The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (23 page)

“Take your time.”

“Would you like to go to lunch with me?” I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it as if it had asked the question, not me.

What am I doing?

“Just friends,” I said as I placed it back to my ear.

“I would love that. Just friends.” His voice was quiet.

We went to the diner right in the middle of town. We sat in a booth by the window and watched as half the town walked on the sidewalk in front of us. The server and everyone sitting at the bar knew the colonel. They all said hello, and he introduced me to each one as, “Meredith Walsh, a former U.S. Attorney who now works with me at the police station.” It was intoxicating.

“We never went out in public, did we?” My voice was low, but I wasn’t whispering. We had no secrets. We were no longer breaking any laws.

“No. Never.”

“I like this better,” I said and continued to read my menu.

“That’s because you don’t remember.”

I looked over my menu, and the colonel was challenging me with a naughty expression on his face. “Why, colonel.” He was even more irresistible when he was playful. I wanted him to touch me. In the Riversbend Diner, I wanted him to put his hands on me everywhere. I took a deep breath. I believed him when he said I preferred it.

“I’m just telling you the truth. We always promised to be honest with each other.”

I stared out the window again, searching for the memory of that or any other promise we may have made to each other. The only thing that came was a vague memory of James’s camping trip. A sick feeling somehow attached to pitching a tent and replacing the batteries in his flashlight for tag.

“Lynn looked good.” I changed the subject. Back to a safer one. I thought.

“She’s moving on. She wants a divorce.”

I dropped my menu to the table and stared at the colonel in disbelief. He lowered his menu and met my eyes with his own. If only I could have hugged him. “Are you okay?”

The colonel nodded. “It’s a relief. I’m glad she’s happy.”

“She met someone else?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I think that’s what would make her happy.”

“She’s been talking to a guy we graduated Penn State with.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I’m not sure yet. It’s all very bizarre. But I like him.”

“You’re such a good man.” The comment was absurd. I was talking to my ex-lover about his estranged wife and her new boyfriend. That didn’t make it any less true though. He was too good, better than anyone I’d ever known. He forced me to love him just by being himself.

I SEARCHED THROUGH MY WALLET
for cash. I needed four dollars to attach to the permission slip for James’s class trip. I found three dollars and seventy-five cents. “I know I have more money in here somewhere.”

James hopped up on the stool next to the counter. “Do you want me to look?”

“Yes.” I rummaged through the notebook and folders for the spring fair in my purse hoping a dollar had fallen between them, and James searched through all the compartments of my oversized wallet. He wasn’t going to find anything. I hated Mondays.

“What’s this?” James held up a penny with the center missing. I stood up straight—the memory holding me above the ground.

“It’s a lucky penny,” I said and took it from James. I held it in my hand. The center was cut out in the shape of a heart.

“Cool!” James said and took the penny back. “Can I have it?”

My past exploded in my mind. The first night I was with the colonel at his hunting cabin. The book club I lied about in Philadelphia. His truck, my Escalade, this penny . . .

“Here,” I said and handed the penny to James. “We’ve got to go.” I barely heard the words as they left my mouth. “Liv, get in the car. We’re going to be late for school.”

James followed me out yelling, “Mom, wait!” I stopped. Mentally, I was barely there. “Take this with you. I want you to have the luck.” He placed the penny in my palm and climbed into the back of my car.

I sat in the driver’s seat and squeezed the penny in my hand. The day Vince had first told me he loved me and gave me this penny shot through me. I’d been angry at the time and hurtful when I’d left him. I was terrified of losing him.

I closed my eyes. I loved him now. I knew I’d loved him then. It wasn’t just an affair. The outrage at the kids’ principle over the dress code. Vince fucking me on the hood of his police cruiser. Dancing with him on the dock at Lake George all came back. It was always him. It was never an affair. It was Vincent Pratt.

Liv hauled her backpack, flute, and lunchbox into the backseat and pulled her door shut. We drove to their school without another word. As if my children could sense I needed silence to breathe.

“Have a great day,” I managed to say as they hopped out of the car. “I love you.” The words lingered behind them. They walked through the front door of their school and I sat motionless in the carpool line. Lost in my thoughts in the Escalade their father had purchased for me.

“Let’s move it,” Mr. Danner yelled in my window, making me jump and press on the accelerator. I left my children and drove to the police station.

The frozen air surrounding me barely penetrated my sweater dress and boots. My coat I left in the car. All I needed was Vince. I steadied my breathing and tried to calm down as I opened the door to the station. The vision of him naked and lying next to me in a hotel room in Philadelphia hit me and my thighs tightened together. I took a deep breath.

“Hey, Meredith. What brings you in on your day off?” Thompson asked.

“Is the chief here? I need to talk to him.” It was as if someone else was speaking the words.

“Took the day off. I think he’s hunting. Do you want me to call him?”

Yes, call him and get him here right now!
I wanted to scream. “No. It can wait. I was just driving by. I’ll talk to him the next time I’m in.”

“Okay.”

“Be safe,” I said and walked back out the door I’d just come in.

I sat in my car with my phone in my hand. I could call him. My finger slid across the screen. My memories guided me to the icon for “Private Mode.” I followed the directions and swiped my finger over the home button, allowing the phone to read my fingerprint.

Tears filled my eyes as I opened the private photo album. The first picture was the colonel at his cabin. He had no shirt on and the sweetest smile on his face. It was the same smile he’d had when I’d answered the door at my shore house after I’d hurt my head.

Liv swinging in my backyard skipped through my mind. She’d been going so high. I’d made Brad come watch her, and then he’d said, “Say the word,” and the world stopped around me. I’d thought he knew about Vince and me. I’d been terrified he’d take Liv and James away forever.

I put the car in drive and paused as I remembered Brad screaming at me not to walk away from him. He’d been completely out of control.

“Shh. The kids will hear you,” I’d said, trying to calm him down.

“I will not quiet the
fuck
down!” he’d screamed at me, and I’d turned and walked out of the room with him an inch behind my every step. I stayed calm. I still didn’t know what he knew, but he wasn’t learning anything else from me. I climbed the front staircase, a few steps ahead of him. “You’re not going anywhere!” he’d yelled and yanked my ankle out from under me.

Brad would never let me go. He would never lose . . . me.

I DROVE TO THE HUNTING
cabin. The one I’d been to at least once a month for a year. The one I’d first made love to him at. I hated him for not telling me sooner. He should have told me the day he came to the hospital or the day we were together at the shore. He should have done something to make me remember.

You can’t be held captive

If you can’t be caught

The words on his card rang in my head and reminded me of how he understood me better than anyone else alive. I loved him more than I hated him. He’d promised me he would never ask for another thing, and he kept that promise until I’d almost lost him in my mind forever.

I wanted to scream at him and punch him for leaving me alone. I inhaled deeply, my breath catching as I exhaled and tried to grasp the coronel in my mind. I wanted to fuck him until I couldn’t remember the other man in my life, and then I wanted to fall asleep in his arms.

I wanted him.

The road was as familiar as my driveway. The clarity was overwhelming. Tears filled my eyes as the memory of the night we’d spent together on a lake in New York filled my mind. Anger had seared through me at the thought of him leaving his wife. And now that he’d done just that, guilt overcame me.

From the road, I could see the gate to the cabin lane was wide open. I pulled off and stopped just inside the opening, put the Escalade in park, and took a deep breath. Too much had happened. More than one person could forgive or forget, and he was willing to let me live without the memory of him for the rest of my life if that meant I was happy.

I stepped out of the vehicle and swung the gate shut. I closed the padlock and locked us away from the world. This had been our haven for almost a year, and now I returned, needing to feel safe again.

The colonel’s truck was covered in frost and parked near the walk leading up to the cabin. I stood still and listened for movement in the woods. Squirrels scurried around and up a tree. They chased each other across a branch and leaped onto the tree next to me. But other than their pursuit, the world was silent.

My gaze fell on the door, and my anger at his silence returned. I was going to walk in there and scream at him. I was going to throw back in his face his insistence that we
never
stop talking and that we work through things together. That was what he’d made me promise. That we would never shut each other out again, but he deserted me. He broke that promise and left me alone to find my own way through this sea of deceit.

I marched toward it. The doorknob in my grasp sent a wave of need through my body. The familiarity of it in my hand, the entry into a place it was safe to touch him. To have him to myself. The feelings calmed me, but even the peace left me off balance.

It was too much to process. Love, hate, betrayal. Vince. Brad. All the things I never understood suddenly all made sense, and none of them were a part of my plan for myself.

I turned the knob and stepped inside to the four walls that protected the clandestine truth of my life. Silence filled the room. It surrounded me and held me tight against the door I’d just closed behind me. My hand lingered on the knob, waiting for him to tell me what to do. Vince would know what to say. He’d halt the chaos in my mind and replace it with the warmth that always surrounded him.

Cool air caressed my neck, and I shivered, still waiting for him. The wood stove had burned its logs from the night before and now sat quiet in the corner of the room, the log bin loaded next to it. He’d told me a dozen times, “It’ll warm up in a minute. Let me get the fire going.”

He must be out hunting.

I’d sit on the couch where he’d made love to me until he returned. But I stopped as soon as I stepped into the second room of the cabin. Vince was lying on the couch with the television on low. His left arm was on top of the blanket, exposing half his chest and arresting my breathing. His eyes were closed, and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. I leaned against the doorframe and watched his chest rise and fall as he lay motionless and alone.