GAVIN DIDN’T SLEEP the night after they returned from Mobile, or the next. The third night he managed to grab something resembling rest between the bright flash-bang of dreams that woke him once or twice before dawn.
So the series of knocks clattering against the other side of his bedroom door at seven thirty made him think about the pistol he kept on the back side of the headboard. He’d been trained to shoot in the dark. He could work without eyes, he mused, then deal with the mess later. After sleep.
Already a headache throbbed at his temples. It would be a shitty day, he thought, before Prometheus began nosing his leg to rouse him. The mattress moved as he stepped over Gavin’s prone form and jumped from the foot of the bed. Gavin heard him rooting beneath the door.
Before Prometheus could claw his way out, Gavin planted his feet on the floor and scrubbed his stubbled cheeks. At the sound of the fourth set of knocks, he growled and leaped to answer.
“What?” he gruffed, throwing the door wide.
Mavis stood on the other side.
“Damn,” he said instantly. He’d worn nothing but Fruit of the Looms to bed and hadn’t thought to grab shorts or a shirt between the bed and the door.
She took several seconds to blink at his indecent state. Without a word, she did an about-face. “I’ll wait,” she said.
“For…” He drew the word out.
She touched her chin to her shoulder, careful not to look. “For you to cover up.”
“I was sleeping,” he told her.
“Sorry,” she said, scrubbing Prometheus’s ruff with both hands when he vied for her attention. “It’s daylight. I thought you’d be up.”
Well, he was now. It was a good thing she’d turned around.
When he didn’t move, she added, “I need to talk to you.”
About the other night. About the other night when he kissed her. Or she kissed him. He hadn’t known where it started, exactly, or who had started it…
He’d take the blame. He’d wrapped himself around her like a bandage, hating the fact that it wasn’t enough. To cure her. To remove the vicious memory of her eyes rolled to the back of her head…
It wasn’t enough, he’d thought, and he’d kissed her. As ill-advised as it had been, he’d taken Mavis’s mouth on her parents’ front porch and he wasn’t even sure he was sorry about it.
No, he pondered, visually tracing the line of her shoulders. She was wearing a loose black sleeveless T-shirt. Under the close crop of her haircut, he saw the halter tie of a matching bikini. Freckles dotted the points of her shoulders.
He wasn’t sorry.
He backtracked into his room without bothering to close the door. He located a clean shirt and yanked it over his head. He’d stopped wearing clothes to bed a while ago. It was no use with night sweats. Jerking a pair of running shorts up to his waist, he padded back to the door. Cinching them, he said, “Go on.”
“Are you decent?”
“I’m suitable for the eyes,” he said. Though even that was a stretch.
She scanned his attire, settling on the shorts. “Do you have swim trunks?”
“I might.”
“Put those on instead,” she instructed. “And meet me downstairs in five.”
He rolled his eyes as Prometheus trailed her to the stairs. “I had plans to go back to bed.”
Gripping the banister, she tossed back, “I’m talking to you, whether it’s here or down there. Your choice.”
Gavin groaned because he knew there was no way she was entering his quarters. Not with the shades down and the sheets in disarray.
He padded into the bathroom. It was a small room, but the ceiling was lifted and hanging plants helped it breathe. Gavin washed his face and gargled Listerine. Running his knuckles over his cheek, he scowled. No time for shaving this morning. He ran his hand over the top of his head. Later, he’d call Harmony for a haircut. His sister had a steady hand and a barber’s eye.
He left the shirt on and traded the running shorts for a pair of buff-colored trunks he’d almost forgotten that he had packed. He kicked his duffel bag into the corner where it’d lived since he moved to Zelda’s. It had been weeks since he arrived here and she had yet to announce an expiration on the invitation, and he had yet to unpack. No clothes in the bureau. No shoes in the closet. So far, the only items he kept at hand were toiletries, and those were limited.
He’d been surprisingly comfortable at Zelda’s, for the most part. He’d slept more hours in this room than he had in the one he’d occupied as a boy at the inn. However, he wouldn’t kid himself into believing this had in any way, shape or form become home. None of it took away from the clock in his head that was winding down in expectation of the moment he would move on.
He might admire the long-standing residency that Zelda, his parents, and the Brackens and Mavis held in the town, the solid legacies they’d carved…but he’d be a fool to think he could plant himself as they had. Plunk down roots, buy land, stop being a drifter.
It wasn’t so much wanderlust anymore that kept him going, he admitted. What led him away was more the burden he created for the ones here. If there was one thing he refused to be, it was burdensome.
He didn’t know when he would leave, where he would go or how exactly he would part with the people he’d grown reattached to.
There was one person in particular whom saying goodbye to could be likened to torture.
He’d hate disappointing Mavis. But if he suspected for just one moment that he was burdening her…
Since meeting Mavis, Gavin had found that he could live with being blind. He could live with having no direction. He’d survived that way thus far. But he couldn’t live with encumbering her with his issues.
Swallowing some pain pills for the dull thumping on the left side of his skull, Gavin left his room and started down the stairs to the first floor. The old treads creaked and whined in places. There was one toward the middle of the first set that was shorter than the rest. It’d tripped him up a couple times after he’d moved in. He avoided it altogether, moving smoothly to the second set that turned sharply to the right to meet the house’s entry point.
He pulled up short at the figure waiting at the bottom. Back to the railing, she favored his right side, as always.
Now that there was some light, he noticed that her sleeveless shirt had a grinning Day of the Dead skull. Also, it was so elongated that it either hid her shorts or masked the fact that she wore none.
As he came down the last bit of stairs, ducking the low part of the ceiling, he couldn’t fight half an amused smile. “Where’s your red today?” he asked, scanning her closely. She’d taken her mango scent up a few notches. Or else he was that much more aware. Like a territorial mammal sniffing out its mate.
The word mate birdied the good part of his brain off a cliff edge. The only thing that tethered it back was the double kick of his pulse on his eardrums.
He’d been intimate with women. He thought he might have been in love a time or two in his past, but he’d never associated any female with the word mate.
Mavis reluctantly reached over the rail to the trestle table. When she revealed the straw-colored panama hat and the thick red ribbon plaited around its middle, Gavin couldn’t fight the single laugh that shot from his chest. He lifted his hand to the brim. Mavis let him take it.
He swiveled the hat over his fingertips. If the kiss had troubled her, would she have bothered bringing the hat with the ribbon? Would she have bothered to show up for him at all?
Silent questions grew thick between them. Finally, unable to bear another moment’s hesitation, she took the hat and the hand underneath it. “Come on,” she said, tugging.
“Where’re we going?” he asked. He buttoned up quickly when they were met by a small group of women in the foyer with yoga mats either arriving to class or leaving. Several of them greeted Mavis. She didn’t waste much time on small talk, steering him through the contingent to the wide sliding doors rife with golden light.
Gavin dug his sunglasses out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He followed Mavis through the door to the grassy lawn. He heard the breeze moving through the wispy branches of the wide weeping willow. Ducking under the limbs, he kept his neck low.
She sailed easily underneath, headed for the clean lines of the dock.
“Are you embodying the spirit of mystery more than usual today, or do you plan on telling me what you’re up to?” He tipped his gaze to the robin’s-egg-blue sky. The light wasn’t nearly as harsh as it had been in Mobile, even if the water’s fishy odor was strong. The angle of the sun was long and light. “Damn, it’s early.”
“You’re a navy man,” she said, letting him go. Her tall Grecian sandals twined up her calves, almost to the knee. They slapped against the planks of the dock as she made her way to a small boat.
“I was.” He watched without much shame as she bent down to untie the dock lines. “Why? You need a captain for this…vessel?”
“Not yet, Prometheus,” Mavis said when the dog tried to step into the boat. “Not yet. You’re going to need counterweight.” Waving an arm at Gavin, she said, “Come.”
“No,” he said, snatching the dock line from her.
“No, you’re not getting in first? Or no, you’re not coming?”
She probably meant to sound sarcastic, as always, but he heard the waver under it all. Fighting not to touch her, he took the hat from her fist and placed it on her head. “Ladies first.”
Taking his offered arm for balance, she stepped into the canoe, then clambered over the first seat to sit at the bow.
“Go ’head, beastie,” Gavin said, tapping Prometheus on the back. The canine arced lithely from the dock’s edge to the middle of the boat, which pitched into a drunken rock. Mavis grabbed for the sides and Gavin crouched quickly to grab on, too. “Still dry?” he asked wryly when the rocking subsided.
“Still dry,” Mavis confirmed.
“Oars?” Gavin nodded approval when she lifted two for inspection. “Casting off.”
“Careful,” she said as he shoved off the dock with his feet, hands on either side of the boat. At his smooth transition from dock to boat, she groaned. “Cat.”
As they strayed from Zelda’s with the current, he remained standing long enough to peel the shirt from his shoulders before settling on the center seat and taking the oar Mavis offered. If he’d felt at home anywhere, ever, it was on the water. “Where to, Frexy?”
“Downstream,” she claimed, shifting so her back was to him. She positioned her oar across her lap before falling into the rhythm he set, dipping in and out. Without looking back, she alternated strokes. When he dipped port, she dipped starboard. The arm action was so deft and intentional, he no longer had to wonder where her shoveling muscles hailed from.
The weather wasn’t just favorable, he realized as they set a course; it was gorgeous.
They paddled around a series of corkscrew bends. The gentle laps of sun and exercise and the sound of the water sluicing around them…even the tug of tidal resistance against his oar relaxed him. The quiet call of small birds and the shouts from people along the river’s grassy bank helped erase the pounding in his head. He and Mavis fell into a companionable, working silence as they explored the river’s snakelike parameters.
The river widened; the current quickened. Gavin caught the white flash of a shiny mullet as it made its oxygen-seeking leap from the depths. Prometheus barked at it. He barked louder at the reedlike motion on the shore from an unfazed heron.
“Osprey,” Mavis cried out, stopping her oar long enough to grab the lid of her hat and jut her nose to the sky. “See it?”
Gavin could make out the shadow and predatory glide of the large river hawk near the tops of the trees. “Affirmative.”
“I think I see its nest,” she said, dipping her oar to port to bring them closer. “Up there. Top of that bald tree.”
Gavin squinted. Osprey nests were high, large and normally easy to spot if you knew where to look. He shook his head, unable to see it for the backdrop of other trees. He fell back into rhythm with Mavis and shook off the puff of gloom.
Not today, he thought. There wasn’t room enough in this boat, what with him and the dog. Gavin wouldn’t let it crowd its way between him and Mavis. Somehow she’d known he needed this today. She always seemed to know exactly what he needed. That was the miracle of her.
Mate. Miracle. He doubted she’d go for either classification so he did his best to stop thinking. Onward. Onward was better than the way he’d come. And it was the first time in months he had admitted as much.
Hell. She was part of that, too, wasn’t she?
Mavis. It was Mavis at every turn. Sunk, he mused, dipping his paddle deeper as the current picked up and the river stretched. Sink. Sank. Sunk. Like an old B-24 in blue Adriatic water covered from tip to tail in rust and barnacles.
It was a good thing he liked water.
The sun picked up on the chain of freckles on Mavis’s neck and shoulders. Her arms. He could lean forward and lay his mouth over each dot, draw lines between, map her out until he knew precisely what her constellation would add up to. Andromeda? Aquila? Cassiopeia?
Gavin felt a cool kiss around his ankles. His oar stilled over the river’s surface when he glanced down. “Uh…we’re leaking.”
Mavis looked back at the water gathering at the bottom of the boat. “Oh, that. We’re nearly there. We’ll dump it once we hit land. The canoe should be good for the paddle back.”
Gavin swiveled his head to the left and right, combing the trees.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking for Dilbert,” he said.
Mavis chuckled in that hummingbird way that went straight to his blood. “Row, Nemo, row.”
The murkiness started to bleed from the river and the scent of marsh hit Gavin’s nose. Soon, the river would funnel into Weeks Bay. Beyond that, it would thread like a needle into the mouth of Bon Secour before meeting Mobile Bay and, beyond Fort Morgan and the barrier islands, Gulf waves.
Mavis chose to disembark before they found the river’s end. She steered to a sandy spot on the starboard bank. The boat bumped ashore. Prometheus took his leave first, leaping over the canoe’s port side, drenching Gavin in the process. He gave a startled laugh when the mongrel arced like a noisy porpoise in and out of the water.
“Don’t let your shirt get too wet,” Mavis pointed out. She’d tossed her oar onto the sand and tucked a small basket under one arm.
Gavin frowned at the T-shirt he’d hung across the bench. Lifting it, he saw that the tails were already damp.
“We’ll hang it,” she said, grabbing it by the neck.
Gavin stood to take her arm as she threw one leg over the bow. When both her feet had touched down on the grass-and sand-strewn turf, he reached up to adjust the hat on her head, keeping her shaded. Her eyes met his briefly before she moved off to drape his shirt over a fallen tree.
“Where’d the mutt go?” Gavin wondered, trying to find Prometheus among the thatch of undergrowth encroaching on their beach.
“Marking trees. Chasing snakes…” She spread a towel on the flattest patch of ground. “Whatever it is menfolk do when they make camp.” Setting the basket in the center of the towel, she returned to the boat. “Let’s flip it. It can dry while we eat.”
“You brought breakfast.”
“It’s more brunch at this point.” Mavis grunted as she yanked the canoe deeper into shore.
“I’ve got this,” Gavin said, nudging her aside so he could heft the boat and upend it over his head.
She sighed as he walked the canoe to shore. “Brute male strength is so irritating.”
“Chalk it up to my long list of faults.” He set the boat on a bed of dry leaves, hoping it would drain properly. “No discernable holes,” he said, tipping his sunglasses up to check the hull.
“There’s a crack,” Mavis claimed. “Just a sliver. I fix it, but the patch never holds.”
“She’s yours?” he asked of the canoe.
“Kyle and I are both water signs, for a reason. He lives for a sail,” she said, picking up the discarded oars. “I live for a good paddle.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth and looked pointedly away from the oars. “I’m trying to figure out what you’re wearing under that shirt.”
Her scoff didn’t ring true. “Try cooling off instead.”
Gavin was going to have to, at this rate. The fresh air and exertion had helped him leave what he’d seen behind closed eyes in his curtained room at Zelda’s. Now here they were, just the three of them. No river houses in sight. No boats. A long towel spread between them.
Gavin took off his sunglasses, tossed them onto the basket. Before she’d finished laying the oars against the canoe’s hull, he was knee-deep in river. Without much of a thought, he pushed off the silty bottom with his feet and dived all the way under.
* * *
MAVIS WASN’T WORRIED. Why should she be? SEALs could hold their breath for an ungodly amount of time. As she opened the basket to arrange its contents on the towel, the seconds ticked by on the inside of her head, growing louder.
She wasn’t going to wring her hands over him. Gavin was an excellent swimmer. At the farm, as boys, he and Kyle had swum often—Kyle more leisurely and focused; Gavin restless and pacing, like a shark.
The idiots. She used to despise their games. Who could tread water the longest? Who could sit on the bottom of the pond the longest? There were times she thought their heads would never break the surface again. One time when she nearly dived in to save them, they’d come up laughing, making her realize that the game had changed and they’d been counting to see how long it would take her to come in after them.
She stopped following them to the pond after that.
Gavin’s head popped up near the other bank, spraying mist. Mavis set the glass in her hand down before she could lob it at him.
Slowly, he swam back. First freestyle. Then he flipped over and paddled backward. As he swam closer, turning over again, her fingers loosened around the glass.
She hadn’t seen him relaxed since he’d been back. Not completely. The edge was always there, relentless even when calm took hold. She’d memorized how it wormed along his taut jaw and wove itself in invisible streams at the creases of his eyes. Shadows, too. His was a face full of shadows.
Not now. Repose had taken hold and for the first time in a decade, Mavis saw the old Gavin. The young Gavin.
She swallowed. Her heart knelled against her breastbone, rocking and ringing as if to proclaim itself out loud.
Stupid, she thought, and went back to prepping brunch. This path she’d somehow chosen toward him. Stupid, Mavis. She’d told herself she would be his friend, that she was ready to be his confidante, his buffer.
Colliding headlong with him as she had three days ago on the porch…it was foolish and dangerous and so not what he needed.
Not that she’d planned this. What kind of a hot mess could’ve planned this? He was Gavin. She was Mavis. It didn’t matter what life had wrought for either of them. It didn’t matter that they seemed to understand each other on an existential plane…
Somehow, her fate seemed tied to his in an irrevocable manner that was both frightening and irreversible. She wasn’t scared of what went on inside his head. She wasn’t scared of where the journey might take them.
She was scared, however, that she could see fighting his battles beside him long into the future. She was scared that she wanted that—to be beside him.
He was a runner. He never stayed in one place. Always moving. Always roving. Swim or die, he seemed to say every time he moved on.
It was an act of survival. It was as ingrained in him as the mystery of all of it. Even as she embraced it as part and parcel of who he was, she admitted that it might be the one thing about Gavin that terrified her most.
Prometheus cut through the undergrowth, tongue lolling playfully, panting. Mavis silently thanked him for cutting through the fabric of her thoughts and tossed him a Milk-Bone. He yanked it out of the air with his teeth, making quick work of the snack. Mavis ran her finger through the clean water she’d poured into his water bowl next to the towel, pleased when he moved to it to freshen his palate.
His fur was warm from the sun when she ruffled it above his collar. Fingers sinking in, she lowered her cheek to the flat top of his head when he came up for air, answering the touch by pushing lovingly against it. “You’re with me,” she murmured. She hated the ache inside her. She hated how it made her question—everything. “Right?”
Sitting back on her heels, she braced herself as Gavin stood. The river sluiced off him, a glossy coat. It tuned her in further to his potency. Muscle and bone didn’t so much cohabitate, as each fought for ground, bringing his struggles to the surface. The survivor—warrior Gavin—was there in rippling arms, pectorals, abdominals. His thick quads were outlined by his buff-colored trunks pasted wet against his skin. She couldn’t even look near his waist where his distinct V-cut was on parade.
Embattled Gavin—haunted Gavin—was there, too, and it was loud in the strain of his rib cage and the knots of his collarbone and high shoulders.
As he splashed to shore, he ran his hand over his face, then back and forth over the crown of his shorn head. Mavis’s attention snagged on the fangs of the wolf. The wildness of it, the primal nature…it suited.
He wasn’t tame. He snarled. He spooked. He made the hairs on the back of her neck stand sharply on end. He was a wild thing that appealed to everything offbeat inside her. He made her answer in places she didn’t normally have to think about on a regular basis. She chastised herself and nearly thought better of the gesture she’d brought him here to make. Frowning, she lifted the hot foil-lined packet between her hands as his wet feet dredged into the sand. “Here.”
“What’s this?” he asked, taking the gift with a measure of caution.
“An animal sacrifice.” She shook her head as he unwrapped the foil with a rustle and settled slowly on the towel next to her.
“Ah,” he uttered, and she heard the moment the grin hit his face. “You,” he added with affection.
“I did promise,” she said, and sniffed. The smell of braised beef hit her squarely in the stomach and she turned her nose. “Eat it quick before Prometheus catches a whiff or I decide it needs a proper burial.”
“Mmm,” he answered, mouth full. “Oh, gawd!”
Mavis held up a hand. “The sex bomb noises aren’t helping.” Seriously not helping. Her gorge wasn’t the issue anymore. More, the cinder and burn sweeping outward from the star-bright point of her navel.
“But it’s so good!” He polished off the burger quickly, licking his fingers and crumpling the empty foil. He gripped her arm, the one closest to him, tugging her around to him. Big hands framed her cheeks as he said, “You are a dark, strange goddess but I’m willing to worship you any way you’ll let me.”
“Hmm,” she said, trying to sound noncommittal. He released her and she turned halfway away, filling their tea glasses with lemon water from the well-capped pitcher she’d brought in the basket. Composing herself appropriately.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Are you ever going to tell me?” he asked.
Her brows lowered. “Tell you what?”
“How you got into the business with Zelda. You said you’d tell me, eventually, if I stopped thinking of it as a racket.”
“Have you?” she probed, raising the lip of the glass to her mouth.
He nodded, decisive. “Sure. I mean, I don’t know if I believe that there’s something there. I do know that you believe in what you’re doing. So does Zelda. You’re pros.”
Mavis nearly smiled at the admission. “Thank you,” she said. At the tilt of his head, she added, “For saying it.”
“Do I get to hear the story now?” he asked.
She took another sip. “You’ve probably heard it before. It’s no secret.” Sitting up straighter, she cleared her throat. “My interest in the paranormal found me. Kyle was fifteen. He knew how to drive but only had a learner’s permit at that point. He wanted to drive Dad’s Mustang into town. Dad was in the passenger seat. I was in the back. We came up to an intersection. The light turned green, but before Kyle could hit the accelerator, Dad yelled at him not to. It wasn’t a second later that a tractor trailer blew through the red light and hit the car in front of us.
“Traffic stopped, as you’d expect. Everybody got out to help. Dad told Kyle and me to stay back as he ran to see if anyone was hurt. I remember Kyle dialing 911 on his cell phone, speaking to the operator. He had his hand on my shoulder, like he wanted me to turn away, but you know how it is when you see something like that. You can’t help but look.”
Gavin nodded sagely. When he stayed silent, listening, she went on. “The driver’s door of the tractor trailer was open. It’s as vivid to me now as it was then. I saw the driver climb down from the cab. He was wearing a blue shirt. He didn’t look injured at all. I think he even looked up at me. Then he turned and walked away into the crowd of people standing around. It didn’t occur to me that nobody stopped him, nobody…”
She paused in the telling to wet her throat. Gavin frowned at the lull. “You’re going to tell me he didn’t really get out of the truck. Aren’t you?”
Mavis brushed her knuckles across her chin to wipe away a bead of excess water. “We were at dinner the next night. Nobody had spoken about what happened, at least not around me. Dad said something about a diabetic coma. I wanted to know what that was. He told me. Then Kyle asked, ‘That’s what the driver had?’ It took me a moment, but the way Kyle said it bothered me. Past tense. I asked, ‘What do you mean he “had” it? He’s all right, isn’t he?’ I knew by the look on Mom’s face that that wasn’t the case. It was Kyle who finally told me that he never made it out of the truck.”
Gavin’s stare was trained on her profile. She could feel it washing over her features. “How old were you?”
“Five,” she said. “Close enough to my birthday to feel six. But five.” At Gavin’s next beat of quiet, she spread her fingers wide. “I’ve gone over it in my head a thousand times or more. There’s a good chance I didn’t see what I think I saw. It was the closest to death I’d ever been at that point so there’s a possibility I imagined it, to cover the shock.”
Gavin shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
She turned her gaze to him, finally. “It doesn’t?”
“No. I remember all those times Kyle and I would camp out in the woods. We’d hear you in the bushes when we told ghost stories. No matter how scary we made them, you’d never run. We could never make you scream. You’ve always absorbed things. That’s one thing I noticed. You and your owl eyes—always absorbing everything and everyone around you.”
“Is that why you thought I was spooky?” she wondered.
“You could say that,” he replied.
She studied him, pursing her lips. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“I never thought you were crazy,” he told her. “A little weird, but in a good way. An interesting way.”
She smiled with more ease than she would have thought possible after telling her story. “Good answer.”
His eyes skimmed across her lips. She caught the gleam in them, the beginnings of an answering grin before he glanced around at her picnic basket. “Didn’t you pack anything to eat?” She nodded and he picked it up by the handle.
“Thank you,” she said, and opened it to find her brunch. “Anything else you want to know while we’re here?” Alone.
“Plenty,” he admitted. “Like what’s the deal between Zelda and Errol?”
“What do you mean?” Mavis opened another foil-wrapped packet. The veggie wrap didn’t smell nearly as offensive as his cheeseburger. She dived in, realizing how hungry she was.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, stretching his legs and hooking one ankle over the other, “when we got back to the river house after our field trip to Mobile three days ago, Zelda was out of sorts. Errol quietly volunteered to make us grub. Zucchini lasagna.”
“How was it?” Mavis asked curiously.
“I’ve had worse.”
“You should try his vegetarian meat loaf,” Mavis suggested, taking a large bite from her wrap. “It’s his specialty.”
He held up a hand. “Help me out here. How the hell do you make meat loaf vegetarian? The meat part’s baked into the title.”
Mavis crumpled the foil into a ball. She chewed, swallowed and answered, “Chalk it up to a man trying to impress a female…even if it means giving up that vital crutch all red-blooded American men seem so desperately attached to.” At his frown, she expounded. “Cow.”
“Huh.”
“Someday you’ll have to explain to me the correlation between virility and beef,” she told him.
Gavin’s jaw worked for a moment. He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “You worry me, Frexy. Did your parents not tell you the deal about the birds and bees?”
She elbowed him in the side, enough to make him straighten up. Being close to him wasn’t helping her train of thought.
“Anyway, after the meal,” he said quickly, “Zelda thanked Errol profusely, and asked if I was in good form. When I answered yes, she made it pretty clear that she was dragging Errol off to her wing of the house.”
“And?” Mavis asked.
“And he was at breakfast the next morning,” Gavin finished.
Mavis shrugged. “So?”
He scratched the tip of his nose. “So, they’re clearly doing some bed-hoppin’…”
“And you—a red-blooded American man who is no stranger to sexual escapades—is scandalized by the idea of a single man and a single woman having relations because why?” When he made a face, she rolled her eyes. “Tell me it isn’t their age.”
“I don’t have a problem with old people doing it,” he claimed, “just so long as I don’t try to picture it in my head.”
“Why would you picture it?” she asked. “Are you a pervert?”
“Not that kind of pervert,” he said.
“Then what’s the deal?”
“They’ve been doing this for how long?”
“I don’t know,” Mavis replied. “The whole thing started six months or so after I moved to the river.”
“And how long have they been having sleepovers?” he wondered.
“As long as they’ve been together,” Mavis said.
“And they live in separate houses?” he asked. “Zelda’s not the conventional sort so I wouldn’t be surprised if she opposed the marriage route, especially since she’s…however old she is. She still won’t tell me.”
“She has a flair for mystery,” Mavis said.
“Like you,” he acknowledged.
Look who’s talking, frogman. “You know how old I am.”
“In the physical sense. But you’re an old soul. That’s been clear a hell of a lot longer than I can reckon.”
His eyes grazed her features again, as if he were memorizing them. Mavis cleared her throat. The starry point at her center was swelling at an alarming rate. “You’re right about one thing—Zelda doesn’t believe in marriage. She tried it once, when she was younger.”
“I take it it didn’t last long.”
“About thirteen months. He wanted to bring home the bacon and leave her at home to do the washin’, dryin’ and child-rearin’. Also, he wanted to give her an allowance.”
“Sounds quaint and domestic.” Gavin gave a false shudder. “No wonder she ran.”
“As for her and Errol’s arrangement,” Mavis continued, “it suits them. They both can operate independently. If ever one needed to take care of the other, things would change. But for now, Zelda’s home is the river house. It’s her business. It’s her life, one I think she had to reinvent in a lot of ways. It took guts for her to go back there after her father passed on. Her mother ran off with the mailman when she was little.”
“The mailman?”
Mavis nodded. “The mailman. Her father remarried quickly. Her stepmother was a woman of the church with two little girls of her own. While they never toed the line, Zelda was—as you’d expect—different. Rebellious. Outspoken. The stepmother put all her energy into convincing her father that she was evil.”
“Seriously?”
“She went so far as to try to get the reverend to affirm that Zelda was possessed by the devil,” Mavis revealed.
“And Zelda’s father believed this?”
“It’s unclear what he believed,” Mavis said, “but he didn’t do much about it. Zelda ran away before she was sixteen.”
“Where to?”
“Where else?” Mavis said, smiling. “To join the circus. She was a trapeze artist.”
“You don’t say.”
“She toured for several years, wound up in Vegas where she joined an acrobatic troupe. Before Cirque du Soleil, there were Zelda and her fellow artists. Then her father died. He left the family money to the stepmother and her daughters, but he bequeathed the river house to Zelda. She didn’t have to come back. She had a good job, good money and good standing—none of which she’d ever had at home. But she was like me; even when her stepmother was taunting the shakes out of her, she could never stop loving the river. She swept back home, making an entrance in a pink stretch limo and a gold lamé cape.”
“Like Elvis?”
Mavis held up a silencing hand. “Don’t bring up Elvis. She’ll spend hours regaling you about how he stole her look after their torrid affair.”
Gavin chuckled deeply. “Okay. Don’t bring up Elvis.”
“The stepmother had decided to stay on at the house, figuring Zelda wouldn’t dare show up again.”
“But she did.” Gavin tipped his chin. “Thatta girl.”
“Zelda said the stepmother packed her bags quicker than Jesus could part the waters and she never heard from her again. Anybody on the river will tell you what happened next. She dissolved the family antiques business, took every last scrap of furniture she could find and piled it on the front lawn and burned it all to cinders. Some say she danced on the ashes.”
“Naked?”
She eyed him balefully. “That’s when she planted the willow and started her own business. She’s been here ever since.”
“And Errol?” he asked.
“He and his wife moved here after the war.”
“What war?” he asked.
“’Nam.”
“What branch was he?” Gavin asked contemplatively.
“Army,” she said. “He volunteered to fight, lied about his age to do so…”
Gavin grew quiet.
It was her turn to watch him. “I won’t tell you how it went. I think you already know. He and his wife lived in the city. Once he was discharged, apparently it became clear to her fairly quick-like that he needed a change—of scenery and pace. So they came here. They bought a house with an apple tree. She died sometime in the nineties, leaving him alone.”
“Until Zelda,” he guessed.
“When she and I started investigating, a lot of people laughed,” Mavis explained. “Most people laughed. A lot of callers wanted to hire us for the spectacle. Errol was one of our first clients. The first one to take it as seriously as we did. And the reason he won’t move to the river house with Zelda is because his house was the first place we discovered legitimate EMF anomalies.”
His shoulders moved as he released a breath. “The wife. He thinks she still lives there.”
Mavis licked her lips in reply. She realized the foil was still balled in her hand and tossed it into the basket with the pitcher.
“How does Zelda feel about sharing?”
“Oh, she doesn’t mind. Aurelie, his wife, had dibs on him first, after all. Though when they do the sleepover bit, it’s not often at his place.”
“I should think not.”
Mavis noted his discomfort on the subject. Maybe Gavin did believe, after all. She wrapped her hand around one of the glasses she’d filled. “Cheers,” she offered.
“To what?” he asked.
“To a large step in an uncharted direction.” When he frowned, she elaborated. “You did something three days ago—something you weren’t comfortable doing. But you did it regardless, and whether you choose to join Errol, Zelda and me again in the field, I’d just like to say congratulations.”
“Why?” he said, frown deepening.
“Well, when I do something that scares me…” Mavis waited a beat for Gavin to deny that he’d felt any sort of fear on their jaunt to Mobile. He didn’t. Pleased with him, she continued. “… I tend to confront pieces of myself I wouldn’t have otherwise known. Which I think is exactly what you need right now, especially since you don’t know exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life. And at this point there’s nothing wrong with that.” He groaned in disagreement and she shook her head. “Your life’s been turned upside down. There’s nothing wrong with recalculating, recalibrating and taking the time to know yourself again—discovering what else there is in life. I know that’s what you want.”
“Do you?”
It was a direct question, posed in a direct manner. “It’s okay if whatever path you choose doesn’t bring the same sense of satisfaction as being a SEAL did,” Mavis said. “And I don’t care where it leads you when you find it. Just… I want you to find it.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” Mavis nodded in certainty. She tapped her glass against his, brought the lip to her mouth and sipped. “It’s water,” she added when he sipped, too. “Sorry. Champagne’s not my style.”
“I hate champagne.” His voice broke, gruff and brambly. He hung the glass in both hands between raised knees. A muscle in his jaw hammered visibly against the strong bone there. “Mavis, how are you?”
She tipped the drink to her mouth once more. “You held out asking longer than I thought you would.”
“You hate the question, and I’m pretty certain you could shave off a vital part of my anatomy with a look.”
“Sometimes I wish that were my superpower,” she granted. She pushed her foot through the sand, letting it mold against her calf. “How do I look to you?”
She felt him honing the points of her profile yet again. “Riveting. But then, you always look riveting and I can’t see you nearly as well as I’d like. So humor me, before I start shaking you for answers.”
The vulnerability he exposed by saying as much gripped her as fiercely as the strength and fortitude he wielded like sword and shield. She’d never met anyone more human, she thought, and she had to curl her fingers into sand to hold off on touching him. “My grandmother told my mother for years the best thing for me was the indoors, particularly after an episode like the one in Mobile. That’s what she called them. Episodes.”
Gavin’s foot brushed alongside hers, unintentionally. He moved it, but the small bit of contact wobbled Mavis off course. She gathered a breath and peppered chastening thoughts at her id. “She…seemed to think I’d be better off living in a bubble, that I never should’ve left the incubator. I was something feeble to be kept under glass and looked after closely.
“It was Dad who listened. He wasn’t around when Kyle was a baby, so everything was new to him. The seizures terrified him. He didn’t trust himself to make decisions about my care. He hardly trusted himself to hold me. So while Mom said I needed to build stamina and play like any normal child would and Edith said the opposite, he listened to the latter because it made more sense. It was one of the few painful parts of their marriage. Mom went by instinct; he heeded caution for perhaps the only time in his life. It wasn’t until years later that I told him I used to follow Kyle out into the woods when I should’ve been napping. Mom knew and turned a blind eye because it worked—it helped me. There’s something about fresh air. Trees and grass. Sky and earth. It heals. Edith moved off the farm before I was ten because Dad started to see what Mom saw. He’d take me out riding. It’d be years before he let me have my own horse or ride alone. But he’d take me out on the front of his saddle and we’d ride for hours.”
The memories of her father, James’s, wide chest snug against her shoulders and the vibration of his gentle, sonorous tones brought warmth deeper than the sun ever could reach. “He knows I’m like him—hardheaded, independent, and I like to make my own way. But days like the one in Mobile bring his irrational fears swarming back.”
“Can’t blame him.”
She peered at Gavin’s frown and stifled the urge to soothe it. “I told you water’s always called to me. I’ve always loved the river. It’s never the same. It’s never still. It’s like the moon; it changes, every night. When I saw that river house for sale, I knew I had to have it.” Rolling her eyes, she raised her glass. “Not before Dad and Kyle got a hold of it, of course. The sale had barely closed and they were already repairing and updating everything down to the kitchen tiles. There was mold in one of the bathrooms. They gutted it. The outside stairs weren’t to code. The deck was falling down. Every week or so, Dad still shows up for breakfast or dinner. Really, he’s looking it over, every speck of it. Still trying to pacify those irrational fears. In silent ways, at least.”
“He’s a good man who loves you,” Gavin stated plainly. “Any real man’d do the same.”
Love her or look after her? Mavis wondered. Tucking that away for later, she leaned back on one hand and said, “It all comes back to the river. Since I moved from the farm to the water, I’ve had less ‘episodes.’ Bad days have been fewer and further between. You, Dad and my grandmother can argue all you like about what happened a few days ago. But days like this…” A cool breeze licked over her, caressing skin slicked lightly with the dew of perspiration. She turned her face into it and closed her eyes. “… I wouldn’t miss for the world.”
When he didn’t agree, she raised a brow and tipped her head back so she had a panoramic view of the sky. “You might as well ask me to crawl back into that incubator.”
“I’m not asking you.”
He might as well have been whispering. Still, she could hear he was troubled. And she sighed. Because men… Releasing restraint, she shared the warmth with him, placing her cheek on the sculpted muscle of his arm and twining her arm around his waist. She stroked his spine in small circles, then, giving in, spanned her fingers wide and traced his vertebrae—those tired bones that’d held him up through everything. “I wish it hadn’t happened with you there to see it.”
“Don’t do that, Frexy,” he muttered. He lowered his head to her hair. She felt the air from his lungs push through. “Don’t apologize to me.” A curse. “I was useless.”
“No.”
He kept chiding himself. “I was no use to you when you needed me. It’s what I am. It’s what I will always be. You wanna talk about irrational fear? It’s crept in on me every day, every mission since…”
Mavis’s brows veered together when he stopped abruptly. She lifted her cheek to study him. “Since when?” At his short uttered refusal, she slowed the caress on his spine, moving her palm in a horizontal glide over his waist. “You want to tell me.”
“No. I don’t,” he said sharply.
“Yes, you do. Or else you wouldn’t have started. I’m here.” She said it because, again, he needed to hear it. “Tell me, once and never again, unless it’s what you need.”
“That’s what you want?” He was grim. Eyes flat, they drilled straight into the ground between his feet. “You’ve already seen more of my cards than anybody. You want to see the ugly ones, too?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“In my experience, only professionals want that. And they’re paid, Mavis.”
She made sure to steady her hand before placing it over the base of his neck. “I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me all the things you’re afraid to tell anyone else.”
“I’d rather make out.”
The quick stab at amusement couldn’t sway her. “Gavin.”
His defeated breath deflated him swiftly. “They ask you, after every mission. You go into a room, sometimes with your buddies. Sometimes without. They make you break it all down, piece by piece, until every detail of the op has been transcribed, every decision scrutinized, every motive questioned and upheld. Toward the end, they ask: Would you do anything different? Would you have waited a second longer to pull the trigger? Would you have rushed the door a minute sooner? Would turning counterclockwise instead of clockwise have made you more effective? I used to think it was ludicrous because my answer was always the same. Hell, no, I wouldn’t do anything different because I always did the thing I should’ve. I did everything they trained me to.”
He pinched the skin between his chin and neck where sweat had begun to gather. Just like in the Cadillac, Mavis could see it beading along his temple, collecting around the slight hollow adjacent to his ear. “One day, the answer changed. My training never failed me. Somehow, it was something inside me that disconnected. I hit a patch of mental ice and went off the skids.”
“What happened?” she asked.
Pain washed over his face, then trickled away, taking his color with it. “Benji.”
Of course. Benji. Gavin had been the acting medic on the squad Benji was assigned to when he was killed. If stories were true, Gavin had carried him out of firing range. He’d tried to save his life.
It made sense. Benjamin Zaccoe’s fate haunted Kyle, too. It was Benji’s ghost and the sense of duty that Kyle felt that had kept him from pursuing Harmony sooner. It was Benji who had kept Harmony single until she and Kyle had decided to take their friendship to the next level. As gross as it was to have a longtime bestie and a brother infatuated with each other, even Mavis had to admit that Kyle and Harmony’s collision was inevitable. “You feel responsible for what happened to Benji?”
Gavin’s brow rucked. “You’re damn right I’m responsible.”
She picked through what she knew of Benji’s death carefully. “Kyle told everyone Benji couldn’t have been saved.”
“A surgeon could’ve saved him.”
“Gavin, you aren’t a surgeon.”
“No,” he said. The muscles of his face quavered. “No. I’m not.”
Mavis’s mouth numbed. A dinner at the farm came back to her, over a decade past. The conversation around the table she remembered crisply, as if she’d heard it yesterday.
“So, Gavin,” Adrian said, peering across the centerpiece to the person occupying the chair opposite her own. “Have you decided what you would like to do once you graduate?”
Gavin’s mouth twisted into a half smile as he cut his steak with fork and knife. “I thought about joining Kyle at Emory so I could bug the hell out of him, but my grades won’t make the cut.”
“You haven’t thought about what you want to do?” Adrian asked, less judgmental than curious. “You don’t know what you want to be when you leave school?”
Gavin’s smile turned inward. “I don’t know. I’d like to see some of the world, I guess.” At James’s affirmative nod and grunt from the head of the table, Gavin went on, encouraged. “School’s not easy to get into and it’d take forever to finish the way I want. But… I don’t know… I kind of always wanted to be a doctor.”
Mavis’s chin sailed up. “You? Really?” she asked before she could close her mouth. Every face turned in her direction. Adrian raised a brow, quietly reproachful. Reprimanding herself, Mavis fell silent again.
Gavin cleared his throat. “Yeah.” He’d lost what hype the conversation had managed to drum out of him. “I guess.”
“What field?” Adrian asked kindly. “Pediatrics? Psychology?”
“Plastic surgery?” Kyle snorted.
“Hush,” Adrian chided shortly.
“A surgeon,” Gavin granted. “Though nothing superficial. I want to do the gritty stuff. Maybe be a corps surgeon.”
“That’s admirable,” James noted.
Gavin didn’t seem to know what to do with the compliment from James. He nodded and went back to cutting his steak.
“You’ll never do it,” Kyle opined. He yelped and stared broodingly at Adrian for kicking him under the table. “What? If Gav’s going to do anything military, he’s going to be on the front line with a gun in his hands. He treats every day like a training exercise already. Not that you’ll ever make it through basic. You’ll punch out the first instructor who calls you a worthless piece of—”
“Kyle,” Adrian said in warning.
Mavis eyed her brother. “That’s better than crying, which is what you’d do.”
Gavin barked an astonished laugh. When he turned to her, he smiled at her in a way that wasn’t irritating or smug like all the times before.
She recognized affection even if she’d stopped giving it. Unsure what to do with it and the awareness that flickered like a wakening light bulb under her skin, she looked quickly away again and spent the rest of the night pretending that her family didn’t have company for dinner after all.
She couldn’t deny even after all these years that he’d surprised her that day. She’d never bothered to dig underneath the surface of the troublemaker she knew him to be and unearth all the potential he’d hidden there. Intelligence. Self-effacement. Goals with far-reaching scope.
The tumult burned off him. She could feel it through his arm. “Even if you had been a surgeon, who says you would’ve been in the same place at the same time when he was shot?” she asked. “The chances are nearly nonexistent.”
“Nearly,” he groaned, distant.
She tightened her grip. “You could’ve been the greatest surgeon in the Navy and you probably still wouldn’t have saved him. There’s no coming back from an injury like that. Is there?”
“You’re saying he wasn’t meant to be saved.”
Mavis didn’t know how to answer. Not when she could feel the tremor going through him. “Kyle’s going to kill me for this, but I heard him say once that he wished it had been him that day.”
“In my place?”
“In Benji’s.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Have you not thought the same?” she challenged. “Benji had everything going for him—wife, baby on the way…”
“And what did I have?” he echoed. “Family I avoided more often than not? Some frenemies from high school, aside from Kyle, who didn’t like me anyway? Would the impact back here at home have been smaller if it had been me?”
“You believe that.” Suspicions confirmed, Mavis took the care to breathe slowly, coolly. Her hand flattened. She lifted it from him. “You actually believe that.”
“Didn’t I tell you,” he stated, “if you dug deep enough you wouldn’t like what you found?”
“You think Cole and Briar would’ve been better off?” she asked. “What about Harmony? You think you’re less than equal to Benji in her eyes? If you asked Benji, would he have thought his place in the world bigger than yours?”
“I can’t ask him. Can I?”
“What about me?” she demanded.
Gavin’s countenance cleared. One by one, the shadows strayed off, leaving only questions. “What about you?”
Her heart pounded. The twin surges of rage and need had made breathing unnecessary. She couldn’t draw a single breath. “It would’ve mattered to me,” she concluded. Something damp singed the back of her eyes. She blinked three times in the space of seconds. “You matter.”
“I didn’t then.”
Dropping to a whisper, she asked, “How do you know?” She waded against wisdom and spoke, freely. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here with me.”
He stared at her, questions eclipsed by awe. “Ah,” he breathed, “I’m going to kiss you.”
He took her face in his hands again. They were gentle this time, tipping her chin up so that the angle was right.
Mavis began to shake her head. If he kissed her, he’d lay all the reasons he shouldn’t to waste and she’d no longer care if either of them could handle it. Even though she knew she couldn’t.
“Shh.” It soothed from him to her. He pressed his brow to hers. His mouth skimmed the tip of her nose in a whispered kiss. “You can’t talk like that…and not expect a man to kiss you. Especially a broken one like me.”
“I don’t see broken.”
“No.” He laughed in one hushed burst. “You don’t, do you?” The line of his mouth wasn’t steady. A wince worked over it, unguarded. “I think you know me. What I am. You might know me better than I know myself. And fuck if that doesn’t scare me, Freckles.”
He was right, maybe. She couldn’t take it, knowing what she knew. She couldn’t stand it, knowing he wrestled his soul every night. Not alone anymore. The sentiment blazed like a comet, incinerating doubt. I won’t let you do this alone anymore.
Their lips met. He moaned. Her eyes drew closed. She felt a crease form between them as his lips closed over her upper lip. His teeth grazed once. Then again. All the muscles of her neck and shoulders went lax in approval, sensations rooted deep in sinew. Jaw loosened, she let him confront her, mouth to open mouth, and had never felt so eager or needy.
She pulled back, enough for his hands to slide away. Gripping his shoulders, she climbed to her knees, taking the high ground. She mirrored him, embracing his face and kissing him.
“Mmm,” he said. His arm slid over her waist, looping all the way around her back. He pulled her close.
She licked him, his lips parted in a sneer that was as involuntary as it was wolfish. She licked him once more, encouraging. She found the tip of his tongue with her own and traced it in one teasing stroke. Under her palms, she felt a shudder. It went through him, from bottom to top. Gripping harder, he jerked his chin back. His gaze locked on hers, hard and green. His fingers raked, spread, through her hair. He cupped the back of her head and beckoned her to him again.
It’d be so easy to rock him back to the surface of the towel and take more, deeper.
She withdrew because she felt her tremor go up against his. The urgency between them had built to the height of anticipation. She remembered he was vulnerable—more so than she might’ve been. Slow was the name of their game. It had to be.
He didn’t follow her lead. Holding her close, he laid an open kiss to her cheek. His chest rose on a prolonged inhale. When he released it, it resonated, gruff. A predatory sound that drew her skin taut everywhere.
“You’re prickly,” he murmured against her cheek, “but sweet. Like a pineapple.”
She dragged the tips of her nails gently over the nape of his neck. He was salty and deep. Like the Dead Sea. Even there, she sensed, she’d swim until her limbs felt like noodles and she had no course but to sink. He tipped his mouth beneath her chin to a place that was ultrasensitive and she closed her eyes. The tremor had grown into a consenting shimmy. “Give me a minute. I…think I might have something to say.”
Both his arms roped around her waist. “Nah, baby. We just got started.”
“Yes. But… Gavin, you’re not exactly grounded right now.”
“Right now, I feel like a freaking sequoia.”
Risking it, she lowered her eyes so she could study his features. There was want there, yes, and need great enough she felt the bite of it along the ranks of her inner thighs. A smile stitched the seam of his lips together. She caught herself teasing it with the edge of her thumb and dropped her hands from him completely. “You shouldn’t smile,” she admitted. If only he knew how much him smiling, sincerely, laid her bare. “Not when I’m trying to be sensible.”
“I’ve never wanted to be less sensible.”
Mavis gulped air. “That’s my point. This…all this…it’s nice for now. But what happens in the end?”
“When I leave?”
Mavis lifted a shoulder. “Isn’t that what you’ll do, eventually? You’ve been very clear. No promises.”
Gavin relinquished half their link, bringing one hand up to his face to rub his lips briefly before propping it behind him and leaning away.
She shifted to her hip, feeling as flattened as he looked. “I’m not fishing for assurances you’re not comfortable giving. I’ve told you. I know you don’t know your place in the world anymore and I’m aware of who you are—who you’ve always been. You’ll go looking elsewhere for it if you can’t find it here. You’re—”
“A drifter,” he concluded, gaze dull and far off. “I run.”
She groped for his hand and gripped it tight. “I want you.”
The truth bomb snatched his head around, back to hers. His brows hitched, surprised. Impressed.
Mavis nodded. “That isn’t something I’m capable of ignoring anymore.”
“Anymore,” he murmured. His jaw softened. “How long have you been ignoring it, exactly?”
“I don’t think it’s relevant.”
“Oh, I think it might be,” he said, mischievous.
“The point is…” she said, trying to strengthen her resolve when she felt weak. So weak. “If we pursue this—whatever happens, I won’t stop you if you need to run. If you need room, just tell me, before. That way I can… I can try to…”
Using their entwined hands, he pulled her to him again. “Okay,” he murmured. He turned his nose against the place beneath her ear and held her fast against his heart, nodding. “Okay, Frexy.”
She stopped talking, thinking—everything. Quickly, her arms banded around his shoulders. Closing her eyes, she burrowed against hot skin, muscle and bone, doing her best to hold firm.
Then he said the one thing that could undo her entirely.
“I promise.” Husky, sure miracles tripped off his tongue. “I promise you’ll be the first to know.”
She shuddered again. It might’ve been a silent sob, but she ignored it. Indulging the need to grin like an idiot, she ran her hands up and down his back. “You promised.”
“There’s a first for everything. Right?”
She skimmed a kiss across his lips in reward. Then another in gratitude. And another…because she wanted another. Stop smiling. Stop. He’ll think you’re insane. “What’re we going to tell our parents?”
“At this rate, I don’t care,” he said, adjusting his weight. She gave a sharp gasp when he hitched her all the way onto his lap. “What I want to know is, do you always kiss dirty?”
She beamed. His hands were underneath her now, emboldening her to answer. “Is there another way?”
“Aw.” He laughed, bringing his mouth up to hers. “Aren’t you perfect?”