Reaching down to pluck a perfectly intact seashell from between the rocks, he flips it between his fingers. “Now what?”
I shrug. “Now I call my cousin and tell him I want to keep it.” I sigh. “It’s what Ned would want. It’s what I want.” Oddly enough, saying the words out loud for the first time brings me a sense of peace.
“Because she was right, wasn’t she? It’s an anchor.”
I glance up to see that distant worry in his eyes. Esmeralda’s words are still lingering in his mind, too.
“One of them.”
His chest lifts with a deep breath, and I’m hit with a wave of panic that something between us has changed since yesterday, that he’s grown bored with me overnight. That he’s decided he doesn’t want to do this, after all.
I hate this insecurity swirling inside my head and my heart. I’m not used to feeling it; I’ve managed to avoid it all this time by not committing to people. And now, here I am, finally ready to commit, and I’m already losing my cool.
“She was right. About my ghost,” he says quietly, his gaze holding to the ocean’s water line.
I sigh with relief. This isn’t about us at all. “What do you mean?”
He clears his throat, as if voicing the next words is going to be hard. “We used to go on these regular raids through Marjah, routing out insurgents. There were a lot. I can’t tell you how many rounds of ammunition I fired in my time over there. Anyway, there was this one day on my second tour, we had a tip on someone and I was out with my team, hunting them down. We found ourselves driving into this long corridor in our Humvee. And there was this little girl running at us, with these big blue eyes and dark hair, and wearing a backpack. The Taliban were known for using children in these kinds of attacks. Where we were, with buildings on either side, we’d be leveled by an explosion. She was so little, six or seven. She was scared, I could see it in her eyes.”
I’m trying to picture this but I’m struggling, partly because I don’t want to. I’ve always rolled my eyes at Dakota when she talks about auras, but right now the very air around Sebastian has chilled. I’m shivering.
He heaves a sigh. “We yelled at her to stop, but she kept coming. I was the only one who had the clear line of sight. So I took it. She went quickly. We scouted the area for insurgents before we closed in to secure the backpack. There was a blanket, a bottle of water, and naan wrapped in cloth.” I look over to see his profile, an image of sorrow, as his voice grows thick. “She wasn’t coming to kill us. We found out later that she had no home, no parents. She was running to us for help.”
My chest begins to throb. “But . . . that wasn’t your fault.” Even as I say it, I understand that wouldn’t mean anything to the man who pulled the trigger. To a man with Sebastian’s discipline and code of honor. Something like that must have destroyed him.
He says nothing, peering down at his boots.
“So what happened?”
“It got swept under the rug as a wartime casualty and everybody moved on.” He pauses. Everybody but him, I’m guessing. “The next time a kid darted out from behind a car at our outfit, I froze. Even when my commanding officer yelled the order to fire, even when I saw the IED in his hand, I couldn’t pull the trigger. He lobbed it at the Humvee in front of us and blew them up.”
“The one your friends were in?”
“They were all my friends,” Sebastian explains quietly. “But, yeah. That’s the one.”
This story is getting worse and worse.
Sebastian has an army of ghosts trailing him.
I reach over to take his hand and squeeze it. He turns my fingers in his palm, lightly tracing the splotches of color with his free hand.
“I took some shrapnel to the back. Kirkpatrick, my commander at the time and a fucking dick wad, wrote me up for insubordination. When I filed my papers to leave the navy, I ended up with an ‘Other than Honorable’ discharge.”
“What does that mean?”
His lips twist in a bitter smile. “It depends who you ask. For someone like you, who doesn’t know anything about the navy, it doesn’t mean much at all. For someone like my father, who retired as a highly decorated navy captain, it’s almost as bad as if I were some street thug, murdering innocent human beings.” He pauses. “It means that it can be hard to get a job, and a lot of veteran benefits don’t apply to me, even with my years of service.”
“But you did get a job.”
His lips twist in thought. “Yeah. Through a friend.”
“Well, then . . . screw that less than honorable discharge, because you’re doing what you’re good at anyway. Right?”
He studies the sand for a moment. “Right.”
No wonder he doesn’t like talking about the navy. I wouldn’t either if those memories were tied to it. And it sounds like he doesn’t have anyone in his corner, now that he’s trying to move on. “Are you and your parents close?”
“Not really.” He hesitates. “But I haven’t made much of an effort, to be honest. I haven’t made an effort with anyone.”
“Where are they now?”
“Still in Potrero Hill.”
I frown. “Don’t you live in Potrero, too?”
A slight frown touches his forehead. “Right.”
So they’re probably minutes away from each other? While I’m not necessarily one to push family bonding, after watching Ian miss out on making amends with his father, I don’t want to see it happen again. “Thanksgiving is in a couple of days. Maybe it’s time to make an effort?”
“Maybe.”
Silence hangs over us as we both watch the waves crash in.
I finally reach up to smooth my hand over his back in a soothing way. Wanting to take some of his agony away, to make him feel less alone. “So . . . I guess creepy Esmeralda was right about a lot of things.”
“Fuck, was she ever creepy,” he mutters, and we share a laugh. Sebastian pauses to toss the seashell into the water. “These anchors she talked about . . .” He shoots a sideways glance my way.
“What about them?”
“Well, they sound like they involve some commitments, and I remember Ivy Lee telling me that she didn’t make commitments.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Has that changed?”
It’s endearing, watching Sebastian—a man who’s normally so controlled and in charge—hesitantly probe in a way that he wouldn’t have before.
How has he not figured out that everything has changed for me, and it’s all because of him?
I answer by throwing a leg over his thighs to straddle him, my back to the ocean. Because I’d rather be looking at this man anyway. “Maybe.”
His eyes scan my face, settling on my lips, and I expect that he’s going to lean in and kiss me. But he suddenly scoops me up in his arms and trudges easily through the thick mounds of sand toward his car. I squeal like the kind of girls I mock.
“We should get home. Get some sleep.” His deep voice hums through my body, because I know we won’t be going to sleep immediately.
“When is your plumbing going to be fixed?” I’m desperate to see Sebastian’s home. To be surrounded by his things. To invade his life like he’s invaded mine.
“Don’t know yet. Soon.”
I groan. “Are you sure you don’t have a wife there?” That would be just my fucking luck. I hate that I asked, but it’s beginning to drive me nuts.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Girlfriend?”
“None.”
“Boyfriend?”
He chuckles. “Trust me, after last night’s dinner, I’d rather be bringing you to my place than risk meeting another one of Dakota’s friends.” We reach the car and he sets me down, opening the door for me.
I climb in and watch him as he rounds the front, his raptor gaze scanning our surroundings.
When Sebastian told me we were going to his parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner, I remember being happy that he actually listened to me, and that this was a big step for him. I completely dismissed the reality that Sebastian’s parents would be meeting me.