CHAPTER FIVE
BELLA
My peace lasted as long as the walk to the door to the beach house where Falcon refused to let go, kissing me long after was probably socially acceptable, except that neither of us cared any longer. I’d only met him the night before. Already he’d broken through barriers I spent years erecting around myself in a bid to keep out creepers and stalkers…and sweethearts like himself that were destined to break untried hearts like mine.
He finally let me go, his eyes reflecting the claim that he didn’t state in so many words but that his touch conveyed anyway. His hold tightened at the last minute as he reeled me back into his chest. “Tonight. Tomorrow. I need to see you again.”
I laughed and batted at him, but it wasn’t like I was trying that hard to extricate myself from his embrace. “I need to sleep. You need to sleep.” I pushed at his shoulder when he kissed along my throat and sighed, too blissed out to really care.
“I’ll live without sleep. Or we can find a place to snooze together. Picnic?” He raised his head and waggled his eyebrows.
“Deal.” I grinned as his eyes lit up. “You’re insatiable. In a few days. After you have slept. Promise.” I kissed him lightly and let myself into the house while he was still professing undying love of some random description at the base of top flight of the beach house stairs.
I hoped he didn’t trip over himself and tumble several flights as he walked backwards, still waving to me like a lovelorn.
Aren’t we?
And cue worry. That’s all it took for my anxiety to spike. I watched him cross the road and head away from the house, down the hill and back to the marina. Actually, my preference would have been to watch him walk all the way to the marina where he would have been the size of an ant in the end from my point of view, but a voice from the back of their house pulled my attention away from his spectacular frame.
“Dad?” I called, wandering through the level I was on.
I placed Falcon’s hoodie that he still wouldn’t let me return on the marble benchtop in the kitchen. I checked the study, but that was empty too, through the desk was messy, like he had been working in there earlier. “Where are you?”
It took me a flight up the stairs to the bedrooms, then down a different flight of stairs into the living area below and out the back to the ground level garage below to find him standing in a darkened corner, tapping away at his phone.
“Dad? What are you doing all the way down here?” As far as I knew, he had never touched the tool chests or any of the mechanical equipment that came with the house, gifted on from the previous owner who didn’t want to take anything with them.
He mumbled something, and as I inched closer, I noted the half empty bottle of liquor with a label I couldn't make out in the dim light standing by his side.
“Are you okay?” I reached for the bottle and slid it off the workbench, placing it on the level below and behind something, not taking my eyes off him. “Why don’t you come upstairs? I just got home. I’ll make something for dinner.” Guilt assuaged me for staying out so late and having fun with Falcon when Dad was home, drinking away his grief on his own.
“Dinner?” He peered at me from squinted, watery eyes. “Is it that late?”
“Yep.” I took his arm, slipped his phone into my pocket when he didn’t protest, and steered him up the stairs. “Come on. One at a time. What would you like to eat?”
“I was looking at photos of your mother. I miss her.” His voice cracked as he hugged me, one armed.
Which would have been sweet, but he was drunk, twice my size, and we were on the stairs and it wasn't working out well. At all.
“Okay, this is good. Let’s keep on moving.” After a day on the water and what Falcon did with his tongue—my God, could that man kiss and…other things…I struggled to stand, let alone manage my father’s weight.
We made it to the second story without side effects—like death—by some utter miracle. I parked him on the sofa, pulled off his shoes and threw some sports channels on without checking what was playing. If he didn't like it, he could fix it. But I doubted he was paying much attention at this point, either.
“She had blonde hair. Just like yours.” He patted me lightly, though his attention waned.
My heart panged in my chest. “I know, Dad.”
He’d taken all her photos down after we lost her, saying it hurt too much to see her. I wondered now what he felt every time he looked at me.
My steps took me too fast into the kitchen. My hip collided with the corner of the marble bench top where I’d left Falcon's jacket. I hissed breath through my teeth at the shot of pain that tore through me, rubbing my hand over the spot that would be sure to bruise. I always marked up fast. As a kid I’d been covered in spots Mom used to be certain was dirt until it wouldn't wash off. I laughed softly at the memory as I opened and closed cupboard doors with no actual plan in mind.
This is not working out so well.
“What do you want me to make for dinner?” I limped back into the upstairs living area to find Dad’s head slumped over one shoulder.
He snored fairly efficiently, so I figured he wasn’t going to suffocate. Sighing, I propped him up with pillows, grabbed a tub of blackberries from the fridge, and headed out the back to the wrap around verandah. A short flight of stairs took me to the rooftop where I curled on the terrace, staring out at the flickering lights of Love Beach.
At one end of the town all the buildings were clustered about—the shopping area and tourist traps, plus the bigger resorts and even a nightclub or two. Then there was the large marina right in front of that and the boardwalk that wound through everything like an endless snake.
But if I traced that same board walk all the way along, it led to the cliff tops to my left, much farther away from the town itself. A smaller bay with a tiny marina and longer jetty sparkled with the lights of the boats moored there, the few occupants who were still awake at this hour.
I grimaced belatedly, realizing how long I'd left my father alone for, knowing he didn’t cope well on his own after dark. Especially here, in a place where he and Mom had been so close in the years during her supposed remission and the treatments that came afterward.
The tears that threatened in the house brewed and fell without any prior warning or shot of pain to wash them away. I dug my fingers into my palms, and when that didn’t work, I stabbed my nails into my ankles.
But the grief refused to stop and poured out of me until my tears covered the backs of my hands. I hung my head, letting my hair blow around in a knotty mess as the night wind picked up as it often did here, the edge of Spring’s cold kiss numbing my skin after a while.
Or maybe that was the pain I refused to accept.
My father wasn’t the only one with grief issues.
It took my phone several beeps to tell me I had incoming messages.
“Sorry,” I muttered my apology out of pure habit to the inanimate object as I checked the unknown number, straining through my blurred vision to read the texts.
UNKNOWN: I enjoyed today.
UNKNOWN: Be able to sleep better if I knew I could see you tomorrow.
UNKNOWN: Make it a date, my Bella.
I swallowed hard. My Bella. My thumb fumbled the keypad in my haste to reply as I saved his name in my phone.
BELLA: You really are crazy. I didn’t give you this number.
FALCON: Perks of the crazy that’s me, I guess.
BELLA: Keep your crazy over there.
BELLA: But thank you for today.
FALCON: You’re welcome. I enjoyed myself.
BELLA:
FALCON: I know you enjoyed what we did. You can say it.
BELLA: I did. Thank you.
FALCON: I heard you whisper that. I’ll see you tomorrow.
BELLA: Maybe
I closed my phone, and stared out at the dark water. The tiny lights on the very much not tiny boat where I knew Falcon would be tonight — sleeping or otherwise — beckoned me.
Tomorrow.
His request seemed less like that and more demanding, presumptuous even. But part of me wanted to see him again, too. Maybe a little too much. Was there such a thing? I didn’t know. I was so far beyond the shoals that I couldn’t see the shoreline.
I’d stayed away from relationships when I saw how much it hurt watching Dad lose Mom over the year that just extended into more years. And how much it hurt me. Maybe that was selfish, but I never wanted to experience that sort of pain that crippled him each night, made him revert to childlike thinking for most of the day while he attempted to appear normal and carry on his business efforts.
It didn’t take a genius to know our finances were suffering. I just needed to finish college, get a job and then maybe somehow I would be able to support him for a change and be useful.
I kept staring at the marina for long enough to realize my eyes were dry, and that the tears had stopped. As embarrassing as the conversation with Falcon had been, the heat he drew up from low in my belly at the memory of what we did together on the boat?—
He also stopped the tears for one night.