Chapter 14 Kodiak
Chapter Fourteen
KODIAK
I woke at four thirty on October twentieth with Emma’s arm across my chest. It was three years to the day since I lost my brother.
Jake’s dog tags were in my nightstand drawer, feet from where Emma slept.
Each year on this date, I’d hold them and sit alone, allowing my guilt to fester.
This year, Emma was in my bed, and I couldn’t do either.
She’d know something was wrong the second she got a good look at me, and I wasn’t ready to answer her questions about what was bothering me. Bothering didn’t begin to cover it.
I slid out from under her arm and went into the bathroom. The shower ran cold before I stepped out, and by the time I made it to the kitchen, I’d been awake for over an hour. I ate standing at the counter because sitting required being still, and I had to keep moving.
Atticus called for an update at the same time Emma walked in.
I wrapped it up, then settled with her at the table and opened my laptop. That was the extent of what I was capable of doing. Getting through the day would require putting one foot in front of the other and keeping my mind engaged.
I asked how I could help, then moved closer to her so we could review her list together.
She read through it, I made notes, and the end result was something far more manageable.
We’d been working for an hour or so when she asked if we could take a break. I didn’t know how to respond. How could I tell her that if I was forced to still my mind and body, I’d go crazy. Worse, I’d grab the closest bottle of booze I could find and drink myself into oblivion.
When her mother called, it got worse.
Then, my cell vibrated with a text.
How you doin’, kid? Gunner asked.
He’d never forgotten. Three years ago, he was standing beside me when I got the call about Jake.
I didn’t have to explain what it meant or how deep it went.
Gunner had lost someone on an op—someone whose death he carried daily, whether anyone else saw it or not.
He took one look at my face, and he knew, because he’d been living with his own version of hell for years.
Every October twentieth since, he remembered.
He’d text, call, or show up at my door. He’d do whatever it took to get me out of my own head.
Most years, that meant the two of us taking his boat out on the Chesapeake, not saying much, just letting the water and the wind do the work that conversation couldn’t.
About to lose it.
Get your ass over here.
When I didn’t respond fast enough, he called.
“Do I need to come to you, or are you on your way?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I paused. “Copy. Give me thirty.”
I pulled up Luke’s contact info and sent a text, asking him to take over Emma’s detail. He responded in under a minute.
“Luke’s on his way. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” Yeah, she deserved an explanation, but there was no way in hell I could give her one.
Instead, I left.
My hands gripped the steering wheel for ten seconds before I put the car in reverse.
I’d texted the man I’d been jealous of for months and asked him to come sit with the woman I loved because I couldn’t hold my shit together for one more hour. Emma deserved someone who could.
I drove twenty minutes on the empty road in silence. Gunner was on the front steps when I pulled in. Instead of whiskey, he held a bottle of water. He’d stopped offering me booze since the last time I’d accepted; I hadn’t stopped until Zary drove me home at two in the morning.
He came down the steps and put his hand on the side of my neck and held it there.
“Let’s go sit.”
We settled on the rear steps, facing the Severn River.
The garden had been cleared for winter. Oliver’s bike lay on its side near the fence.
A tire swing that hadn’t been there last October hung from the oak.
Every year, this porch looked a little different.
Four pairs of boots sat by the door where there used to be two.
“He’d have been thirty-six today,” I said.
“What would he be doing with himself?”
“He’d be living on the Eastern Shore, with a dock and two mutts from a shelter.”
“That sounds right.”
I couldn’t get the next part out, and I didn’t try. Gunner had been sitting on this porch with me long enough to know what I couldn’t say.
“It’s been three years,” he said.
“It doesn’t get easier.”
“Never said it would, kid.”
I stared out at the water, not bothering to search for something to say. What was there that hadn’t been said too many times already?
Gunner eventually nudged me. “Tell me something good in your life.”
“Emma.”
He waited.
“Scares the crap out of me.”
His mouth twitched. “I get it, but fear is something you can overcome.”
“What if she needs me, and I can’t—”
“You can. More, you did.”
The porch door banged open, and the storm glass rattled.
“Uncle Cole, you’re here!” Lia hit me at full speed. Her arms locked around my neck before I could get to my feet. Oliver was three steps behind her with a piece of paper the size of a place mat.
“I drew this for you. It’s a dragon.”
It looked more like a potato on fire, but considering he was four, it was a damned good try.
“That is one hell of a dragon, Ollie.”
“Dad said it’s a helicopter.”
“He’s wrong. Any idiot can see it’s the fiercest dragon in the universe.”
Oliver beamed, and Gunner laughed and shook his head.
Zary followed the kids out, kissed Gunner, and set the bags that were in her arms on the porch. Before I had time to brace for it, she wrapped me in a hug.
“How’s Emma?” she asked in her thick Russian accent that hadn’t diminished one bit in the years I’d known her.
“She’s doing well.”
“Bring her next time. I need to meet the woman who won Kodiak’s heart.”
Gunner carried the bags inside. Zary and Oliver followed him, but Lia stayed on the steps.
“Are you having dinner with us tonight? Mama said you might, so Ollie and I picked out dessert.”
“I can’t tonight, sweetheart.”
“Will you come see us again soon?”
“I will. I’ll bring my second favorite girl with me.”
Lia’s cheeks turned pink, and her smile was big enough to show her dimples. “Papa said she’s pretty.”
“He’s right about that.”
“I’ll tell Mama you can’t stay.” The screen door slammed behind her when she ran inside.
I stood on the porch and listened to the family on the other side of the wall. Oliver was arguing that dragons have propellers. Lia was telling him he was wrong. Zary told them to wash up.
Gunner had been where I was—closed off, bare walls, a house built for function. Zary had changed that, or maybe she was the reason he’d changed himself.
I wanted what he had. Not someday. Right now, on the worst day of my year. Except as much as I longed for it, being that close to someone—hell, having kids—scared the fuck out of me.
Gunner returned with two rods and a tackle box. “Tide’s right. Let’s get on the water.”
I followed him down to the dock, where his sloop sat in the slip, with the mainsail cover still on and the jib furled tight.
We didn’t need to talk through the routine.
I’d crewed for him often enough to know the order.
I took the helm, and he handled the sail while we motored past the no-wake markers.
The main went up clean and filled on the first gust, so I killed the engine. Gunner trimmed the jib and pointed us downriver toward the Bay.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. That was the thing about sailing with someone who knew what they were doing—everything that needed saying got said with a hand signal or a nod toward the telltales.
“Jake ever sail?” he asked.
“He was terrible at it. No patience. He’d be on the foredeck for ten minutes, and then he’d want to jump in and go for a swim.”
“Sounds about right for a Marine.”
“You’re a Marine.”
He chuckled and corrected the sail.
I lost track of time, which was the whole point of coming out here. I wasn’t alone; Gunner sat three feet away, not saying a goddamn thing he didn’t need to say.
We tacked twice heading south and ran broad on the way back when the wind clocked around to the north. The temperature dropped with it, and the bay was too choppy to stay out.
Gunner brought the sloop up into the wind, and I dropped the main. We motored upriver, then docked and cleaned up.
“I should head home,” I said once we had everything battened down.
He walked me to the car after I’d said goodbye to Zary and the kids.
“I’m in love with her.” I hadn’t meant to say it. The words were out before I could stop them. “I’ve never said that out loud to a single person, including myself.”
“She’s the real thing, kid. You know that.”
“I do know that.”
“Then, get out of your own way. You’ve spent three years beating yourself up over something you can’t change. Don’t waste the next three missing what’s right in front of you.”
“Is that your version of a pep talk?”
“That’s me telling you what Jake would say if he were standing here.” Gunner went quiet for a second. “Your brother would want you happy. He’d be pissed off if he knew you had a shot at this and you were too busy punishing yourself to take it.”
I didn’t argue. If my brother were here, he’d tell me I was an idiot for hanging out with him and Gunner when I could be with her.
“Zary is expecting you both for dinner when this case wraps up. Don’t make me ask you twice.”
“Tell her we’ll be there.”
Gunner stood in the driveway with his hands in his pockets while I reversed out. When I checked the mirror, he was still there.
The drive home was twenty minutes with the windows down. Gunner’s words stayed with me, but under them was Jake. Not the version from the end. The one from before—my brother, who would’ve laughed at me and said, “She’s too good for you, Cole. Go get her anyway.”
I pulled into my driveway and killed the engine, then went inside.
Emma was on her feet the second I came in. Luke was at the dining table, with his laptop open and files fanned out around his chair.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “You will not believe what we found.”