Chapter 1 #2
I still had my mom’s rotting, tumbledown single-wide trailer in my head as my default concept of a dwelling place, even though I had plenty of money, and had for some years now.
I’d bought a house in a little town not too far from the headquarters of Ready Line, the elite security company that I had founded with Freya’s brother Shane, but I had never put any thought or energy into the place.
It was nice enough, but I just used it to crash, use the microwave and the coffee machine.
It had a big garage where I stored my sports gear, my weightlifting equipment, my bike and motorcycles.
It was a place to do laundry. Nothing special about it.
A bland, cookie cutter house on a boring street, as devoid of personality as a hotel room. More like a parking place than a home.
And it had never occurred to me that anything was lacking, until I met Freya. Because every space she spent time in reflected her personality. So did her town house on Capitol Hill, in Seattle, and her waterfront warehouse engineering studio. She made places beautiful, interesting, alive.
When we first got engaged, I had been worried that she was going to realize that I was actually as dull as a slice of toast, but she snapped me right out of that, so fast my ears were still ringing. The woman did not suffer fools. So I was sharpening right up.
The song was winding down, fading out, I pressed a kiss on the top of her head. Loving that fuzzy, silky warmth of her curly hair. “I’m still not sure if that song is romantic or apocalyptic,” I said.
“Both,” Freya said. “God knows, we’ve done both at the same time.”
I snorted under my breath. True thing. We had the choreography down.
Shane had taken me with him to see Nighttime Visitor perform in little taverns and roadhouse dives all over the Pacific Northwest before he approached them and proposed financing their first album himself, and like most of the things that Shane did, the album hit big.
Nighttime Visitor had been instantly propelled in the big music festival circuit, constantly on tour, and fending off slavering, predatory record companies right and left.
The chords of the song faded away—and the next one began, and my stomach dropped in icy panic.
Fuck. This was “Nature’s First Green Is Gold,” the Robert Frost poem that Shane had requested the band set to music as a tribute to his late mom.
It had been her favorite poem. He’d also used it as part of the dummy password they had set, to ostensibly open up SmokeScreen, but only if under duress.
Which Freya had been, with Nicole Volange’s knife under her eye.
The last time Freya had chanced to hear that song, it had triggered a stress flashback so intense, it scared us both half to death.
I lunged for the radio, turned it off. “Shit. I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought this was one of the older live sets from before they wrote this piece.”
“I’m okay,” she said gently. “I’m fine with it now.”
“The fuck you are,” I said. “You’re always telling me not to be so macho, always playing the hero. But it goes both ways.”
Freya had been forced to enter that poem backwards while Boer and Volange threatened to cut chunks off both of us. She had kept her head, and pulled it off, goddess that she was. Still. Bad moment, for both of us.
“I’m serious,” she said. “It’s a precious memory of my brother. My mom, too, by association. I don’t actually remember her reciting it to us at bedtime, like Shane did, but Shane remembered it for me. I am not letting anyone take that away from me.”
“And the stress flashback?”
She waved her hand. “The therapist told us that PTSD responds to being talked to death. So I wrote that poem out maybe fifty times, then I recited it out loud fifty more. Then I listened to Nighttime Visit sing it, maybe twenty more times. The nausea is almost gone. See me now? I’m cool.
No stress flashback. No fainting. Maybe I’m a little bit tense, but I’m hanging in there.
I will not let those bastards win. They don’t dictate how I feel. ”
I met her clear, steady gaze, and shook my head, admiring. “You are one tough babe.”
“Don’t you ever forget it, Clearwater.”
We smiled at each other. Then panic exploded in my mind. “Fuck! The steak!” I bolted out to the barbecue, and opened it up, forking the chunk of meat out and onto the serving platter.
Not too bad, from what I could see. Not a blackened, charred monstrosity. We would find out how badly I’d fucked up when we sliced it.
What a bonehead. Freya had prepared everything else for dinner. I had one job. One, and I’d fucked it up.
I carried it inside, laying it down. “Sorry. I spaced out the steak.”
“Jed,” she said.
Her careful, even tone made me look up into her worried eyes. “What?” I said. “Don’t worry. It should still be edible.”
“I don’t give a damn about the steak. It’s you.”
Dread clenched my guts, way down low, like cold, pinching fingers. “Uh…okay,” I said. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But that was a really disproportionate response to having left the meat on the grill a minute too long. That was more like, ‘oops, I left the live grenade in the baby’s crib.’”
I snorted. “I won’t do that, when the time comes. I’m safety-minded.”
“Of course you are, and of course you won’t. I was being silly. But you’re so wound up. Every muscle in your body is as tight as piano wire. And since we’re getting married tomorrow, I was thinking I should ask. Just in case. Are you having cold feet? Second thoughts? Be real with me. Please.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words burst out, louder and harsher than I had intended, and she jerked backwards, startled. “Shit. I’m sorry,” I muttered. “Didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“Okay,” she said. She crossed her arms, lips tight, and just waited for me to explain my jumpy jack-ass self.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I told her. “Cold feet is the last thing on my mind. I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”
She looked baffled. “Well, what, then? News flash, babe. You got me. You have absolutely, one-hundred-percent got me. You couldn’t shake me loose if you tried.
Truth is, even asking if you having cold feet is bullshit, because it’s too late for that.
After what we went through together, you aren’t allowed to have cold feet.
You can just double up on the socks. You are my man.
I have claimed you. End of story. Understood? ”
I let out a harsh, stifled bark of laughter. “That is comforting, but...”
“But the problem remains,” she said flatly. “Even though you can’t articulate it for me. Please. Just try.”
I shook my head helplessly. “It’s a feeling,” I said. “I just can’t shake it. Like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
She shook her head, frowning. “Meaning? What shoe?”
“I can’t get too comfortable,” I told her.
“I didn’t earn this. And you’re still not safe, Frey.
Not by a long shot. So I feel like I’m tempting fate, getting fitted for a fancy suit, flowers, seating chart, fancy menu, caterers, a cake, a play list for the deejay.
Happy wedding things that normal, happy, safe people do.
But we can’t really afford them. Because we’re not safe, Frey.
We’re not normal. I feel as if I’m setting myself up to get slammed. ”
Freya pondered that, biting her full, pink lower lip. “I see how you might feel that way. But we can’t stop living because our enemies are out there wishing us ill. Fuck them. Our wedding would really stick in Nicole’s craw. Let her choke on it.”
“It freaks me out, that we’re exposing ourselves like this,” I admitted.
“We’re not inviting strangers, Jed,” she pointed out gently. “Only trusted friends.”
I shook my head. “I know, but I feel like I’m indulging myself. That I don’t deserve this. I could kill it, by being a dickhead. I’ve done it before.”
Her beautiful eyes narrowed. “No, you have not. You were never a dickhead, except maybe that one time when you handcuffed me to that bed, but I’ll let that go for now. You got captured because Rachelle Grifo sold you out. I came after you because I wanted to. My choice.”
“I didn’t mean with you,” I said.
“No? Then who?”
I shook my head, as panicked discomfort ratcheted up. “Never mind.”
“Don’t never-mind me when we’re having a conversation like this. What were you referring to?”
Aw, fuck. I’d made myself a real shit sandwich, and now I had to eat it. “My mom,” I said reluctantly. “I guess…I guess that I was referring to her.”
“What about her? You said she committed suicide, right? Which is very tragic, but not relevant to us now. So?”
“She did it because of me,” I said, my voice tight.
Freya’s eyebrows drew together. She was silent for a long moment. “You were seventeen,” she said finally. “Still a child.”
“Yeah. And so?”
“What could you say that would make her do something like that?”
“I told her to do it,” I admitted. “I said, if you want to kill yourself so badly, just finish the fucking job. I called her a thieving junkie bitch. Told her to get away from me. And she did. That very night. She jumped off a bridge.”
“Oh. I see.” Freya’s voice was muted. “I’m so sorry, Jed. But I imagine that she must have driven you to it, to say something like that.”
“What if she did? It wasn’t what she needed to hear.”
“No, but you were a child, and she was the adult. It was not your job to take care of her. Not your job to make her life worth living. Just like it’s not your job to save me.
We can work together. We can protect and save each other.
It’s not all on you. That’s too much pressure for any one man.
” She paused. “And it wasn’t your job to save your mom, though I know that it’s hard to accept.
I watched my brothers suffer for years because they weren’t able to save me from what happened with my aunt and uncle.
They overcompensated for that in weird, inconvenient ways which continue to make my life difficult to this day. So don’t do that to me.”
“Okay,” I said. “Message received. No crazy overcompensation. But I think I need a break from talking about this. Sorry, but I’m…I can’t.”
“Okay,” she soothed. “Shall we have dinner?”
“Sure,” I agreed, gratefully.
Freya reached up and turned the radio back on. I was relieved that Nature’s First Green Is Gold was over, and the band was well into a rocking rendition of Bird’s Eye View, another hit from the album Shane had financed.
Freya was boot-leather tough, but I did not want to see her white-knuckling it. She’d been through enough pain and terror. And if I was a macho muscle-head by trying to spare her more of it, or make her safer, so be it.
Guilty as charged.