Chapter 7
INDY
“What are you doing with all that food?”
I spin around to face a smirking Rafe, shopping bags swinging on my arm. He’s maybe fifteen feet down the hallway from me, a large bouquet of multicolored flowers clutched in his hand.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I glance at the bags stuffed close to overflowing, topped with ripe tomatoes and tri-colored peppers and a container of vivid spring greens. “Am I not allowed to buy food?”
As Rafe closes the distance between us, he eyeballs the visible contents of my bags, his gaze lingering on the vegetables and the bottle of extra virgin olive oil tucked beside them.
“Of course you can buy food,” he replies.
“I’m just not used to seeing you buy vegetables. Or anything fresh at all, really.”
I shoot him a quick glare. “I didn’t realize you were paying such close attention to my shopping habits.”
He cocks his head and gives me his patented don’t bullshit me look.
“I don’t. But I’ve also known you for a long time.
And I know damn well your idea of cooking consists of throwing a frozen dinner in the microwave.
Or possibly heating up a can of soup. But actual vegetables?
Olive oil?” He peers inside one of the bags.
“And are those fresh herbs I see in there?”
“They’re not for me,” I admit. “They’re for Bea.”
Confusion creases his forehead. “Isn’t there plenty of food in the apartment already? I got everything on the list Eden gave me.”
“There is.” Easy to prepare stuff, like cold cuts and ready-made salads and the basics like eggs, cheese, bread, and milk. Things Bea could use to prepare basic meals, if she wanted to.
But. One of the things I remember most vividly about Bea is how much she likes to cook. She’d talk about it all the time during our sessions and though I never admitted it, listening to her chatter on about recipes was a welcome distraction from the pain that accompanied my exercises.
Which, now that I’m thinking back on it, was probably her intention.
“Bea likes to cook,” I explain. “Really cook. Fancy recipes and all that. So I thought having ingredients to cook with might help cheer her up.”
Rafe’s smirk fades. “How’s she holding up? That had to be tough on her, sitting through all our questions this morning.”
My jaw clenches at the memory of Bea sitting at the conference table in our meeting room, looking so small and uneasy and vulnerable it was all I could do not to pick her up and carry her out of there.
I didn’t want her there at all, really, not when it’s only been three days since her head injury, but she insisted.
When the topic came up over coffee and donuts this morning—I didn’t dare make breakfast sandwiches again, but donuts from the local bakery seemed safe enough—I reassured Bea that the meeting could wait until she was feeling better.
“But it can’t wait,” she told me firmly. Fiercely, even. “Jenna’s killer is out there. What if he goes after someone else? What if another woman is killed, and something I know could have stopped it?”
It was hard to argue with that.
Because while we’ve been working hard on the investigation, there were still a lot of gaps we needed to fill, and Bea was our best chance of doing that.
So I brought her to the conference room after a breakfast she barely touched, and she spent the next two hours answering questions about her background—friends and coworkers and ex-boyfriends who might have motive to want Bea hurt or in jail.
She told us about Jenna and her mysterious request to meet and how she thought it might have something to do with her boyfriend.
“I don’t know that they were having problems,” Bea explained.
“It was just the only thing I could think of. But it could have been something else. A conflict with another coworker. A patient who acted inappropriately. I wish I knew. I wish I’d asked her on the phone. Or hurried to meet her sooner. Then—”
Her voice broke at that point, so we called a quick break.
Bea could have pushed the rest until tomorrow. No one would have minded. But she wanted to be done with it. Wanted to tell us about the time spent in the locker room. About the sound of the man’s voice who hurt her. About the words he said.
By the end of the meeting, poor Bea was crying, and I felt terrible for letting her be there.
I still feel terrible.
Which is one of the reasons I made an impromptu trip to the grocery store to pick up as many of the ingredients I remember her talking about using in her recipes—hothouse tomatoes and orange bell peppers and bay leaves and sweet creamery butter and extra virgin olive oil.
The other reason? The one I’ll never tell Rafe, even though he’s my best friend?
I’m hoping this little offering, of sorts, will make her smile.
Because I miss it.
I kept her smile tucked into my memories, dragging it out when I was feeling the most down.
When my insecurities would come roaring back with a vengeance and the lure of retreating to my solitary life was hard to resist. Then I’d think of Bea and her beautiful smile.
I’d remember the lilt of her laugh and the pride that would shine in her eyes when I’d accomplish one of her goals.
That smile got me through a lot.
And now that she’s here, selfishly, I want to see it again.
Realizing Rafe’s still waiting for my answer, I quickly reply, “I checked on her after lunch, and she said she was fine. But…” I shrug.
He nods. “Fine doesn’t always mean fine.”
“Right.” Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way from Eden. “So I just figured… she might like some stuff to cook with. It might make her feel more at home.”
Rafe stares at me for a second, a knowing look in his eyes. “Gotcha.” He pauses. “Well. Eden’s making tacos for dinner. And I’ve got these—” he jerks his chin towards the bouquet in his hand.
“You’d better hurry, then.” I clap his shoulder. “And tell Eden I said hi.”
He smiles. “Will do.”
I watch Rafe as he walks away, his step light and cheerful, so different from the man who never went anywhere without looking like he was on a life or death mission. Which, to be fair, was often the case.
He’s still like that on our jobs, of course. We all are. Because the habits drilled into us in the Army are too deeply embedded to break. But the instant Rafe sees Eden, his demeanor shifts. He’s not a soldier anymore, but a man in love.
While I walk towards Bea’s apartment, I spin the word in my head.
Love. I know what it means, of course. I know what it looks like. And I know how it can leave a person devastated when it’s gone.
Like my mom. She lived for my dad, and when he passed, she fell apart. Her occasional bouts of depression turned into months-long stretches when she barely left the house, and, on some particularly bad days, she wouldn’t even get out of bed.
Looking at love that way, it didn’t seem all that great.
But it works for plenty of people. Like Eden and Rafe. All my friends at the Sleepy Hollow and San Antonio branches of Blade and Arrow. My old teammate, Cillian, who recently found love after a stretch of his own struggles.
Me, on the other hand…
I snort softly at the unfortunate pun.
What woman would want a man who has to touch her with metal and carbon? A man who has a scarred stump where his lower arm used to be? A man people will always stare at, wondering what happened to him and sometimes, even rudely asking outright?
Once I reach Bea’s front door, I take a deep breath and forcibly shove the negative thoughts down. Because now isn’t about me. It’s about seeing if Bea’s okay.
Shifting all the shopping bags to one arm, I rap on the door with the other. And though I know there’s a camera right above the door, so Bea can see me, I still call out, “Hey, Bea. It’s Indy. Is it a good time?”
When she doesn’t answer right away, the now-familiar worry resurges.
Is she in pain? Was there a complication?
Is she having a panic attack? Did I wait too long to come check on her?
I wanted to give her some time alone after the meeting, so I worked on inventorying the medical clinic on site before heading out to the grocery store, but maybe I should have stopped by sooner.
Or maybe she can’t hear me. I don’t really know how good the implants are for hearing sounds like this. Maybe at home she has a special doorbell that lights up when it rings. Or an alert on her phone.
Shit. I should have asked.
I’m just fumbling for my phone to look up cochlear implant accessories when the front door jerks open. On the other side of the doorway, Bea stands there, looking slightly flustered but otherwise okay.
“Sorry to take so long,” she says. “I was in the bedroom, and I wasn’t sure if someone was at the door or not. And then I had to get all the locks open.”
“Do you need a special doorbell?”
Bea blinks in confusion. And I feel like a damn idiot for blurting it out that way. “I mean,” I amend, “I’ve been knocking whenever I come over. But I didn’t think. Would it be better to have something that alerts you on your phone? I can ask Tyler to find an app.”
She smiles, and some of my worry eases. “You don’t need to do that.”
As I walk inside the apartment with her, I persist, “Would it help?”
Bea turns to face me. “It’s okay, Indy. Most of the time, I can hear the door just fine. I was just changing, so it was harder to hear—” Her mouth clamps shut. Splotches of pink rise high on her cheeks.
And my imagination tears off down a road it’s not supposed to be on.
A road that leads me past Bea nearly-naked in her bedroom, wriggling into the stretchy pants that cling to her slender legs and pert little ass. Pulling on her bra, adjusting it so her small but perfectly shaped breasts are supported, her narrow waist and flat belly on full display…
Then I catch the outline of nipples beneath her long-sleeved shirt, and my wandering thoughts come to a screeching halt.
Is she wearing a bra?
Or is it just bare skin under there?