Chapter 29
A fter dinner with Joseph, the three returned to the cave bar and selected their activities for the week.
Philly and Callie made sure to pick most of the same ones as Joseph, but not wanting to appear as if they were following him, they chose a few he had not, and three they split—him going with Joseph on two and Callie on one.
The little witch did manage to get him back for the fiancée comment and loudly exclaimed how much he loved ATV-ing and they had to do it. Joseph agreed and signed up as his partner for the four-hour trek into the canyons.
Now back in their cabin, he lay under the covers thinking about how the resort had placed the bed in the wrong location.
Situated parallel to the windows, Callie, lying on her side, had a magnificent view of the mountains, whereas he had a view of her silhouette—of the dip of her waist, the rise of her shoulder, the length of her legs.
Not a bad view. Actually, a damn nice one.
But not when he couldn’t—wouldn’t—do anything more than appreciate it.
She drew her legs up, curling into herself.
A few minutes later, she flopped onto her back.
A few more minutes passed before she flung an arm over her head and tucked it under the pillow.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the way the move arched her chest. They weren’t close, but if he reached out, he’d touch her. Which he wouldn’t.
In the few moments of stillness that followed, he started drifting off—one of the skills he picked up in the military, he could sleep anywhere at the drop of a hat.
An annoyed sigh woke him.
Another skill he picked up in the military: how to awaken at the tiniest sound.
“What’s wrong?” he mumbled, keeping his eyes closed.
She turned her head. “What?”
“You’re like a cat on a hot tin roof. What’s wrong?”
A pause. “I don’t sleep well,” she admitted on an exhale.
“That comes as no surprise.” She didn’t eat well either. Although, to give her credit, she’d finished her salmon fillet at dinner.
“Rude,” she shot back, though he heard the humor in her voice.
He chuckled. “Do you ever sleep well, or is it because you’re sharing a bed?” If it was the sharing thing, he’d take back what he said earlier and sleep on the floor.
“I’ve never shared a bed before,” she said.
His eyes popped open.
“I’ve had my fair share of lovers?—”
“TMI, babe.”
“But I don’t ever stay the night,” she continued, ignoring him.
“And they never stayed the night with you?” He hated asking the question, but his curiosity got the better of him as it often did.
She shrugged, her shoulder sliding across the sheet. “I never invited them over.” She paused, then shrugged again. “None of them lasted long.”
He snorted.
Her lips twitched. “None of the relationships lasted long. Which I’m sure also comes as no surprise.
” He didn’t like the thread of resignation in her voice, as tiny as it was.
“But I don’t sleep well regardless of who is or isn’t in my bed.
My brain spins, and I start thinking about everything that went wrong that day and how I can make it better or how I could have been better.
Then I worry about Daphne or regret selling my grandparents’ farm when they passed.
“I end up tossing and turning and the few times I did try to stay the night with someone, it never ended well. They made it known in one way or another that I annoyed them. It seemed easier to leave. Maybe I should sleep on the floor,” she said, tossing the covers back.
His arm snaked out before he even knew what he was doing. Wrapping it around her waist, he hauled her back into bed, dislodging the pillows, and tucked her against him. Well, tucked might be too strong a word, as she was stiff as a board.
“Gabriel.”
“Take a few deep breaths,” he said.
“This isn’t going to work. I’m…too much.”
His heart broke a little for her, something he never thought would happen two weeks ago.
“What I think, Callie, is that you were raised with the unattainable expectation of perfection, and the repercussions for not meeting those expectations were swift and harsh. It doesn’t surprise me at all that your mind is constantly trying to figure out how you could have done something better or been better.
It was what you needed to do to survive.
And even though you don’t need to do that anymore, it’s conditional training. It doesn’t just go away.”
She remained silent for a long time. But still, too. Except for her hand, which now curled gently over his forearm as it rested across her stomach.
Five minutes passed before she spoke. “I never thought of it that way.”
Again, that didn’t surprise him. Her parents had trained her well to assume everything was her fault.
“Would it help to talk about the case? Or do you want me to tell you a story?”
She turned her head. They were so close now, her face mere inches from his. “What kind of story?” The mint of her breath invaded his senses. Never had he been so aware of the scent of toothpaste.
“I could tell you about the time Dulcie all but adopted a family of twelve, including their goats.” Her eyebrow went up. “Or the time when Superman accidentally exploded an outhouse.” She huffed a soft laugh into the dark. “Or I could tell you a story about the last time I saw your grandmother.”
“My grandmother,” she said. “Tell me a story about my grandmother. Assuming it’s a good one?”
“Are there any bad stories about your grandmother?”
She chuckled. “Fair point. How she and grandfather ended up with a woman like my mom as their daughter, I have no idea.”
“I don’t think either of your grandparents figured that one out. I also think they stopped trying when you and Daphne came along, choosing to focus on giving you everything they knew their daughter, or your dad, wouldn’t.”
She nodded. “Okay, tell me about my grandmother.”
“Close your eyes.” Another eyebrow went up. “It’s story time, Callie. That means you close your eyes and listen.” She rolled them but then followed his direction, her dark lashes falling against her delicate skin.
“The last time I visited your grandmother was when I went home to collect Matthew’s ashes.”
Her eyes popped open. “This does not sound like a good bedtime story.”
He gave her hip a little smack. “Hush and be patient.” She narrowed her eyes at him, but after a beat, closed them again.
“It was the one and only time I ever went back to town after I joined the army. I was twenty-two and had already served four years. I had no intention of scattering Matthew’s ashes anywhere near where we’d grown up, and I planned to jet out of town after grabbing them.
But then I drove by your grandparents’ farm and, well, I couldn’t not stop.
So I pulled in and, unexpectedly, found your grandmother on the porch, drinking iced tea and doing a crossword.
Your grandfather had gone into town to pick something up at the hardware store.
“I joined her, of course. And, of course, she had cookies, because she always had cookies. Growing up, I thought they were for us. When she brought out the plate that day, though, I realized that all along they were for your grandfather. Well, maybe a bit for both, but your grandfather had a sweet tooth.”
She smiled but kept her eyes closed. “He did.”
“We talked about Matthew and my job. I was doing Spec Ops by then, but didn’t, well, it felt like something I just did. I felt no sense of purpose or pride or even dislike. It just was what it was. Your grandmother did not like that.”
“She believed we should have a purpose. I can imagine she wasn’t thrilled.”
“She was not. But the more we spoke and the more she questioned me, I realized something. I realized that everything I did to get me to where I was in the army, I did because it was easier than doing anything else.”
“Explain.”
He smiled. “I trained harder than most guys, took on more work, more risks, more opportunities than the others because then, when the day ended, I was too tired to think about anything else. I used my job to escape my past, my memories. A way to avoid facing the fact that I’d grown up with an alcoholic abusive father, to avoid the fact that my mother had abandoned me and Matthew to a man she must have known would be the kind of father he was, to avoid…
well, a lot of things from my childhood.
If I was too tired to think about anything by the time I got to bed, then I didn’t have to think about that .
“But your grandmother didn’t like that. Interestingly, she didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t want to face my history.
That wasn’t what bothered her. What bothered her was that my work was nothing but an escape.
As if I was shortchanging the military with my less-than-noble commitment.
” He paused. “No, that’s not right, it was more that I was shortchanging myself by seeing my work only as a means to an end rather than embracing everything that it could be to me, including the hard parts.
“The conversation stuck with me when I left. And as I spread Matthew’s ashes in the Caribbean, a place he’d always wanted to visit but hadn’t had the chance, it hit me.
Unlike Matthew, who would have no more chances at anything, I still did.
I had chances and choices. Many of those had been taken away from me as a kid, but as an adult? They were mine for the taking.
“When I returned to base, I started looking at things differently. The training and ops we did were hard as shit, but I started letting myself enjoy the downtimes. I started looking forward to Viper’s dry humor.
I started to appreciate Monk’s steady presence.
I started to accept that the military and Spec Ops was a choice I’d made, and I was lucky to be in a position to make it.
It didn’t happen overnight, but over the next year, I changed.
That one-hour conversation with your grandmother opened my eyes.
Because of her, I grew to love my job, I gained the family I have, and I recognized when it was time to leave and start something new.
If not for her, my life would be very different now.
No Falcons, no house of my own or Mystery Lake community.
She’d probably say I was attributing too much to her, but it’s the truth.
Growing up, your grandparents did what they could to help me in all sorts of small ways, but that afternoon literally changed my life. ”
By the time he stopped talking, Callie’s breathing had grown deep and steady, and her body had softened under his arm.
She wasn’t asleep yet, but she would be soon.
He didn’t fool himself into thinking he was a sleep-whisperer.
She’d wake at least once more during the night, but maybe she’d relaxed enough to slip into sleep for a few hours.
“I miss them,” she said, her voice soft in the night.
He inched a little closer, pleased when she didn’t tense. Taking a deep breath, he sank deeper into the bed. “Yeah, I do, too,” he said. The last words spoken until the morning sun rose above the mountains.