The Buried (The Apostles) (16 page)

Alex gave his head a frantic shake. Yeah, because then the kid would have to answer a lot of questions. Hatch grabbed Alex’s hand, and he didn’t feel one damn bit guilty when the boy winced.

Alex swallowed. “You, uh, know what you’re doing?”

Hatch lifted his pant leg, displaying a neat, inch-long scar on the side of his knee. “When you live by yourself on a boat in the middle of nowhere and spend a good deal of your time with knives, hooks, and boat engines, you learn a thing or two about first-aid.” He knelt in front of the trembling boy and added in a softer tone, “Like Grace, I have a few certifications in stuff like this, but if you prefer, I can take you to the emergency room.”

Alex gnawed on his lower lip. “Just do it.”

Hatch picked up the needle, and Alex gripped the seat cushion with his free hand.

Grace sat on the other side of the table. “See the old dog in the corner? His name’s Allegheny Blue. He’s famous.”

“Famous?” Alex jerked as the needle bit into his skin.

“He was the hound who nosed his way all the way from Tallahassee to Cypress Bend a few months ago. But even before that, he was in the news. Five or six years ago he tracked and treed the black bear in Eastpoint that had mauled two hunters and left one without an eye. Even aired on the national news.”

Alex studied the dog snoring in the corner. “That’s cool.”

“Apparently many people thought so. His former owner had hunters in the tri-state area offering stud fees as high as a thousand dollars, and someone even offered $10,000 for him.”

“Wow. You gonna sell?”

“No, he’s too old now. He just sits around and eats and sleeps. And drools.”

Alex scrunched his forehead. “Ten thou? That’s a nice chunk of change. I’d like to get my hands on that kind of money.”

“What would you do with it?” Grace asked.

Alex pressed his lips together, which Hatch noted were no longer quivering. “I’d buy a boat, ’course nothing as fancy as this.” He waved his good arm around the cabin. “Something small, but big enough to take out on the open water. I’d take it through the gulf, maybe all the way to Mexico and…”

By the time Hatch tied off the final stitch, a smiling Alex was telling Grace about his plans to go gator hunting with his buddies Gabe and Linc.

“Okay.” Hatch tossed the needle in a trashcan and gathered the rest of the supplies. “We’re done.” If he’d pulled something like this, his father would have beaten the shit out of him. “Now it’s time to talk.”

“I don’t think so.” Alex jumped up and wobbled past him.

He reached for Alex but slipped his fist in his pocket.

“If you don’t talk to Hatch,” Grace said, “you’ll need to talk to someone at the sheriff’s station.”

Grace, as usual, delivered. One more reason for wanting to throw his arms around her and land a kiss squarely on those lips he’d been fantasizing about this morning when she woke him up on that damn little sofa. She got his son, and she was clearly getting the boy’s attention.

The blood drained from Alex’s face. The kid tried so hard to be tough, but tonight he looked so damned young and scared. Hatch ran a hand along his face. Maybe that was what the kid needed, to have the shit scared out of him so he’d turn his life around. With an encouraging nod from Grace, Alex reluctantly told them about trying to break into the Clip & Curl and breaking only the window.

“So what do you need to do now?” Grace asked.

Alex shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” Boom. The attitude was back.

“Dammit, Alex,” Hatch started, but Grace’s fingers dug into his thigh.

“Alex, you better care or you and your dad are headed to the sheriff’s station first thing in the morning.”

Alex toed the floorboard. “I guess I should contact the hairdresser lady and offer to pay for the window.”

“That sounds quite appropriate. Hatch, what do you think?”

Hatch had no idea what the hell he was doing, but he was grateful Grace seemed to have a game plan. “Sure.”

“Excellent,” Grace said. “Tomorrow you two will contact the owner of the Clip & Curl and talk about making restitution.”

They drove Alex to his house, and as the boy got out of the car, he looked like a kid walking to the principal’s office. He and Grace followed. The minute Alex walked through the front door Trina Milanos hollered, which woke the twins, who thought midnight was a great time to play.

“Pillow fight!” Raymond cried as he grabbed a pillow from the sofa.

“Prepare to be conquered, wench!” Ricky grabbed another pillow and threw it at Grace’s head.

Grace ducked. “I don’t think so.” With her customary agility and grace, she grabbed a pillow of her own. “Prepare to go back to bed!” She chased them out of the room amidst peals of little-boy laughter.

Hatch rubbed at his forehead, wishing he could join in the sweet laughter.  Alex shot him a final glare and stomped to his room where he fell onto his bed fully clothed. Hatch talked to the grandmother while Grace corralled the twins and got them in bed.

As they walked to the SUV, Grace picked feathers out of her hair. “Alex needs rules and consistency.”

“And you know this because?”

“Because what he has isn’t working.” Grace placed her hand on the SUV’s door handle but didn’t pull. “Hatch, the boy needs a man in his life. Even I, with my limited knowledge of small people, can see that. He needs someone besides a tired grandmother with health issues to help him navigate the waters of his teenage years.”

“And you think he can get that from me?”

“Can he?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He began pacing in front of the SUV. “Did I ever tell you about my old man?” That was a rhetorical question because he never talked to anyone about his dad, other than to say he died when Hatch was in high school. “All Pops ever wanted was to race cars. At age twelve he started pumping gas at the local station just so he could be around them. No big career plans, no dreams of going to college. He just wanted to drive fast cars, but at age sixteen, his world and dreams came to a screeching halt. He became a father. Hard to grow a racing career when you have a wife and kid and a minimum-wage job pumping gas. Pops spent most of his life frustrated and mad at the world, but mostly, Grace, he was mad at me, and he wasn’t shy about letting me know. I was the reason he worked sixty hours a week behind the counter of a tiny auto parts store where he died before age forty.”

“You’re not your father.”

“Exactly, and I have no plans to step into his shoes. I’m not going to die an angry, bitter man with a laundry list of regrets.”

“But you’re nothing like him. You don’t have a temper. You love your job. You’re happy with your life. And you can be a good father to that boy.”

He stopped pacing and reached for the passenger car door.

She slipped between him and the door. “You need to trust you can do some good for Alex.”

He tried to nudge her aside.

She wouldn’t budge. “That boy needs you.”

“Dammit, Grace!” He grabbed her arms and yanked her away from the door. “Drop it!”

Blue growled.

Hatch stared in horror at his fingers, digging into the creamy flesh of her arms, fueled by too much anger, too much heat, and too much past. Grace must have felt it, for she stood with her mouth open and eyes wide, an unnatural sight from a woman with a marble resolve.

“Oh hell, I’m sorry.” He jammed a hand through his hair. “You see why I’m not meant to be a father? I’ve got too much of my old man in me. Alex will be much better off without me. Hop in the car, and I’ll take you home.”

Grace remained stone still. Under the soft glow of the moon, she looked like a marble statue. At last she moved, just her mouth, and just a fraction. “No, Hatch. You’re taking me sailing.”

His fingers slid down the ropy tendons of his neck. “Not tonight, Grace. Did you forget we’re waiting on a call from someone buried alive?”

Grace shook her head and held up her cell phone. “I have bars throughout the bay.”

G
race loosed the tether and hopped from the slip to the deck, her sandaled feet barely making a sound. So graceful and beautiful, and, as usual, so right.

Hatch needed to sail, to feel the wind on his face and the salty sea spray against his skin. He gunned the motor, and like a well-trained horse,
No Regrets
slid out of the gate straight and hard, away from the town where his son had once again attempted a B&E with his two best
friends
. Alex frustrated him, angered him, but more than anything else, the kid confused him. He was trying to help get his son straightened out, but he didn’t have a ruler or even a straight edge.

Grace pulled on the rope, unfurling the mainsail.

But he had Grace, and that counted for a whole hell of a lot. Despite him losing his temper over Alex, she was still at his side.

Although it was past midnight, the bay was far from quiet. Trawlers with their bright lights and big booms headed out to rake for shrimp, frogs bellowed, and owls tore the black sky with razor-sharp screeches. With his eye on his depth gauge and a flashing thought that he was so out of his depth with Alex, he slipped through the night, the wind in his face and the bay beneath his feet.

Sometime later, when the moon had shifted in a night dance to the ballad of the bay, he realized the heaviness tugging at his shoulders and the fog clouding his vision were gone, thanks to Grace. She knew him, and she knew he needed to sail.

He rolled his head from side to side then took a seat on the bench next to her and stretched out his legs. Grace sat with her chin on her knees and her cell phone on the seat next to her thigh. The sail had clearly not been a catharsis for her. She looked thoughtful but far from peaceful. Maybe she was thinking about the minefield that was his son. Maybe she was thinking about a game-playing killer. Or maybe, after he’d manhandled her in front of Alex’s house, she was once again thinking about ways to get his sorry ass out of her life. Knowing Grace, she was pondering a little bit of everything and creating a plan to fix the world, because unlike him, she didn’t know how to unwind.

He reached into his pocket and took out a set of small silver rings. One by one he dropped the circles on his palm, the metal clinking softly and her cool green gaze following. He took the final ring, tapped it onto the top ring, and the rings linked. He spun the next ring on his palm, and it, too, joined the chain. He slid the rings in and out and up and down, eventually adding all the rings. As the chain grew, the lines along her forehead softened.

Some nights, especially a night like tonight, called for a little magic.

When the last ring clinked onto his palm, she smiled. “The rings were always my favorite.” She took one and slid her finger along the curve. “A perfect circle of seemingly unbroken steel. Simple but solid and strong.”

“But under the right hands”—he swirled his hands in the air—“capable of such incredible feats.”

Grace threw back her head, a soft laugh falling from her mouth. “Your good humor’s back. We should call it a night.”

Hatch slipped the rings in his pocket and dipped his chin toward Blue, who was snoring in the galley doorway. “He looks too peaceful to be disturbed.”

“Come on, Hatch.” She nudged his shoulder with hers. “We both have a lot going on. You have to get up early and meet with Alex and the hair salon owner, and I need to…” Grace couldn’t say the words, but they were in her head.
Wait around for a call from someone in box number two.

He gazed at her with half-lidded eyes. “Do you remember the first time you were on this boat?”

“Hatch—”

“Do you?”

She pulled in a deep breath and counted to three before releasing. She’d dragged Hatch out on the ocean to clear his mind of his troubles with Alex. Mission accomplished, but now he’d turned the tables with his clinking rings and this little walk down memory lane.

“Well?” Hatch asked.

“I won’t insult either one of us by saying
no
,” Grace said. To say it was a memorable night was the understatement of the decade. That entire summer, the summer when Hatch sailed into her world, had knocked her senseless. Literally.

“You couldn’t resist me,” he said.

Grace laughed. “Technically, I couldn’t resist the chance to kick Victoria Jensen’s ass.”

“Victoria Jensen?”

“The lead swim instructor at camp. Black and red razorback swimsuit. Nicely filled out.”

A puzzled look twisted Hatch’s face. “I don’t remember a Victoria or the swimsuit.”

“You made quite the impression on her. That first week of camp she talked about you every night. She told us about the book of poetry you carried in your knapsack, Longfellow, and about sailing around the barrier islands and skinny dipping at midnight. With a lascivious grin she assured us you didn’t have a single tan line anywhere on your body. She was smitten, and if it weren’t for Victoria and the other dozen girls who were half in love with you that summer, I don’t think I would have bothered with the contest.”

“Contest?”

“You never knew?”

“I wasn’t one for gossip around the water cooler, remember?”

He might not gossip, but he’d been the subject of most of the gossip that summer ten long years ago. “That first week of camp the female staffers decided to have a contest to see who could snag you. The first one to get you to commit to a summer exclusive got the room with its own bathtub.”

“The prize was a
bathtub
?”

“A
private
bathtub. One with claw feet and its own water heater.”

“This is so not good for my ego.”

She popped him on the arm, her fingers lingering over the swell of his bicep. “But I didn’t go after you for the bathtub. In the beginning I pursued you because I didn’t want to lose to Victoria.”

“And you won.”

“Yes and no,” Grace said.

His brows lifted in a curious tilt.

“I won the contest but lost my heart.” He opened his mouth, but she waved off his words. “And more importantly, I lost my way.” A decade’s distance didn’t take the edge off the raw truth. “I’d created this grand plan for my life, clearly defining what I wanted to accomplish and where I wanted to go, and I was well on my way.” Her hand fell into her lap. “Until that first night on this boat. Until you.”

“That’s not a bad thing, Princess.” He inched closer, his thigh pressing against hers, his deck shoe sliding along her sandal. He rested his hand on her knee. “It’s okay to ramble and roam, to be without purpose or a plan.”

“For you, Hatch.” The Hatch she knew ten years ago had lived without a compass, without a care, and he still did to some degree. He’d come to town to get Alex straightened out with the law, and he’d certainly thrown himself into the hunt for Lia and her killer. But his time in Cypress Bend was just another layover on Hatch’s never-ending journey.

“That’s the fundamental difference between you and me,” Grace continued. “It’s not okay, not for me. You’re content to sail under sunny skies wherever the winds may take you. I need something more, something solid and lasting.”

His brow furrowed, more contemplative than contentious.

She slid his hand from her knee, her skin growing oddly cold in the steamy night. “You never understood my need to sink my feet into the earth and put down roots. You expected me to give up everything—my job, my family, my dreams—and sail with you into the sunset.”

“Whoa there, Princess. I never asked you to give up your life. If I recall, I was the one who changed course. Without a second thought, I docked ship so you could work at the prosecutor’s office, so you could be close to your daddy, so we could live out
your
dreams.” He pointed a sharp finger at the water. “I dropped anchor.”

“You were there in body, Hatch, but not in spirit, at least not fully,” Grace said gently. “Every time we visited Daddy, you looked like a man walking to the gallows.”

“Your daddy hated me. The first time I visited him, he threw a punch at me and called me a loser.”

“Because he didn’t know you or understand the depth of my feelings for you, but if you would have given him time, he would have come around. He wanted me to be happy, and there’s no doubt in my mind I could have been happy—deliriously happy—with you. But this isn’t just about Daddy. You hated my job. You hated that I had to work nights and weekends and that we couldn’t take off for a week when the weather was good. And you resented being dragged to social functions with my workmates or community fundraisers I supported.”

“I never complained, and if you recall, I managed to be quite charming and entertaining.”

“Exactly, Hatch. You
managed
. You didn’t want to be there in a banquet room crowded with people in suits and ties. You were counting the days, the hours, the minutes until you could set sail for another adventure. You were doing time.”

He slid his fingers along the captain’s wheel. “I gave you what I could, Princess. I’m not going to apologize for who I am.”

“I know. I passionately believe with one hundred percent of my entire being that you gave me everything you could.”

His knuckles whitened. “And it wasn’t enough.”

“Oh, it was. It was very much enough for me.”

“Says the woman who demanded a divorce.” The words were sharp and brittle.

She slipped her hand over his and didn’t move until he looked her in the eye. “Says the woman who was deeply and madly in love with you.” The pulse at his wrist spiked under her fingertips. Somewhere nearby a fish jumped, sending a soft, chiming tinkle of water through the air. Inland, a bird squawked. But the loudest sound was the pounding of her heart. “I could live on a boat. I could work long days during the week so we could have weekends together. And I accepted the idea of not having kids because you were so against it.” She released his hand. “But the problem wasn’t me.”

“I gave you more than I’d ever given anyone. Hell, I put my heart on a silver platter and handed it to you.” He thumped the sides of his hands on his chest, an eerily hollow sound echoing through the now quiet night.

“Yes, you did. I never doubted your love.” She saw it now. Hot and passionate, sweet and golden. She’d also seen his pain. She still did. She smoothed a lock of hair from his forehead. “What I doubted was your ability to survive. You hated being tied down. You hated this town, and in time, you would have hated me.” He shook his head, but she placed a hand on either side of his face and forced his gaze on hers. “You could never give up that restless part of your soul, and it was killing you, Hatch. God, I hated sitting on the sidelines and watching your head and heart do battle. With the passing of every day, every week you were getting bloodier and bloodier.”

“I was coping.”

“You were dying!” A shudder wracked her body as she pictured him as summer slid into fall. “You stopped humming sea songs, and you stopped doing silly magic tricks.” Her shoulders dipped in a bone-weary shrug at the weight of the memory. “And watching you was killing me.” She tried to clear her throat but the jagged lump wouldn’t budge. “So I sent you away.”

It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. She may as well have reached into her chest and pulled out her own heart, leaving a gaping, bleeding hole. After Hatch left, he’d called—ten times.

And not once had she picked up the phone.

Why didn’t you pick up the phone, Grace, why?

On the eleventh call, she threw her cell phone in the sea and holed up in a motel room, where she tore the landline from the wall to keep from calling him. Nor did she contact her father or her boss. For five days it was just her and a searing pain that left her a molten puddle on the floor, like an addict going cold turkey. On day five, the motel manager knocked on her door with a message from her boss:
You’re fired
.

Those two words had been the wake-up call she’d needed.

With Hatch out of her life, she needed something to fill the hours, the days, the years ahead. She scraped herself off that stained motel floor carpet and poured what was left of her into getting her life back on track. She fought like she’d never fought before, and when Travis gave her her job back, she vowed never to let anyone bring her that low again.

Hatch inched closer, his knee pressing into her thigh. “Princess, do you—”

She pressed her fingers against his lips. She didn’t want to hear his words. Oh, Lord, she didn’t want to hear, because she knew Hatch. She knew his heart, and she knew what he was about to ask.

“Do you still love me?” His words pressed softly against the quivering flesh of her fingers.

She knew there was only one way to answer. “Yes.” She loved Hatch—everyone she’d dated, everyone she’d slept with left her wanting more. No, not wanting more. Wanting Hatch. “I love you, Hatch, and I will always love you.” She kept her words matter of fact because facts and evidence were so much easier to deal with than the chaotic emotion swirling through her body. “But I can’t
have
you. No one can. You’re too much of a free spirit. In a few months, the box will close in on you again, and regardless of me or Alex, you’ll take off.”

His fingers slid through hers, and the long-buried desire burst from a cold, dark place deep in her chest. His eyes, so blue and earnest, bore into hers. “And after I take off, I’ll come back. I have to, I
want
to, because of Alex. As long as you’ll take me, I’ll always come back.”

She’d hoped he’d tell her she was wrong, that he didn’t need the wind and sea. Hatch had changed so much. He wore a watch and carried a gun. He was trying to be a good father to Alex. But he still couldn’t wrap his head around her need for something solid and constant, a house on a hill and roots to dig into that soil. “And I’m supposed to be happy with that?”

“Why not? You’re married to your job, and I’m shacked up with the sea. Neither one of us has found happiness with anyone else. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not the kind of man who’ll be happy with nine-to-five and two-point-five kids. But I can be happy with you. I love you more than any human being on this earth, and I’m giving you part of me.”