Chapter 19
Elenie
Roman had rolled up the sleeves of his casual shirt and those sun-kissed forearms, all dark hair and sexy muscles, were exposed for Elenie to drool over.
He didn’t seem like himself today. He’d been distracted from the moment he’d climbed into Caitlyn and Milo’s car outside the most stunning A-frame cabin Elenie had ever seen. Torn between out-and-out begging to go in and look around and noting the subtle signs of strain on his angular face, she’d opted to stay quiet, wondering how much he regretted asking her to join them. The worry burned at her skin like poison ivy.
Full to bursting but determined to finish her pie, Elenie found it harder and harder to keep her eyes off him. Every now and then, he looked her way, lifting an eyebrow to check she was OK. Each time he did, her heart gave a thump. She felt like she’d been picked up and dropped into a parallel reality. There had never been an afternoon like this one in her whole life. Although she’d dated a little, no one had ever taken her home to meet their family. And Elenie had never had a close friend who’d asked her either.
She tried to think of anything that linked Ava to her mother or Elias to Frank, but came up short. They were as different as apples and bicycles.
No one laughed in the Dax household unless it was at someone else’s expense. Conversation never went both ways because no one wanted to listen. The affection that Roman’s family shared hung in the air, as obvious as the food on the table or the sun in the sky.
It wasn’t about money, because the Martinez house was far from grand. And Frank and Athena didn’t struggle for money themselves. Yes, it was a bit all or nothing. Cash either spilled out of Frank’s pockets, or he lost himself in a funk for a couple of weeks when things got tight. There was certainly enough that their house didn’t have to be so dirty, scuffed, and soulless. There could be food in the fridge or nice meals on the table. Things didn’t need to be broken or neglected. It was just that no one gave a shit.
Never had Athena teased her the way Ava teased her children. Never had she tugged her close with a careless, loving arm and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Pet names and casual touches flew between each person around the table and it was intoxicating. The desire to have a different life hit Elenie again like a sucker punch. If there could be a home and a family like this in her future, she wanted it with an intensity that made her heart hurt.
Looking up, she found Roman’s eyes on her face. He was tapping again, muted stress in the rhythmical movement of his fingers. It brought her out of her reverie. She was just about to ask him if he was OK when Elias flung out his hand in an expressive gesture, upending Florence’s glass of sangria down her front. Red wine spread from her neck over the pale cream of her lacy top. Florence shrieked and leaped to her feet; Elias too, apologies abundant. Thea grabbed a paper napkin while Ava ran for a cloth, scolding her husband over her shoulder as she disappeared indoors.
Roman’s eyes were fixed on Florence’s neck and the brilliant stain of red. He swallowed roughly, the movement of his throat jerky and pained. His breath lodged in his chest. Skin waxy, he had the look of a man drowning on dry land.
“Roman?”
He gave no sign of having heard her. “Roman?”
Elenie gripped his arm and found it solid and chilled, like an iron bar beneath her fingers. She dropped to her knees in front of him, placing herself directly in his eyeline and blocking Florence out behind her. Her hands on his face, she forced him to look at her. The grate of his stubble rasped against her palms.
“Roman, you need to breathe.” Those inscrutable eyes of his, tortured and burning, finally met and held hers. He took a long, wheezing gasp of air and then another. “That’s good,” she said. “Really good. It’s alright. You’re alright.”
Everyone else faded into the background. Elenie forced him to watch her, breathing loud and slow so he could hear and copy her. She could see the shudder of Roman’s heart as it thumped beneath the cotton of his shirt, and hers pounded in tandem. He buried his head in shaky hands, struggling for control. She glanced around. Florence, his parents, and Thea were all busy in the kitchen.
Milo stepped up to Roman’s shoulder.
“You alright, bro?”
He sounded at a loss, quiet concern in each unfussy word.
Elenie made a swift decision.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
She took Roman’s hands from his face and pulled gently.
“Stand up,”
she told him. He rose to his feet without a word.
“Come on—I’d like to see the backyard.”
Luke handed her a bottle of water and Elenie shot him a silent smile of thanks. She threaded her fingers through Roman’s, the action so alien and yet so right as they descended the steps onto the grass. Their shadows led the way—his tall and rangy, and hers pressed close to his side. She gripped his hand without speaking and kept their strides slow.
Ava and Elias’s yard was wide and long. They walked over mown grass through well-tended borders and into an area left more natural. The end boundary seemed to lie beyond an assortment of greenery, dwarfed by an old, gnarled chestnut, out of sight of the house. The tree had thrown out one long bough, parallel to the ground, at the perfect height to sit on.
“Want to keep going?”
Elenie searched Roman’s face, relieved to see his color had returned.
“No, let’s sit.”
He slumped onto the chestnut’s limb with a ragged exhale of breath. Elenie perched next to him, her shorter legs swinging. The bark was barnacle-rough against her thighs, even with the material of her dress in between. Roman gripped the back of his neck with both hands, staring up at the sky—and, damn, if his beautiful biceps weren’t extremely distracting even as she examined his face with concern.
Five minutes passed. The breeze through the leaves was a soothing whisper in the air. Eventually, he met her gaze, weary-eyed but present again. She handed him the bottle of water without speaking.
Roman unscrewed the lid and took several long swallows. He studied the label.
“Have you spent much time in Detroit?”
he asked eventually.
“None at all. I only know what people say about it.”
“Most of it’s true, although some areas are getting the attention they deserve. There’s a lot of regeneration but there’s a long way to go. It still has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. Almost everyone carries a gun.”
His breath remained unsteady.
“I spent most of my time in the worst parts, where it’s a chaotic mess of gang wars, drug use, and debt. Streets that look like they’ve been hit by a natural disaster. Block after block of abandoned houses. A few families living in amongst the mayhem.”
He picked at a piece of bark.
“There were so many bodies. People who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who died because of it. And every time I crouched beside another one, every time I broke the news to another family, the cases we solved, the cases we didn’t—they all built up on top of each other, higher and higher. Until it reached a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore.” Roman’s eyes met hers. They were flat and honest and open.
“Did you talk to anyone about it?”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“I’m not much of a talker. I should have spoken to someone sooner, but for a long time I just accepted it. I chose to work homicide. I wanted to be a detective. I thought the violence came with the job. I didn’t feel I had the right to complain or feel overwhelmed when everyone else was in the same boat, and they were all coping.”
Roman rubbed at his chest.
“And the thing with the crime scenes, the victims—it’s bad enough when you can’t get rid of the memories yourself. You don’t want to put those kinds of images inside the heads of the people you love. I couldn’t do that to them.”
Elenie’s heart felt bruised. She reached out her hand until it bumped his, linking her little finger through Roman’s much larger one.
“Years ago, before we moved to Pine Springs, someone Frank knew had his throat slit when he skimmed off a couple of jobs. Photos got sent out to everyone the dead guy worked with as a warning. Frank left them on the kitchen counter for a week before he threw them away. I was about fourteen.”
Roman shot her a look of fury and disgust and she shrugged.
“I’ve seen all sorts. You can talk to me.”
And so, over the next hour, he did. Slowly and painfully at first, then with calm, quiet relief. He told her how he’d been stressed but functioning, overworked, overtired but managing. Until he wasn’t. Until the call came in that took him to the trap house on the East Side and the young female victim who’d been stabbed in the neck. He told her how she’d been lying face down, how he’d kneeled beside the mattress on the floor and gently turned the body over.
Mouth tight, voice rough, Roman described how like Florence she’d looked—similar brown eyes, the same olive skin, his sister’s dark, long, wavy hair and full lips, her curvy build.
“So much blood,”
he told Elenie.
“It covered her. It covered the sheets. It was drying and crusty. More like fake blood than real.”
He wiped a hand over his face.
“I got this buzzing in my ears and it wouldn’t go away. It started to drown out everything else. We had so little to go on. Never even found out who she was, let alone who killed her. I couldn’t move past it. Drawing a line under the case meant accepting she just didn’t matter. Or that’s how it seemed. And it ruined me. I tried to carry on as usual but I couldn’t focus. I felt completely detached. I couldn’t sleep. And the less I slept, the harder it was to keep a grip during the day.” He stared at Elenie, although she wasn’t sure he really saw her, and she could see the hell he’d been through in his eyes. “My heart would pound so hard at night I thought I was having a heart attack. I saw a doctor and she told me I needed to look at my life and make some serious changes.” Roman smiled, a faint and empty version of the one that usually did her own heart so much damage. “I finally spoke to my superiors at work. There were meetings and discussions. We agreed to a twelve-month secondment so I could step away and get my head sorted. And that’s why I’m here. Back in Pine Springs, trying to get my shit together, instead of pushing forward on the fast-track to make lieutenant.”
He looked down at where their fingers were still linked on the bark of the chestnut limb. Much of the tension had drained from his body and he flanked her like a solid wall of heat in the cooling afternoon air. He was so strong and dependable and reserved, offering that unshakable support of his to anyone who needed it. But who did he allow to take care of him?
Elenie wanted to bring up his fiancée. His ex-fiancée. But she couldn’t find the courage.
“Have you talked to your parents at all?”
He shook his head.
“I haven’t even had the guts to tell them I’m not back for good. They’d want to know why I took the transfer and I don’t know where to start.”
“They love you.”
Of that, Elenie had zero doubt.
“You’re kidding yourself if you think your parents haven’t noticed something’s up. They don’t seem like easy people to fool.”
Roman grunted an agreement.
“Just talk to them. You’ll feel better for it. And they’ll support you. I think you’re underestimating their strength.”
He stared down at her, his brows knotting and his beautiful mouth softly vulnerable.
“Thank you for not thinking worse of me. It’s not what you expected, I guess. Not what anyone expects of the high school baseball star and the new police chief in town.”
Elenie bumped his shoulder gently, aching for him and the broken pieces he’d been hiding.
“I’ll be honest, you’re still an improvement on the last one.”
Roman chuckled, rusty and low, but he sobered as he continued to search her face. The air crackled. Elenie’s spine grew taut.
“If things were different . . .”
he began. There was enough heat in his eyes to melt tungsten. No one had ever looked at her that way before.
“I know.”
He swallowed. His voice was pained.
“If I wasn’t leaving again . . .”
“Yes. And if I wasn’t who I am,”
she whispered.
Roman shook his head.
“I would never want you to be someone else.”
The feelings in her chest banged on her ribs to be let out. She ducked her head so he wouldn’t see the ridiculous desire written all over her face.
Looping a strong arm around her back, Roman pulled her closer, his fingers closing tightly on her hip bone as if he wanted to keep her there. Elenie’s shoulder bumped his shoulder and it felt like the most daring thing in the world not to move away. They sat in silence, breathing synchronized, in the calm embrace of the chestnut tree.
The atmosphere had evidently shifted when they returned to the house. Roman’s meltdown and her handling of it had obviously been discussed in their absence and the family didn’t hold back. Elenie, overwhelmed by the subsequent outpouring of warmth that flowed from everyone, reeled from the non-stop chatter.
His parents made her promise to visit again soon.
“Let’s see that movie together next month,”
Florence, in a borrowed t-shirt, gave her a kiss on the cheek when they stood up to leave.
“I’d like that.”
Thea squeezed her arm, rubbed it, then squeezed again. Her eyes glittered with heartfelt gratitude and Elenie fell a little in love with Roman’s twin.
Roman’s mother opened her arms and swallowed Elenie up in a hug which caught her completely by surprise. Her hands fluttered, not knowing where to rest, until they tentatively settled on either side of Ava’s waist.
“Thank you, little one.”
The whispered words encompassed so much more than just her presence over lunch, and Elenie’s cheeks heated with pleasure.
Ava and Elias waved them off from the doorstep as Milo put the car into gear and pulled out of the drive. In the back seat, Roman gave her that barely there smile. Everything about him seemed calmer than earlier. His face was softer, his mouth curved, brown eyes tired but warm.
“Are your ears ringing?”
Elenie laughed.
“Your family are just—wow.”
“Yeah.”
Roman looked pleased.
“They are.”
A comfortable silence settled between them all as they drove along the quiet roads that linked his parents’ house to the back of the town.
“What’s the age gap between you and Florence?”
Elenie asked.
“Thea and I are six years older. We’re thirty-two and Florence is twenty-six. I think it took my parents that long to catch up on their sleep.”
Roman’s phone rang; he tugged it from his jeans pocket and she saw Zena’s name lit up on the screen. His eyebrows pulled together into a frown.
“I don’t need to get that.”
He swiped to disconnect the call. Elenie’s fingernails bit into the palm of her hand. She slowly spread her fingers out against the material of her shirt dress, feeling like a bucket of cold water had been tipped over her head.
“You on an early tomorrow, Ro?”
Milo asked over his shoulder. They discussed meeting up for a beer later on in the week until, way too soon, the car pulled up in front of Roman’s cabin. Elenie wished the drive had been longer.
Greedy for a final moment of privacy with him, she climbed out of the car once Cait and Milo had said their goodbyes.
“Will you be alright?”
she asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
He looked like he meant it. Their eyes locked and held. She could have sworn he swayed toward her, but his hands stayed in his pockets.
“Thank you so much for the invitation. Lo pasé bomba.3”
“Yo también, hermosa.4”
He shot her a slow, wide smile, which lit his face and cracked the shields around her heart.
“You won’t get away without a repeat visit, you know. My sisters are limpets when they like someone. And embarrassing me is what they love to do best.”
His endearment stole her breath.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
“See you soon, Elenie.”
“Bye, Roman.”
He watched them drive away, his tall, shadowed outline unbowed and stable again for now.
Something about Roman’s struggle reached out to the parts of Elenie that doubted and feared. She was as stuck in her own nightmare as he was in his. There had to be a way out for them both.
The expansive love of Roman’s family, reflected in the food, the jokes, the casual touches, had shone a spotlight on the irreparable flaws in her own. She’d pushed him to turn to his parents and his sisters for support. Maybe she should use them for motivation.
It was time to stop hanging on for something she’d never find within the walls of the Dax family home.
It was time to let it go.
3 Lo pasé bomba (I had a blast)—Spanish4 Yo también, hermosa (Me too, beautiful)—Spanish