“Not that it matters,” Harrison said. “I’m just curious.”
She turned toward him. Even though he could barely make out her features in the faint light of the glow stick, he could tell she was irritated.
“Why do you care?” she snapped. “You’re married, I’m not.”
“Because I do care.”
“It’s time to stop caring.”
She turned away, looking into the darkness as Harrison assessed the sudden tension between them.
“We’re going to have to sort this out at some point,” he said.
“Sort what out?”
“Us. We need to find a new norm.”
“We don’t need to figure out anything. We both made our choices in life. It will never be like it was.”
“Chris, we can’t disregard twenty years of history. Pretend like we were never best friends, that we never dated, were never engaged—”
“We were never engaged.”
Harrison pulled back slightly. “You said yes, and the ring went on your finger.”
“I gave the ring back the next morning. There’s probably a twenty-four-hour rule somewhere.”
It was Harrison’s turn to become irritated; this wasn’t the first time she’d claimed they hadn’t been engaged. “Why is our engagement such a sensitive issue for you?”
“Because I follow through on things. When I say yes, I mean it. Unlike you.”
Harrison had trouble following her. “What do you mean, ‘unlike you’?”
“I asked if you would wait for me, and you said yes.”
“So that’s what this is all about? From the time I proposed in high school, I waited ten years, Chris. There was no indication you were interested in getting married, much less to me. You had your sights set on bigger fish.”
“I wasn’t chasing bigger fish. I was busy. I was working sixty-, seventy-hour weeks. I didn’t have time for a relationship, much less marriage. I had a checklist of things I wanted to accomplish before settling down.”
“It would’ve been nice if you had shared that with me.”
Christine didn’t respond, turning away again.
As Harrison tried to sort through where they stood, he realized the premise of her argument was flawed. “Why are you upset at me for saying yes and then changing my mind, when you did the same thing when I asked you to marry me the first time?”
“I never said yes.”
“You’re rewriting history now?”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Harrison’s frustration increased, but he knew it was pointless to argue. Once Christine got something in her head, she’d dig in like a bulldog playing tug-of-war. But he’d get in one last jab. He leaned toward her and softened his voice, whispering in her ear. “It was short, but I enjoyed our engagement.”
“We were never engaged.”
57
KRASNODAR KRAI, RUSSIA
There was a dull hiss in her ears as she awoke, lying on her side with her back against the cliff wall. As her vision cleared, she realized it was the sound of the unrelenting rain, which seemed to be coming down even harder in the early morning light. She pushed herself to a sitting position, noting someone had covered her with a SEAL camouflage jacket while she slept. A quick look around spotted Harrison without one; he was sitting beside Kalinin, talking with him in Russian. Harrison’s eyes caught hers for a moment, then he looked away as he continued his conversation with Kalinin.
Christine took a closer look around. Two SEALs were on watch at opposite ends of the cliff recess, which appeared to be the entrance to an abandoned trail along the cliff face, following the river. Maydwell and Rosenberry were weathering their wounds okay; both had good color in their faces and were talking quietly with two other SEALs. Christine pulled her water bottle from her backpack and took a sip. Senior Chief Stone saw her stirring and moved along the ledge, stopping beside her.
“Do you have food?” he asked.
She pulled the Russian rations from her backpack. “Not the tastiest,” she said.
“May I?” Stone asked, reaching toward the pouch.
Christine opened the package and offered him a piece of dried meat.
“That’s not bad,” he said. “You’ll have to wait until we return to Michigan for a decent steak, though.”
“Do we still plan to wait until tonight before heading to the coast?” she asked.
Stone nodded. “The area is infested with Russian soldiers. Our best bet is to stay put until nightfall, although this miserable weather would provide excellent cover. Even if they chose to fly helicopters in this mess, their visibility would be almost nothing, and their satellites are useless as well. But waiting until darkness, combined with the bad weather, is better.”
Chief Stone moved on, conferring with one of the SEALs on watch before checking with the other. Christine chewed a few pieces of meat, then rummaged through her backpack and selected a pouch of dried fruit. As she stared into the gray, dreary weather, her thoughts drifted to her conversation with Harrison last night. She had dropped her guard and revealed the one thing she wished she hadn’t.
When she had learned Harrison was engaged, she’d reacted indifferently on the phone, passing it off as—it’s your loss, not mine. However, the news had been devastating. She’d spent the rest of the weekend curled in a fetal position in bed, crying into her pillow.
He said he would wait.
The years passed and she married Dave Hendricks, their tumultuous marriage coming to an end ten years later. Christine had to admit she was partly to blame. Although she could reason her way through the most complex issues, she sometimes struggled to contain her emotions, and every once in a while, she’d say or do things she’d later regret.
Compared to some of the things she’d done, last night was a minor transgression. But she had finally revealed her true feelings — that she’d been devastated by Harrison’s engagement. She didn’t know why it was important he not know, but for some reason it was. It was a moot issue now.
She glanced at Harrison again. He was still talking with Kalinin and the two men seemed to be getting along. Christine wondered where their conversations went; whether Harrison was probing Kalinin for information about their relationship, or worse yet — giving him a data dump on her. Although she didn’t have any dark secrets, she was bothered by the thought that they might be talking about her. She decided to join them.
Christine approached Harrison, handing him his camouflage jacket.
“Morning, Chris,” he said. “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
“Not bad, considering the accommodations.” She sat down, the two men clearing a spot between them.
Kalinin noticed that Harrison had used a nickname for Christine. He asked the Navy SEAL, “Do you two know each other?”
“You could say that,” Harrison replied. “We were engaged.” Then he cracked a sly smile.
Christine’s anger ignited. Despite their conversation last night, Harrison had pointed out they’d been engaged, just to spite her. She punched him in the chest as hard as she could, narrowly missing the armor plate in his tactical vest. “Why do you always go there when someone asks about us? Why can’t you just say, ‘We’re friends’?”
“That’d be a stretch.”
Her eyes narrowed, then she draped her arm around Kalinin’s shoulders. “Yuri is my friend.”
“You should choose your friends more wisely. Look at where we are.”
She turned to Kalinin. “He’s being an ass. Ignore him.”
“Well,” Kalinin replied, “if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you two were married.” He glanced at Harrison and spoke again in Russian, and the SEAL laughed.