The Darkest Joy (14 page)

We don’t catch any fish today.

But I think Brooke might be catching me.

I say yes when he wants to take me home.

I don’t say no when he asks me to play for him.

The sea has an interesting afteraffect: I’m sun kissed and wind tired. The light picnic food settles comfortably in my belly, giving me just the touch of relaxation I need so the keys move under my fingers like they’re an extension of me and my music. The notes weave themselves in the tight and swollen air of the underground space, filling it with a melody like a shining breeze of gold captured for the moment, weighted but floating between us. We breathe in the music as it connects us.

When I finish the song and the last note resonates into an echo, Chance remains standing at the foot of the steps that lead into my aunt’s basement music room, one muscled arm bracing his weight against the floor joist that holds the ceiling above us, his eyes never leaving me.

He’s silent for so long I ask a little nervously, “Did you like my playing?”

Chance gives a slow nod. “I like watching you play.”

“Watching me play?” I repeat, swallowing over the tension the music’s absence leaves behind while my mind tumbles over the hours on the boat, the sting and bite of salt in the air softened by the fresh sea that carried us in its watery embrace.

“Watching you,” he replies simply and walks toward me slowly. My body tenses with anticipation.

But Chance doesn’t do what I think he’ll do.

What I think I’m beginning to crave like breath.

Instead, he take a quilt that lies on top of the chest at the foot of the piano and lays it out at its feet.

He holds out his hand and I take it as he lowers me to the quilt.

I lie down and he moves to his side, looking down on me. “Tell me about Brooke from Seattle,” he says softly, moving a single strand of hair off my face.

I do, my body tense with the emotion of wanting to share yet being uncomfortable with it. Omitting the truth with the precision of a surgeon. Gradually, each muscle in my body becomes less tense, the day sweeping away my reservations even as I hold on to the worst of it in a compartment for later.

For now, I am with Chance and it’s enough. It’s a start.

Starting anywhere feels right; starting with him feels more right than it should.

I don’t even know when I fall asleep, but I dream of eyes that hold the sea, my grief slipping away with the tide.

S
he’s lying
. I know it.

I watch Brooke’s face as her eyes slip from our locked gaze when she talks about things she wants to avoid.

Who am I to bitch, though? I haven’t offered her anything solid. Oh yeah, the glam job of cleaning up fish guts and seaweed. Right.

Such a catch
, I think with a low chuckle at my bad pun and she doesn’t stir.

Sleeping
.

I look down at Brooke, her hair, as black as my own, curls around her body like an ebony cocoon. Sooty lashes lay against her pale cheek, residual pink infuses her softly from our . . . kiss, a testimony like a watercolor painting of imagery and tactile sensation that tightens my growing feelings for her in a vise.

Without an observer I stare with an intensity that scares the shit out of me. Brooke’s body fits exactly in the hollow of mine,
like a human puzzle piece that’s found its place. With me. I close my eyes.

I don’t want this to end.

I sigh harshly, sitting up on my elbow, knee up, and watch Brooke sleep, trusting me.

God, we’ve got fishing in three hours.

Damn, damn . . . the sea waits for no one.

I squat beside Brooke, then haul her into my arms, and she doesn’t stir, a soft and perfect weight against me. I tuck the quilt around her a little more, and the unbidden tenderness almost pisses me off.

This isn’t like me. The picnic on the boat, the quiet interlude afterward when I take her back to the cabin and listen to her play the piano. Later we lie together on the quilt. I know I should ask her why she doesn’t want to live. But maybe, just maybe . . . she’ll decide she does.

Then I remember what she does to me with just her eyes and I exhale again.

And I’ve called friends who have girlfriends pussies.

Won’t be doing that anymore. I’d be eating an assload of crow after this gets around.

I meant to sweep her off her feet and convince her to stay, to work alongside me. I’m always in control, the one calling the shots. I like it that way.

But with her, I never saw it coming. One minute, I was standing, the next . . . I was airborne and in her net like the fish I catch.

I climb the steep basement steps with Brooke tight against me and notice her phone is blinking.

Messages.

I move quietly to her room, navigating the darkness easily. I’ve always been able to see like a cat in the dark.
Besides, with only forty minutes of darkness per night, it’s really just dark daylight
, I think, smirking in the gloom.

I slide Brooke into her bed and she rolls over, tucking her bent wrist underneath her chin.

She looks so young like that
. Then I recall how much of a woman she’s proved herself to be in that room beneath my feet.

I stare at her for a few more moments, memorizing her, then back out of her bedroom, closing the door softly.

I’ll kill her alarm
, I think, moving toward her cell. There’s no way I’m making Brooke come in for that 4 a.m. shift that starts—I look at my diver’s watch—
one hour and forty-four minutes from now
. Fuck that noise. In fact . . . maybe I shouldn’t even hit the rack. I might feel like hell either way. It’s been my experience that less than two hours of sleep feels almost worse than just burning it and never going to bed.

I rake a hand through my hair, scrubbing it into messy spikes. I scoop up Brooke’s cell off the small tabletop next to the front door and thumb through the navigation tiles on the front page. I hit
alarm
—
silent
.

I move to set it down and a flashing icon from a message catches my eye.

FBI.

I blink. I look again. Yeah, I’d recognize that symbol anywhere.

I hesitate, the angel on my shoulder condemning my next move, the devil fist pumping on the other side.

Horns win over wings on this one.

I read the message twice.

What the fuck is this?

Miss Starr, phone me immediately from a land line. We have a break in the case
.

I read the name twice too: Marshal Decatur Clearwater
.

I know a little about the FBI. Witness-protection Feds have marshal status. Not your run-of-the-mill bureau boys. Uh-uh. The big guns.

My mind rolls over the “something that happened” that Brooke referenced earlier, the meaning deepening with each passing second. The boyfriend inference is puzzling as hell.

What’s happening? What
had
happened?

And who the hell is Brooke Starr, really?

A woman with a past.

Fugitive?

Refugee?

Or . . . worse?

The shadow of her aborted suicide spins in my head, looking for a landing. The more I try to figure it out, the more it makes a grim kind of sense. Who wants to stop living? What is so terrible that you can’t transcend it . . . that you feel your only choice is the most final one of all?

I don’t know. But I knew enough to save her.

I’m damn well going to find out.

I put the phone down gently when all I really want to do is heave it, then quietly leave.

I stare at the solid wood front door standing partway open, my eyes moving to the square black box with a thumb-latch lock. I’ve never locked a door in my life.

However, I’ve never had something so precious to protect.

I move the interior lock until it clicks into place. Then

I close the thick door behind me, hearing the lock engage, and jog down the wood steps and to my car.

I drive down Brooke’s driveway, needing time to sort shit out. The possibilities of her past and who she is courses through my brain like a torrent of mud. Messy, slow . . . weighty.

I put the Bronco in third gear, going faster than usual, dust kicking up behind me in a thick cloud.

I don’t want to leave.

But I can’t stay.

I blink awake, surprised that I’ve awakened before my alarm.

I flop back down onto my lumpy quilt and groan, throwing my arm against the bright sunlight filtering through freshly washed windows. I slowly lower my arm and look around, trying to gauge the time. It looks like I haven’t beaten my alarm, I just forgot to set it. And now, clearly I’ve completely missed my first day on the job.

I swing my legs around on the bed and glance over my shoulder, surveying the quilt, and I’m flooded with the memory of falling asleep in Chance’s arms in the basement, the piano our witness.

Against every impulse of regret a small smile lifts the corner of my mouth.

I rise and stretch, noticing the tenderness of my lips as my fingers brush the flesh there.

I can’t ignore this
, I realize.

Chance is like my dream catcher. I’ve been asleep, my dreams all nightmares, then he comes into my life and catches the bad ones.

Maybe they’ll be better now.

I pad across the cabin in my button-up shirt that moves around my body like a short cape and boy-style boxer shorts. I make my way to the front door and pick up my cell from the small table beside it.

I smile when I see the alarm silenced.

Okay, I guess when my boss decides I get a day off, I can hardly say no
, I think as a small laugh escapes like a bubble bursting.

I see a blinking icon and swipe it.
Clearwater
. I read the message, twice.

I don’t like seeing it there, mocking me.

I sigh, my light mood turning dark, eyes suddenly burning with tears I don’t want to shed. I’m surprised I have any left.

Fuck it
, I’ll . . . call him later.

Or text.

I nod to myself, shoving my phone into the drawer.

Later
, I think, moving to the bathroom, where I take out my emotional grudge on the shower faucet with a hard twist.

I lather up twice and rinse off, thinking about Chance. I realize that I don’t regret a single golden moment with him.

As long as he doesn’t know about . . . what happened, then maybe we can have something.

For eight weeks
, my mind whispers its reminder.

I shove those thoughts away. For once, I want to live in the now.

I grab the keys and head out for a coffee.

I resolutely ignore the butterflies that churn. Their restlessness for absolution from a past I can’t alter, that won’t free me—to a present that begs for me to engage in . . . to live. They wait.

I’m tired of waiting.

I walk out into the brilliant sunshine, the warmth of the sun possessing a cool press, the northern latitude stealing true heat but lending length to our days here. I close my eyes, lifting my face to the sun, my damp hair in a single braid down my back.

I see the light as though from a crack underneath the door as I reach to open it.

Almost.

Almost free.

I
pull the bus into the parking slot in front of the best coffee shop in town. Of course, no place can outdo Seattle. We have coffee beat there. There has to be a balance for all that wet weather, a counterbalance to chase the chill dampness. I wait out the comparison of my two homes, my emotions sorting my internal temperature. It doesn’t make me feel too sad and feeling a new confidence, I open the door of the bus and walk up to the storefront.

Latitude 59, the driftwood sign reads as it swings in the sea breeze. The organic chic of rough font with weathered bright coloring makes me smile. It’s a vibe that’s pervasive in this town. A beachy community of tough year-rounders, part-timers, and summer dwellers, it’s an eclectic mix of people.