Heaven and Hell (58 page)

Luci was sitting in the sand, knees cocked,
elbows to knees, jaw in hands, eyes to the water, the waves rolling
toward the shore licking her ankles.

I kept going flat out.

I was across the beach and five feet away
from her when her head jerked to me as her body jumped, she looked
up and her mouth dropped open.

Then she asked, “Kia,
cara mia,
what
on earth are you doing here?” Her gazed moved down to my middle
then back up and she finished, “In your robe?”

I stopped abruptly, sucked in breath and
told her, “You’ve been gone for three hours. Everyone is worried
sick.”

She blinked up at me and queried, “Has it
been three hours?”

“Yes, Luci!” I cried. “Celeste is
freaking out.
We all are.”

Her eyes moved beyond me and her brows drew
together. “Is that Skip?”

“Yes, it’s Skip. He was at the house being
cantankerous when Celeste showed
freaking out.
”

“Woman! What the hell!” Skip yelled when he
arrived.

She gracefully stood saying, “I’m so sorry,
I lost track of time.”

“For three hours?” I asked and she looked
back at me.

“I…” she looked to the ocean then her eyes
came again to me. “Yes,” she whispered. “For three hours.”

I studied her face, I did not at all like
what I saw so I said, “Skip, give us a minute.”

“Hell with that, I –”

My eyes sliced to him and I ordered firmly,
“Skip, give us
a minute.
”

Skip scowled at me. Then he scowled at Luci.
Then he turned and stomped down the beach toward the trail Hap was
running down with Celeste following him some distance behind.

I turned back to Luci and got closer. “Are
you okay?”

Her head tilted to the side, her mouth
curled into a small smile but her face suffused with sorrow. The
jig was up, the shutters thrown open. No hiding. All of it there
for me to see.

And it hurt to witness.

She whispered her answer, “No.”

“Luci,” I whispered back, moving even
closer, my hand reaching out and taking hers.

Her fingers curled tight on mine but she
looked to the sea and kept whispering. “I remember. I remember what
it was like to fall in love.”

I kept silent but my heart squeezed because
there it was. Watching Sam and I was torture for our Luci.

“Like it was yesterday,” she went on softly.
“Funny how you can fall so hard but it doesn’t hurt. You’d do it
again. You’d do it again and again and again. You’d do it
forever.”

I held her hand and held my peace.

“I thought we had forever,” she whispered to
the sea.

I swallowed back tears and kept my focus on
Luci.

She kept talking quietly. “We used to make
love here. In the sand.”

Oh God.

God, God,
God.

“At night, Travis would wake me up and we’d
walk in the moonlight holding hands. No words. Just holding hands.
He’d bring me here and make love to me in the sand, under the
stars. Then he’d hold me and we’d whisper to each other about
nothing. Then we’d walk back, silent, holding hands. I never slept
so well. Those times, after we got home, I slept so well, Kia, safe
in the arms of the man who loved me like that. Loved me so much he
wanted nothing more than to walk holding hands in the moonlight to
beauty, create beauty with me, then take me home and hold me while
I slept.”

I squeezed her hand, inched closer and
whispered, “Honey.”

Her eyes came to me and her sultry, gorgeous
voice was dead when she said, “I’m never going to have that
again.”

“Oh, Luci, sweetie, you don’t know.”

“Not with Travis.”

Well, she was right about that.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered because,
honestly, there was nothing else to say and seriously, I was.

“I am too,” she whispered back, her eyes
locked on mine and I watched them get bright as I watched her lip
start to quiver, mine reciprocated and she kept whispering. “I am
too. I am very,
very
sorry, Kia.”

I saw it and moved right into it when it
happened. The sob tearing out of her throat, I wrapped my arms
around her and she shoved her face in my neck, her body jerking
against mine, wracked with tears.

I held her close, stroked her hair and said
not a word as her tears wet my skin, so many of them they started
to slide down my chest and wet my robe. Hearing them, feeling them,
I struggled holding back my own. But she needed strength and
understanding and I needed to give it to her.

Still, I couldn’t stop it, one escaped to
slide down my cheek.

“I want that back,” she whispered against my
neck.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, you can’t have it
back,” I told her gently.

“I know. I know I can’t have it back with
Travis. But I want it back.”

I wasn’t following.

She explained, pushing closer, shoving her
face deeper in my neck, she said so quietly I barely heard her over
the rushing waves, “I have to let Travis go so I can find it
again.”

I closed my eyes and held her tighter.

There it was.
Thank you, God,
there
it was.

She got there herself.

Thank. You.
God.

“Yes, Luci, honey, that’s what you need to
do,” I whispered.

She nodded but said no more nor did she
move.

Not until I felt a presence right before I
felt a hand on the small of my back. I twisted my neck and tipped
back my head to see Sam standing there. I nodded to him then
shifted Luci into his arms. She looked up at him in surprise then
her face crumbled again and she did a face plant in his shirt.
Sam’s arms went visibly tighter.

I leaned in and kissed the side of her head.
Then I reached up and briefly cupped Sam’s jaw. I smiled sadly into
his intense eyes then dropped my hand and moved away.

I walked down the beach, the wind beating my
insanely expensive robe against my body. Celeste, Hap, Maris and
Skip were standing at the trailhead. I stopped at their huddle.

“She’s worked it through on her own,” I
announced. “She’s letting him go.”

Hap closed his eyes and dropped his head.
Maris pressed her lips together and turned her face away. Celeste
gave me a melancholy smile.

Skip looked me in the eyes and announced,
“You’ll do.”

Burned in My Brain

It was night, dark and Memphis and I were
hanging on the deck. Memphis on my lap, breathing easy. Me in a
chair sipping an Amaretto.

Luci’s realization changed our plans for the
day. Sam took her back to her house and stayed with her. Skip went
wherever Skip had to go. Hap went back to the base. Celeste and I
drove Maris to the airport. Then we spent the rest of the day
together.

When it got late and there was still no Sam,
Celeste got in Luci’s Corvette and went to her house. Fifteen
minutes later, Celeste texted me with, “All is well. They’re
talking on the deck. Sam says he’ll be home soon.”

So I got my dog and my Amaretto with a cube
of ice, hit Sam’s deck, settled in and waited for my man to come
home.

Sitting with only Memphis for company, it
didn’t take long for me to come to some realizations myself. The
first being, sitting alone on the deck in the night, the house
empty behind me, watching the moonlight on the waves, that since I
met Sam, I had very little of this. Solitude. Time to think. Time
to be with me.

And once I realized that I realized that was
by Sam’s design. Except for him offering to give me space the next
night after the first time we had sex, that offer was never
repeated. In fact, neither Maris nor Sam suggested they have alone
time before she went home. That was my idea.

Dad had said it but I didn’t process it then
and I didn’t understand it now.

Sam and I were inseparable.

I did not question falling in love with him
because he was Sam.

And I did not question my decision earlier
that day to hook my star to his, to restart my life after Cooter,
however that came about, with Sam.

And I no longer questioned that Sam would
want to hook his star to mine. We got along great (when we weren’t
fighting). He was into me. He thought I was beautiful. He liked the
way I dressed. We had great sex. I made him laugh. He made me
laugh. His friends and Mom liked me. My friends and family liked
him.

What I questioned was Sam announcing to
everyone we were moving in together nearly upon waking the day
after he made that mistaken assumption. It was almost if, in doing
so, he was building a barricade I would find it difficult to break
through if I decided to go back.

He wasn’t trapping me, I had free will, my
life was my own, but he was throwing up obstacles, making it
difficult, tying me to him.

And I didn’t get this.

Sam Cooper
and
Sampson Cooper didn’t
need to do that with any woman. There was a desperation to it that
alarmed me.

A desperation that might come from a man who
lost a brother who was a brother bigger than blood then for over a
year dealing with that man’s wife and seeing firsthand the
devastating loss to a loved one left behind.

No.

That wasn’t all.

Seeing it at the same time
feeling
it
for Luci wasn’t the only one who lost Gordo.

And thus I knew Sam loved me as in
loved
me for learning about loss by watching it and feeling
it, he wasn’t taking any chances, he wasn’t wasting any time.

This worried me. I didn’t want him to feel
this loss. I didn’t want him to feel this desperation. I didn’t
want what we had to grow under that cloud. No one could tell the
future and we might only have another day together or we might have
fifty years. But even if we had only one day, I didn’t want Sam
living it under a cloud.

But I had no earthly idea how to talk to him
because this kind of thing, Sam did not share with me.

On this thought, Memphis’s head came up, it
jerked to the house and I heard Sam’s truck growling into the drive
then the gate swinging closed. Then I listened to the garage door
going up. Memphis jumped down and her claws clicked on the deck as
she ran to the porch door to wait for Sam to arrive.

Even with my heavy thoughts, this made me
smile. My baby liked my man. Not a surprise. But my man liked my
baby.

And that made life all the more sweet.

I heard a yap, twisted in my chair and
watched Sam stride through the house I’d left lit softly with a few
lamps. He hit the deck, scooped up a bouncing, happy Memphis on the
go and came to me.

I tipped my head back, smiling gently at him
and waited for his approach and kiss.

He didn’t give it to me. On the outside, he
rounded the chair beside mine and folded into it, Memphis on his
lap. She bounced, trying to lick his face and give him her brand of
welcome home.

“Settle, Memphis,” Sam ordered firmly but
not sharply.

Memphis, somewhat surprisingly, did as she
was told.

She was immediately rewarded when Sam’s
fingers massaged her fur at her neck and his eyes went to the
sea.

I was a little troubled he had not greeted
me but I let it go and asked softly, “You okay?”

“Hope to Christ this is a day I will not
live again,” Sam answered immediately.

That didn’t sound good.

“How’s Luci?” I ventured.

“Lots of crying, hangin’ around while she
talked to her folks, more crying and lots of listening to her talk
about Gordo.”

“She’s processing it,” I deduced.

“She’s processin’ the shit outta it. She
crammed a year of mourning into a day. She’s all over fuckin’
processing it.”

I pressed my lips together trying to read
his mood and tone. It wasn’t frustrated but it was. He sounded
tired. He sounded impatient and over it. The first and the last
surprised me.

“Is she coming to any conclusions?” I
asked.

“Sellin’ her house, movin’ back to Italy.
It’s all about Gordo here. She’s got friends but her life here is
her life with him and that’s gone. She’ll come back and visit but
family and home is not here. Family and home is Italy. She’s
puttin’ the house on the market tomorrow.”

Whoa.

“Shouldn’t she wait? Think about it awhile?
This is a fragile juncture and moving on sudden decisions might not
be good,” I suggested and at that, Sam’s head turned to me.

“Sudden?”

“Well, yes. Sudden as in, coming to terms
with Gordo dying one day and putting their house on the market the
next.”

“Nothing sudden about this shit, Kia. He’s
been dead awhile. It’s about fuckin’ time she moved on. She’s
movin’ on.”

I stared at him and said nothing. This was
because I didn’t have to try to read his mood and tone. He was
frustrated, tired, impatient and over it.

I was shocked.

That was not Sam.

“Wiped,” he muttered, got up and moved
Memphis to my lap. Then, without touching me, no kiss, not even
meeting my eyes, he went on, “Hittin’ it. Got shit to do early so
may be gone when you get up. Be back late afternoon, early evening.
You don’t feel like cookin’, text me and on my way home, I’ll pick
up fried clam platters from Skippy’s. Not as good as crab
sandwiches, still can’t be beat.”

Then, without another word, a goodnight kiss
or even a gesture, he walked into the house as I watched in stunned
silence.

Once he disappeared up the stairs, I twisted
back to forward in my seat and looked down at Memphis who was still
looking beyond me to the door. She felt my eyes, her eyes came to
me and she yapped.

“Yes, baby, that was weird.”

She yapped again and I nodded.

“I didn’t like it either.”

She whined a little then settled in my
lap.

I pressed my lips together, my mind harking
back from now to the first night Sam and I slept together.