The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (7 page)

“I need you, Meredith. I need
this
tonight.” I sounded desperate.

Meredith watched me in the mirror. “Why?” she asked and I lifted my head to face her reflection.

“Why what?”

“Why do you need this tonight?” There was a cold understanding behind her eyes, and I feared she remembered how lovemaking had been for us the past year. How cold and distant we were with each other.

“Because for an entire day, I wasn’t sure we’d ever be together again,” I said, hoping I sounded sincere.

“Just give me some time.”

She walked out of the room.

Chief Vincent Pratt

I SENT HER AN E-MAIL
from my work account. What difference did it make at this point? I just wanted her to talk to me. Even if I never touched her again, I needed to know she was okay. The e-mail was returned undeliverable.

I checked Facebook. She was never on there. I searched her name and the recent posts hypnotized me. Sarah Lawson had uploaded several pictures and tagged Meredith in two. She was at the shore. More specifically, she was at a party at the shore. Had he taken her right from the hospital to vacation?

Can the woman rest at all?

The picture ate away at what was left of my sanity. Not the fact that she was down there, but the happiness on her face. She was on Brad’s lap with his arms around her, and her smile was filled with love. She was in love with him.

I stared at the picture until it hurt, and then I leaned back in my desk chair and let my focus fall toward the ceiling.

She’ll come back.

She would remember being at the Sagemore Resort with me. She’d remember me waiting for her inside her hotel room. How I was the one who opened the door and found her leaning against the wall with her head hanging low as if we were doomed. I’d pulled her inside and trapped her against the wall. I’d kissed her as if we’d never see each other again. She had to know how much I loved her. She had to know it every day for the rest of our lives.

I’ll never be what you want.
I shook my head as Meredith’s words rang through it. She was wrong. I couldn’t want anything but her. I had told her that, and before I’d made love to her, I’d promised, “I’ll never ask you for another thing, but just say the word and we’ll be together forever.” I wouldn’t push her for more. I’d forever let her tell me what she needed from us.

I’d wait for her to say the word now. Even if it broke me.

I’d been sleeping on the couch at my house, and it was killing my back. We’d decided to wait until school started to tell the kids, but it seemed like just the sight of me was killing Lynn. She thought if they had a better routine they wouldn’t take our split as hard. I wasn’t so sure, but I was in no rush to tell them. Meredith had put the fear of God in me when it came to the damage divorce inflicted on children. I prayed every day this was the one thing she was wrong about.

The house I was standing in needed work in every room. The front porch was literally falling off, but I could fix it. I could fix all of it. I needed a place to stay, and Jackson Serwan would let me stay here rent-free while I worked on it. It was a deal I couldn’t pass up.

“So what do you think?” Jackson asked. He was hoping I’d agree.

“It needs a lot of work.”

“All work you can do. We can make a fortune off this place.”

“We?”

“Well, me. But you’ll get to save on rent. You sure you want to do this?” he asked, and it was as close to a real conversation as Jackson and I had ever come close to having.

“I’m sure I need to move out.” I looked around at the stained wallpaper. “This place I’m not so sure about.”

My phone rang, and as I reached for it, Jackson tossed me the keys and walked out. I guessed that was decided. I answered the call and caught the keys before they hit me in the face.

“Hello,” I said, dreading the intrusion on my day off.

“Colonel?”

My heart rose up in my throat. I walked to the window to make sure my reception was good. “Meredith?”

There was a pause, and I thought she’d hung up. I was already turning toward the door. Ready to storm Sarah Lawson’s for the address of the shore rental Meredith was trapped at.

“Yes. Sorry. I guess I should call you Chief Pratt.”

I exhaled and stood still, trying to slow my heart rate. “Are you all right?” I could hear the need in my voice. I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t sound normal no matter how hard I tried. And God, I swore, I was trying.

“Yes. Slowly but surely, I’m feeling like my old self. I was actually calling because I’d like to come back to work when the kids start school.” I closed my eyes and imagined her for the thousandth time at the receptionist desk at the station. “If it’s okay. I’m sure my unexpected absence has been a huge inconvenience.”

“No. Not at all. We can’t wait for you to return. You can start tomorrow if you’d like.”

“Actually, I’ve been down the shore. It’s kind of an imposed vacation for me to rest. I’ll be here another whole week.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“At first, I felt terrible, but now that everyone has left me here alone, I’m quite bored.”

My heart raced in my chest. Meredith and I would have killed for a day alone at the beach before she’d been hurt. “Well, we should probably meet before you come back. I could drive down and bring some lunch if you’d like.” Silence.

What am I saying?

“Or not. Whatever’s best for you,” I added.

“I’d love it. But do you mind if we go out to lunch? I’m starting to get depressed looking at these same four walls.”

“That’s perfect. Tomorrow okay?”

“Yes. Come whenever. I’ll be here.” She gave me the address, and I had to hang up. I wanted to hear everything about the last week. I wanted her. But I let her go.

I was driving to the shore to take Meredith out—in public—for lunch. She may not realize it, but this, a real moment instead of a stolen one, was the one thing that she had longed for more than anything else. I parked in the driveway of the rental at exactly eleven. I knew it was early for lunch, but I couldn’t wait. Like, I couldn’t wait one more second.

I rang the doorbell and inhaled.

“You’re here!” she said as she opened the door. The bruises had faded, her hair was in a ponytail, making it hard to see the damage to her head, and she had a beautiful smile on her lips. She was exquisite. I smiled back without realizing it. She enchanted me. “Come in. You have to see the view.” She pulled me through the door, and I followed her up the stairs to the living room of her shore rental.

I looked out the three sets of sliding glass doors facing the ocean. “Wow. That’s some view.”

“You just missed the dolphins swimming by. I swear they know I’m here,” she said and blushed.

“I’m sure they do. They know where all the mermaids are.”

Meredith stopped and stared at me. Her eyes searched mine for answers I wasn’t going to give unless she demanded them. “How’s work?” she asked without looking away from me. She tried to keep me talking. She wanted to hear what I knew. The advantage I had was cruel, but it was the only time I felt I was on equal footing with her.

“Slow, which is good. Where’s your family?”

Meredith sighed loudly and then smiled at me again. “My husband was supposed to be here all week, but work called. I think he underestimated what two full weeks with us is like.”
Heaven. That’s what it’s like.
“And my brother took the kids for a few days because he thought I needed time to recover. Which I do.” She turned and stared at the water again. “Brad was bored with recuperation, but I’m trying to heal as fast as I can.”

“Have any memories returned?”

“A few little things. It’s not coming back as the doctor described.” I stayed silent, only questioning her with my eyes. “They told me my memory would most likely return in the order of my experiences. That the memory loss would shrink until everything, including the day I got hurt, returned. But so far that’s not the case.”

I needed her to remember everything from me to what happened that day immediately. “What has come back? Exactly.” My breathing was deep. I could see my chest rising, wanting her.

Meredith watched me. I knew she was memorizing every detail of this conversation and of me, hoping to leverage it later against her lost thoughts. “Just a feeling, a song, driving in my car . . . Nothing I can put together to form a coherent memory. It’s horrifying. Can you imagine not being able to remember the people you love?”

“No.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to climb into her head and retrieve her memories for her. I wanted to kiss her and see if it brought her back to me. If I could, I would rip her clothes off and touch her until her memories showed themselves. But for now, I had to be satisfied with standing in her shore house next to her.

Brad Walsh

FINALLY HAVING ESCAPED FROM MY
family I drove the highway and considered what the chances were of James having thought “the dumbest thing ever” twice a day? Sometimes three times. “Hey, Dad, I just thought of the dumbest thing ever.” James would follow it with some incredibly stupid sequence of events that would never occur in real life but took several sentences to convey. I didn’t listen to a single word of it.

I turned up the music in my car and felt the tension disappear. Getting back to work where things were controlled and away from the chaos of my children and injured wife was exactly what I needed.

My cell phone rang, cutting off the music. I answered it and Dharma’s voice filled the car.

“Where have you been?”

“I was at the shore for a few days.”

“I know, fuck face. I saw it on Facebook. Why the
fuck
haven’t you called me?” Her voice rose as she finished the question. Having a cool head was not something Dharma was known for.

“Where did you see it on Facebook?”

“On your wife’s page. Why haven’t you called?”

Why are you on my wife’s page?

“Meredith—”

“Don’t say her name to me,” she cut me off, and her words tore through my rational plan to end things with her. Dharma was not rational.

I sighed. “My wife fell and was hospitalized. It was a scary few days. When she was released, I took her and my kids to the shore so she could recuperate.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have to answer to Dharma or anyone else about where I’d been. Today was the last day I was going to put up with her shit. “I’m almost to the office. I’ll see you there,” I said, through with the conversation.