Chapter Three #2
Slowly, Dani pulled back and stared up at him with her hands on both sides of his face, sending an aching in his stomach. He’d seen that look many times. There was a hopefulness to her eyes. A questioning. But it never lasted, primarily because Theo always had a knack for killing the mood.
“Hey, Juicy,” he said, smiling down at her.
“I can’t believe it. You’re here. You’re really here.”
“So are you.”
“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” she said with worried eyes.
“I know.”
She drew back and knit her brows together. “You know?”
Before he could respond, Dani cross-jabbed him in the shoulder.
Damn. That hurt. He brought his hand up to the spot where she’d hit him and rubbed it.
“What the hell was that for?” he asked, massaging his shoulder with the opposite hand.
“What the hell? What the hell?” she growled back at him. “Did you not hear me? Everyone thinks you’re fucking dead, Theo. Capital D-E-A-D, dead! Yet apparently, you’re…living in Greece?” she said, waving her arms at their surroundings.
“Okay,” he said, trying to stop her, “I’m not over here on vacation or something.”
“Oh really? You’ve been missing for over a year.”
Shit. Had it been that long?
But she didn’t stop there.
“The boat you were allegedly sailing on was found capsized. The papers all reported that you were presumed dead. You may not be on vacation, but you didn’t think to, oh, I don’t know, maybe call your parents to let them know you’re alive? They’ve been worried sick about you. We all have.”
“It’s not what you think,” he tried to explain, but she put her hand up to his face to stop him from talking, clearly not having it.
“We had a fucking funeral for you, Theo. There’s a gravestone for you in Cedar Memorial Cemetery that says something like, ‘Dr. Theo Galanis, lost at sea but never lost in our hearts.’ Your mom was devastated.
Is devastated. They even moved away from Grand Rapids a few months ago because they said they don’t want to be in a place that reminds them of you. ”
His stomach roiled.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, leaning over and resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
This was worse than he ever imagined. Of course he’d seen the newspaper article about himself that Louis left sitting in the bathroom, and he imagined his family would be concerned.
But in his desperation for escape, he’d never let himself consider the full extent of that pain.
They’d moved from their home? From the place his parents had immigrated to over thirty years ago?
And a funeral? It pained him to picture his mom and dad dressed in all black, standing over a headstone with an empty grave underneath.
“Good!” she snapped. “You should be. If everyone knew you were over here galivanting around Greece and doing Lord knows what with those shady-ass men over at Knossos—”
Her words snapped him back to reality. Maurice and Louis. He took her hands in his to stop her from talking.
“Listen, we need to get going.”
“Going where?”
“To the US consulate,” he said, standing and attempting to pull her up by her hand. But Dani resisted.
“Theo, you need to tell me what’s going on.”
“We can talk about it at the consulate.”
She folded her arms and sneered at him. “No. I’m done with being left in the dark with you. I want you to tell me now. I want you to tell me to my face.”
He blew out his breath. God, she always was stubborn. “We don’t have time for that.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, this is unbelievable. You’ve been gone for a year with no communication whatsoever, but you don’t have five minutes to spare to tell me what the fuck is going on? Who are you and what did you do with Theo?”
“Look, Juicy—”
“Don’t call me that.”
The anger in her voice couldn’t be masked.
Sure, the nickname was silly, but he’d called her that for years.
Once the initial annoyance of the nickname had worn off back when they were teenagers, she hadn’t seemed to mind.
It was so second nature that sometimes he wondered if she even remembered its origin.
Not that he could ever forget Operation Juicy-Gate.
Clearly, things had changed between them.
Hence why he up and ran away to Greece in the first place.
But they didn’t have time for explanations.
“Fine. Look, I get that you are mad. And confused. And probably a whole slew of other emotions right now, but I need you to trust me. When have I ever let you down?”
“Um, well, for starters, how about the last time you were home?”
The punch she’d given him in the arm a few moments earlier was no match for the figurative punch in the gut he felt now.
She had no idea. No idea what it had been like the last time he’d been home. Spotting her out with someone new, singing, drinking, and dancing, after doing all those same things a few weeks earlier with him.
No—after saying all those…things to him.
It’s always been you.
Clearly everything she’d said to Theo had meant nothing.
She sure had a lot of audacity acting like he let her down. She wouldn’t have even known he’d stopped by one last time had he not left that book. Forgive him for treating it like some sort of parting gift to mark the end of their nonexistent relationship.
After all those years, all that time waiting for the “right” moment, none of it made a lick of difference. Because when it came to him and Dani, there was no right moment.
It was easy to blame things on timing. Or on being in other relationships. Or his parents’ insistence that he find a Good Greek Girl. Or even that absolutely ridiculous juvenile pact. All those things were easier than admitting that maybe he and Dani simply weren’t meant to be.
Instead of accepting that, however, he’d run.
Taken the first opportunity that came to him and gotten the hell out of Dodge.
That was it. No more torturing himself with fantasies of what would never be.
So he dropped the book off at her apartment—the last, he vowed, he’d ever give her—and he boarded a plane back to Greece, hoping a couple of months of digging in the dirt would finally get her out of his system.
“I didn’t think you’d miss me,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course I missed you.”
She did? He looked her straight in the eyes, and she quickly added, “We all did.”
Of course. She missed him like any other of his friends and family missed him.
“I know you were there, Theo. I found the book.”
He hadn’t exactly tried hiding the fact that he’d stopped by. Leaving the book in the garage was a dead giveaway. An unspoken love note. And that time, not any book. Her favorite book. A reminder that there was no place like home.
Home meant they were together. Even when everything else in his life piled on him—the weight of the pressure to succeed at the museum, the anxiety of hiding his true passions from his family, the strain on his relationships when he could never give other women his full heart no matter how hard he tried, the burden to fulfill his parents’ American dream—Dani never let him down.
Being with her eased his mind. They could hike and kayak like carefree kids again.
Sit quietly beside each other reading, Dani always tucking her perpetually cold feet under his thigh.
Take a drive to nowhere. Laugh together over a basket of fries and micheladas, though for the life of him he didn’t know how she could drink the ones with Clamato.
He liked to joke that she’d be pretty cool if not for her love of clam water, which always earned him a playful ribbing. Or as he saw it, a jolt of electricity from her touch.
It was time to let those things go, though. Childish things, as his parents frequently told him.
It was time to let her go.
“Dani, we don’t have time for this,” he started to explain, but she wasn’t having it.
“No, you can’t say shit like that, act like it was okay for you to disappear for a year and not give a shit that we were worried sick about you, and then brush it off like it’s nothing.
Or like it’s not important enough to spend, oh, I don’t know, more than two minutes telling me what the fuck is going on?
After everything you’ve put me through, after I cried over your grave, you owe me more than that,” she said, pushing him back on the bench.
She might as well have thrown a brick at his chest. Yes, he knew everyone had probably been worried about him. Scared, even. But this? This wasn’t sadness or fear.
This was anger.
She was right. He owed her more than that.
“I’ve been kidnapped,” he said. Hearing those words aloud for the first time from his mouth made his skin crawl. He was a thirty-seven-year-old man, for fuck’s sake. How does an adult man even get kidnapped and manage to stay held captive for an entire goddamn year?
Cowardice, that’s how.
Dani blinked back her confusion. “Kidnapped?” She scrunched her face and looked around, obviously perplexed by the illusion of his freedom.
“Kidnapped, captured, held hostage, take your pick.”
“Theo, what on earth are you talking about? You’re standing right in front of me now, alone.”
“I know it sounds absurd.”
“Wow.” Dani laughed, incredulously. “I can’t believe you. You know, if you’re in trouble or if you’re running from something, maybe you could spare me the bullshit and come clean. Because this?” she said, twirling her hands in a circle in front of his face, “This is insulting.”
His eyebrows drew together. What was insulting was the fact that she thought he would ever lie to her about something like this. Especially after the year he’d had.
“Daniela—” he started, but she laughed.
“Daniela?” She nodded her head and looked away. Her eyes bulged and she mouthed, Wow, exaggeratedly. With the limited time they had, he had no choice but to ignore her temper tantrum.
“Believe me or not, but it’s the truth. And it’s not safe for you to be here. To be seen with me. Those men you saw me with yesterday? They’re probably looking for me right now. So I’m sorry, but we need to go.”
Footsteps sounded in the distance, and Theo looked over his shoulder.
And his stomach sank. It was too late. Maurice and Louis crested the hill, staring down at them from atop.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, standing and pulling Dani up beside him. “Here, take this.”
He reached for the letter in his back pocket that he’d written that morning on a piece of scrap paper just in case he didn’t have more than an opportunity to slip her a note and shoved it in her hand.
“It explains everything. Take it to the US consulate. But you’ve got to go now.
Please,” he pleaded, shifting his attention to Maurice and Louis heading straight toward them.
Dani followed Theo’s gaze, her eyes going wide at the sight of Maurice and Louis barreling down the hill.
“Theo?” she said, her voice shaking, anger replaced with fear.
“Go!” he said, pushing her away.
She clutched the note in her hand and took off running, but Louis—a champion sprinter, as Theo had discovered the first time he tried to escape—quickly caught her by the arm.
“Let me go!” she said.
“Be quiet!” Louis snapped back at her with a force that would silence just about anyone into submission.
“Let her go,” Theo said. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“Oh really?” Maurice asked. “Then what’s this?” He plucked the letter Theo had written out of Dani’s hands.
“It’s nothing,” Theo said, knowing Maurice and Louis weren’t that stupid.
“Mm-hmm. We’ll see about that,” Maurice said, tucking the letter into his back pocket. “The boss thinks it’s time to meet you.”
The boss? In the last several months, Theo had yet to learn his name.
“Fine. Take me, but let her go. She’s nobody,” he said, catching a curious glance from Dani.
“Really? Because some old broad over at the museum said that a man took off running out the back with his fiancée,” Louis said. “Don’t you remember telling us about your fiancée when we first met?”
Dani and Theo flashed each other a look. The only way Theo could describe Dani’s face was with one word: hurt. God, he wished he could explain. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Not now.
“So nice to finally meet her,” Maurice said.
“She’s not her. Not my fiancée, I mean. She’s just some nosy woman. I’ve never seen her before in my life. Aside from yesterday.”
“Then why give her this?” Maurice asked, pointing to the letter in his pocket.
Theo shrugged. “She seemed curious. Figured I’d take my chances?”
Maurice scoffed. “You think we’re stupid? Yesterday I thought she was just some snooping tourist we needed to make sure wasn’t going to head to the police, but now I’m not so sure. She’s coming with us.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Dani said, wriggling to free herself from Louis’s grasp. “I don’t know what you three are up to, but I’m going to call the cops as soon as—”
“Call them with what?” Maurice asked. “With this?”
He held up what Theo could only presume was Dani’s phone based on her wide-eyed look. Crap. It must have fallen out of her pocket when he was carrying her through the museum.
“Who are you people?” Dani asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Maurice said. “Come on. The dock’s thataway. And don’t even think about trying to scream or run.”
Maurice flashed the handle of something metal out of the pocket of his pants—some sort of weapon—and Theo hung his head.
He’d brought Dani into this. Brought her into this hellscape that he’d been living in for the last year since these two captured him on the boat and destroyed the ship to make it look like he’d been lost at sea.
No communication with his friends and family.
No real communication with the outside world.
He may have been walking around like a free man, but he was essentially their prisoner, and they controlled his every move.
Save for trips to the bathroom and his handful of pathetic attempts to escape, they hadn’t let him out of their sight.
And after they’d threatened to go after his loved ones, he stopped even trying.
If only he hadn’t lied when he told them about her.
Fuck.
Dani may have given him hope, but now he’d do anything to take the last ten minutes back. He’d forgo ever seeing her again if that meant she’d be safe and far away from this shitstorm.
Suddenly his strategy of dragging out the search for the Minotaur didn’t seem like the best of ideas—not that he knew where to find it anyway. Theo wasn’t sure the damn thing even existed.
But now? Now that they had Dani? Well, this game of “play dumb and they might give up” probably wasn’t going to end well.
Because playing dead was easy.
But playing dumb was no longer an option.