Over the Line (20 page)

Lee

“Where the fuck are you?”

I pull the phone away from my ear. Not a good sign that Rob is already this pissed before I’ve said a word.

“I’m, um . . . Are you home?” I glance across the bed at Oliver, twisted into the sheets with his head propped in his hands, flexing alternate pecs at me. “Not helping,” I mouth.

A shit-eating grin spreads across his face and my stomach does some flippy thing.

“You haven’t been answering your goddamn phone,” Rob growls as if I asked nothing. “Ulie said you’d gone school shopping for Sherm, that you said you’d be back before dinner. It’s eleven fucking o’clock, Lee. We thought you were dead.”

“Something came up. I’ll explain when I see you.”

“Which will be . . . ?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What the hell is going on?” he asks low into the silence that follows my statement.

“I’m with someone. I’m staying here tonight.”

For several beats of my racing heart, all I hear is his breath bellowing through the airwaves. “Tell Buchanan he’ll be dealing with me tomorrow,” he warns.

“We’ll talk when I see you.” There’s a shake in my voice that I can’t fully control. I hope he doesn’t hear it. “Will you be home tomorrow morning?”

“You damn well better believe I’ll be home. And if Buchanan’s a man, he’ll be showing his face here too.” He disconnects before I can get another word in.

“He thinks I’m with Wes,” I say when I lower the phone. “Wait till he finds out who I’m really with.”

“What’s with you and that Fed?”

I lift my eyes from the phone at the jealous current in Oliver’s tone. “Nothing . . . really.”

He cocks his head to the side and his eyes narrow. “Elaborate on
really
?”

I put my phone on the nightstand and lean against the headboard, bringing my knees up and hugging them to my chest. “I lied to you. I never slept with him on that first date. But when I thought you were dead I got drunk and . . . we came close. I was . . . numb, I guess. I needed to feel something.”

He grabs my ankle and drags me down the bed to where he lays. He rolls on top of me and his erection presses against my thigh, hot and hard. He quirks an eyebrow at me. “Do you feel something now?”

I wrap my legs around him and he presses inside me. “Uh-huh,” I answer on a breath as he stretches me.

He makes slow love to me, and I feel more than I ever have. Oliver is a human amplifier. Every sensation is bigger, every sound louder, every touch more intense when we’re together.

Afterward, we curl together and I hear his breath sink into the slow cadence of sleep. This is where I intend to spend every night for the rest of my life—which may be very short when Rob finds out the truth.

***

The Loveland County Courthouse is a two-story stucco building wedged between the fire department and the Quik Lube on the corner. When Oliver and I walk in hand in hand, I try to pretend the sweat slicking our palms is his.

He knows it’s not.

“We don’t have to do this, Cheetah,” he says, leaning close and talking low in my ear. “I want to spend every night I have left just like last night, but if you’re having second thoughts . . .”

I squeeze his hand tighter. “I’m not. I’m just dreading what comes next. How am I going to explain this to my family?”

He cradles my cheek in his palm and holds me in his gaze. “Just tell them the truth. I love you more than life and I’ll never let anything, including my family, hurt you.”

His words turn me to goo and I ooze into his arms. “This is why I love you.”

He kisses me, then guides me to the reception desk.

“Give me one guess,” the middle-aged receptionist says, beaming up at us from her seat. “You’re here for a marriage license.”

I smile. “You don’t miss much.”

“Down the hall and to your right, in the county clerk’s office,” she says, pointing the way.

We follow her directions and find a short line ahead of us. The guy currently at the desk is arguing with the guy behind the bulletproof glass that he should be allowed a hardship postponement for jury duty because his cat needs surgery. The guy’s not buying it.

Another window is opened and the two people ahead of Oliver and me are helped and gone while jury duty guy continues to plead his case.

“Can I help who’s next?” the woman in the other window says.

“We’re here to apply for a marriage license,” Oliver tells her as we approach her window.

“I need some form of ID for each of you and your ninety-three-dollar fee.”

As I’m digging for my license, Oliver flips his license and a credit card onto the counter.

“Nebraska,” she says, picking it up and looking it over. “You’ve come a long way for your bride.”

If she only knew.

“She was worth every mile,” he says, grinning at me.

I go a little gooier.

By the time I finally find my license, she’s already got the paperwork out.

“If you could both take a minute to fill this out,” she says pushing some papers through the slot, “I’ll get a copy of your IDs.”

I pull the papers through and hand Oliver the sheet for his information, then start to work on mine.

“Shit,” Oliver says after a minute, glaring down at his form.

I glance at it and he’s got “Oliver Anthony Silva” written in block letters across the NAME blank, and nothing else.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have no clue what my address is. I need my license back to fill this out.” He stabs at the STATE blank on the form like it’s a venomous spider that just won’t die. “I give them my father on a silver fucking platter and they send me to fucking Nebraska.”

“Not for long,” I say, plucking the pen out of his hand before he shreds the form.

The clerk is back a second later, slipping our licenses back under the glass. I hand my form through and take Oliver’s license and finish filling out his.

“Did you complete the Florida State pre-marital class?” she asks.

“Oh . . . no, we didn’t,” I say. “Is that a problem?”

She shakes her head. “It only means you have a three-day waiting period before the license will be valid.” She sets my form aside and flips a booklet out of a rack behind her. “This is the Florida Family Law Handbook. You need to sign that you’ve read it before I can process your application. If you want to take a few minutes and do it now, I’ll hold your paperwork.”

Oliver scowls as he shoves his paper through the slot and grabs the booklet. “Go ahead and run the credit card.”

The whole Nebraska thing seems to have killed his mood.

He flips the booklet open and I look over the front page. “Wow, they don’t have much faith in marriage, do they?”

The first sentence says, “You’re getting married—hopefully for the rest of your life,” and the whole rest of the eight pages is all about what happens when you get divorced.

“I’m likely to die before you get sick of me, so I think we’re good,” Oliver says, closing the booklet. He signs the box that says he read, then shifts the paper to me.

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” I grumble, signing the paper.

“All set?” the clerk asks, pushing a credit card receipt through the slot to Oliver.

I slip the booklet and the paper back to her.

“The handbook is yours to keep,” she says brightly, as if she’s doing us a huge favor.

“Oh yay,” I mutter, creasing it down the middle and shoving it into my bag.

“Any judge, notary, or clergyman can marry you. You need to give him this license,” she says, holding up a certificate with our fake names on it. “He’ll return it directly to us once the deed is done and it’s all signed, and we’ll log it in.”

“Can we schedule a civil service here?” Oliver asks.

“You can,” she answers. “It’s a thirty-dollar fee and we schedule on a first come, first served basis.”

“I thought we’d do it on the beach at home,” I interject. “You know . . . with my family?”

“You already know this isn’t going to fly with Rob,” Oliver reminds me, his expression still sour.

“I’m not doing this without him, Oliver. He’s my brother.”

“Let me see what our first available is,” the clerk says, pounding on her computer keyboard. “Sometimes it takes a while to get an appointment. That may help make your decision.” She squints at the screen. “Well . . . you appear to be in luck. With your three-day waiting period, we can schedule as early as Friday, and it looks like we had a cancellation at eleven that day.” She looks up at us. “Do you want it?”

“Yes,” Oliver says at the same time as I say, “No, thank you.”

The clerk looks us over as we stare each other down. “You are aware that you’d need to supply two witnesses even if you do chose to marry here.”

“Let’s just schedule it, Cheetah. If we talk to Rob and it goes better than I anticipate, we can call this afternoon and cancel it. If not”—he shrugs—“then fuck Rob. Fuck all of it. We do it here, Friday.”

I look at the clerk, who’s looking back at me, waiting for an answer. “Fine.”

“Excellent.” She types our names into the computer. “We’ll charge you when you come in, and here’s your license.”

She pushes our marriage license through the slot and I take it and look it over.

Lee Davidson is marrying Oliver Silva. Two people who don’t even exist. My heart sinks, seeing the names in writing on an official document. It all somehow feels like a farce—like we’re scamming the whole world, God, and maybe even ourselves. Disappointment drags me down like an anchor and now it’s
my
buzz that’s fading.

We get in Oliver’s car and head back to the Target in Port Charlotte for my car. The marriage license sits in my lap, feeling heavier than it should for something that’s basically fake. “Maybe this is a mistake,” I tell the trees outside the passenger window, because I can’t look at Oliver. “Maybe none of us are allowed to have anything real anymore.”

He pulls to the shoulder so abruptly that my seatbelt locks. I spin to face him, eyes wide.

“You are the only real thing I have left.” His green eyes darken and his gaze cuts to the heart of me. “I’ve given up all the rest so I could have you. So don’t tell me this isn’t
real
, Lee. Nothing else is. Only this.”

I didn’t realize I was near tears until a fat, round one slips over my lashes and plops heavily onto the marriage license in my lap.

He doesn’t move to comfort me. We sit, crushed under the weight of his words for what feels like hours.

“I’m sorry,” I finally whisper.

He snatches the license out of my lap and waves it at me. “For this?”

I shake my head. “For getting so bogged down in the fake that I lost the real.” I slip the license out of his fingers. “I’m sorry for feeling like this was less because it’s not our real names on it.” I lean in slowly, but he sits ridged. “I’m sorry I’m not your wife already,” I whisper against his stubbled cheek.

All at once, the ice damn melts. He grabs my face between his hands and kisses me with all he is. “If the fucking state of Florida is going to make us wait three days to make this legal, then so be it, but nothing else is going to slow me down. I don’t give a fuck about Rob or anyone else. I am marrying you on Friday.”

I look down at the license as he pulls back onto the road. “Why did you pick Silva?”

He sucks the corner of his lower lips between his teeth in a self-conscious gesture that I never remember seeing before. “I thought it was something I could give back to you—something that mattered.” He shrugs. “Maybe a little piece of your mother.”

“This is why I love you,” I say again, settling into his side and resting my head on his shoulder.

***

We pick up my car and I pull up the driveway ahead of Oliver just before noon. Rob is seated on the porch, waiting. I’m not even out of the car before I see the lines etched in his face. He stands and paces to the top of the front steps.

I swing my door open to intercept Rob before Oliver’s even cut his engine. “Rob, you need to stay calm so we can talk about this.”

But then Oliver steps out.

Rob’s eyes lock on him in a death beam and his mouth falls open. “What the fuck?”

I rush toward Rob as he charges down the stairs. “Stop!” I say, planting a hand on his chest.

“Where did he come from?”

“It’s a long story, Rob, but—”

“This is who you were with?” he asks, glaring down at me.

The front door opens and Ulie rushes out. “What’s going—” Her feet and voice both stall when she sees Oliver.

Grant and Sherm spill out behind her.

“Holy fuck,” Grant mutters. “Oliver Savoca, back from the dead. And here I thought zombies were only in the fucking movies.”

“Let’s just all sit down and talk about this,” I say, trying to defuse the atomic bomb that’s seconds from blowing my whole life into oblivion.

But then Ulie steps forward, staring at my hand. “Is that . . . ?” She trails off, her eyes wide.

I thought about taking Oliver’s ring off, but then decided it might help our cause with Rob if he knew we were serious. “It’s an engagement ring,” I say, holding my hand up. “Oliver and I are getting married.”

There’s general chaos and I step in front of Oliver as everyone rushes us, all with something to say. It’s Rob who gets my attention when he shoves me out of the way and lunges for Oliver.

“What’s your game, Savoca?” he says, shoving him.

I push in between them, plowing Rob back with both hands on his meaty chest. “I said stop, Rob!”

“There’s no game,” Oliver answers from behind me. “A dead man doesn’t have time for that shit. I need to focus on what matters with whatever time I have left.”

“He’s working with the Feds, Rob,” I say. “He’s in WITSEC.”

Rob splits a glance between Oliver and me. “What’s she talking about?”

“It’s true,” Oliver says, straightening his shirt. “I gave them the smoking gun. My father won’t be getting out in eight years. There might be some collateral damage in the Delgado camp.” He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Nothing I could do about that, but sorry anyway.”

Rob’s gaze fills with disdain. “You’re a fucking
rat
?” he spits.

Oliver holds his ground. “It was the only way.”