Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (22 page)

She looks mortified and darts into the bathroom, still naked. I just like looking at her, watching her move. I wait for her on the bed while she showers.

This time she doesn’t bother closing the door. Water beads on the small of her back and droplets run over the round fullness of her ass and down her perfect thighs as she brushes out and dries her hair. She sees me watching and leans over the sink, arching her back. Her ass juts out and she shows me a glimpse of her pussy before she stands up, walks out, and starts to dress.

I help her with it, tugging the sweatshirt down over her. I use pulling her sweats up as an excuse to hold her from behind and savor the smell of her damp hair. I love it when she’s fresh from the shower, she smells like heaven. She’s warm from the heat of the water and suddenly I feel cold.

“You ready?”

“Yeah, let’s pack up and go.”

There’s not much to pack, just a duffel my mother gave us and the paper bag with Ellie’s folded-up wedding gown and my tux in it. It all fits in the back of the ’Vette with ease. I hand in the key and we’re off.

Vegas is different during the day. It feels bigger, more inviting. It’s Disneyland in the daytime and red-light district at night. There are performers in foam suits, parents leading gaggles of kids behind them.

Ellie glances at the children in the crosswalk ahead of us and looks at me.

“Should we have kids?”

I grip the wheel and glance at her. She looks serious enough.

“I don’t know, Ellie. I’m having a hard time thinking past tomorrow. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

She sighs.

“I think I’d like that, though,” I add quietly. “I’d like you to be the mother of my children.”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

I let out a long sigh.

“I’m afraid.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“I don’t want to be like my own father.”

She seizes my hand.

“Jack, you’re not. Stop saying that. You’re sweet and kind. You actually care about somebody besides yourself.”

“Thank you, Ellie.”

“I think that’s why he sent you away. He can’t stand looking at what he could have been. He was jealous of us.”

“Jealous?”

“That you could love me in a way that he isn’t capable of.”

The light turns. I motor through the intersection. We’re going to have to take the highway. Down the Strip, Las Vegas Boulevard first, then onto the interstate. Ellie stares back wistfully at the city.

“I didn’t really get to see it. We have to come back here someday.”

“We will, I promise.”

She shifts in the seat and sits up, staring out at the scenery.

“It’s so beautiful here. It’s like everything is painted. Look over there. That looks like rust.”

“It probably is. I think that’s an iron mine. They do that out here.”

She looks at me and grins, and then back out.

“The sky is so big. Isn’t it weird? It’s like it’s five times bigger than back home, and it’s always so clear. It must not ever rain here.”

“It must rain sometime. Can’t stay sunny forever, right?”

She looks over at me again and I see a little hint of sadness on her face.

“California border is a few hours away. Then we need to find some beach we can go to and just look at the ocean, I guess.”

“I wonder if it looks different. The Pacific, I mean. I haven’t been to the beach since I was little. I hoped you’d take me the summer after… Before…”

“I’m taking you now. We can see it together for the first time.”

“Where should we go?”

“I figure Malibu would be closest. Isn’t that near LA? Put Malibu Beach in my phone and tell it to take us there.”

Ellie nods and after some fiddling, gets us directions. We’re going to be on the interstate all the way to LA. No one knows we’re in this car—I hope—but my teeth are still on edge every time a highway patrol cruiser passes us.

The long stretch of highway through nothing settles my nerves a bit, once we’re away from the city. Ellie is marveled by the scenery. I play it cool, but it has an effect on me, too. I didn’t expect the desert to be so vivid. The piles of rock outside the iron mines look like giant mounds of blood, and the sky is so blue and completely clear, not even a hint of a cloud.

The sky does look bigger out here. Ellie rolls her window down after a while. It’s crisp, cooler than you’d think, but the way the sun beats down on the black car and all the glass heats up the interior. With the wind blasting into the cabin, I have to shout for her to hear me.

Thing is, it’s like we don’t even need to talk. Ellie leans over on my shoulder and her eyes grow lidded, but she’s not asleep. With a long stretch of highway ahead of us with no curves, I’m glad she does.

As the day grows older the sun eases up and I can finally roll up my window.

“Think we’ll see any aliens?”

“What?”

“My uncle thinks there’s aliens up here, up at that secret air force base.”

“How is it a secret if everybody knows about it?”

“Good question.”

“You mean Area 51, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, clearly Area 51 is fake, and all the real shit is at Area 52 where nobody bothers looking, you know?”

Ellie laughs and sits up. “How much farther?”

“We’ll be in Los Angeles soon. We’ll stay on the highway. It’s better to not stop.”

She shifts in the seat and sits up to better look around. It’s still desert out here but the city is there in the distance, hazed out, rippled like we’re looking at it through an aquarium. The sky is a little heavier and grayer and it grows smaller as suburban sprawl starts popping up around the highway.

After another hour or so, I guess we’re in the city. I’m used to New York and Philadelphia—lots of building up, not out. Here everything is fairly low, with a distant core of skyscrapers we’re not even going to pass through, looming on the horizon like some mythical realm.

Ellie sits there and stares quietly, soaking it all in. How strange it must be for her to see such massive things, such wide-open places after spending years and years locking herself up in her room.

“I feel small,” she says.

“Yeah, me too.”

“What was it like, traveling the world? Seeing so many things?”

I frown. “It was… I’d have gotten more out of it if I wasn’t so focused on what I didn’t have. I saw things you wouldn’t believe. Especially in the service. Funny shit, horrifying shit, depressing shit. It was mostly boring, though. I made coffee in tents.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I could have been anywhere and it would be a burden because you weren’t with me. I want to go back to some of those places, now. With you. You need to see Europe.”

“Alright,” she says without missing a beat.

“Any place you’d like to go?”

“London. Paris. Venice. Madrid. Some places in the country, too. The south of France. The Riviera.”

“Ambitious.”

“I have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

“Me, too. We’re almost there, honey.”

“Think we’ll make the sunset?”

“Yeah.”

Ellie

The trees here are strange.

I wasn’t expecting to drive through a forest, even a scrub forest with low trees and sandy soil. My mental image of southern California was always either desert or city, no greenery. It’s fall now and leaves have fallen, but there is so much nature here.

I’m not sure where we are. This is all just a blue line on the map app to me. I soak in the details, turning and twisting in my seat.

Then we round a curve. The road swells up, swinging out over the edge of a cliff. I should get the willies from having nothing between us and the drop but a guardrail, but I barely even register it.

I see it. The Pacific Ocean. It glitters like a vast jewel, sunlight pooling between the waves. The sun will be down in an hour or two and already grows huge on the horizon. It suddenly registers to me how strange it is to see the sun going
down
in the ocean rather than over my shoulder as I look at it.

The last time I went to the beach I was a little girl and my father was there. We went to the Jersey Shore a few times but my dad loved Rehoboth Beach down in Delaware the most. For some reason, we stopped going when I was eight or nine, around the time my father remarried.

I can’t stop staring at the water. Why does it look different? Is it the angle of the sun? Jack only glances at it a few times.

Our route takes us out of the forest and into Malibu, the city. For some reason I start to feel butterflies in my stomach as we stop at red lights and finally turn off the coastal highway toward the beach itself.

The ocean reaches out farther and farther ahead, all the way to the edge of the world. It’s cold and rain clouds hang above, threatening. The beach is deserted, and so pale. I’m used to beaches that look like ashtrays and shrink every year. This beach is huge, the sand so clean and bright it looks almost like snow, the water line strangely distant. Jack takes my hand and we walk down a boardwalk to a staircase, and then out onto the sands.

I start to shiver, but I don’t care. I can taste sea salt on my tongue. The air is heavy with it. The water rolls up in big, strong waves, crashing hard on the sand before drawing back and doing it again. The foam curls up like the tongues of sea serpents, and in the distance the waves rise and fall and catch sunlight between them, like hands grasping water from a spring cupped between them.

I forget myself and bolt down the sand. Jack yells something and runs after me, but by the time he catches me the surprisingly warm water is lapping up over my calves. I kicked my shoes off before I reached the water and hiked up my pant legs, and now the water rolls in and swirls around them. Wet sand squishes between my toes.

I lean down and cup my hands together. The Pacific Ocean wets my palms and sluices between my fingers. I smell my hands and take in the tang of seawater. It’s weird how clear it is. Before the wave rolls back out, I can see my feet through the water.

Jack, barefoot, finally stands next to me and takes my hand. I try to say something but the words catch in my throat half formed. It’s almost too beautiful for words.

My cheek feels wet and I wonder if I was splashed somehow, but it’s too warm, and the salty taste is wrong. Tears stream down my cheek. I feel the world turning around me, all at once aware of how huge it all is. It’s like I’ve been walking with a giant following me my whole life, and I’ve only just now turned around and spotted him.

Jack squeezes my hand.

“What do you think?”

“It’s magnificent.”

He doesn’t seem all that impressed, or maybe he’s just more interested in me than the sea; he’s been staring at me the whole time.

“You should see the look on your face.”

I giggle and jab at his arm, but he catches my wrist and turns me around to face him. His arm snakes around my waist. The sand squishes even more under my toes as I rise up on the balls of my feet to reach him, pulled into a kiss. The cold sea air whips around us, and his lips are the only warmth in the world, his tongue the only taste. I hold him tight and feel his heart beating against my chest.

This is what it’s like to feel whole.

We didn’t bring a blanket, so a bench on the deserted boardwalk will have to do. It’s the same kind they have at the beaches I know, oddly enough. The big, heavy back swings from the sea side to the land side, so it can face either way. Jack pushes the seat back and we press against each other. I stick my hand up under his sweater to keep it warm, and feel him.

It takes an hour for the sun to set. It’s like being in a trance. Food and air and water are little things. I could live on Jack for the rest of my life if I had to.

The sun dipping into the water is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, the colors so vibrant and captivating that I can’t stop staring. Jack watches me the whole time, though, smiling softly. His smile turns into a grin when I glance up at him and our eyes meet.

I don’t need to ask. I know he enjoys watching my reaction to the sunset more than the sunset itself.

When the sun is gone and the sky begins to darken, we stand up and walk back to the car.

Jack takes the phone and plugs in directions, and we drive.

I feel almost lightheaded. We reached the end. What now?

I should have known. Jack drives straight to the nearest burger stand. It’s a small place, a mom-and-pop type outfit, with only six round metal tables and an ordering counter.

Before we go in I pull my hair into a loose ponytail. No more hiding, behind my hair or otherwise. I am who I am. The cook looks up and is startled, and the woman running the register frowns slightly when she sees me.

I can’t blame them, it’s a shock, but I don’t care.

We scan the menu for a minute, holding hands, like any other couple in the world.

Jack orders one big milkshake with two straws. I snicker when I see it, in a big glass with whipped cream and a cherry on top. They give us more milkshake in the metal mixing cup, on the side.

Jack eats hungrily. He picks up a french fry and pokes it toward my face. I play at swatting it away then nip it from his fingers with my teeth and we both laugh hysterically. The employees are watching us, but I don’t care. I glance over and see them smiling.

By the time we finish, I’m stuffed. One of the big burgers wasn’t enough for Jack, he had to go back for seconds, and now I’m leaning back in my seat with a bowling ball in my stomach, watching him finish his second round. He slows a bit at the halfway mark.

“Damn, these are good,” he says. “We have to come back here.”

I slip my foot out of my shoe and tickle his leg with my toes, smirking. Jack gives me a look that sends a shiver through my whole body and nudges the milkshake toward me. He gives me a look that makes me feel dirty for sucking it through the straw.

“Get a room, you two!”

Startled, I jerk back, and a blush creeps over my cheek.

I expect Jack to snap at the cashier, but he grins instead. “You know a good place around here? I need something high class. I can’t take a girl like this to a jack shack.”

Mortified, I turn away.