The remote beach on the island of Kauai was definitely not a tourist spot. Lying on a hammock outside the little house he’d rented, Gage listened to the crashing waves on the shore and wondered what was going on in Anchorage. He’d made sure Chains was available to stay with Laurel through the end of this series and then they would reassess. In the meantime, he was as far away and off the grid as humanly possible. Laurel needed her space, and he needed time to reflect. Just as she seemed to think she couldn’t forgive him, he was struggling with forgiving her. How could she keep the death of their unborn child from him? Hell, he hadn’t even known she was pregnant.
He was still furious at Carol, and at some point would be talking to her superiors in D.C., but for now, he was keeping to himself, going through a delayed type of mourning he didn’t truly understand. This most likely was not the same pain he would’ve felt had he found out about the miscarriage when it happened, but it was still deeply personal and emotionally draining. That Laurel had suffered alone all these years bothered him as well. It explained so many things, but he struggled to find a focus for his anger. Should he pin it all on Carol, who perpetrated everything that led to Laurel’s divorcing him, or did Laurel share in the blame?
At twenty-three, she’d probably been scared and grieving for her mother, trying to hold everything together all by herself. Being approached by someone in the CIA had to have been terrifying and that part of it infuriated him. Carol was a bitch and he intended to have her either fired or demoted. She had no business being anyone’s handler. Yes, she had a job to do and most of it was protecting her assets. However, lots of CIA agents had families, and there had been no reason for her to approach Laurel on what had to have been the worst week of her life.
Which brought everything full circle. Laurel had gone through a double trauma that undoubtedly wrecked her both physically and emotionally. He’d been unavailable, hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, waiting for help to come or to die. She didn’t know that, though, and Carol’s appearance had probably been the straw that broke the camel’s back. She’d made it clear she didn’t want him to make a career in the military, and before the CIA had come calling, he hadn’t wanted to either. Being a spy was different, though, and when the CIA had started training him in conjunction with his military posting, he’d fallen into it without thinking of Laurel.
That had been on him. He’d been excited, pumped up, ready to take on the world while serving his country. He hadn’t forgotten about her, but he’d convinced himself once she realized how important it was, how much he loved it, she’d change her mind. Instead, fate and forces out of his control had conspired against both of them, costing him the only woman he’d ever loved.
He turned on his phone just to check messages and make sure Chains wasn’t trying to reach him. The missed call from Laurel startled him and he was tempted to call her back, but he opted not to since she hadn’t left a message. They needed time apart because this pseudo repeat of history was jarring. They loved each other, were each other’s soul mates, had never truly looked at anyone else. He’d had sex with other women, but since the day he’d met Laurel, he hadn’t looked at another woman with romance in mind. Yet no matter how good things were, how much they were meant to be together, things seemed to fall apart. Some of it was on them, but a lot of it was a hell of a lot of bad luck. In spades.
With no definitive answers, and nothing to do but ponder the past and the future, he closed his eyes and dozed off, the sound of the ocean lulling him to sleep.
It was turning out to be a hell of a series. They were alternating games, and by the time the Blizzard left Anchorage to head back to Las Vegas, they were tied at two games apiece. This trip wasn’t nearly as fun because with the way the playoffs worked, they’d had two games in Las Vegas, two at home, and now they were alternating cities each game for three games if they went the full seven-game series. Though the league allowed an extra day for travel back and forth to Anchorage, it was still a long, thankless flight that left them jet-lagged.
The Sidewinders were by far the toughest team they’d faced in the playoffs, and they were hungry to win another championship. The Blizzard was hungry too, but there was a ferocity to the Sidewinders they hadn’t faced before and it was wearing on them. They’d all probably gotten a little overconfident, no matter how many times she’d reminded them each series was like starting over.
She’d been on autopilot the last two games and there had been zero contact from Gage in nearly a week. She’d tried to get information out of Chains, but he’d merely held up his hands and said he wasn’t getting involved in their personal relationship. She wanted to smack him, but since he was her bodyguard, that probably wasn’t the best idea.
“You all right?” Dani asked her as they headed into the hotel in Las Vegas. It was dinnertime and the team was going out as a group, but Laurel was exhausted. “Something is going on with you and Gage. Everyone’s noticed his absence and you look like hell. No offense.”
Laurel smiled. “None taken. I feel like hell.”
“Did you find out?”
Laurel knew exactly what she meant and sighed.
“You did and you are.”
Laurel gave a tiny nod.
“He was mad.”
“He doesn’t know. We had a huge fight right before I was going to tell him.”
“Yikes. What are you going to do? You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I just can’t deal with him right now. He’s high-maintenance sometimes, believe it or not.”
Dani chuckled. “I haven’t seen that side of him, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“He keeps a lot of things to himself,” Laurel muttered. “He says it’s to protect me, but it drives me batty.”
“Like what?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Laurel trusted Dani, but it wasn’t fair to tell her things that might be dangerous. Not that she knew anything important, but she was fairly certain no one involved with the Blizzard knew he’d been in the CIA.
“If it’s not really to protect you, then why does he do it?”
“It is to protect me, it’s just that I don’t really need to be protected. Not the way he thinks, anyway. And then I kept a secret from him, from when he was in the military, and he threw it in my face. He’s right about that, but at the same time, there were extenuating circumstances. I don’t know what to do, Dani. I love him and can’t imagine living without him, but I also don’t know how to trust someone who seems to keep certain parts of himself private.”
“Only you can make that decision, but you have to weigh the loneliness you felt all those years without him against what you have when you’re together.”
“Does Sergei’s past ever come up?”
“You mean with his late wife?” She was thoughtful. “Every day. There’s a picture of her and Niko in Niko’s room… He talks to her every day, tells her about school, what his new mommy did, how Daddy’s doing, and once he asked her if there was hockey in heaven.”
Laurel grimaced.
“But I don’t hide it when those things happen. I tell Sergei about it, what I overheard or whatever, and admit that it’s hard for me… We work through it. Sometimes we talk to Niko about his mom, because we don’t want him to feel like it’s a taboo subject, but there are times it bums me out. Sergei knows, though, and he always says the right things to make me feel better. Mostly, it’s about how much he loves me and how he can’t wait to have more babies together, how much he’s looking forward to our life together. If I didn’t get that from him, I couldn’t handle it.”
“I feel like I’ve lost so much time with him already,” Laurel whispered, leaning against the wall as they waited for the elevator. “How much more do I have to sacrifice to be happy?”
“Did he apologize for whatever he did?”
“Of course. He always does. That’s just it. He apologizes, swears it’ll never happen again, and then it happens again.”
“But there’s a baby now.”
“I know!” Laurel hadn’t meant to raise her voice and she sighed, closing her eyes. “Sorry. I just hate feeling this way, not knowing what to do. I’m not the simpering maiden in the corner waiting for a man to sweep in and rescue her, but that’s how this feels. Like if I just push away everything I’m upset about, he’ll come save the day and make me happy again.”
Dani wrinkled her nose. “That’s not what this is, hon. I’m no simpering maiden either, but when Sergei came to the Olympics and dropped to one knee, I wanted him to whisk me away. He wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t do for myself—but I can’t be in love by myself. He came to give me himself and I wasn’t going to walk away from it. What would that prove? That I’m more stubborn than he is?”
“You’re right, of course.”
“You two need to talk. Like maybe sit down with a therapist or something, but you need to hash this out, once and for all.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“Do you want to skip the team dinner tonight? I can come to your room and we can order food and watch Netflix and chill…the girlie kind of chilling.” She giggled.
“You don’t want to be with Sergei?”
Dani wrinkled her nose. “I love that man more than life itself, but seriously…we work together, we travel together, we live together, we parent together, we even have the same friends. I totally need time without him once in a while.”
“Then yes, let’s do that. The guys probably don’t need me around tonight anyway.”
“Okay, let me go change into sweats and I’ll meet you in about twenty minutes?”
“See you then.”
Laurel dragged herself up to her room and realized she missed the big suites she shared with Gage. Well, she missed him, but the suites were nice too. Especially those big spa-style tubs most of them had. She didn’t need all the finer things in life, but she’d certainly learned to appreciate them these last seven or eight weeks. Ironically, she’d be willing to trade all of it just to have Gage back with no drama from the past. Why was everything so complicated? It didn’t have to be. They both wanted the same things and they loved each other.
Lies and secrets mattered, though. Not knowing where he was or being able to reach him when he’d been deployed had proven she didn’t like not knowing. Carol had convinced her that his country was more important than anything, including her, and for some reason she’d believed it. In retrospect, she shouldn’t have. She’d sensed there was more to it than that and she’d been right, but in her emotionally fragile state she hadn’t had the strength to fight for him. This time, she did. This time, she had to.
She picked up the phone and dialed his number. It went straight to voicemail, but this time she left a message.