Chapter 19
The Widow
The lock turns with a click. Careful not to make a sound, I inch the door open. It’s ten thirty, so I know Natalie’s asleep, and Nathan might be too. I’d texted him back earlier to let him know not to wait up for me.
The town knows Nathan Carter’s alive, and it won’t be long before they know where he lives. At least no one followed him home tonight, but we both know those crazy reporters will show up eventually.
What a long day.
A soft glow spills from the living room.
Nathan’s up. He’s on the floor flipping through his journals with a plate of Natalie’s chocolate chip cookies beside him—half eaten.
Another favorite food they share. When he sees me, he gets up and crosses the room, reaching for me.
His walk is relaxed and confident. There’s my Nathan.
“Missed you,” he says.
He brushes his lips against mine.
I gesture toward the books and papers scattered across the floor. “Find anything interesting?”
“A lot, actually.” He sits back down and pats the floor next to him. “Join me?”
Sliding out of my heels, I cross my legs and settle in beside him.
“When I’m reading through my text, it feels like I’m writing the words down for the first time.”
He moves through a stack of journals until he finds the one he’s looking for. Flipping through its pages, he shows me his college dissertation. The one that earned him a ProQuest award and put him on the academic map. A thesis about the descendants of Atlantis.
“Did you learn you’re a genius today?” I wiggle his chin.
He lets out a short laugh. “Hah, right?” He shifts and riffles through another stack of papers and notebooks, pulling out a newer leather-bound one.
“What’s that?”
“Elliot’s diary.” My heart skips. He kept a diary as Elliot.
He flips through the pages and turns them to face me. He has the same handwriting, and the sketch he’s pointing at was drawn in the same style as the other work he drew years ago.
Am I looking at…?
“It’s the stone,” I whisper.
“This was a hobby of mine in Miami.” He laughs. “This, along with watching Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Expedition Unknown—all of them.”
“See… you’ve never been that far away from yourself.”
“This drawing. It’s the stone Finn is talking about, right?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I drew it for fun. But it had to be something I remembered.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, there’s something that’s bothering me.”
Curious, I wait for him to continue.
He turns back to one of the older journals. “My theories changed—evolved—into something more complicated than archaeology. Especially toward the end... I started consulting with others on...” he stops.
Oh no. Not this again. “Nathan, what? Tell me.”
“I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I don’t want to scare you with any half-baked assumptions right now. Let me dig into it a little more.” He picks up another journal.
I put my hand over his.
“No more secrets. You’ve tried to keep danger from me in the past—look what happened.”
A red flush flares across his cheeks. “I’m so sorry I left you with him.” He lowers his head, defeated. Immediately, I regret my words and feel my own face heat.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” I have to make him understand that I can’t do this again. “I’m your ally. You’re my best friend. Don’t keep secrets from me this time. I can help you.”
He lifts his gaze, opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s a man at war with himself.
Finally, he nods.
“Okay,” he says as he clutches my hand. “I’ll share what I know.
After I found Carter’s Drop and the warm stone, I started questioning how a civilization as advanced as Atlantis could even exist more than a myriad years ago.
” He takes a deep breath. “The isolation of technology to a single location with one destruction event didn’t make sense, even though my research was leading me to evidence that an advanced society did indeed exist.” He shakes his head in frustration.
“I consulted with other scientists in rapid succession. But in typical-me fashion, I never spell out exactly what I was looking for anywhere in these journals.”
He frowns and runs his fingers through his hair.
“Keep looking. You’ll figure it out. I know you will,” I say, gently pulling his hands away from his head. “And I’ll be right beside you this time.”
I pick up an old book lying on the side of the pile of notebooks. A bookmark taken from the ones I keep on the end table holds his place at about 30 percent.
Has he read this from the beginning?
“Look at this one yet?” I ask innocently.
He glances at the book of poetry by Lord Byron. “Yeah.” Heat rushes across the skin on his chest to his neck. He tugs on the collar of his shirt and sits straighter.
“You used to read these to me sometimes… and works from other poets… and even your own poems.” He can’t quite make eye contact. Might as well make him blush some more. “Especially when you were horny.”
He coughs and tries to stop smiling.
I laugh at him. “Reciting beautiful poems and bad jokes. Those were your tells.”
“Maybe I’m not all that different now.” His voice is low and husky. I feel the heat rising on my neck now. It felt so good to be in his arms earlier today. I want him so much. All of him.
“You’re just the same, Nathan. There’s no difference.”
It’s true. It’s strange, but there’s absolutely nothing different about him. How is that possible with no memory? More than ever, I want him back. I’m crawling out of my skin.
His eyes soften and glisten. Tiny tears bead at the edges. I gently remove a few with my thumb.
“Show me some more of your research,” I say.
He jumps back into his journals until he flicks his eyes back up to meet mine, remembering something. “I can’t believe I didn’t lead with this.” Hesitating, he continues. “Something happened when I picked up Natalie.”
A cold rush of fear sweeps over me. “Is she okay?”
“Yes. When I drove up, a man was speaking to her alone. He was about sixty, with a trim beard.”
As he tells me about the encounter with the man Natalie called Walter, my heart drops to my stomach. Could it be the same man who was watching me that night with the dogs?
“He didn’t touch her, but the things he said to her...” he tells me what Walter said, and I share what happened the night I watched the dogs.
“God, Nathan. What in the world is going on? Who is he?” I stand and start moving in circles. I need to do something. Get her out of here.
He puts his arms around me and takes a breath. “Ssh… I’ll keep both of you safe…”
“She can’t stay here right now.”
“No. Where can we take her?”
I could take her to a motel out of town, but then I’m abandoning all my responsibilities and the town’s folk during a crisis.
And where would we go? Some random place far away from all the people in our lives and from the answers we need to find.
Neither of us has family living outside of Maverick Key.
“Maddie,” I say. “Natalie’s comfortable sleeping over at the beach house, and she’ll be nearby with family.”
He nods, agreeing.
After we call Maddie and triple-check the doors and windows to be sure the house is all locked up, we sit back on the couch.
When will this day end? I’m so exhausted. Inside and out. But when I look at Nathan, he’s still wide awake. The photo album in his hand.
He turns back to the photos of our first beach day in Miami. “Can you tell me the story of how we met again? Please.”
Should I tell him I admired him in silence for months before we met?
And that I asked for that exact lifeguard duty when I heard his friends talking about their plans for the beach.
Not only did I want to learn from him—that was true—but I also had a huge crush on him.
A crush that grew into friendship and into love at the same time.
“When I saw you on the beach, I decided to shoot my shot and ask you to be my mentor. I was all coolness and confidence. Drew you right into saying yes.”
“I’m sure you did.” His golden-brown eyes sparkle.
“You had one task for me—explain diel vertical migration. I aced it. And the rest was history.”
“Do it again…” he whispers. His voice is low and deep. “Describe it all to me, every detail. Go slow.”
“All right.” As I retell the lesson that I gave him beat for beat, he holds me to his chest, massaging my neck with an occasional murmur and chuckle.
The faint scent of salt from the ocean clings to his skin.
It never completely washes away. And he’s warm.
His heart is beating a million beats a minute.
And he’s… My voice grows breathier as I soak him in.
When I get to the end, he gazes into my eyes.
Then a switch flips, and that quiet fire of his flares.
He clears his throat. “She…”
Kissing my hand, he lets his lips linger against my skin. “She walks in beauty like the night… and all that’s best of dark and bright… meet in her aspect and in her eyes…” I hold my breath and wait for him to kiss me.
He doesn’t make me wait long.
Warm, soft lips cover mine, and he eagerly explores my mouth. Murmuring appreciation, he pulls me onto his lap, moving his hands from my waist to my breasts. Firmly but gently squeezing them.
I moan and deepen the kiss.
Moving on, he caresses my back—then lower. A shiver jolts down my spine when he bites down on my bottom lip at the same time. I pull his shirt out of his pants and slide my hands up his chest.
Letting myself breathe him in and breathe him out, I take in his oxygen and let go of all my doubts.
When he finally breaks the kiss, his words are choppy—rushed.
“I want you so much, Crystal. But.”
Please don’t stop this time. I need you, Nathan.
“I need to be sure that I’m the man you want. I know you think I will right now, but I may never get my memories back… In fact, it’s more likely that I won’t.”
I hate that for him. That he may never regain the beautiful memories of his life. But I wasn’t lying. All our interaction, and how I’ve seen him act around others.
He’s the same man.
“I love you, Nathan. You. Just as you are right now. I don’t want anyone else.”
He lets out a small sound and pulls me closer, kissing my neck, working his way back to my lips.
Before I let him take me to bed, I get the one thing I’ve been holding on to off my chest. I don’t want to do it. But I have to. I gently break our kiss.
“Do you have questions about Mark and our… relationship? I’ll never mention him again if you don’t want to know anything, but if you want to know—I’ll tell you everything.”
“I don’t care a damn thing about Mark.” He glances away, pure hate etched across his features, then returns his softer gaze to mine. “But I do want to know everything. To know what he put you through.”
Taking my mouth with more urgency, he adds on a breath. “Just not tonight. If that’s okay.”
“What are you waiting for, sailor?”
He carries me to my bedroom and sets me on my feet while he locks the door and turns on the fan and radio. Fiddling with the knobs until he gets to a station playing something passably romantic. That makes me giggle. He doesn’t want Natalie to hear anything. He’s forgotten that he’s a quiet lover.
Then he turns to face me.
Taking the air in quick gasps, I search his face, wondering what he’ll do next.
Will he pull me close and lose himself in me like he did during the storm at sea?
Or ask me to undress slowly, the way he did on his birthday after I told him I was pregnant.
Or maybe it will be like our honeymoon in Belize, when he promised to make love to me all night and kept his word…
and then did it all over again the next morning…
His hands tremble as he reaches for me, fumbling with the buttons on my dress. I gently still his fingers and kneel in front of him instead. When I look up, his desert eyes have darkened. Full of desire and something else.
Slowly, I unbuckle his pants and study his face as he watches them fall. His heart is beating so loudly.
Or maybe that’s my heart.
Pushing his hips toward me, he gives me his answer, and I take him.
He slips his fingers into my hair, holding me there as he draws me closer. I follow his lead, hands tight on his hips, glancing up now and then to catch the storm in his eyes.
“Please. Just like that.” His grip tightens.
His moans build until he takes over, shifting the pace with confidence. When I take a breath, he scoops me up and tumbles with me onto the bed.
He slides his fingers under my panties. Impatient, he grunts and quickly pulls his own pants down, positioning himself at my center. But then he stops.
He looks up with desperation in his eyes. “Can I?”
“Please, I’m on birth control.”
He rolls his hips once, watching me closely. “Like this?”
“Yes, but more. Make love to me, Nathan.”
He moans and squeezes his eyes shut tightly, and I gasp when he pushes into me and lets himself go, muttering words I’d never heard him use in bed. He rarely said anything. He didn’t have to. I join him, running my fingers through his hair, down his back, further.
Still a quiet lover, he’s overcome with so much pent-up desire that he lets out his baser thoughts in undertones.
I urge him on and let him know everything he’s doing right.
Even though it’s like the first time for him, he instinctively remembers all the right ways to touch me, and he takes his time.
After, we hold each other under the covers. Saying little things. Sweet things. When we’re on the verge of sleep, he gently rolls me over to face him.
“Crystal?” he asks, brushing hair from my eyes.
Yes, I mouth silently. I’m too tired to speak.
“I’m ready for this. For us.”