Chapter 7
Jace
He was gone when I woke up and the panic that went through me was complete and absolute. That was twice in three days that he’d managed to get away from me without me even so much as stirring.
I practically fell out of bed as I tried to get my bearings.
I darted toward the upper deck but came to a sudden stop when I caught sight of him standing in front of the small stove, carefully cracking an egg into a skillet.
He looked up at me in surprise, the empty eggshell dangling in his fingers above the crackling pan.
“You’re still here,” I said dumbly.
I saw a smile ghost across his mouth. “We’re in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, Jace. Where am I going to go?” He dropped his eyes to what he was doing, but the smile didn’t leave his face.
I’d take it.
After the hell of last night, I’d pretty much take anything at this point.
“How do you like your eggs?”
“Um, scrambled,” I said. My stomach growled as my senses finally caught up to my brain. Not only could I smell bacon, but the sweetness of syrup pervaded the air too. One glance proved that Caleb was cooking pancakes, in addition to the bacon and eggs.
“There’s coffee,” Caleb said as he motioned to the full coffee pot.
“Thanks,” I said as I searched for a mug and filled it up. “Do you want some?” I asked.
Caleb shook his head. “Never did get a taste for it,” he said. “Two years in Seattle and I still haven’t been inside of a Starbucks.”
“I think that might be a crime out there,” I said as I returned the coffee pot to its place.
“Probably,” Caleb responded with a soft laugh.
His laugh was a balm on my battered soul.
I knew the events of last night hadn’t fixed anything for him, but maybe it was the start of something.
Even as that flicker of hope flared inside of me, my eyes fell to his right arm.
He’d put on one of the shirts Dalton had bought him.
It was the only long-sleeved shirt in the bunch.
It made me wonder if he was hiding any new cuts beneath the fabric.
I hadn’t even thought about all the knives that were in the kitchen.
There was probably even a utility knife in the tackle box.
As I lifted my eyes, I saw that Caleb was watching me. His smile was gone and I cursed myself for my stupidity.
An awkward silence filled the small cabin, so I used the time to set the small table against the opposite wall.
I was certain I’d fucked up enough that Caleb would make some excuse about being tired and not wanting to eat, but he surprised me when he began serving food on both of the plates I’d put out.
Once we were seated, we each began picking at the food.
“It’s really good, thanks,” I said.
Caleb nodded but didn’t say anything else.
“I can’t cook to save my life,” I admitted, hoping to break up some of the tension.
It was several beats before Caleb said, “My grandmother taught me how when I was little. My mom and dad were too busy to cook, so my grandmother did most of it. She was living with us.” His eyes lifted to meet mine briefly before he lowered them again and began digging into his food with a little more gusto .
“My grandmother tried to teach me, but after I set the kitchen on fire that third time, she gave up and started collecting take-out menus for me. By the time I got out of the military, she’d amassed like a hundred of them.”
It felt like a small victory when Caleb smiled, and I felt myself relax.
“Have you always lived in the D.C. area?”
I shook my head. “No, I moved down here after my grandmother died. Maggie is planning to go to school at Georgetown University. She got accepted into their graduate program for art and museum studies. She was supposed to start right after she got back from the backpacking trip.”
I refused to let my thoughts linger on Maggie.
It was a coping strategy I’d come to rely on after I’d learned of her disappearance.
If I gave myself even a few minutes to think of the things she was enduring, quite possibly even at this very moment, I’d lose it completely.
Fortunately, like the night before, Caleb seemed to sense my need not to go into too many details about my sister.
“Where did you used to live? You said you moved in with your grandmother when you were a kid?”
I nodded. “We lived in Vermont. When my grandparents emigrated from Romania, they opened a little gift shop near this ski resort. When my mom was a kid, they managed to scrape together enough money to also buy one of the lodges and fix it up. My mom and dad ran the lodge after my grandfather died.”
“Do you still have it?”
I shook my head. “No, my uncle – my father’s brother – and his wife inherited the lodge.
They ended up running it into the ground and had to file for bankruptcy.
My grandmother had managed to hang onto the gift shop she and my grandfather had started, so that kept us afloat until I was old enough to enlist. When our grandmother died, she left the gift shop to me and Maggie.
Since neither of us wanted to run it, we sold it and Maggie used some of the money to go on that backpacking trip.
The rest was for her tuition at Georgetown. ”
“So you must love the slopes,” Caleb ventured .
“Um, no, not exactly.”
My response had Caleb perking up. He must have sensed my embarrassment because he said, “Why not?”
I studied him for a moment, then crooked my finger at him to motion him closer to me. “Can you keep a secret?” I asked.
Another smile split his gorgeous lips. “For the right price,” he said.
I’d only seen this side of Caleb once before.
It’d been when I’d spent Christmas with him and Mav and Eli.
While Eli and Mav had attended a wedding, Caleb and I had gone sightseeing in Seattle and it was like he’d become a different person.
We’d laughed and joked as we’d explored the marketplace, aquarium, and Space Needle.
Under all the pain was a bright, charming, kindhearted young man with a melodic laugh and sparkling eyes.
I eyed him and said, “Okay, what is this going to cost me?”
He studied me for a moment, then said, “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to cash in my chips.”
There was something about the way he said the words that had my insides heating and my cock reacting. We’d somehow wandered into dangerous territory, but I couldn’t find it in me to object.
“Fair enough,” I murmured. I paused and then admitted my shameful secret. “I can’t ski.”
“Lots of people can’t ski,” he said.
“No, I mean, I really can’t. When I was a kid, my parents paid for me to take lessons with an Olympic gold medalist who lived in the area. I broke her skis… and her arm.”
Caleb sat there for a moment, his fork halfway to his mouth, before he laughed. “What?”
I nodded. “She was trying to guide me down the bunny hill and by the time we reached the bottom, I was lying on top of her. She was only the first in a long line of many. I ended up giving another instructor two black eyes and a broken nose when my skis got away from me as I was getting them out of the car. I broke my own leg once and sprained more joints than I can count. Even after almost four years of lessons, I never made it off the bunny hill.”
Caleb began to laugh so hard he had to put his fork down. He covered his mouth with his arm, but I was glad when he was unable to muffle the sound.
“Nice,” I said, feigning irritation.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t picture it. You’re so… so…”
He shook his head.
“So what?” I asked.
“Put together… untouchable,” Caleb finally said after settling. “I’d have thought you’d be good at everything.”
I shook my head. “Nope, I was such an awkward kid… you wouldn’t have even recognized me.”
“Do you have a picture?”
“Maybe,” I said as I began eating again.
“Can I see it?”
“Maybe.”
“How do I turn the maybe into definitely?” Caleb asked, his eyes dancing with amusement.
I pretended to study him for a long time before saying, “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to cash in my chips.”
Caleb chuckled. I grabbed my wallet and searched out the picture I kept in it. It was an old, wrinkled photograph of me, my sister, my parents, and my grandparents standing in front of a Christmas tree. I handed it to him.
“Wow,” he said as his eyes scanned the picture. “How old were you here?”
“Fourteen. It was the last Christmas we had together. My grandfather died a couple of months later and we lost my parents the following summer.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”
I nodded. “What about you? Is your grandmother still alive? The one who taught you to cook?”
Caleb shook his head. “She died about a month after my mom did. I think losing my mom broke her heart, you know? She kept saying no parent should outlive their child. My mom’s dad died when she was a little girl and my dad’s parents were both gone by the time I was born, so Nana was the only grandparent I had. No aunts or uncles, either. ”
I’d figured there hadn’t been any other relatives, since it was his stepmother, Eli’s mother, Mariana, who’d had to take Caleb in after his father had been arrested.
“How were things with Mariana?” I asked. “Before you moved in with Mav and Eli.”
Caleb began to pick at what little food was left on his plate. “She was always really nice. We got along well from the time she married my dad. But that made things worse, you know?”
“How so?”
“I could tell she really loved my dad. It was hard to be a part of the secret he was keeping from her. And since I knew what Eli and my dad were doing, it felt like I was lying to her about that too.” Caleb lifted his eyes and quickly said, “I mean, what I thought Eli and my dad were doing at the time – I didn’t know Eli wasn’t into it. ”