Swap Out (24 page)

When I was eighteen I tried petitioning the court for my records. I should be able to have the contact information and names of the people I lived with, sometimes for years at a time because it’s
my
life. But the Freedom of Information Act is a tricky little bitch, and when my file came back it had the name of the hospital where I was born, my date of birth, a few sketchy details about my biological mom and a name listed for her that I’m sure was a lie, and that’s it. The only other things I have are my memories. Faces that blur together and names that are just out of reach. Some of them I don’t ever want to know again, but I didn’t want to lose Starr.

“I don’t…” Zoe sighs. “I called this morning but they wouldn’t tell me anything so I looked into the real estate and property tax records, and there’s a guy who’s going to check out a lead in Seattle.”

“You hired a private detective? And you did all this
today
?”

I cannot even begin to fucking fathom this.

“No…”

I tilt my head at her. “Zoe?”

“Just a little one,” she insists. “And I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to be upset if it didn’t work out. But you’ve been under a lot of stress lately and I thought…” She blows out a breath and squares her shoulders, then spouts off, “I don’t regret it.”

I press my fist to my mouth. I don’t know whether to flip the fuck out about her prying into my past without my knowledge, or to fall on my knees and thank her in case this actually works.

And how the hell did she do all this in one day when I’ve been searching for thirteen years and haven’t found dick?

“We’re getting off subject,” she says, and I barely hear her. “The point is: you want to go rock climbing? Fine. Skydiving? Okay. You want to tie yourself to the Eiffel tower and backflip off it? Then…whatever. It’s part of who you are and it makes you happy, and I don’t like it but I have to accept that. But you need to realize that when you do these things, you cannot take unnecessary risks.”

My eyes narrow. “Careful, Zoe, you almost sound like you care about me.”

She slaps her hand down on the table. “Goddammit, Luca! How do you expect me to trust you when you force me to face the possibility of your death every time you walk out the door? You can’t
do
this to me anymore!”

“I’m not!” I shout. “I’ve stopped climbing, and the one time I went after we found out I tied in instead of free soloing!”

“I don’t know what that means!” she shouts back, and I scrub a hand over my face. She takes a long moment to get herself under control, then says stiffly, “I know Scott is your friend, but—”

“But I should have let him die?” I interrupt, and her eyes flare.

I push away from the table and head to the refrigerator. I grab a bottle of water and take a drink and wish it was whiskey, ignoring the sound when I hear her chair scrape over the tile as she gets up.

“What you did…was incredible,” she says quietly from behind me, close enough that I can feel her breath skirt over my skin. “And you know how much I adore him, and I can’t even fathom the bond you two have. The things you’ve seen, the close calls…” Her hand lightly touches my back, her fingertips walking over each scar until she stops at my shoulder. “He was
with you
, Luca.”

I stand more still than I ever have.

“But if I have to choose between him and you, I choose you.”

My breath strangles in my chest. Did she just…?

Her palm wraps over my shoulder, squeezing gently as she stays quiet, and I can’t believe she just said that. The thing I’ve been needing more than anything over these last emotionally grueling weeks, the words I didn’t think she’d ever be able to admit to herself, much less to me, and here they are.

She loves me
.

I wasn’t imagining it, it wasn’t some hopeful delusion, it’s real. And as much as the knowledge fills me with warm relief, I wish so much that she could’ve said this at a different time. When we’re not fighting, but a moment when I could kiss her and let her know I heard her, that I believe her. When I could tell her that she doesn’t have to be afraid to admit it anymore, not with how much she means to me in return.

But she’s questioning whether my loyalty belongs to her or my oldest friend, and I can’t even face her, conflict is so rotten in my gut.

It only gets worse when she says, “I know you love him, and that your choices, your priorities, may be different. But you are my priority, and you should know that.”

My eyes squeeze shut. I need to say something. She’s finally opening up and I know how hard this is for her, but my jaw stays locked and when her hand leaves my skin, the sudden loss chills me to the bone.

“Come to bed when you’re ready,” she whispers, then her footsteps fade as she walks away.

I lean forward against the counter, bracing my weight on my elbows and I…I’m lost. Today scared the shit out of me. The possibility of watching Scott die right before my eyes, and not even realizing that I almost died myself until I was under my reserve. I never even thought. I just
did
. And afterward as I was watching Scott, waiting for him to wake up while the ground was steadily approaching, that’s when it hit me. The regret-filled wondering: if anyone would have known to contact Zoe, and if they did, it would only be a phone call to my employer. I was sick with the possibilities of what she would do, who would comfort and take care of her. Whether she would keep our child and raise it, as a last memory of me.

With everything I’m trying not to think about, all that she’s been hinting at the last couple of days, I don’t know what her decision is anymore. And what’s worse is: I don’t know how to admit the truth of what
I
feel when she has the power to destroy me. One wrong move, that’s all it will take and she’ll rip me apart worse than any bullet, any fall. For the first time, I don’t know if it’s worth the risk to let myself love her, and now I’m the one who’s hesitating.

Except that may be the slip, the fumbled footing and the twisted cord, the unfurling of the rope.

I straighten and shake my head to clear the thoughts away, then take another drink of water before putting it back in the refrigerator. I turn off the kitchen light then check the front door to make sure it’s locked, then the one to the garage and even the back door even though I did it earlier, but I just can’t help but to be sure. I follow dark hallways into the dark bedroom, my eyes trained on the shadowed outline of Zoe in bed as I approach the other side.

She’s facing the door, her back to the window and the side I always sleep on when I stay here with her. But when I slide under the sheets, lying on my side and watching the rise and fall of her shoulder, she reaches back. I grasp her hand fiercely, my breath catching in my throat as she pulls me closer and winds my arm across her chest, tucking it next to her heart.

I duck my head, inhaling her soothing lotion and nuzzling the back of her neck. “How are you always so soft?” I whisper, my voice crackly and weak though I’m not even sure why, and she rolls over to face me, keeping my hand clasped over her heart.

“I moisturize.”

I feel the corner of my mouth turn up, and she shifts so her right temple is pressed to mine, hiding my face in a curtain of her hair while her lips brush my ear.

“He’s going to be fine,” she breathes and I flinch, my eyes squeezing shut. “I promise you by next week he’ll be bursting through the front door, asking you to go BASE jumping with him off the top of Mt. Everest.”

I chuckle brokenly and her hand smoothes down the back of my head, her nails drawing across my scalp with the perfect amount of pressure to keep me grounded.

“You’ll argue about G.I. Joe action figures and laugh for an hour while yelling something about pork chop sandwiches, then have another one of your ridiculous Iron Man competitions in my living room to see who can do more push-ups. Which is juvenile and pointless because you’ll end in a tie once dinner is ready, like you always do.”

I squeeze her hand, and her lips press against my temple before she pulls back and arches an eyebrow at me.

“Now, if you promise to let me get some sleep, then tomorrow we’ll go see him first thing and I won’t say a word when you relentlessly pelt him with baby aspirin and rain down a pack of newborn diapers all over his bed, because I know you’re going to. I’ll even guard the door while you do it.”

I grin and her smile grows, then she kisses me once before turning over and snuggling down.

I hold her tightly to me, then say innocently, “What if I hired a stripper to jump on his bed and dance to ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons?”

She pops up out of my reach and starts batting me with a pillow, and I burst out laughing as I protectively cover my head with my arms.

“It was gonna be a guy stripper!”

I glance to my right, seeing Zoe biting her lip as she watches me from the passenger seat, and I sigh.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says immediately, reaching down to the floorboard to grab her purse.

“Why do you even bring that when we’re going swimming?”

“Because,” she says, taking out a hair tie and flipping down the visor, “I need something to lug around your ego in.”

“Ha. Ha.”

She chuckles and does some crazy twist maneuver and then wraps her hair in the black rubber band, and I shake my head as I pull her Enclave to a stop at the trail head for Mill Creek. I have no idea how she can toss and twirl the brown strands, hook a tie around it and in four seconds she has a hairstyle that looks like it should be worn on the red carpet, but I almost don’t want to know how it works. It may ruin the mystery.

I turn off the engine while Zoe adds the finishing touches: loosening one strand here and another there, and when a few of the baby hairs slip down and tickle the back of her neck, I swallow. We’re still not having sex, and I think it may have a little more to do with me than her. Okay, it’s all me. My eyes are still feeding ravenously on every single curve of her body, but mentally I’m a little freaked that the second I get close to home base, I’m going to panic again and ruin everything we’ve built since the night I don’t want to think about. And to me it’s just not quite worth the risk because Zoe’s not complaining about it, and she’s been feeling great. Better than great.

She is increasingly less tired and the morning sickness is finally backing off, and her moods are wonderfully, blissfully stabilizing. I don’t even know if that’s just from where she is in the pregnancy or if she’s becoming more acclimated to not taking her meds, but either way, she’s happy and smiling more than ever. Ipso facto, the dumbass grin I’ve been sporting lately and can’t seem to wipe off my face, and don’t really want to. So other than the sex hang-up, over the last couple of weeks things have just been infinitely better, all around. Well, apart from two things. One small, one…not so small.

The first was a phone call. Turns out the private detective Zoe hired to track down Starr did find her, and he did it fast. Four days after the AFF jump fiasco the news came back: she had succumbed to a bout with cancer six years ago. The man she had married after moving to Seattle had her ashes scattered into the Pacific, just like she had wanted, and that was that. Done. Gone forever.

I don’t know which part was worse: knowing Starr had been suffering and I wasn’t there with her, or the fact that Zoe was the one who had to tell me the news. I didn’t cry, but she did.

I was still numb and silent by the time she dried her eyes, then she made me go sit with her on the couch. She put on some documentary about killer whales, and we sat quietly and watched people talk about how messed up it was that they were separated from their families at an early age. How they were strong and fearsome, but they were also beautiful and had souls, and they cry. I only remember like a third of the whole thing because my mind kept drifting off into the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s
The Wall
, breathing in Zoe’s lotion and half-wishing it smelled like incense, but I don’t think she cared whether or not I was paying attention to the movie as long as I was next to her.

Because as soon as the documentary was over she got up and turned on a channel that’s basically an aquarium; saltwater fish swimming around in the ocean and sea fans swaying to the tides. And that’s how we fell asleep, her body curled around mine as we stretched out on the couch and listened to underwater bubbles. We woke up late the next morning, but she didn’t say anything about being behind on the schedule when we got to work at 10
a.m.
She didn’t say much at all, apart from if I wanted this to eat or that to drink, if I had time to come with her to do a bid on a stage or if I preferred to just head over to one of the vacation properties and meet up later.

And I can’t really thank her enough for that, for just sliding us back into normal and not constantly asking if I was okay, not trying to sit me down and get me to explain everything that was churning inside my head and chest. She just let me be, her touches no more frequent than usual, but they lingered a moment longer. And when Scott showed up that Friday, she didn’t complain one bit when we got drunk on her back porch and then chased her around the back yard with a water hose.

I woke up Saturday morning to find she was gone, a note on her pillow saying she had some shopping to do and wouldn’t be back until late. I pouted a bit, until I found my bag of climbing gear by the front door. My eyes widened, worried about the weight of the bag she obviously carried considering it was supposed to be in my closet at my apartment, right where I left it. But I felt my shocked expression slide into a grin when I opened it, because there was a second note taped to the ropes, declaring them required to be used.

She just…
knew
. And I went.

I came home to find her already asleep, her car suspiciously empty of any bags or purchases, but I didn’t care because I felt better than I had in weeks and I wanted her to know it. I gently woke her up, and when her eyelashes first fluttered open she groaned, but then she froze when she saw my smile. Everything in her softened, her palm resting against my cheek like she was soaking it in, and after one too-short kiss she pushed me away and told me I stunk like dirt and sweat and to go take a shower. Instead I ripped back the covers and tackled her, locking my arms and legs over hers as she shrieked and squirmed since I felt the need to happily rub my face and nose all over her so I could share.

And something about that night, it was like another restart. And every time we do it, we take a step forward.

I watch as Zoe finishes with the mirror and flips up the visor, and when she glances at me, she pouts, reaching over to brush the back of her knuckle against the skin below my eye. I playfully growl and nip at her wrist, and she giggles with a blush, snatching her hand away. She’s still getting flustered and a little nervous whenever she is openly sweet to me, but she’s getting better about it. Although she’s still
her
, and I’m instantly reminded of that when I reach into the backseat to grab the towels and a flashlight, because she smacks my left shoulder.

I turn a hard look her way in hopes of an explanation, and she bursts out with, “Don’t reach with your right arm. Reach with your
left
or just get out and open the back door and get them.”

I roll my eyes. “Get over it, Zoe. I’m fine.”

“A couch fell on you!”

A few days ago our latest-hired dumbass was helping me load a couch into the back of the truck, and thanks to a spider the size of a dime, he dropped his end and mine landed on top of my shoulder. And okay, she’s never heard me grit-out a yell in pain before, but the wooden leg caught me right in the clavicle and it fucking hurt. But there was no reason for her to start shrieking at the guy while fawning all over me and insisting I go to the hospital. Yeah…that was not happening.

Since then, she hasn’t stopped arguing with me about why I refuse to take even a single aspirin if I’m sore—which I’m not—nagging about how I don’t need to lift this or carry that and every time I sit down, she’s instantly behind me: gently massing my shoulder and asking if it hurts. I’m not exactly proud of the little bit of fibbing I do when that happens, but it just feels so damn
good
and sue me. I never claimed to be a saint. Just an adrenaline junkie who needs uncirculated air and natural flowing rivers after spending a day sucking A/C and chemical fumes from industrial-strength grout cleaner.

“It didn’t fall on me. I was supporting it with my shoulder.”

“Yeah, the shoulder already supporting a
bullet wound
.”

“
Healed
bullet wound,” I clarify and she huffs. “Are we going to sit in the car and bicker about this all night? Or are we going to go down to the lake and go swimming so I have an excuse to gawk at you in that little white bikini you have on under your clothes?”

She gasps. “I am not wearing that!” She crosses her arms and arches an eyebrow, then tries to say convincingly, “It’s a brown one-suit with multi-colored little seahorses on it.”

I grin and lean closer, then slip a finger inside her shirt and hook it around the thin white string tied behind her neck. “Liar.”

Her eyes narrow playfully. “You weren’t supposed to watch me get dressed.”

“I didn’t watch,” I drawl huskily, the back of my knuckle tickling her collarbone until I feel goosebumps rise. “I accidentally stumbled onto the sight of you changing clothes in the bathroom. And if you didn’t want me to see, then you should have shut the door.”

“You are in so much trouble,” she says with a grin, and I nod before brushing my lips against hers.

She’s been really,
really
guarded lately when it comes to the amount of skin she’s willing to show, and I have no idea why but it doesn’t stop her from instantly melting into me with a moan. And thirty fiery-hot seconds later I couldn’t give a fuck about going swimming because I’d rather pursue her hands on my jaw pulling me closer and my fingertips tickling their way up the inside of her silky thigh. Her fingernails tease my back under my shirt, heat and hunger surging down my spine, and faster than she can stop me, I drop her seat back. She squeaks in surprise and I can’t help but to chuckle, leaning over the center console so I can feel her body molded to mine. Her kiss slows down even as it heats up, and I swing my left leg over so I’m fully on top of her, my knee finding the space between hers as I rock my hips forward.

She shifts towards me, her leg sliding higher up my waist as her arm falls back so her fingertips brush the headrest, and both my brain and my body are screaming hell yes, drunk on the silent “take me” that is the best thing I never heard. I brace my weight with one hand, my other palm secure on her hip and my thumb nudging the button on her shorts, and I’m one movement away from unhooking it and letting my fingers taste her when she seems to change her mind and pulls back, pressing her thighs tighter together as her kiss dims and then closes.

She ducks her chin and turns her face slightly away, and guilt rushes over me but I won’t let it slow me down. My body is ignited with the sensation of my clothes rubbing over my skin, with the nearly-painful throbbing from being as hard as I am because I want her desperately, and I can do this. I know I can do this as long as I stay focused on what’s important, and she is what’s important. Everything else, every fight to be had about our uncertain future and every insult from the past can all fuck off because I’m crazy about this woman, and I need her heat to wrap around my length and promise I’m still me. That I’m still hers and she is mine.

It’s the only truth I need.

I nip at her lip, then whisper with a smirk, “How offended would you be if I suggested you teach me the benefits of having a car with a backseat?”

Her cheeks flush, but before she answers, her phone rings.

Her eyes dart to her purse and I narrow mine.

“Don’t even think about it, Zoe.”

“It could be important!”

“It’s almost nine o’clock on a Thursday night, which means whoever it is can leave a message. You’re
busy
.”

She pushes me off and grabs her phone, and I groan as I sit back in the driver’s seat and adjust myself in my loose-in-the-waist-and-tight-everywhere-else swim trunks. So much for that.

I make a mocking, yapping hand gesture, but instead of batting it away she suddenly holds her phone up in front of my face, then pointedly sends the call to voicemail. I snatch the phone away and set it down in the cup holder, then smile triumphantly before getting out and opening the backseat door. Grab two towels, and a flashlight for the quarter-mile hike, then shut the door as gently as possible because she flips out if I don’t baby her precious Buick like it’s a Ferrari.

I toss one of the towels at Zoe, then start down the dark trail without bothering to wait for her. Gravel crunches as she hurries to catch up, and when she reaches my side she hugs me around my waist, my arm falling comfortably over her shoulders as my other clicks on the flashlight.

“I can’t believe you’re making us go swimming right now,” she complains. “Especially considering your total lack of strength since you slept for maybe thirty minutes last night and haven’t eaten more than a slice of toast in forty-eight hours.”

I shrug. “Not tired, or hungry.”

“Those black circles under your eyes say otherwise. Another week of this crap and you’re going to have to start wearing makeup.”

“Sorry I’m not as pretty as you. I’ll work on it.”

She hugs me a little tighter. “Work on staying in bed the whole night instead of sneaking off to the back porch to do
nothing
but just sip bottled water. It scares the crap out of me when you disappear like that.”

I swallow, but my steps never falter. I know perfectly well it irritates her when she wakes up alone, because then she comes searching for me and when I’m found I usually get an earful about how it’s selfish and inconsiderate to keep doing that when she’s repeatedly told me how much it upsets her. But when I’m lying there in bed, eyes open and mind racing, I just…eventually I have to get up and go outside. Everyone needs space to think, to keep things in perspective and decompress, but I can’t tell her that because then she’ll want to discuss what’s bothering me and that’s not exactly a conversation I’m looking to delve into when it’s still more night than morning. Or when she’s already pissed off. Actually, it’s not a conversation I’m looking to have
ever.