Chapter 7 #2
“When I was a kid, we used to go to this cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior. Little town called Deep Haven. Population about a thousand, especially in the winter. We stayed at my grandpa’s vacation cabin, a little two-bedroom house right on the lake.
Dad would fire up the woodstove, and we’d play games and watch the waves crash against the ice shore.
I loved it. Especially at night. Sometimes we’d bundle up in blankets and go outside and watch the stars—they’re so crisp and bright at night.
We’d watch our breath in the air, how it vanished in the darkness, and yet the stars stayed.
I felt so small, but sitting with my dad, I wasn’t scared.
” She hated how the memory crept into her throat, bruised it.
“Sounds like you had a great dad.”
“He tried . . . until my mom died.” She left off the rest.
Silence fell between them, and she didn’t hate it, sitting here with the warmth of the fire, safe.
Not afraid.
Huh.
The aroma of fresh bread and soup filtered from the kitchen, a few families arriving at tables.
“This reminds me of winter camp,” he said quietly. “We’d earn our outside badges during the day, play games at night.”
“What games?”
“The classics. Monopoly. And Risk. I loved Clue.”
“Of course you did. I saw a Clue game in the bookshelf.” She pointed to the long bookshelf on the opposite side of the room. “But I’m not sure it’s fair.”
“What’s that?”
“Challenging a cop to Clue.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How about Battleship? I saw that over there too.”
“Oh, I’d kill you in Battleship.”
He smiled, and it reached in, stirred her.
She blamed the magic of the storm and the blue of his eyes.
“Where’s Caspian?”
She glanced around. “I don’t know. Last I saw, he was sitting outside the bathroom door, whining.”
He sighed. “That dog. I got him from a friend who decided the dog belonged with me. Shep travels a lot, so I figured why not. But he’s not trained.”
“He seems pretty trained to me.”
“It’s weird. One minute he’s like a soldier, watching my six, sometimes running out ahead of me, as if he’s scouting out the territory. The next, he’s leaning against me, his big brown eyes on me, almost like he’s worried about me. Or scared. I can’t figure him out.”
Oh, he possessed such a nice smile when he wasn’t so dark and grumpy and serious.
In the silence of a blizzard, where the world faded to white,
I heard your laughter through the storm, a beacon in the night.
She didn’t know where the words came from, but they landed on her heart, along with a tune, and she hummed it.
He glanced at her. “You have a nice voice.”
“It’s better when it’s not broken.” She didn’t know why she said that. Not that she wanted to hide Bliss, but she didn’t hate being free from her, just for now.
“How’d it break?”
“Virus. And then I developed a node on my voice box.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Sounds serious.”
“It was. And still could be if I don’t take care of it.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to save my life again.” He winked at her.
Oh. And the crazy of his words simply swept her up. Ignited something inside her. Still, “I’m no hero.” So far from it, it seemed almost laughable that she had to speak it.
He gave her a wry look, then shook his head. “Whatever. I’d better find Caspian.” He reached for his mug and got up. “But I’ll be back, with the game, and you’ll see—your ship is sunk.”
He walked away, limping just a little, shoulders wide, whistling for his dog.
And she couldn’t agree more.
Dawson nearly shucked off the horror of freezing to death as he sat on a bench across from Keely, analyzing his Battleship board.
Outside, the blizzard still howled, the storm reaching epic proportions, the snowfall nearly two feet on the porch.
Keely’s words earlier by the fire kept nudging him. “If you hadn’t gone out there, I wouldn’t have spotted Wren. Right place, right time.”
Maybe.
“4B.” He smiled at her.
“Miss.” She grinned back, all teeth.
He made a face of annoyance and put his white pin into the board. “I know there’s a destroyer out there. I’m going to find it.”
“Not before I sink your aircraft carrier.” She picked up a red pin. “C8.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Hit. Sunk.”
“That’s right, it is. You can run, but you can’t hide.
” She drew up one knee. Her blond hair tumbled down from under her blue pom-pom hat, and it only seemed to draw out the blue of her eyes.
She wore the same white cable-knit sweater but had changed into a pair of blue velour leisure pants, probably from the same bin of clothing he’d rescued his flannel shirt and jeans.
“Fine. 5B.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Hit.”
“Bam. Now I got you.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I’m still three ships up to your one, there, Monk.”
“Monk?”
“Favorite show ever. I watched the entire last season on tou—on a trip across America last year.” She suddenly stared at her board, cleared her throat.
Weird, but . . . “Monk is my kind of guy. No games, all facts, all focus.”
“You do know he’s OCD. 7D.”
“Yeah, but it helps him notice things others don’t. And that’s a miss there, Captain Sparrow.”
She laughed, and oh, it poured into him like sunshine, hot and bold, and lit a long-forgotten ember inside him.
She could be dangerous. Because like Caroline, she seemed tough, despite her city-girl demeanor, and that only led to terrible assumptions that could cost lives. She wasn’t an Alaskan.
So, down, boy.
“Besides, his job helps him forget his losses. 6B.”
“Destroyer gone. Good hit. Like the loss of his wife?”
“Yes. And maybe pieces of himself too. His OCD only started when life went out of control. As a cop, he gets to be involved in someone else’s problems instead of being stuck in his own .
. . stuff.” And of course, that’s when Moose’s words stirred in his head.
“God uses circumstances to wake us up, get at things inside.”
No, this wasn’t about him, or his stuff. He was here for her. To rescue her.
But he still didn’t know why she called him Monk.
“I think he’s sad,” she said. “He’s caught in the past, and the more he looks back to what might have been, the less he can function today. D9.”
Oh. “Hit.” Her words, too, hit him in his chest.
He studied the board.
“You okay over there? Bleeding a little?” Her tone had turned mocking.
He glanced up at her. Sorta, yes. He swallowed and didn’t know why his story rose to the surface with the terrible urge to spill out.
Still, he took a breath and let it. “The guy who shot the little girl—her name was Kiana, by the way—he got off on a hung jury. The prosecution charged him with first-degree murder and refused a plea request by the defense to lower the charge to manslaughter. And the jury couldn’t convict, so . . .”
“Hung. Does that mean they can try him again?”
“Yes. But they need . . .” He looked up at her. “They want me to testify.”
She lifted a shoulder. “And?”
He looked at his board, the red, sunk battleships. “I can’t go back there. Relive it. I gave an initial statement, and . . .” He made a grim face. “I’ve never felt so . . .”
“Frustrated?”
He considered her. “Helpless. Angry. I lie in bed at night, and all I hear is Kiana crying, feel her blood on my hands—and it’s not metaphorical. She died, my hand over her chest.” He blew out a breath as his own chest webbed, tightened. “Fact is, I stopped trusting myself that day.”
At his feet, Caspian lifted his head, sat up, and put his muzzle on his knee. Maybe the dog needed to go out.
She shut her board. “Game’s over.” Then she reached out and touched his hand, wrapped her hand over his.
He looked at it. Looked at her. She gave him a tight smile. “You’re not the villain here, Dawson.”
Soft words, but they stilled him.
He took his hand away, ran it across his mouth. “You sure you want to fold?”
“You win.” She leaned back. But it seemed her eyes had filled.
Wait—for him?
Aw. “I think I need to take Caspian out.” He swung his leg over the bench. Tried not to grunt as he stood up.
“Hey, buddy. Let’s get some fresh air.” He’d found the dog earlier in the kitchen with Wren, who was feeding him.
The children sat around the fire, listening to Nance read a story. Camp, indeed.
Caspian thumped his tail and got up, followed him to the door.
Keely stood there, pulling on a parka.
“What are you doing?”
She looked at him. “I’m going outside to stand in the cold with you.”
Oh. “You don’t have to—”
“I know. Let’s go.”
He had nothing as he put on his boots, pulled on his coat, a hat, his gloves. He followed her outside.
A crew of shovelers emerged every hour to clean off the porch and the steps, so just a thin layer coated the surface as they went outside. The blizzard raged, ferocious in the darkness.
Caspian trotted down the stairs and into the snow, eating a mouthful, as if thrilled by the drifts.
Dawson stood at the top of the steps, hands in his pockets, shivering.
Keely sat down on the top step, her hands between her knees.
Fine. He sat with her.
She leaned into him, her shoulder warm. “There was this serial killer that haunted Minneapolis for a while. Killed a number of young women—most of them were waitresses. My dad was a young cop at the time, and he landed on one of these grisly killings. It tore him up, but . . . instead of facing it, he turned his fears to me. Taught me how to use a gun and enrolled me in self-defense classes, made me camp out in the backyard just so I could endure a night alone.”
“Seriously.”
“I know he was just trying to keep me safe, but he scared me. He was dark and stoic and refused to admit his emotions. He didn’t even cry at my mom’s funeral.”
He nodded. “My father didn’t cry at Aven’s funeral either. Just disappeared into himself.”
“I took it personally for a long time. Felt rejected.” She glanced at him. “For an adopted kid, that’s a double whammy.”
He’d completely lost Caspian in the snow, but he couldn’t take his gaze from her face. Pretty, with a softness to it, snow caught in her lashes. Winter Tinkerbell, indeed. And despite the chaos, the frenzy of the blizzard around him, his usually chaotic insides had settled, his heartbeat steady.
As if here, in this pocket, his body said he was safe.
Keely stared out into the night. “He just poured himself into his work, then. Shut me out. Until a woman walked into his life. A neighbor who’d gotten divorced.
I think she saw my dad and his life and wanted stability—anyway, they got married two months after she showed up on his porch and asked him out. ”
“Wow.”
“I made the mistake of not being overjoyed. I thought it was too fast, and I was worried about him. They called me dramatic and selfish and cut me out of their lives.” She swallowed.
“I grieved for a long time. And then I realized . . . maybe I was scared of losing him so I hung on too tight.” She lifted a shoulder.
He cocked his head. “We don’t cause things to happen just because we fear them.”
“I agree. My father was broken, and my mother’s death only made it worse. I think I hoped things would be different, that after her death we’d somehow get close. But he only fled into his job, and then his new wife. I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t what he wanted. Or needed.”
He had the wild urge to find this guy, tell him what he was missing.
“I did learn that fear makes us do stupid things. It makes us run. Hide. See things the wrong way. And sometimes, it causes us to make terrible choices that cost us more than we can realize.”
She looked away then, and aw, he couldn’t stop the urge to put his arm around her, scooting close, their parkas crunching in the snow. Her body sank against his.
“Maybe there’s stuff.”
Aw, he couldn’t escape it.
He sighed. “I’ve had three months to sit on that day.
Running the shooting over and over in my head.
And every time the anger just . . .” He shook his head.
“If they put me on that stand, I’ll either come off as a cold, calculating jerk, or I’ll lose it, and yes, I see myself going over to the defense table and strangling the man. So . . .”
She nodded.
“So yeah, I’m angry. And frustrated. And . . . it’s completely messed . . . I think it’s messed me up.”
He might have let her go, disgusted by his confession, but she turned to him, put her hand on his jacket. “You’re grieving.”
He met her eyes, beautiful and shiny in the puddle of porch light, and frowned.
“Yes. Grieving,” she said. “And maybe it started with your sister, but you’re also grieving the family you should have had. And probably your mobility. And maybe even your own heroism.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What, are you a psychologist?”
She laughed. “Sometimes. But the fact is, there is a lot more churning around inside here, Dawson. And none of it adds up to you being the villain.”
His throat tightened. She lifted her face, searching his, so close that all he had to do was lean down and—
Oh, wow. He let her go, looked out at the night, pulling in a cool breath.
“You okay?”
“Mm-hmm. Hey, Casp!” he called out. “Where are you?”
He waited for his dog to appear. Nothing.
He called again and started to get up.
A bark, and just like that, Caspian came bounding toward them, his entire body snowy, nipping at the snowflakes. He ran up the steps, right into his lap, and slurped his chin. “Casp!”
Keely laughed.
Caspian bounced away.
“Well, he loves you,” she said.
Caspian leaped up to her too, and she squealed, pushed him away.
“Clearly he’s falling for you too.” He let his words hang there, his heartbeat catching his words. No, that wasn’t right . . .
But then she met his eyes with a slow grin, and his pulse thundered, and no . . . no . . . that was not going to happen. “Yeah, well I snagged him a soup bone from the kitchen, so . . .”
“I see. Bribery.”
“Absolutely. Gotta wipe the memory of my screaming from the poor guy’s memory.”
She got up and held out her hand to Dawson.
Oh no, it was Caroline all over again. Believing in him.
“I’ll get you home.”
“I know you will.”
And with Keely standing there in the glow of the light, the wind taking her hair, her eyes bright, he fought the dangerous urge to pull her back down, to wrap his arms around her.
To kiss that pretty mouth.
He stared at her.
“What? Sheesh. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He took her hand, let her help him up. Found words. “No. I’m just wondering what game I’m going to best you in next.”
“Rematch, anytime, if you have the guts.” She winked and walked into the lodge, Caspian running in front of her.
He stayed a moment on the porch, the storm behind him, dark, furious, lethal. Then he followed her into the warmth and light of the lodge.
Not feeling safe at all.