Chapter 13
thirteen
. . .
Armin
It’s been a hell of a month, more for the nurses of Saint Vincent’s than anybody else, I’m ashamed to admit. I’m not the sort of man who takes well to laying in a sick bed.
I try my hand at the hospital steps instead of the ramp, but I regret it.
My face flushes hot though it’s a lot cooler out than it was when I first arrived in Sunbreak Harbor.
My ribs are jabbing me in a critical part of my lung with every footstep, though the doctor assured me they’re all back in their usual spots.
Then I stop breathing anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
She’s there. At the foot of the steps.
Mia.
Not Mia, I have to remind myself.
She said she would come.
But I still wasn’t sure. I couldn’t let myself have that much hope.
She rushes up the steps to help me, but I wave her off even though I could use her help.
Even though I want nothing more than to have her hands on me.
The primordial, macho part of me is hurt even more than the rest of me.
Sore and smarting from the fact that she had to rescue me, instead of the other way around.
“I’m okay,” I say, though I’m not.
I was comfortable with the other way around.
Stop being such a fossil. But it’s not that easy.
“Listen, Armin—”
“I know.” I don’t want her to apologize to me.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t…”
“You don’t have to explain. The other agent told me. Because of the nature of the case.” The other agent said a lot of things.
Was I sure I wasn’t purposefully being used as bait?
Did I think she’d targeted me, as a sheriff, as Harvey’s rival?
And then, about a week ago, Agent Rossi leaned a little too close, and put her hand on mine in a way that suggested a different relationship entirely, and it cast her questions in a suspicious light.
But there was no doubt in my mind that I’d been pursuing Mia this entire time, and not the other way around.
I was such a fool. All this time trying to protect her. It never occurred to me that she’d been trying to protect me.
“Yeah. The nature of the case,” she echoes. She only shakes her head and looks sad.
I want to reach out to her, but I stop myself. I don’t know if that’s what she wants. “Walk me to my car?”
“Sure,” she says. “Are you really alright to walk, though?”
Her voice is different. More business. More FBI, I suppose.
“I’ll make it,” I say.
She turns to take the sidewalk to the hospital parking lot.
“Not there,” I say. “I had them park it on the beach lot.”
She raises her eyebrows. But she sticks with me, heads towards the beach.
I know she was busy with the case. Prohibited from visiting me, is what Agent Rossi said. Still, I was haunted by the absence of her, and my new knowledge of her identity, and I couldn’t think about anything else.
I remember what it was like to be a small-town cop. Being a Fed has to be a thousand times worse, the paperwork every time you fire your weapon.
And Mia did it for me.
The voice inside that enjoys fomenting mental anguish: She was only working this whole time. It had nothing to do with me.
And, what’s more, she’s not Mia.
I’ve had to fight that voice all day, every day.
“I wasn’t sure,” she says. “That you would want to see me anyway.”
Even so, I can’t help but check out this new stranger shaped exactly like Mia. She flits slightly ahead of me, her footfalls light when we reach the sand.
I’ve got a bit of a hobble going in comparison. I watch her purposefully slow her steps to lag behind, to be with me.
“Are you kidding?” I fight the urge to grab her hand. I catch her eye, and she averts her gaze, casts it out on the ocean.
“No,” she says. “I mean it. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me or not. Now that I’m not…”
She doesn’t finish her thought out loud.
She’s quit with the sundresses, all the outfits I thought were hers.
Nothing more than a disguise. She looks amazing in these linen pants and her collared shirt.
She could drop my jaw wearing anything. I briefly visualize her FBI uniform from my fugue state, try to see her face in my mind when she shouted FBI; freeze!
And saved my life.
A gull cries at us from its vantage point on the sand. Mad we don’t have any french fries for him to steal.
“You saved my life,” I blurt out, ashamed of my own silence, my pouting, the internal tantrum I’d been having off and on throughout my hospital stint. Yes, the whole situation is shocking, and I miss Mia like all hell. But that’s not this woman’s fault. “Thank you.”
“Oh, no need to thank me. I was just—”
“Stop it.” I can’t bear to hear that she was just doing her job, can’t be reminded again. When we were fucking, was she just doing her job?
That was real. Despite everything, I know our love is real.
She stops in her tracks and studies me.
I walk it back a notch in my mind: the anger that’s covering my fear, fear that she’s done with me. She doesn’t need me the way I thought she did. But maybe she wants me. Maybe she’ll let me be a part of her life. “Let me thank you, I mean.”
“Oh,” she says. “Well, you’re welcome.” She turns to continue on down the beach, but I hold back where I stand.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
“Didn’t Agent Rossi tell you?”
“Sure she did. But I want to hear it from you.”
She smiles faintly. “Daphne. Daphne Munro.” She sticks out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I shake it. “Nice to meet you, Daphne.”
“Likewise,” she says. I hold her hand for too long, and her smile widens. It’s a good sign.
“I know you’re a busy FBI agent, and, ah…”
“Uh, not necessarily.”
“What?”
“I resigned.”
“Because of me?”
She shrugs. “I did what I came to do. Against all odds. And now I think if I stayed on, I would only hurt the case. I hope they put him away for a long, long time.”
“Me too,” I say, because I feel the same way about Daphne as I did about Mia. I only want her to be safe, protected. Happy. And by my side. “Well…hey, are you married?”
She laughs out loud. It’s a familiar sound, and I love it.
“What? No. Oh hell no. I wouldn’t have—Jesus, Armin. No.”
“Single?”
She runs her hand through her hair, and a woman who I only ever knew as wholly confident and self-assured now glances away.
“I am. Not married. Well, there is this one guy I’ve been seeing, but…”
My face falls. I imagine her in the arms of some ruggedly handsome DEA agent or some douchebag CIA analyst who flies her around the world.
Shit, I could fly her around the world.
Or I could kill this other guy, another part of my mind offers. Lord. Too much time around crime bosses and hit men.
“It’s you, Armin.” Daphne interrupts my dark thoughts. “I’ve been seeing you. I know it’s under false pretenses, but I still—I consider you my…there’s nobody else.”
“Thank God,” I say. “I was so jealous of him. Listen, I know how we met wasn’t ideal, but I still—Daphne, I…come up to East Greenwich sometime? Or wherever you want? Doesn’t have to be East Greenwich.”
“Yes,” she says quickly, to absolve me of my blathering. “East Greenwich sounds great. After the past couple of months, I could use a drive through the woods. Still got your cabin?”
“I do. I think I do. Unless they bulldozed it on me while I was gone.”
“When should I come up?”
“How about now?”
She smiles in that favorite way of mine, her beautiful half-smile.
“I know a place. Maybe you’ll let me take you there? Great pie and ice cream. Nice cup of coffee. If we leave now we could be there in twelve hours.”
She pulls out her phone and takes a long look. I hold my breath. I know this is a long shot. I know she’s not Mia, but I love her too, this stranger, I know I do, I love this Daphne, and I can’t let her leave my life.
“Okay,” she says, and she takes my hand, interlaces her fingers in mine. “Let’s do it. Let’s go back to East Greenwich.”
And her touch makes me feel like I’m home already.