Second Chances: The Seahaven Series - Book One (18 page)

Then there are the 5am shopper moms who buy groceries after they've exercised and before their kids wake up. That's some serious early morning dedication to body preservation which I wish I had but am not motivated enough to act on. Running on a treadmill for an hour is a little too close to living life like a hamster on a wheel if you ask me. I'll take my beach walks with Buster over that any day.

And the food checkers have stories too. Some are too tired to talk, but some are so lonely from the night shift that they're eager to engage anyone and everyone who comes through their line. One of them hounds me for ambulance stories, always asking about the gory stuff. I try to avoid her.

I spread the food out on Matt's counter and spend a minute visualizing my cooking plan before I get started. It's a little unusual to eat dinner at 8am, but then we have unusual schedules.

Will he like eggplant parmesan? There's so much I don't know about him yet. Is he going to leave before I learn everything? He can't go, he hasn't said a thing about it. Why would he go? He loves me, he loves it here. I realize my thoughts are spinning and I'm getting more anxious, so I force myself to push them from my head. It's a rumor, Ellie. No more, no less. Until he confirms it, it's only a rumor.

Buster sits politely at my feet and wags his tail. I drop a small chunk of eggplant and he catches it. “Good boy, Buster. Such a good boy.” I give his ear a scratch and then kick his ball into the living room. He scrambles after it, happy to be playing.

I turn the oven on and start chopping. Forty minutes go by in a blink, and then the food's cooking and I grab a cup of coffee, laptop, and a blanket and take them out on the deck. I sit in an Adirondack chair with Buster at my feet and open the computer. It's gray out, and the water is filled with whitecaps. A storm is coming.

For the next thirty minutes I research wrongly-accused murder cases, reading case histories and outcomes. I open windows with news stories reporting Cesar's stabbing, looking for quotes from eyewitnesses, clues to the way it happened, anything to help prove his innocence. I can't find anything new.

I hear gravel crunching down the street and turn to see Matt driving towards the house. I smile involuntarily. I can't help it.

Buster bounds down the stairs to greet him, and Matt bends down to give him scratches. I can hear him saying, “Hi buddy, what's going on?” as he gets closer.

He stops at the top of the stairs when he sees me in the chair. He smiles a tired smile and exhales a big gust of breath.

“Quite a day,” he says, coming to sit with me. He plunks down heavily in the chair next to mine. I hold my hand out and he takes it.

“Yeah,” I say. “A doozy.”

“So. This ex of yours...” he trails off.

“I think he finally got the message loud and clear today.”

I picture Matt subduing Paul, and Paul's look of sheer anger. No, Paul won't want more of that.

“He seems pretty determined to get you back.”

I shake my head. “He just wants what he can't have. Some men are like that.”

Matt keeps holding my hand. He says, “Sometimes I realize I don't know a lot of things about you.”

I nod, smiling. “I had the same thought standing in the kitchen an hour ago making eggplant parm. 'Does he even like it? Will he hate it?' I had no idea.”

Matt smiles. “So that's what smells so good. Lucky me. I love it.”

We look out at the gray ocean.

“When you're married to someone like him it gets to be really clear what's bad for you,” I say. “You learn a lot about yourself. And I learned that I get very intensely involved in things. I found out I need to take a step back sometimes and not dive into the deep end. And that I need to make sure that if I do get deep into something, like jobs, or people...” I look up at him. “That I pick the right ones.”

We look at each other. It feels like a big moment, like this is the right time to put an end to the going to Australia rumor, to put it to bed so I don't have to worry about it anymore.

“Are we going to have time to get to know each other?” I ask him, serious.

He looks down at our hands, down away from my eyes. He shakes his head.

“I hope so,” he says. “I want to.” He looks back up at me. “I love you, Ellie.”

My heart beats faster at these three little words. Matt is only the second person who's said this to me in my life, and the second person I've felt the same way about and said it back to. And knowing how I feel when Matt says it, I'm not even sure it was real the first time around with Paul.

“I love you, too,” I say.

“But...” he looks down again. “I have to go back to Australia.”

I feel a bolt of pain and panic rip through my chest. It's true. It can't be true.

I choke back the lump in my throat.

“Why?” I ask dumbly, feeling out of balance and devastated even though I knew there was a chance this was coming.

“You just got here,” I say. “We...” I can't keep going because I feel close to crying, and I don't want to cry.

He sighs heavily, clearly upset. “My sister is in trouble. I mean it's my nephew who's in trouble, the one I talked about. She can't handle him and no one else is stepping up.”

“She asked you to come home,” I say, beginning to understand.

“No, she never would. She would never in a million years ask me to do this to help her. That's the reason I have to go, because I know she needs help but is too proud to ask. Her husband left, I left to come here... she's been abandoned. She and her kids are my family. I can't leave them stranded.”

I nod. This commitment to people and caring about them is what makes Matt who he is.

“What about us?” I ask quietly, less sure about how he'll respond.

He moves closer to me and takes both my hands and looks me in the eyes. He leans in and kisses me tenderly. His lips are warm.

“I love you.” He turns and looks out at the ocean. “Australia is a long way away. Too far away in physical miles and space.”

I'm not sure what he's saying. Is he saying it's too far for the two of us to continue a relationship? Is he breaking up with me?

“It's fourteen hours by plane, and it's expensive to fly.” He's still looking out at the roiling sea.

“We can see each other and talk on the computer,” I say quickly, not liking where this is going.

“No,” he says, turning back to face me. “I would die if I could see you but not touch you. It would be torture, better if we'd never met.”

He squeezes my hands and looks directly into my eyes. “Come with me, Ellie. Move back with me. I have to go but I can't lose you.”

His eyes search mine hopefully, looking for an answer. I don't know why, but I didn't think he'd ask me to go. It hadn't even entered my mind and I'm totally caught by surprise.

“Move?” I say. “To Australia?”

I lean back in my chair, stunned, quickly trying to sort out my thoughts. A million things go through my head at once: Cesar is in the hospital, I just got divorced, I just moved back, I'd have to leave my job, I love my job, I love him and want to be with him, Cesar needs me, Australia is a world away, I love him, what do I do? This is happening so fast.

“There's a great EMT system there, just like here,” he says. “With a few minor certifications you'd be back to being an Ambo in no time. It's a beautiful place. Ocean, just like here. We're in a small town on the coast, just like this, with a decent hospital and support services—”

I wave my hands to slow him down.

“This is huge, a huge decision. I just got back here, I just got divorced,” I'm talking fast, saying out loud all the things rolling around in my head. “Australia is halfway around the world. I'm not twenty-five anymore, I can't just pick up and go. This is happening so fast.”

“We could have a life together,” he says. “A good life. I can't lose you, Ellie.” He shakes his head, as if shaking away the whole idea of not being together.

I stare at him silently. I look his face, his hands, his pained expression at the thought of being without me. And what is my life without him? It's my friends, it's my job, it's this town, it's Cesar. Those people and things are all important, and I don't know what I'd do without them.

But.

Him. Nothing matters without him.

I get up and sit in his lap. I take his hands in mine, and I look into his eyes and smile.

“When do we go?” I say.

He looks back into my eyes with a bright look of pure joy, and that alone tells me I made the right decision.

“A week,” he says smiling, and takes my face in his hands.

As the salt air blankets us he whispers, “God, I love you.” And we kiss as the waves crash against the rocks, mother nature's song to us that everything is going to be okay.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

After Matt and I eat our morning dinner inside at the table, he insists on cleaning up. I take my glass of 10am wine out to the deck again to watch the waves and the clouds. I lean against the railing, watching a pod of dolphins jumping in the surf, and then I see a couple of sea lions bobbing up and down, watching me watching them.

A little further out I see pelicans fishing for their breakfast, flying up high, parallel to the water, then diving straight down into the ocean with a quick pointed splash. It's a beautiful, special place, and now that I've finally found my way back to it, even though I've made my decision to go, it makes my heart hurt to think about leaving.

And Cesar. What if he'd been stabbed while I was a fourteen-hour plane ride away? I can't even think about it. I'm finally back in the same town with him, trying to help him get back on track, and now I'm going to leave him again? I immediately hatch a plan to convince him to move with us. As soon as they finish investigating and realize he isn't the killer, I'll bring him to Australia. It will be a fresh start for him, a place free of bad influences.

Over breakfast-dinner Matt and I talked more about what it will be like for me to move with him. We'll live together in a cottage by the ocean much like this one. He'll work at the hospital, I'll work as a paramedic. We'll spend time with his sister and her family, and he'll focus special time on his nephew James to be sure that he doesn't get into trouble.

He showed me pictures of what it looks like in his hometown, and it's beautiful. The sun, the sand, the community. Even though I'll be leaving something special, I'll be going toward something special, too.

And I'll be with the man I know I love and want to spend my life with. A man who wants me to move with him, who says he can't bear the thought of not seeing me or touching me, who I can't bear the thought of not seeing or touching.

As I watch the waves I feel arms wrap around me, and then Matt's head is next to mine. We watch the dolphins jump, and he points out a couple of babies following behind.

He kisses my neck and behind my ear and I feel a rush of warmth through my belly. He puts a hand on my hip and runs another down my back, and I shiver from head to toe. Without saying a word he takes the back edge of my skirt and pulls it up. I feel his fingers on my underwear, pushing it aside, then he slips a finger in and out of me. I groan and move back against him as I feel him unbuckling his pants. Then his body presses into mine and I grip the railing of the deck and spread my legs slightly as he enters me from behind.

I have the half-thought that someone could be watching us from a boat or another house with binoculars, and while it might look like we're just standing on the deck and he's hugging me from behind, I'm pretty sure anybody really paying attention would know what we're doing. But even though I don't want to end up peeping-tommed or on the internet, I couldn't stop even if I wanted to. He pushes in and out of me slowly, fully into me, so he's almost all the way out and then all the way in, almost in time with the waves.

He brings a hand around and rubs my clit through the fabric of my skirt as he's fucking me, and it's all I can do to keep standing up. He bites my back gently and pushes in and out, starting to thrust a little faster.

“Come for me,” he says hotly into my ear, and after a few more thrusts I do, with a gasp and a cry that gets carried off on the wind. Then he puts his hands on my hips and pushes into me and then he comes too with a grunting sigh. He leans into my back, kissing my neck.

He turns me around, his hair ruffling in the wind. He puts his hands on my face.

“You make me so happy,” he says, and kisses me.

* * *

I wake up a few hours later to the sound of the rain falling outside and my phone buzzing. I'm next to Matt on the couch and he's still asleep. I don't recognize the number, and by the time I answer it's too late—whoever's calling has gone to voicemail.

As I wait for the message to show up, I open the sliding door to let Buster out. Then I hit the voicemail button and yawn as I listen, watching Matt's chest move in and out while he sleeps. His nose makes a tiny whistling sound. I smile.

The message plays in my ear, and it's a woman, my brother's nurse at the hospital, and I'm glad she called because I've been meaning to follow up on a couple of tests he had yesterday.

Except as I'm listening to the message I hear her saying they've discharged him and taken him to jail.

“Shit!” I say, and scroll to find his lawyer's number in my phone. Matt rolls toward me groggily as I dial.

“What's going on?” he asks.

I put my hand on his arm. “Mr. Coughlin, it's Ellie Bacerra, Cesar's sister. I just got a call that Cesar's been taken to jail?”

I listen to the lawyer tell me there was a chance this would happen once he was well enough to leave the hospital.

“What about bail?” I say into the phone.

Matt leans his head next to my head and we both listen as the lawyer tells me they've just scheduled the arraignment, and it's in half an hour. Can I be there?

I hang up the phone and immediately gather clothes, keys, purse. Matt hops into his pants and pulls on a shirt.

“Your shift starts soon,” I say. “I'll call and tell you what happens.”

Matt shakes his head no as he lets Buster back inside. “No way. I'm coming with you.”