the very idea of fate.
I fight against the hands pulling me off John, and then I just give up and roll onto my back atop the broken pieces of a chair that we just obliterated. My chest is heaving; the sound of my labored breathing is the only thing I can hear besides my heart breaking as I lie there, John battered beside me, and despair stretched out in front of me.
“She loved you.” I freeze at the strained words coming from him lost in the shuffle of feet moving around us now that the show is over. I blink several times as I lie there, trying to make sure I’ve heard him correctly, because they were the last things I ever thought I’d hear come from him. I open my mouth to speak but shut it when I’m not sure exactly what to say. “We need to talk in private.”
And the way he says it has my curiosity piqued, my mind clearing some to briefly wonder how a civilian could be in on this meeting, but my thoughts are lost to the feeling deep down that I want nowhere near him right now. We may have loved the same woman, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like him. In fact, it is completely opposite from the way I feel. As soon as I catch my breath, I want the fuck out of here because I can’t breathe. Can’t think in here. I don’t want to believe the lies I was just told in this room… because they are lies. She can’t be gone. This can’t be happening.
How can her own husband make that statement? That would mean they’ve talked about me.
But he said she loved me. It’s the one thing I’ve wanted to hear more than anything, but at the same time right now, I’m not sure I can handle it.
“Go to hell,” I grit out between breaths, starting to push myself up because I have a plane to catch, and if I catch it, then I can run away and pretend like this meeting never happened and that she’s still alive and I’m still going to come back in a few days and fight like hell to win her over. To make her understand that what we have is real and true and worth it.
“We weren’t married,” John whispers ever so softly. I stop midway to standing and look over to him for the first time as my heart stutters in my chest. His eyes mirror the grief in mine, the loss burning bright, but they are also saying something else that I can’t quite understand. “Can we talk?” he asks, using his chin to indicate a doorway over to his right.
I stare at him, wanting to know and yet afraid to know more. But I follow John inside and shut the door behind us, leery, uncomfortable and overwhelmed because so many things have been thrown at me that I can’t comprehend any of them.
“Sit?” he asks, and I just lean a shoulder against the wall. I’ve had enough things knock me to my knees right now; I don’t think there’s much more that can. Besides, I fear that once I process this all, once it all sinks in, I won’t be able to move anyway, so sitting? No, thanks.
“What I’m about to tell you is classified and could get me fired and you in trouble, but you deserve to know the truth.” I just stare at the ground, my eyes shut, and fingers pinching the bridge of my nose because I’m so afraid of hearing what’s next and at the same time a small part of me holds on to some hope that he’s going to tell me that was all a farce out there. That Beaux’s alive. That when I open the door, she’s going to be standing there with that smirk on her face and green eyes looking for me. “I’m Dane Culver. Nice to meet you.”
My head whips up at his extended hand. What the fuck? “Wha…?” I don’t even bother finishing the word or shaking his hand.
“Beaux was my partner. I’m an agent too. Our marriage was a cover.”
“Wait a minute, so —”
“So that means how she felt for you was real. She loved you.” His voice is soft, sympathetic, but all I can hear are the words “She loved you.”
I sag against the wall, another tsunami of emotions hitting the wave that’s already ebbing because I can’t focus on anything, my thoughts splintering into a million pieces as the questions try to bubble up to the surface. My hands are cradling my head as I double over because if I thought the news of her death was devastating before, it’s crippling now. Because now that I know she wasn’t married, hadn’t cheated on her husband, it’s like the veil of guilt that shrouded around the love I felt for her has been lifted and those feelings are a hundred times more intense and a thousand times more devastating.
“Oh. My. God.” They are the only words I can say, and I repeat them over and over as all of the things I doubted and questioned and berated myself for dissipate, so that what I thought I really lost, I really did lose.
And after a few minutes of trying to breathe underwater, all of a sudden it’s like I can draw in a breath for the first time when my thoughts line up together. “So this is part of it too, right? She’s really alive. The bombing wasn’t real either?” Even I find the hope lacing the incredulity in my tone pathetic, but I am holding on to threads here, and when that’s all you have, you don’t care how bad they cut you as your grip slips so long as you’re still holding them.
When I stare at Dane, I know my hope is fleeting, because his eyes well up with the tears that won’t come for me. He shakes his head slowly, sniffing his nose and clearing his throat. “I’m sorry… Goddamn it!” He pounds on the table and shoves up out of the chair he’s sitting in as he swallows back the emotion threatening to overwhelm him. “I was supposed to be at the embassy with her, might have been able to save her,” he says, unable to look at me, “but I wasn’t slated to leave for a few days while I made sure her cover remained intact.”