Beyond the Past (12 page)

Chapter 29

“Let’s get you to bed,” Lucas said, bringing Gabby out of her reverie.

He got to his feet and helped her to a sitting position. He gazed down at her, and she thought she detected a little bit of guilt on his face.

Slowly, she stood up. Sexual activity had been the last thing on her mind when she awoke, but being near him had changed that. She missed her husband, and although her body was in physical pain, it ached for his touch. Pulling the sweatshirt over her head, she winced, exhaustion rolling over her. Maybe she did need to go back to bed.

“You should be resting, not letting me do naughty things to you,” he murmured, helping her get her arm in her sweatshirt.

She grinned. “What can I say? You make me horny.”

He chuckled. “And you do the same for me, honey, but you need to get your priorities straight.”

She tried to bend down to get her sweatpants, but he beat her to it.

“Sit down,” he said.

She did as told, and he kneeled before her. He held up the pants so she could slip her legs in. She probably should have found out exactly where he’d been for the past six months and what he’d been doing before jumping him.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “Did they take you? If so, why?”

Lucas sighed and stood. He reached for her hand and pulled her up, then tied her sweats. “I’ll tell you everything later, okay?” He brushed a thumb over her cheekbone.

“I’d like to know now.”

He shook his head. “Later, Gabby. You should be resting. Your body has been through a lot, and it needs time to heal.”

She yawned, not quite ready to give in that quickly. “It’s my turn to talk, Lucas.” She winced at the pain in her side. Having an orgasm hadn’t been a very good idea, but she’d needed to sate her desire for Lucas, to capture some of what they’d once had. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but now, as the discomfort radiated throughout her body and her eyes grew heavy from the medication, she’d have to reconsider that stunt again in the near future.

She allowed him to lead her down the hallway to her bedroom. As she slipped beneath the quilt, her eyes grew heavier.

“I’m going to go out for a while, but I’ll be back,” he murmured as he gently caressed the side of her face.

“Where are you going?”

From what she remembered from last night and what she’d noticed out the window, it wasn’t like he could run down to the store for a six pack of beer.

“I’m going to work out,” he answered.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“I’m going for a run, and then I’ll do some pull-ups on a tree branch, and hopefully, I won’t run into a bear.”

“Don’t even joke about that, Lucas.”

He chuckled and gently kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Do you promise, Lucas?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You also promised me that you would never leave me again, and you did. I don’t know the exact details of what happened, if you were taken from me or you walked out on your own accord, but you disappeared.”

He nodded. “I did, and I promise you, I’ll tell you about it later today, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

As the door closed, Gabby allowed her lids to fall. A tear slipped out as she remembered how her world had been turned upside down in a whirlwind of confusion, anxiety, stress, depression, and heartache. She thought of everything she’d lost when Lucas disappeared, but quickly pushed those thoughts aside.

If he had left her instead of being taken from her, she didn’t know if she could ever trust him again.

Chapter 30

Lucas returned from his run, his whole body aching and burning. His breathing came in short spurts, but overall, he physically felt good. His emotions, however, told a different story. He never should have gotten intimate again with Gabby, at least not before they’d hashed everything out.

What had gotten into that girl? She always wanted to have her say, or in this case, get her questions answered. Never before had she allowed him to stonewall her.

Of course, pleasuring Gabby had been spectacular—it always had been. Yet, he couldn’t help but wonder if her feelings mirrored his and if she had been looking for a way to fill the loneliness and emptiness she felt inside.

As he walked along the driveway to the house, the sun cast a glare off the tranquil pond. Could there be trout in there? Would any of them like to sacrifice their lives so Gabby and he could have a tasty meal?

Glancing up at the cabin, he noticed her sitting on the porch, wrapped up in the blanket from the couch. She waved, and he checked his watch, surprised he’d been gone over two hours.

“Hey,” she said as he climbed the stairs. Her hair looked a little damp, her cheeks pink.

“Hi, honey,” he said, his legs burning as he climbed the three stairs to the porch. “Did you shower?”

She nodded, and he wished she’d waited for him to get back. What if her sides had started hurting and she’d fallen? She’d taken a couple good hits to the head, as well. What if she became dizzy? Then he remembered a doctor had checked her out and had found nothing wrong with her but bumps and bruises. However, doctors weren’t always right.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

He sat down next to her and wiped the sweat from his brow. “See that mountain over there?” He pointed straight ahead.

She nodded.

“Usually, I run about half-way up, then do some pull-ups on a tree. Today, I went about three-quarters of the way up and found a different tree to abuse.”

She smiled. The purple welt on the side of her face looked so much more pronounced in the stark sunlight.

“Are you ready to talk to me?” she asked, staring out over the pond, to the mountain he’d just come from. “And I think you better say yes.”

Taking a deep breath, he tried think of another way to stonewall her, but none came. Instead, he steeled himself. “I guess so.”

“So? Where were you? What happened to you?”

He looked at the majestic beauty before him and didn’t see a way to pussy-foot around the subject. He’d never been good at padding his words, or giving them a soft landing on others’ ears. He tended to be blunt, saying it like it was, or how he saw it. However, he didn’t go for the jugular, either. He’d decided on his run that he would ease into the explanation, starting with when he got back from Guatemala.

Chapter 31

He sat back in the chair next to her. “How do you think things were when I got back from Guatemala?”

“You were messed up,” she answered without hesitation, and she’d been kind with her words.

“Yeah, I was.”

“I didn’t understand why,” she added, glad he agreed with her assessment, and thankful her initial lightheadedness from the medication had worn off during her nap. She wanted to be coherent for this conversation. “You’d been honorably discharged, and they’d relocated us.”

“Yes, they did, but would it surprise you if I told you I didn’t want to be discharged?”

She glanced over at him. “What does that mean?”

“That means they discharged me without reason.”

“Why?”

Lucas let out a long sigh. “My guess is it’s based on what happened in Guatemala.”

“What was that?”

He told her of the explosion, the blindness, the searing pain. “When I woke up, I’d apparently been asleep for three days.”

She stared out into the beautiful vastness, her stomach coiling. Why hadn’t she known about any of this?

“They told me that you needed to be hospitalized as a precaution when you came back from the jungle so that they could test you for diseases. Are you telling me that wasn’t true?”

He shook his head. “No. That’s what they told me to say, but that’s not what happened.”

She knew she stood on the precipice of a large secret, something that was going to explain everything that went wrong in their marriage after they released him from the hospital. “So, what happened?” she asked, wanting to know, but at the same time, unsure she wished to hear the truth.

“The accident left me with certain … abilities.”

Oh, no. Lucas sounded like he had lost his mind and she played a part in a superhero movie. “And what are those abilities?” She suddenly felt like Lois Lane.

“I have visions, visions of people dying,” he said, not meeting her gaze.

She wanted to laugh, but instead, tears stung her eyes. Had her husband gone crazy?

“They started almost immediately after I woke up. When they begin, it’s like my world disappears and I’m sucked through some type of vortex into someone else’s reality. Like I’m standing in front of them, watching them die.”

The tears spilled over and tracked down her cheeks. “Oh, Lucas … “

“I know you think I’ve lost my mind, but I haven’t, Gabby. Something happened in that jungle that affected my unit.”

She thought of Garrett, who she’d just seen yesterday. He seemed perfectly normal.

“I want to show you something,” Lucas said, going into the house.

She stared out at the beautiful scenery in front of her, concern for her husband rippling through her. He needed mental help, and he certainly wasn’t going to get it out in the middle of nowhere.

He came back out and sat down again, carrying the beat-up notebook. He opened it and handed it to her. “After a while, I realized that the visions I was seeing were actually happening—they were real people who were dying. I started writing down what I saw.”

She stared at the notebook Lucas had carried around with him, the one he never let out of sight. How many hours had she watched him write in it?

She looked at the notes detailing people being murdered, run over by a cars, heart attacks . . . it seemed there didn’t exist a way to die not catalogued in there.

“How do you know these things happened, Lucas?”

“Because of this.” He flipped to the beginning of the notebook. “I saw this guy gunned down in front of a liquor store in downtown Portland. A couple days later, I watched it on the news. That’s when I started keeping track of the visions, taking notes on the details.”

She stared at him as he talked. He believed everything he said, and he wanted her to believe him, as well. How could she trust in something that sounded so far-fetched, something she couldn’t verify?

It was impossible, and she needed to go on faith—faith that her husband hadn’t lost his mind and told her nothing but the truth.

“We were all affected by that explosion in Guatemala,” he said.

“How? I just saw Garrett yesterday, and he looked fine.”

Lucas let out a long sigh. “He can change into a bear.”

Gabby shut her eyes. No, she simply couldn’t muster enough faith to believe that.

“And Garrett told me Brody has this deep connection to the sea.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “Lucas, you need to get some help.”

He stood and ran his hand through his hair. “No, I don’t. I’m sane, Gabby. Do you remember those men that showed up at the house, and I told you that they were just military guys checking up on me to make sure that I was feeling okay after the deployment?”

She nodded.

“They
were
checking up on me, but they threatened my life and yours if I were to ever tell you or anyone about any of this. That guy in the wheelchair, Joe? He says the government did this to us. We’re some type of experiment, like Agent Orange or the Tuskegee Syphilis Studies.”

“Lucas—“

“Gabby, you have to believe me,” he interrupted, getting down on his knees in front of her. “Please.”

What would it take for her to believe him? She didn’t know. Right now, she leaned to the side of Lucas needing some serious mental therapy.

“I knew our marriage was falling apart, and I knew I was the cause of it,” he whispered. “I also knew I had to protect you from the military and the government, and from myself.”

“What do you mean, protect me from you?”

“I didn’t know what these visions meant. I just knew I wasn’t the same man you married. Something had fundamentally changed within me, and it scared me. The visits from the military scared me. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You left, didn’t you?” she whispered.

He sighed. “I did it to protect you, Gabby.”

She nodded and glanced anew at her husband looking at her as if begging her to understand his thinking.

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” she asked. She wanted to believe him, but she needed physical proof.

“Because the people who used to come and visit me told me they would kill you if I did tell you. They told me if we tried to run, they would find us and kill us. I didn’t want you near any of that, and I thought if I left, they’d leave you alone.”

A surge of anger flooded her system as she stared into his gray eyes. “You leaving me again was really hard, Lucas.”

“I know. It was hard for me, as well.”

“Where did you go?”

“I came to Reno. I lived on the streets.”

That explained his weight loss. Lucas loved food, loved to eat. Being homeless didn’t exactly allow for three square, nutritious meals a day.

“How did you get here? To this cabin?” she asked.

“Garrett found me. He’s working for Joe, and they said they could use me, that they could give me my life back.”

She pursed her lips, unsure if she wanted to know the answer to her next question. “Use you doing what?”

“Joe runs an exclusive protection agency, I guess you could call it. He says he wants me to work for him. Brody and Garrett already do.”

All of this seemed so far-fetched. A protection agency? Please.

“So, this Joe guy wants to give you a new life working for him. Have you given any consideration to whether I’m going to be part of this new life?”

He didn’t say anything, but stood and then sat down next to her. She didn’t need to hear the words; his actions gave her all the information she needed.

“I guess not,” she said, standing.

“I love you, Gabby.” He grabbed her hand. “I always have. I want you in my life, but I decided it was safer for you if you weren’t.”

She shook her head. “You would think that after all this time, you’d get it through your thick skull that I’m the one who decides what’s best for me, not you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Lucas, you leaving me again just about killed me. One day you were there; the next, you weren’t. I didn’t know if you were dead in a ditch, or if you’d wandered off into the forest and shot yourself. The stress of the finances, your disappearance . . . all of it, Lucas, took a huge toll on me.”

He nodded, his thumb tracing over her knuckles. “I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t!” she yelled, pulling her hand away. “I needed you, Lucas, and you left! My only comfort was discovering that I’d finally gotten pregnant! When you disappeared, I still had a small piece of you, something to hope for, something to hold on to!”

Gabby had been shocked when she’d discovered the pregnancy. She recalled standing in the bathroom, staring at the three tests she had taken lined up on the sink, all showing positive. Her gut had twisted and she’d turned, vomiting in the toilet. Later that night, she’d curled up in bed, her hand resting on her stomach as a lone tear tracked down her cheek. Despite her sadness at his disappearance, she found solace that she still had a little bit of Lucas with her.

He glanced at her stomach, and then back up at her, his eyes wide.

“It’s gone, Lucas,” she whispered. “I lost it at three months. The doctors said the stress was too much.”

“Gabby, I—“

“Don’t say another word, Lucas. I don’t know what happened to you in Guatemala, but you’re right. You didn’t come back the same person. You need some help and should probably be on some sort of medication.”

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and his head in his palms. “What do I need to do to convince you?”

Gabby stared at her husband, and had no ideas. Her anger still simmered at the whole situation, and she grew tired again. Unable to contain the sarcasm in her voice, she said, “I don’t know, Lucas. Since I can’t verify your visions, call Garrett and tell him I want to see his furry bear ass.”

She slammed the door and made her way to her room, wanting to put as much distance between her and Lucas as possible.