Chapter 28 Sydney
Sydney
The sun shines the next day as if the storm never happened.
Lifting my arms slowly to shoulder height, then lowering them equally as carefully, I begin another rep of exercises in the pool. My arms shake and muscles burn. Only when my lungs grow too tight for comfort do I realize I’ve been holding my breath.
“Breathe, dummy,” I mutter.
High stone walls surround our private saltwater pool.
My physical therapist, Mario, a fit man in his forties with warm brown skin and a ready smile, stands in the shallow end with me and demonstrates a different set of arm movements for me to perform.
“Rotate your palms downward. Same lift, but feel how it works different muscles?”
“What?” The water swirls, agitated by my movements, and I take a second to suck in more air. Oxygen. I need oxygen.
“Flip your palm over and try again. Can you feel the difference?” he asks.
Right. Move my hands. Pay attention to something other than the water and the way my lungs feel empty.
You’re not going to drown in the pool. Keep going. Stop panicking like a weirdo.
Remembering is like making friends with a cat. Chase it, and it’ll run. Sit quietly and ignore it, and sooner or later, it’ll curl up on my lap and demand attention.
This isn’t about brain damage any more than my speech problems are. My brain is fine. It’s my subconscious being a stubborn ass and forcing me to live in the here-and-now.
“Yeah, well, this particular here-and-now sucks,” I mutter. Why has my heart rate only lately decided to spike every time I take a shower? Why is the pool freaking me out?
Mario frowns. “Everything okay? You seem uncomfortable.”
“I’m good. This isn’t that different from regular PT.”
Pacing at the edge of the pool, my husband scowls. “You were fully dressed then, not half naked with a strange man touching you.”
“He’s not a strange man. Be nice, McRae,” I say.
He bobs his head side to side with that look on his face.
“You just mimicked me in your head in a voice that doesn’t even sound like me,” I accuse.
He drops his arms and shoves his hands into his pockets. “How do you know that?”
The same way I know he’s currently equal parts irrationally jealous of Mario and worried about me. “I just do.”
He came straight from a video conference to be here for me and immediately tossed his suit jacket over a nearby lounge chair. Sometime later, he kicked off his shoes and socks. Slowly, under the sweltering heat, he’s coming undone.
Directing a pissy look at Mario, he loosens his tie with one hand. Then he turns his green gaze my way and unbuttons his shirtsleeves, rolling the cuffs up his forearms.
That is a very nice distraction. I could almost forget about my anxiety and watch him roll up his sleeves for the next forty minutes.
His lips twitch.
“Are you sure you want to continue?” Mario asks.
Shoot. Man Candy Time is over. I take a breath. Focus on Mario. “Yes. Can you show me the exercise again?”
“No problem.” He demonstrates the straight-armed slow lift, bringing his palm from his side to shoulder height.
Heat floods my face. A two-year-old could do this. I begin, and the water—My gaze darts around—The water . . . the water . . . So much sick dread.
I follow Mario’s instructions and make it another twenty minutes, hanging on to my concentration by a thread. Then I wobble on a leg raise.
Mario braces me with a hand on my elbow for balance and places his palm under my leg to lift my thigh a little higher. I flinch and jerk away, inadvertently going under. I flail. Scream. Inhale salty liquid fire.
A man with a shower sprayer in hand. My red dress soaked and clinging. Another frigid blast of water to my face in an already freezing room. “You fucking stink.”
He’s here. Markov is here.
I come up coughing, fighting, scrambling.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you.
” A man’s voice sounds through my haze of panic.
He touches my back. Then he hits me. Again and again.
He pounds on me, and I can’t breathe to scream for help because .
. . water in my eyes and nose and lungs.
My teeth chatter, my sinuses and throat burn, and I shake hard enough to make my bones hurt.
I scramble away from him, but he follows. Chases me. Water splashes, but I don’t turn my head—too busy trying to breathe and get away from those grabbing hands and—
Then my husband, soaking wet and fully dressed, stands before me with his arms spread wide in protection. “Can’t you see she’s afraid of you? Back the fuck off.”
McRae doesn’t touch me, but when I blink the moisture from my eyes, he fills my vision.
“You’re in the pool. Physical therapy. That’s all this is. Just exercise. You’re safe.” His firm voice reaches through my fear, and I grab on to it like a life raft.
Clutching and clawing, I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
He holds me against his body, rubbing my back, as if he’d only been waiting for my permission. “I’ve got you. Slow breaths. In. Out.”
I breathe and cough twice more until I clear my lungs. Heat from the warm water and the sun sits on the surface of my skin, but inside, I shiver.
“They used water,” I choke out. “They tortured me with water.”
His arms tighten almost painfully around me. “I’m sorry. I am so fucking sorry.”
“Markov,” I say.
He swallows hard and turns his head. “Mario, we’ll see you on Wednesday. Mrs. McRae has had enough for today.”
“Feel better. I’ll see you next time,” Mario says, but I don’t acknowledge his goodbye. It’s not his fault he unlocked something in my head, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to look at him.
“I remember Markov,” I say.
“He’s dead. Do you remember that? I killed him.”
I already knew this, but now I have a face and voice to go with the name. “I wish I saw his body.”
“He’s gone. I shot him straight between the eyes,” McRae says.
I untangle myself from the intimate press of our bodies. “Who was he to you?”
And why is this the first time I was brave enough to ask that question? Because you weren’t ready to know the answer.
“He was part of my past,” he says.
Horror wraps its craven, selfish fingers around my throat. “You were friends with that monster?”
“I thought we were. We were kids then. I grew up in a home I thought was too strict. Too many rules. Too many bodyguards. Nick talked me into sneaking out. It didn’t take much convincing.
I wanted to have fun, and I thought my parents’ rules sucked.
Nick’s mom gave him more freedom. It was a trap.
His mother was involved with a member of the Bratva.
They used Nick to take me in a power play.
Dad had pissed them off with his hard line against organized crime.
Henry followed me that night. We had to shoot our way out to escape.
” His explanation sounds almost clinical, but the rehearsed tone breaks when he continues, “Nick took you to punish me for killing his mother that night. But I had to do it. She’d already shot Henry once.
He was bleeding out. I had to get out and get help. ”
“Of course you did.” I squeeze his hand.
“The plan was to send me back to my father one body part at a time. Henry was only twelve, but he stopped them.”
I clutch his forearms. “Are you okay talking about this?”
He gives me a crooked smile. “I’m fine. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m okay.”
“Let’s go inside. Forget about the pool.”
I look down at my red bikini and my arms and legs that are filling back out and getting stronger every day. “I don’t want to give this to them.”
I tip my face up to his, my brows knitted so tightly my forehead aches.
He tilts his head slightly to the side. “Give them what?”
“I used to love swimming. I took it back once before. I’ll do it again.
” Swimming isn’t a storm, and it isn’t torture.
It’s me in control. Yes, I’m stubborn, but now that I understand where the fear is coming from, I’m going to deal with it.
The water that drowns and wreaks destruction is the same substance that keeps us alive.
This is a swimming pool. I’m safe. “If I give up because of Markov, then I’m still running, and he’s still chasing me. I won’t let him win.”
Something fierce lights in his eyes. “That is the most Sydney Walsh McRae thing I have ever heard.”
“I’m braver because you’re here.”
“You’re utilizing your resources. I happen to be one of them.”
I step to the side, then swish my arms in the pool, water flowing between my splayed fingers as I back toward the deep end, determined to think of good things.
To feel the water as a silken caress against my skin.
I’m in control. Markov isn’t here. Breathe.
“You didn’t wear a bowling shirt with your suit. ”
His eyebrow quirks. “I’ll wear one next time.”
“What’s your name?”
His smile remains, but I recognize the sadness in his eyes. “Gabriel.”
“You’re named after an angel.” A sudden memory pops into my mind. “Your sister calls it false advertising.”
He moves toward me, matching my steps. “She’s right.”
I keep going, but not to get away. To see if he’ll follow. A thrill runs through me, and a warm, melting excitement takes hold inside me.
Angel . . . no . . . Gabriel. I need to learn to call him that, not “the man” or “Husband” or even McRae. He stays constantly by my side. He says he loves me, and I believe him. I’m sick to death of fear controlling me.
I can remember. “Angel.” I shake my head. That’s not his name. It’s the word I can use to remind me of his name. “Gabriel.”
He nods, the muscles in his face tightening with emotion. “Yes.”
Angel. “Gabriel,” I say again, letting the syllables roll over my tongue.
“Yes,” he agrees, his voice hoarse.
The closer he gets, the more I revel in an excitement that’s both new and so old it’s imprinted on my very soul. “Are you staying in the pool with me, Gabriel?”