Strangers in Love, page 8
As I dried the last pot, I broke the silence. “Brody gave me his newest whisky to try, and I figured I’d have a drink in the library. Want to join me?”
“That sounds great.” Aspen flashed a bright smile as she rinsed out the sink. “Paris has some great wine, but not whisky.”
“We’ve been spoiled. Da’s always had good scotch and whisky around, and then after Brody started making his…” I let the thought trail off.
She wiped down the counter. “I don’t like it quite as much as some of our siblings, but every once in a while, there’s something nice about relaxing with a glass.”
I agreed and went to get the bottle, surprising myself at how glad I was that Aspen was going to sit with me. Maybe I was starting to find that part of myself again too, the part that liked being around people. Maybe this was that healing that the army shrinks had told me would eventually come if I let it.
I wasn’t going to think on it too hard, though. I had my plans, and everything else would come or not. If the last eight months had taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t control everything. Or anything, most of the time.
Sixteen
Aline
I was running late, and if I didn’t make up the time, I would never hear the end of it from Freedom. And it wasn’t even my fault.
Freedom had sent me a text thirty minutes ago saying that she’d gotten discharged from the hospital and was on her way to the airport. Then she’d asked if I’d needed her to do anything. Sure that I had everything under control, I’d told her not to worry about it. I’d taken care of it all.
Except I’d made the mistake of calling Mom and Dad instead of texting to let them know that Freedom and I would be on our flight soon. They’d known about Freedom being in the hospital, and I’d been surprised that they hadn’t flown over here as soon as I’d gotten off the phone with them that day. They’d also surprised me by not constantly calling me to check on us. Until I’d called them this morning, I’d thought it was because they’d trusted me to take care of things on my own.
Now I knew that it was because Freedom had been calling Miss Little every morning and evening, asking her how I was doing. If Freedom had just been asking about how things had been going without me having had a translator all week, I would’ve understood it and been fine with it. I’d have done the same thing in Freedom’s position.
Except that hadn’t been the case. Freedom had asked Miss Little to check on things like my eating habits and if I was getting enough sleep. And then, after Freedom got off the phone with Miss Little, she’d call our parents and fill them in on the details.
In my parents’ defense, Freedom hadn’t told them that I didn’t know about the calls, but that didn’t change the fact that none of them had trusted me to take care of myself, to take care of the project I’d selected, the one I’d wanted to do.
The realization had shocked me enough that I’d lost my momentum. Mom had kept talking, and I hadn’t interrupted her to tell her that I needed to go. Not soon enough, anyway. By the time I’d remembered to check the time, I’d been ten minutes behind schedule and completely flustered.
To make matters worse, the car I’d scheduled to come pick me up had left because I hadn’t been right there waiting. It took another ten minutes to get a new ride, and by the time I got into the back seat of the cab, I was glad we’d decided to meet an hour before our flight was scheduled to start boarding. We could still make our flight, but it’d be close.
Unless, of course, something else decided to go wrong.
Like a traffic jam.
We were about a mile from Neutral Ground and way more than that away from the airport, when the car came to a dead stop. Cars all around us were honking, and a quick look told me that we were stuck. Freedom and I were going home with less than we’d come since we’d brought an entire suitcase of supplies to donate, but what I had in the trunk was still too much for me alone to carry very far.
This was not good.
None of this was my fault, but if Freedom and I missed our plane, it would just prove to everyone that I couldn’t take care of myself. I should have, somehow, foreseen each stumbling block that had caused me to be late. I should have woken up an hour earlier. Texted my parents instead of calling. Gotten off the phone more quickly. Told the taxi to wait even if I was late. Had a back-up car.
Yes, those would have all been great things for me to have done, but I wasn’t psychic, so I hadn’t done any of them.
And still, a voice in the back of my mind insisted that Freedom would’ve thought of every contingency.
I pulled my phone from my purse and looked at the time. Fifteen minutes behind schedule, and nothing around us was moving. If I was lucky, I probably had another twenty minutes before Freedom called to see what was wrong. If I wasn’t lucky, it’d probably be in five minutes, which was when I’d told Freedom I’d arrive at the airport.
Then, suddenly, something went right.
Traffic started moving. Not fast, but at least going in the right direction. Just before the first crossroad, the driver glanced back at me and rattled something off in Persian too fast for me to catch. I opened my mouth to ask him to repeat himself, but then he took a sharp turn, throwing me against the door. I winced at the pain in my shoulder, but at least I’d figured out he’d been warning me that he was turning.
It would’ve been better to know that my seatbelt wasn’t exactly secure, though.
Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes, and I flew forward, barely getting my hand up in time to protect my face. My palm smarted, and I was glad I’d had my fingers flat because they might’ve broken with the impact. The driver started yelling, but I was almost certain that the expletives weren’t directed at me. I was always surprised at how quickly insults and curse words were picked up once learning a language moved from the classroom to practical application.
“What hap…” The words died in my throat as I looked through the windshield to see three men with guns coming toward the car. “Go.” The word wasn’t even loud enough for me to hear it. “Drive.” Not any better.
I told my arms and legs to move. Crouch down behind the front seats until the driver got us away. Open the door and get myself away from them. Run. Fight.
Something.
Something other than sitting here, frozen.
Freedom would’ve known what to do.
She would have known how to tell the driver what he should do in a language he’d understand. She’d give clear, decisive instructions, and if they weren’t followed, she’d know what to do next. She’d know if fight or if flight was the better option. She’d know how to do either one. Or both.
What she definitely wouldn’t do was sit on her butt, watching three armed men point guns at the car. Yell something. Open the door and grab her arm.
She certainly wouldn’t have let them drag her from the car. To the dark-colored SUV where a fourth man sat behind the steering wheel. She wouldn’t have gone without a fight. Without screaming. Without trying to do everything physically possible to get free.
She wouldn’t have stared at the back door opening. Wouldn’t have gone into that back seat without raising a hand in her defense.
Freedom would have fought like hell to save me, to save herself.
But I wasn’t my sister, and I didn’t do a single thing to stop myself from being kidnapped in the middle of a street, on a sunny November morning. In Iran.
Seventeen
Eoin
Alec was frazzled enough that he’d referred to this being Evanne’s eighth – instead of ninth – birthday at least three times in the past two hours, but I’d never seen him happier. He’d always loved Evanne and had never hidden it from anyone, but even just a year ago, he hadn’t looked as comfortable as he did right now. For example, my uptight brother was smiling at a pair of third graders who almost knocked over the punch bowl.
I knew a lot of it was due to the woman with him. Not Keli, though she had helped plan the party and was around, trying to make up for all the shit she’d put him through. No, it was Lumen Browne who’d made the difference. Everyone here could see it.
Maybe I should’ve felt sorry for Keli, seeing the man she clearly still wanted in love with someone else, but after all the shit she’d pulled, I didn’t have any sympathy for her at all. I’d always be glad that Alec had met her because Evanne was worth putting up with whatever Keli did, but she’d never get off my shit list after the stuff she’d done this past year.
Lumen, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who made me think Alec had scored way out of his league – and I actually thought pretty highly of my big brother. She was good for Alec, but she was also just a great person. Even when Alec had been acting like a complete asshole, she’d cared about what happened to Evanne, above and beyond what a normal teacher would care about a student. And that wasn’t just because of her feelings about Alec either. She was that sort of person, the kind who really cared about others.
There’d been a girl Lumen had met while volunteering at a local group home. Soleil. I didn’t know the whole story about what’d happened to the girl, but what I did know had been enough to make me agree to help get Soleil justice. Brody, Alec, and I, along with Lumen and two of her friends, had put together a plan to catch a dirty cop who’d not only raped Soleil for years but had also given her to his friends to abuse.
It’d taken all of my self-control not to beat the shit out of him. I hadn’t wanted to kill him, though. Not because I wasn’t angry enough for it or because I didn’t think he deserved to die, but because I didn’t want him to get off that easy. Now, he was in prison, and everyone knew he was a cop who’d raped a teenager. I was waiting to see a news headline saying that he’d been killed, but I hoped it wouldn’t be for a long time because he deserved every second of suffering.
Maybe that was wrong of me or meant that I had issues, but if there was one thing I couldn’t ever forgive, it was someone abusing a kid.
That was probably why I thought so highly of Alec’s new girlfriend.
Lumen hadn’t even been content to just get the information from Soleil and let other people do the dangerous stuff. She’d insisted on going undercover with her friend Mai, putting both of them at risk, because she’d wanted to be certain that the cop couldn’t hurt anyone else. No matter how much the two of them had looked like victims, they hadn’t been. They were both badasses.
And that was exactly the sort of woman Alec needed. Someone who could bring out his tender side but could also kick his ass when he needed it. Lumen stood up to him but also supported him. It was a fine line to walk, and she was just the woman for the job. They weren’t engaged yet, but it was only a matter of time. If they could get through the last few months together, they could get through pretty much anything.
And Evanne completely adored her teacher. The transition from teacher to stepmother wasn’t going to be an issue there.
“Uncle Eoin!” Evanne barreled into me, throwing her arms around my waist. “Come be our king cheetah. We’re going to take over the pride lands and build an obstacle course.”
“Oh, you are?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I think the lions might have a problem with that.”
She shook her head, her dark braid bouncing on her shoulders. “They’re going to live in the swimming pool now.”
“Is that right?” I smiled, and it was an easier smile than any I’d had in a long time. “Lions like to swim?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course they do.”
Of course they did.
“Evanne,” Keli called from the other side of the room. “Come say hi to Jeffry’s mother.”
She sighed. “I guess the takeover has to wait.”
I laughed as she ran off. I’d always loved Evanne, and the one regret I’d always had about being in the army was that I hadn’t had as much time with Evanne as I would’ve liked. We still didn’t live in the same city, but we were a hell of a lot closer than I’d been for most of her life. At least now I could come to birthday parties and holidays, be a bigger part of her life.
It was nice to see the rest of the family too. It had been strange watching them grow up in spurts. Six members of my family were younger than me, so they’d all been still teenagers when I’d enlisted. Technically, London hadn’t even been that. It’d seemed like every time I’d seen them, they’d changed. I didn’t want that with Evanne or any future nieces or nephews. I didn’t want it with anyone in my family again.
“She’s growing up way too fast,” Aspen said as she appeared next to me. “It seems like just yesterday she was face planting in her first birthday cake.”
“I showed that video to my entire squad,” I said. “It was a hit.”
Aspen smiled. “I’ll bet it was.”
The strange tone of her voice made me look at her a little more closely. That wasn’t her normal smile.
“Have you talked to Mr. McCormack and Nana Naz recently?”
“I talked to them last week. I’ve been calling them every couple weeks to check in with them.” The words were casual but reaching out to Israel and Nana Naz was definitely not casual for me. It hurt every time, but I wasn’t going to stop, no matter how much it tore me up inside. I’d promised Leo I’d take care of them.
“I had the biggest crush on him, you know.” Aspen glanced up at me, and I could see now that her smile was sad. “Leo. For years.”
I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. “You…he…you didn’t…?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think he even knew. I certainly didn’t tell him. I was his best friend’s little sister, and he was far too…honorable to have done anything but let me down easy. Even at thirteen, I knew that.”
My fingers tightened around my cup, and I barely stopped myself from crushing it and spilling punch everywhere. How had I not known? Granted, Aspen and I hadn’t been the closest growing up – or even now – but her crushing on my best friend – for years – seemed like the sort of thing I should have noticed.
It hit me then that she’d had to hear about Leo’s death second or third hand. I’d never asked Da who’d made all the calls after it’d happened. Or how much everyone had been told. Paris had been in the same grade as Leo and me, so the three of us had spent the most time together, but Maggie was just two years younger like Aspen. Carson and Cory were two years older. Leo had been around for birthdays and family picnics from the time we were kids, so those two years on either side hadn’t really been that much. Just because I’d been the closest to him didn’t mean they hadn’t lost a friend too.
“I should have reached out – called – I didn’t know.”
“No one did. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t still in love with him,” she said. “Not for a long time.” She gave me a closer look, and something like horror showed on her face. “Eoin, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I shook my head. “No. No. It’s better I know. I mean–”
A screaming horde of children ran past, and I winced. Evanne could get loud, but that shrill, high-pitched yelling…
“I love her, but I’m not so sure I want a pack of them myself,” Aspen said, clearly trying to change the subject.
Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. Hollow. A faint ringing…
Fuck.
“Eoin, are you okay?” Aspen put her hand on my arm.
I nodded but didn’t answer. I needed to go, be somewhere else. I needed quiet.
Fortunately for me, Alec’s house was huge, which meant there was somewhere I could go that would let me work down from the anxiety that was making it hard for me to breathe. I wasn’t in a full-fledged panic attack or flashback, but I could feel myself working toward it.
“I’ll be back,” I muttered as I stepped past Aspen into the hall behind her.
I felt like I was moving under water, in a nightmare, trying to get away, but never really getting there. The walls were closing in, and I couldn’t breathe.
Then I saw it, a half-open door, and I pushed through it. The library. Perfect. I closed the door behind me and dropped into the first chair I found. My eyes closed, and I buried my head in my hands, concentrated on my breathing. Slow counts in and out.
Explosions. Gunshots. Screaming.
“No. No. I’m here.” I had to say the words out loud, keep saying them out loud, hoping that I’d eventually believe them.
The kids were still yelling and, logically, I knew they were happy, but logic wasn’t ruling right now.
Bart was dead. Doto was bleeding out in front of me.
I left him.
He kept saying my name over and over again. Begging me not to leave him. Begging me to save him.
I only saved myself.
I left him there.
I watched him die. Choking on his own blood. Each cough ripping him up more and more inside.
And Bart just kept staring at me.
Accusing me.
Wanting to know why I’d killed him.
“I didn’t kill Bart. I couldn’t save Doto.” Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe it.
Leo screamed as I pulled him from the car, his leg coming apart with a thick ripping sound. His arm came off in my hand. I kept grabbing him, and he kept coming apart. Pieces of him. All over me.
So much blood.
And things thicker than blood.
“That’s not what happened.” I rubbed my forehead. “That’s not what happened.”
I was here. I was safe. And that wasn’t how things had gone down.
It’d been months ago. Far away. It was awful and one of the worst things that’d ever happened to me. But it was over. No matter how much I hated it, I’d survived.
My feet were on solid ground. I was sitting in a comfortable chair with expensive fabric. I was in a safe room in a safe house. My family was here and safe. I was in Seattle. There were no gunshots. No explosions.
