“Let’s go,” I replied.
“Kia, ma belle, you’re in your robe,” Celeste reminded me.
“I’m covered,” I murmured, following Hap out the door.
“Darling, it’ll only take –” Celeste’s voice followed me, I stopped, Skip almost ran into me but my eyes went straight to Celeste.
“I’m fine. Let’s go,” I stated then turned and rushed behind Hap.
“Coastal road, Hap, Kia’s with me, Frenchie’s with you,” Skip ordered as we all rushed down the walkway.
“Sam’s on his way,” Hap said to the walkway, not even looking back as his legs moved with wide strides down to the drive.
We hit the vehicles, Celeste moving directly to the passenger side of Sam’s SUV, me going straight to the passenger side of a decrepit pickup in which Skip was already at the wheel. I was still swinging in when Skip turned the ignition and was still closing my door when he started reversing with scary speed, narrowly missing Luci’s Corvette in the drive. He cut the wheel severely when he hit road and my body swayed nearly to the seat. He righted the truck, took off, I righted myself and clicked my seatbelt in place.
“Tell me what more than the normal not good is,” Skip ordered on a bark.
“She loves Sam, she likes me, she wants us together and even meddled a little to make that so. Still, Sam and I getting tight, Luci seeing it, Celeste thinks it’s making what she lost, already a constant reminder, more intense. She says Luci has dark moments where she can’t hide her despair. And Luci told me herself that one day everything is great and the next everything can turn black. So she already wasn’t good, Skip, but now she’s more than normally not good.”
He took a hair raising turn out to the main road then gunned it as I turned to look at him.
“You know her,” I said softly. “Will she do anything crazy?”
“Never seen a love like that, not in my life,” Skip replied, my stomach clenched and my heart started hurting.
Still.
“That’s not an answer, Skip,” I whispered.
His eyes flicked to me and the old pickup increased speed.
Then, to the windshield, he whispered back, “Yep.”
That was what I was afraid he was going to say.
“Shit, shit, fuck,” I hissed. Then I asked, “What’s Ruler Bay?”
“Can walk it from Gordo and Luci’s place but it’s a ways. On foot, takin’ your time, maybe half an hour. Thing is, you gotta climb some rocks and then descend into it. Got a trail, it’s not treacherous but enough so it’s pretty private. Gordo was home, he ran it nearly every day. He loved it there. Took Luci there all the time. She loved it there too. Far’s I know, she hasn’t been back, not since he died.”
“Is this the only place they’d go?”
“Fuck if I know. Served ‘em fries and crab sandwiches. Got drunk with ‘em. They didn’t whisper their secrets to me.”
“What I’m saying is, maybe we should diversify our search,” I explained.
“And what I’ll say is, if anyone knows where she’d go, it’s Sam. First, he and Gordo were like brothers. Nope, strike that, what they had was bigger than blood. Sam stepped in with her when Gordo bit it and when I say that I mean big time. They were close before, Sam and Luci, but now they’re really friggin’ close. Anyone knows where she’d go, it’s Sam. So that’s where we’re goin’.”
“Right,” I whispered my thoughts on Luci and his words.
What they had was bigger than blood.
Two brothers Sam lost.
Two.
Shit!
I fell silent.
Skip drove like a demon.
Finally, Skip said, “Nothin’ there.”
I craned my neck and scanned the coastline, asking, “Can you see the bay?”
“No, woman, what I’m tellin’ you is, Sam and Luci are thick as thieves but not that way. Not the way he was with you at the Shack. Fact is, ‘fore you, he never brought a woman to the Shack.”
Oh wow.
That was news.
My eyes shot to him. “Really?”
“Just don’t get fool shit in your head ‘bout them. That’s all I’m sayin’.” He jerked his chin to something and stated, “There’s the bay.”
I looked back to the coastline to see a short outcropping of rock. It wasn’t tall and it was covered with green. You could see the trail running from a small parking lot-slash-pit stop on the road.
Skip swung in as I undid my seatbelt. He barely came to a halt before my door was open and I was out.
“Shit woman!” Skip shouted but I took off toward the trailhead, my robe flying out behind me.
About a minute later, I was thinking it was time to join Sam in some kind of workout regime because I had a stitch in my side.
Two minutes after that, I was thanking my lucky stars that the trail was relatively well-used and definitely well-maintained for I was traversing it easily even on flip-flops.
Thirty seconds after that, I was heading down and I could see the bay.
Luci was sitting in the sand, knees cocked, elbows to knees, jaw in hands, eyes to the water, the waves rolling toward the shore licking her ankles.
I kept going flat out.
I was across the beach and five feet away from her when her head jerked to me as her body jumped, she looked up and her mouth dropped open.
Then she asked, “Kia, cara mia, what on earth are you doing here?” Her gazed moved down to my middle then back up and she finished, “In your robe?”
I stopped abruptly, sucked in breath and told her, “You’ve been gone for three hours. Everyone is worried sick.”
She blinked up at me and queried, “Has it been three hours?”
“Yes, Luci!” I cried. “Celeste is freaking out. We all are.”
Her eyes moved beyond me and her brows drew together. “Is that Skip?”
“Yes, it’s Skip. He was at the house being cantankerous when Celeste showed freaking out.”
“Woman! What the hell!” Skip yelled when he arrived.
She gracefully stood saying, “I’m so sorry, I lost track of time.”
“For three hours?” I asked and she looked back at me.
“I…” she looked to the ocean then her eyes came again to me. “Yes,” she whispered. “For three hours.”
I studied her face, I did not at all like what I saw so I said, “Skip, give us a minute.”
“Hell with that, I –”
My eyes sliced to him and I ordered firmly, “Skip, give us a minute.”
Skip scowled at me. Then he scowled at Luci. Then he turned and stomped down the beach toward the trail Hap was running down with Celeste following him some distance behind.
I turned back to Luci and got closer. “Are you okay?”
Her head tilted to the side, her mouth curled into a small smile but her face suffused with sorrow. The jig was up, the shutters thrown open. No hiding. All of it there for me to see.
And it hurt to witness.
She whispered her answer, “No.”
“Luci,” I whispered back, moving even closer, my hand reaching out and taking hers.
Her fingers curled tight on mine but she looked to the sea and kept whispering. “I remember. I remember what it was like to fall in love.”
I kept silent but my heart squeezed because there it was. Watching Sam and I was torture for our Luci.
“Like it was yesterday,” she went on softly. “Funny how you can fall so hard but it doesn’t hurt. You’d do it again. You’d do it again and again and again. You’d do it forever.”
I held her hand and held my peace.
“I thought we had forever,” she whispered to the sea.
I swallowed back tears and kept my focus on Luci.
She kept talking quietly. “We used to make love here. In the sand.”
Oh God.
God, God, God.
“At night, Travis would wake me up and we’d walk in the moonlight holding hands. No
words. Just holding hands. He’d bring me here and make love to me in the sand, under the stars. Then he’d hold me and we’d whisper to each other about nothing. Then we’d walk back, silent, holding hands. I never slept so well. Those times, after we got home, I slept so well, Kia, safe in the arms of the man who loved me like that. Loved me so much he wanted nothing more than to walk holding hands in the moonlight to beauty, create beauty with me, then take me home and hold me while I slept.”
I squeezed her hand, inched closer and whispered, “Honey.”
Her eyes came to me and her sultry, gorgeous voice was dead when she said, “I’m never going to have that again.”
“Oh, Luci, sweetie, you don’t know.”
“Not with Travis.”
Well, she was right about that.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered because, honestly, there was nothing else to say and seriously, I was.
“I am too,” she whispered back, her eyes locked on mine and I watched them get bright as I watched her lip start to quiver, mine reciprocated and she kept whispering. “I am too. I am very, very sorry, Kia.”
I saw it and moved right into it when it happened. The sob tearing out of her throat, I wrapped my arms around her and she shoved her face in my neck, her body jerking against mine, wracked with tears.
I held her close, stroked her hair and said not a word as her tears wet my skin, so many of them they started to slide down my chest and wet my robe. Hearing them, feeling them, I struggled holding back my own. But she needed strength and understanding and I needed to give it to her.
Still, I couldn’t stop it, one escaped to slide down my cheek.
“I want that back,” she whispered against my neck.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, you can’t have it back,” I told her gently.
“I know. I know I can’t have it back with Travis. But I want it back.”
I wasn’t following.
She explained, pushing closer, shoving her face deeper in my neck, she said so quietly I barely heard her over the rushing waves, “I have to let Travis go so I can find it again.”
I closed my eyes and held her tighter.
There it was. Thank you, God, there it was.
She got there herself.
Thank. You. God.
“Yes, Luci, honey, that’s what you need to do,” I whispered.
She nodded but said no more nor did she move.
Not until I felt a presence right before I felt a hand on the small of my back. I twisted my neck and tipped back my head to see Sam standing there. I nodded to him then shifted Luci into his arms. She looked up at him in surprise then her face crumbled again and she did a face plant in his shirt. Sam’s arms went visibly tighter.
I leaned in and kissed the side of her head. Then I reached up and briefly cupped Sam’s jaw. I smiled sadly into his intense eyes then dropped my hand and moved away.
I walked down the beach, the wind beating my insanely expensive robe against my body. Celeste, Hap, Maris and Skip were standing at the trailhead. I stopped at their huddle.
“She’s worked it through on her own,” I announced. “She’s letting him go.”
Hap closed his eyes and dropped his head. Maris pressed her lips together and turned her face away. Celeste gave me a melancholy smile.
Skip looked me in the eyes and announced, “You’ll do.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Burned in My Brain
It was night, dark and Memphis and I were hanging on the deck. Memphis on my lap, breathing easy. Me in a chair sipping an Amaretto.
Luci’s realization changed our plans for the day. Sam took her back to her house and stayed with her. Skip went wherever Skip had to go. Hap went back to the base. Celeste and I drove Maris to the airport. Then we spent the rest of the day together.
When it got late and there was still no Sam, Celeste got in Luci’s Corvette and went to her house. Fifteen minutes later, Celeste texted me with, “All is well. They’re talking on the deck. Sam says he’ll be home soon.”
So I got my dog and my Amaretto with a cube of ice, hit Sam’s deck, settled in and waited for my man to come home.
Sitting with only Memphis for company, it didn’t take long for me to come to some realizations myself. The first being, sitting alone on the deck in the night, the house empty behind me, watching the moonlight on the waves, that since I met Sam, I had very little of this. Solitude. Time to think. Time to be with me.
And once I realized that I realized that was by Sam’s design. Except for him offering to give me space the next night after the first time we had sex, that offer was never repeated. In fact, neither Maris nor Sam suggested they have alone time before she went home. That was my idea.
Dad had said it but I didn’t process it then and I didn’t understand it now.
Sam and I were inseparable.
I did not question falling in love with him because he was Sam.
And I did not question my decision earlier that day to hook my star to his, to restart my life after Cooter, however that came about, with Sam.
And I no longer questioned that Sam would want to hook his star to mine. We got along great (when we weren’t fighting). He was into me. He thought I was beautiful. He liked the way I dressed. We had great sex. I made him laugh. He made me laugh. His friends and Mom liked me. My friends and family liked him.
What I questioned was Sam announcing to everyone we were moving in together nearly upon waking the day after he made that mistaken assumption. It was almost if, in doing so, he was building a barricade I would find it difficult to break through if I decided to go back.
He wasn’t trapping me, I had free will, my life was my own, but he was throwing up obstacles, making it difficult, tying me to him.
And I didn’t get this.
Sam Cooper and Sampson Cooper didn’t need to do that with any woman. There was a desperation to it that alarmed me.
A desperation that might come from a man who lost a brother who was a brother bigger than blood then for over a year dealing with that man’s wife and seeing firsthand the devastating loss to a loved one left behind.
No.
That wasn’t all.
Seeing it at the same time feeling it for Luci wasn’t the only one who lost Gordo.
And thus I knew Sam loved me as in loved me for learning about loss by watching it and feeling it, he wasn’t taking any chances, he wasn’t wasting any time.
This worried me. I didn’t want him to feel this loss. I didn’t want him to feel this desperation. I didn’t want what we had to grow under that cloud. No one could tell the future and we might only have another day together or we might have fifty years. But even if we had only one day, I didn’t want Sam living it under a cloud.
But I had no earthly idea how to talk to him because this kind of thing, Sam did not share with me.
On this thought, Memphis’s head came up, it jerked to the house and I heard Sam’s truck growling into the drive then the gate swinging closed. Then I listened to the garage door going up. Memphis jumped down and her claws clicked on the deck as she ran to the porch door to wait for Sam to arrive.
Even with my heavy thoughts, this made me smile. My baby liked my man. Not a surprise. But my man liked my baby.
And that made life all the more sweet.
I heard a yap, twisted in my chair and watched Sam stride through the house I’d left lit softly with a few lamps. He hit the deck, scooped up a bouncing, happy Memphis on the go and came to me.
I tipped my head back, smiling gently at him and waited for his approach and kiss.
He didn’t give it to me. On the outside, he rounded the chair beside mine and folded into it, Memphis on his lap. She bounced, trying to lick his face and give him her brand of welcome home.
“Settle, Memphis,” Sam ordered firmly but not sharply.
Memphis, somewhat surprisingly, did as she was told.
She was immediately rewarded when Sam’s fingers massaged her fur at her neck a
nd his eyes went to the sea.
I was a little troubled he had not greeted me but I let it go and asked softly, “You okay?”
“Hope to Christ this is a day I will not live again,” Sam answered immediately.
That didn’t sound good.
“How’s Luci?” I ventured.
“Lots of crying, hangin’ around while she talked to her folks, more crying and lots of listening to her talk about Gordo.”
“She’s processing it,” I deduced.
“She’s processin’ the shit outta it. She crammed a year of mourning into a day. She’s all over fuckin’ processing it.”
I pressed my lips together trying to read his mood and tone. It wasn’t frustrated but it was. He sounded tired. He sounded impatient and over it. The first and the last surprised me.
“Is she coming to any conclusions?” I asked.
“Sellin’ her house, movin’ back to Italy. It’s all about Gordo here. She’s got friends but her life here is her life with him and that’s gone. She’ll come back and visit but family and home is not here. Family and home is Italy. She’s puttin’ the house on the market tomorrow.”
Whoa.
“Shouldn’t she wait? Think about it awhile? This is a fragile juncture and moving on sudden decisions might not be good,” I suggested and at that, Sam’s head turned to me.
“Sudden?”
“Well, yes. Sudden as in, coming to terms with Gordo dying one day and putting their house on the market the next.”
“Nothing sudden about this shit, Kia. He’s been dead awhile. It’s about fuckin’ time she moved on. She’s movin’ on.”
I stared at him and said nothing. This was because I didn’t have to try to read his mood and tone. He was frustrated, tired, impatient and over it.
I was shocked.
That was not Sam.
“Wiped,” he muttered, got up and moved Memphis to my lap. Then, without touching me, no kiss, not even meeting my eyes, he went on, “Hittin’ it. Got shit to do early so may be gone when you get up. Be back late afternoon, early evening. You don’t feel like cookin’, text me and on my way home, I’ll pick up fried clam platters from Skippy’s. Not as good as crab sandwiches, still can’t be beat.”