Authors: Ann Christopher
February 10
Dear Talia—
Paul is a $%^#@ idiot. Feel free to tell him I said so. How is the break going?
I don’t want to talk about the war with you. It already takes up enough of my life.
Thanks for the potato chips. They burned the fingerprints off of most of my fingers, which was way cool.
How is your work going? Do you have any fun new students? I want to hear more.
Love,
Tony
P.S. Why have you never sent me a picture?
February 25
Dear Tony—
The break is over! Paul and I are back on and looking for a two-bedroom apartment in Chelsea. Wish us luck!
I do not have any Picassos in my class this time, alas. More like several blind Jackson Pollocks. They do love to wave that paint around, but what are you going to do with five-year-olds?
Much to my surprise, I seem to be the new “it” artist right now. After I did a portrait for this one socialite/philanthropist (translation: she’s richer than God), she recommended me to all her even richer friends. So now I’m overwhelmed with commissions. I’ve even started doing murals on the walls of some jaw-dropping apartments, which is quite the switch for me.
Basically, I have more success than I can handle at the moment, although I haven’t had time to paint any of my favorite slashes and swirls in a while. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
Oh, and before I forget to mention it—I don’t have any pictures to send, but I will take a couple when I get the chance.
This time: jalapeño beef jerky. Truly disgusting. Happy eating!
Gotta go. All this work is wearing me out, big-time, and I think I’m working on an infection of some sort. So I better haul my a$$ to bed....
Love,
Talia
March 25
Dear Tony—
I haven’t heard back from you yet, and I’m starting to worry. I HATE worrying! And there’s a lot of stuff going on around here right now, so I’d prefer to focus all my worrying energies on that.
Here are the scenarios I’m worried about with you:
1. You have thrown me aside in favor of another pen pal who sends better care packages and spicier snacks than I do;
2. The jalapeño beef jerky caused your head to explode and you are therefore unable to find a pen and write me back;
3. You are wounded.
I’m really hoping it’s #1.
Even if I’ve somehow gotten on your nerves, please, PLEASE write back so I can find something more appropriate to worry about. And then I’ll stop bugging you, okay? I’ll even make it really easy for you. Just check a box:
___ Yes, I am alive
___ Other
Love,
Talia
P.S. You asked for a picture last time, and here it is: me in my studio, painting and happy.
April 10
Dear Talia—
I’m sorry for worrying you.
You are not the only one who likes to pretend the war isn’t happening. There have been many nights when I lie in bed and pretend I’m just a guy with a dog and a beautiful painting of the sun to soothe away his troubles.
But the war always comes back.
Things are bad here, Talia. And getting worse daily. I look around for signs of hope, but I can’t find any. Sometimes I stare at my service revolver and wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just—
Remember Chesley, our unit’s bomb-sniffing K-9? She was killed when she stepped on a mine, and we all saw it happen. But I am trying to focus on this: she died on her feet, a hero, and I can only hope that when my time comes, I will do the same.
Love,
Tony
P.S. Thank you for the picture. Your smile is more beautiful than I remembered, and so are your gray eyes.
April 26
Dear Tony—
I have picked up my pen a thousand times, hoping each time that something profoundly comforting would flow from my heart and brain and onto the paper. So far, it hasn’t. All I know is this: Chesley is in a better place, and now when she runs across a field, it’s only a field. Not a death trap.
As for you—don’t you ever let me hear you talk that way again! EVER! You are not going to die in Afghanistan. I don’t care how bad things look sometimes and, trust me, I know a little about
bad.
Dying in the war is not your destiny. I can feel it.
Did I mention that I like quotes? I can whip out a quote for every occasion. So here is a Lord Byron quote to get you through the dark hours between now and when you can come home for good:
“’Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.”
Your job, Tony, is to stay safe and desire life. Always.
Promise me?
Love,
Talia
May 17
Dear Talia—
War can’t be wished away. Death can’t be ignored. He stalks me everywhere I go, and is waiting around every corner for me. I’m in his shadow, and I can’t get out. I escaped him today, yeah, but what about tomorrow? Is this meal my last one? This sunset? This letter? How many more of anything do I have coming to me?
This is no time for me to take anything for granted.
It’s not that I regret being a soldier. Don’t think that. I’m proud of my service. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It’s just that lately I feel like I have more to lose than I’ve ever had before, and it has everything to do with you.
So I have a quote for you, from poet William Ross Wallace:
“Every man dies—not every man really lives.”
If I could die soon—and who are we kidding; I probably WILL die soon—I don’t want it to be before I really live and tell you some things you should know. With apologies to Paul, because I’m not normally a guy who tries to take something that belongs to someone else.
But, Talia—
Talia.
I think about you.
I carry you with me. Your smile is in my heart. Your name is in my head. Your face is in my dreams. It doesn’t matter that we’ve only met face-to-face one time, or that I was engaged to someone else. I’m overflowing with you. Only you.
There. I said it. I don’t expect you to say or do anything back. I just had to say it. I couldn’t breathe without saying it.
Yours,
Tony
May 30
Dear Tony—
Remember this: when Death comes after you, you look him in the face and say, “Not today.” And you repeat that EVERY SINGLE DAY until you’re back here, where you belong.
As for the rest of it—you have to stop, Tony. You’re breaking my heart.
Talia
June 12
Sweet Talia,
I can’t stop. You’ve gotten inside my heart. I can’t get you out.
Yours,
Tony
July 11
Dear Talia—
The silence is killing me. I’m sorry. I’ll never mention my feelings again. I swear. But please write to me. Something. Anything.
Tony
Tony hurried into the APO, his key at the ready in his shaky hand, and pulled up short when he saw someone—McClain, wasn’t it?—already there. The kid was getting his mail out of his slot and seemed to be taking his sweet time about it. Tony hovered, growing more agitated by the second, as the kid pulled out several envelopes and rifled through them, looking for one in particular, which turned out to be a bubblegum-pink number.
Classy.
The envelope also seemed to have been drenched in several gallons of vanilla perfume, a fact that was not lost on McClain. In raptures of delight, he gave a little whoop, pressed the envelope to his nose, slammed his box shut and wheeled around with a shit-eating grin on his face.
That was when he saw Tony.
His smile withered a little. “Sorry, Captain.”
Tony, who understood how important letters could be and how they held the entire universe in their folded pages, was in a mood to be sympathetic. He smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”
McClain hurried off, his treasures pressed to his chest, and Tony worked on getting his key into his mail slot, an effort that took three tries. He finally got the little metal door open and felt a wild swoop of relief as he peered inside and saw…
There it was!
He snatched out the single white envelope and flipped it over to work on the flap, desperate to know if Talia had forgiven him and—
Jesus.
No.
It wasn’t from Talia. It was his last letter to her. And written across the envelope, in red pen in Talia’s handwriting, were the four most terrible words he could imagine reading.
Refused. Return to Sender.
A lead weight settled in his gut, so sickening and dizzying that he had to slump against the wall of mail slots to avoid dropping to the floor in an undignified heap.
That was it, then.
He’d never hear from Talia again. She had her gut feelings, but he also had his.
And right now, his gut was telling him that his number was up. The mission tomorrow, a joint patrol with his brother’s unit, was going to be his last.
There was no way he was going to make it back alive.
Chapter 1
Present day
K
nowing it was a nightmare didn’t make it any less terrifying.
It always started out so sweet—so achingly, indescribably sweet—and that was part of the problem. In the dream, he wasn’t yet a skinny former POW struggling with PTSD and God knew what other mental deficiencies. He was still a soldier.
“You want me, don’t you?” she murmured.
It was Talia. It was always Talia.
She was right there, right within the reach of his searching arms, but her face was shadowed and obscured by those flowing black curls, and, try though he did, he could only catch a flash of her laughing gray eyes. His eyes strained into the gloom, trying to see. If he could only see her, just one freaking time, he’d be the happiest man to ever put his pants on one leg at a time.
But she slipped away and the darkness edged closer.
Only her sounds guided him. The clink of her silver bracelets. The laugh, which was throaty and knowing. The seductive purr of her voice in his ear.
“You want me, don’t you, Tony?”
The frustration churned inside him. He lunged for her and missed, stumbling blindly now and turning in a clumsy circle, only to realize that her low voice was coming from somewhere else—some direction he could never quite pinpoint. A place he could never reach.
“Tony? Tell me.”
“I want you. You know I need you. Where are you?”
“Here.”
She made it sound so easy, but it wasn’t easy at all. Because he could see suddenly, and the seeing turned his bones to melting chips of ice. There she was. Far away from him, in the middle of a road in Kandahar, where it was rocky and dusty and the passing convoy of Humvees and the swooping copters overhead didn’t know how precious she was.
Then the shit storm started.
Rockets and IEDs exploded, showering the whole world with shrapnel and clumps of earth so hard they could be used to cut diamonds. Men yelled and then, inevitably, screamed. The line of vehicles splintered into those trying to speed up and escape, those swerving and crashing into others, and those disintegrating into nothing between this blink and the next.
In the middle of the chaos, too far away for Tony to reach, stood Talia. He sprinted and jumped, weaving through the destruction and ignoring men who needed his help because only she mattered.
“Talia,” he roared. “Talia.”
She reached out her arms to him. “Here.”
“Taliaaaa—”
“Come on, man,” said a male voice. “Wake up.”
“Taliaaaa!”
No one would stop him from getting to her. He flailed and kicked, connecting with a nose and what might have been a jaw. There was a loud yelp, and then concrete restraints locked down around him, and they had no give at all.
Not that he was giving up. He would never give up.
“No,” he shouted. “Talia. Talia—”
“Tony,” said that wry male voice, “I swear to God, man, if you broke my nose, I’m going to knock your teeth out. I don’t care if you are dreaming.”
Tony jerked awake, and it was over.
The restraints eased, allowing him to breathe again, and he opened his eyes with no real need to see anything, because the scene never changed.
It was dark, probably because it was a quarter past dead of night. He lay on his back, nested in the crawl space he made for himself every night, between the back of his bedroom sofa and the wall. The blankets were tangled and he was sweaty. He never bothered with a pillow because half the time he woke up facedown, and he hadn’t made it through the war only to come home and suffocate himself like a dumbass.
And speaking of dumbasses…
His fraternal twin, Sandro, sat in his usual spot, on the floor with his back against the wall at the head of Tony’s sofa, his legs bent and his feet bare. He glared, using the bottom of his white T-shirt to swipe at the blood dripping from his nostrils.
Shit.
With a harsh sigh, Tony heaved himself up into a kneeling position and started in with the apologies, which never seemed to end these days.
“Listen, man—”
Sandro waved a hand. “Forget it. I’m just glad you haven’t sliced my head off.”
That reminded him. Tony jerked around, rifling under the blankets for—
“Looking for this?” Sandro raised a sheathed boot knife, whose three-and-a-half-inch steel blade went a long way toward getting rid of Tony’s demons in the night.
“Yeah.” Tony held his hand out. “I’ll take it.”
Sandro shook his head and slipped it behind his back and into the elastic waistband of his plaid pajama bottoms. “Yeah…no. You won’t.”
Tony, who was still breathing deep to get his racing pulse under control, frowned and opened his mouth.
Whereupon Sandro emitted a low growl. “Say something,” he warned.
Tony, knowing Sandro was right and that they were, after all, on the same team, shut his mouth. There were other people rattling around in the huge house—namely Sandro’s teenage son, Nikolas; and Skylar, Tony’s former fiancée, now Sandro’s fiancée—and neither Tony nor Sandro wanted anyone to get hurt during one of Tony’s frequent nocturnal meltdowns.
Things were complicated in the Davies household in the Hamptons.
Still, backing down rankled Tony, especially when forced upon him by his marginally younger brother. “Put that thing somewhere safe,” Tony told him. “I’m going to want it back.”
“Don’t worry.” Sandro leaned his head against the wall, scrubbed a hand over his face and closed his bleary eyes. “You’ll get it back the second some insurgents show up stateside and come knocking on our door.”
“Funny,” Tony snapped.
Sandro dropped his hand and turned to look at him with pitying eyes. “You can’t go on like this, man. This is the third time this week.”
Since this was likely to lead into yet another discussion about the progress—or lack thereof—Tony was making with his shrink and weekly support group of local vets who were as screwed up as he was, he decided to head the topic off at the pass.
“I know,” he said. “I’m going into the city tomorrow.”
Sandro’s interest sharpened, probably because he was a nosy SOB and Tony had made the mistake of telling him a little about his ill-fated correspondence with Talia.
“To find her?”
Tony nodded with grim satisfaction. “Yeah.”
“About damn time,” Sandro muttered.
Tony couldn’t argue with that.
Now that he’d made the decision that had been festering in the back of his thoughts for days now, he felt relieved to have a plan. Which was not, by the way, the same as being unafraid. Talia’s rejection by return-to-sender mail all those months ago had hurt. Bad. Now here he was, heading off into the unknown and giving her another chance to hurt him.
Brilliant.
Still, he needed to see her. And, one way or the other, he needed to know if she’d ever felt anything for him. If there was any possibility of—
Nah. He wouldn’t let himself go there. Not yet.
But still…it was about damn time.
“I’ll be gone a couple days. I’ll stay at the penthouse. And I’ll check in with Marcus and Cooper.” Their cousins ran the auction house full-time. “I’ve had enough downtime already. It’s time for me to get to work. Resume my rightful place with Davies & Sons.”
Sandro raised a brow. “Marcus and Cooper will love that.”
Tony managed a tired but amused snort. “Screw them.”
They sat in silence for a minute, but then Sandro snapped his fingers. “What about Arianna? She’s supposed to be coming in for a visit.”
“I know.” As if there was any chance Tony would forget the impending visit from their younger sister and her growing family.
“She’s bringing the baby and Joshua.”
“I know.”
“Well, you need to make sure you check in with her and make sure we all get our schedules synced,” Sandro said darkly. “I’m not trying to get killed. And don’t forget I’m heading down to D.C. with Nikolas and Skylar. We need to get working on the house hunting.” Sandro had recently accepted a position at the Pentagon as an analyst and would be moving soon. “In fact, it might be easier if you postpone your little NYC jaunt until—”
Fueled by impatience, Tony surged to his feet and strode across the room to his closet, where he kept his duffel bag. It may have been the middle of the night, but there was no time like the present to put his plan into action, and he wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.
“No,” he said. “I’m not trying to work around anyone’s schedule. This is too important. I’m finished waiting. It’s past time for me to see Talia.”
By about ten-thirty that morning, after riding the train into Penn Station and the subway down to the Village (he hated taxis, limos, driving in the city and traffic delays, not necessarily in that order), Tony found himself in front of the converted warehouse where Talia rented studio space.
He loitered outside the heavy metal security door, some of his excitement tampered by stark terror. Having spent a lot of time in fear while he was in Afghanistan, he recognized it when he saw it, and this was it. His pulse raced; his hands trembled; beneath his armpits he felt the slow trickle of clammy sweat.
Hell, he could almost laugh about it. Maybe the war hadn’t caused his raging PTSD after all. Maybe its source was the loss of the woman he’d never even had.
But not like it mattered why he was batshit crazy.
Whatever. He might be crazy, but he wasn’t a coward, and this was the moment of truth when he could prove it. So he raised his finger and pressed the buzzer, giving it a nice long ring.
No answer, but the place was a cavern and it probably took a good two minutes for someone to walk down the hall and reach the door.
He waited, turning to face the street’s bustle, with its usual assortment of hurrying New Yorkers talking on their cell phones, disposable coffee cups snuggled close to their chests.
Overhead, the sky was a chilly slate-gray that belonged in November rather than May, but he didn’t feel the cold. He was way too hopped-up on adrenaline to be affected by anything as insignificant as the weather, and his jacket was—
Without warning, the door swung open. Tony found himself confronted by a woman about his age—mid-thirties—with a flat-lined mouth and lowered brows that told him he’d already pissed her off and anything further he did—like, say, speaking—would only worsen the situation. Brown-skinned with sleek black hair and sharp brown eyes that surely missed nothing, she would have been pretty but for the overdose of bad attitude and harsh black-on-black clothes.
“Can I help you?” she demanded.
“I, ah,” he began, hoping she didn’t decide to haul off and hit him, “I’d like to see Talia Adams.”
The woman was not impressed. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“And you are…?”
“Tony Davies.”
“What’s the nature of your business?”
He was starting to get annoyed. He knew of several high-security government buildings that were easier to access than this place.
“I’m a friend. Is she here?”
Miss Personality narrowed her eyes. “Don’t take that tone with me. I’ll ask if she’ll see you.”
“Thanks ever so much.”
Another glare, and then she pivoted and headed off down the hall, leaving him to lunge for the heavy door and squeak inside before it could swing shut in his face.
Not the auspicious beginning he’d hoped for, clearly, but Talia was here, in the same building, and that was all that mattered. He hurried after the black-clad woman and followed her up a flight of stairs, dodging a well-dressed couple who were directing a man with a boxy marble sculpture on a dolly, and a gaggle of elementary school kids being herded by their frazzled-looking teacher. They passed the doors—some open and some closed—of other studios, and then they were outside the final door on the left.
The door.
Talia Adams
said the sign.
Painter.
The woman strode inside the studio with no understanding of how important this moment was to Tony, or how he’d lived for it, calling as she went, “Tally? Where you at, girl? Tally? Talia!”
Tony waited on the threshold, incapable of breathing.
Nothing happened.
The woman turned back and shrugged, ignorant of his turmoil, which was a very good thing. “Guess she went to the bathroom. You can wait if you want.”
“Great.”
“Great.” The woman reached for a cardboard box and shot him a last warning frown. “Don’t get in the way.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He looked around, reveling in Talia’s presence and getting his bearings, but things didn’t feel quite right. There was one jarring difference between the studio of his memory and this one: the open cardboard boxes everywhere announced that Talia was in the middle of a move.
This possibility, he discovered, didn’t sit well with him. What if she was headed to Paris for a year of study or something similar?