The Solitude of Passion (46 page)

“What’s important is that it’s the two of us in the end,” he says.

I tighten my grip around him as if the house, Mono, the world were about to blow away.

That’s exactly what I want—right along with Mitch.

“Come here.” Max lands us on the mattress with our heads on the pillows. “Let me hold you, Lee.”

I snuggle into Max and we fall asleep in one another’s arms.

Just like old times.

Just like it’s supposed to be.

Max is still asleep well into the evening. The kids are spending the night at Janice’s, where I assume Mitch has been all day, so I take Kat up on her dinner invite.

“I’m pulling an intervention,” she says, before plunging a slice of pizza into her mouth. The restaurant is full, so we sit at the bar, but Kat has managed to amass a plethora of appetizers that keep coming at a steady pace. Kat’s huge midsection acts as a barrier between us because, apparently, she can no longer belly up to the bar. She holds out a slice of pizza toward me, and I shake my head at the offer.

“Look at us.” I say, hovering over my virgin daiquiri. “Two pregnant women at a bar.”

“We’re the opening line to some really lame joke.”

“That about sums up my life.”

“Stop.” Her mouth falls open with a mouth full of food, and I turn my head away to keep from puking.

“You ready for the whole baby shower thing?” I slide my daiquiri in her direction. They’ve already refilled her soda three times. They can’t keep up with her. “I’ll help you pick out whatever you need. And, I’ve got the entire town on speed dial. We can do a real blowout if you want.”

“No blowout. The only thing that’s blowing out is me. I look like a whale. The last thing I want is to be the center of attention. I’ll just get what I need—as I need it.”

“You sure?”

“Very. Although, I am open to accepting gifts from my wealthy sister.”

“Done.”

“So”—she glances down at her last slice of pizza—“rumor has it Max looked like he wanted to take a chainsaw to your head.”

“Not true. Mostly he looked like he wanted a really long nap on the bed he hasn’t slept on in over a month.”

“Poor Max.”

“Poor Max,” I echo

“Lee?” Her eyes widen at something just beyond my shoulder. I try to turn, but she snatches me by the wrist. “I want to ask you something.” She’s intent on keeping my focus, so I play along. “What if they dated? You know, Mitch and Max.”

“They are dating—each other.” I struggle to turn, but she secures me with her newfound superhuman strength. “What’s going on?”

“So what if they did?” Her eyes enlarge like silver dollars, and that’s never a good sign. It takes a hell of a lot to shock the pants off my sister. “You know, meet friends for drinks?”

“I guess that’d be okay.” Viv pops into my head. She’d swallow Max whole if he let her.

Her face contorts in a series of horrified expressions. “Um…Lee? Friends for drinks at three o’clock.”

Friends for drinks.

I spin around and spot Mitch with one of Colt’s hussies. Her amber hair falls like a curtain, and her lips shine like glass as she breaks out into a laugh.

Oh, God.

It’s happening. I’m losing Mitch. He waited and waited, and now he wants nothing more than drinks with friends at three o’ clock.

My insides pinch sharp as an ice pick—my intestines twist in a ball of fire.

How could he?

I’m going to kill Colt with my bare hands for facilitating the effort. The tramp and her lava-like hair, her thin arms slithering over his chair, his shirt. She runs her finger along the rim of his glass like a promise.

“Slow down, girl.” Kat pulls me back in my seat. I hadn’t even realized I levitated out of it. “You’ve got fire in your eyes and steam coming from your ears. Pull it together.” She takes a breath before evicting me out of the barstool. “Now go kick her bony little ass.”

My feet move swiftly without my permission. Every ounce of me wants to run and hide, but my body wants the exact brand of hostile revenge that Kat just prescribed.

It feels like a dream walking over to them. The little tramp slips her hand over his back and gives a light scratch like she’s done it a thousand times before. The waitress sets down an oversized tray of drinks in my path, and I don’t hesitate to knock it out of my way—filling the air with the violent sound of shattering glass. I ignore the shout from the waitress, the gasp of the patrons, and just keep walking, garnering Mitch’s attention in the interim.

“
Lee
?” He jumps out of his seat, startled by my destructive display. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”

The girl springs up beside him, clutching at her purse in the event she needs to make a quick getaway, and I’m betting she will.

“I’m fine, Mitch.” I stride past him and give her a nice hard shove in the chest.

“Lee,” he barks it out with marked aggression and locks my wrists behind my back. “You’re going to get yourself arrested.” He pulls me in and holds me, but really he’s restraining me, penning me in with all of his strength in the event the threat of a prison term meant little to me. “Hana are you okay?”

She shoots him a look that could slice through diamonds while muttering something in an unfamiliar language. In one swift move she sloshes a glass of water in my face before bolting for the exit.

“That went well,” I say, wiping myself down with the back of my arm.

“Let’s get out of here,” he slips his arm around my waist and leads us out into the cool night air. Mitch waits until we hit the parking lot before he pulls me in, and his entire face explodes in a grin. “I think I like you jealous.”

Kat appears, panting from the trek over. “Can you take her home for me? She’s way more excitement than this pregnant woman can handle—for
any
pregnant woman to handle.” She needles into me like she wants me to tell him about the baby right here in the parking lot in my soaking wet T-shirt.

Kat takes off without so much as a goodbye.

“Let’s get out of here.” Mitch washes me with his eyes, pauses when he hits my hips. It’s like he knows, neither Kat nor I had to tell him. He weaves me through the parking lot and into the passenger seat of his truck.

I guess we’re breaking all the rules tonight. After the bomb Hudson dropped this morning, all of Dr. Van Guard’s rules have been reduced to nothing more than debris on the war-torn landscape of my life.

Mitch and Max are in the heat of the battle.

War is hell.

I’ve got the battle scars etched over my heart to prove it.

Mitch

Lee and I drive down the ebony streets of Mono as the ground clouds roll over the boulders that line the side of the road.

“Swear to God, I was merely doing time when Colt’s gal pal strolled up,” I say as we round out the coast. I’ve already rehashed the story to her twice. The last thing I want Lee to think is that I was trolling for chicks in my spare time. In truth, I was mulling over my stint in China, trying to figure out whether or not this could possibly have fit in the hierarchy of plans that someone upstairs dreamed up for my life—the master plan that eventually revealed itself to be the disaster plan. I thought I’d be free once I left the detention center, but I can feel its looming presence in my life like shadowed wings that hover over me everywhere I go.

“She was all over you.” Lee bites down on her lower lip, and I can’t help but fight a smile.

“I never said she wasn’t.” I give a quick wink. “I’m teasing, Lee. You have to know the only woman I want all over me is you.” Can’t say I’m not impressed as hell by Lee’s reaction though. I was just about to take off when Lee decided to castrate the furniture and break all the dishes. It must mean something. If she’s that bent out of shape, she must still want me. “So, you were hanging with Kat in the bar?” I ask, never taking my eyes off the road. Kat looks as if she swallowed a pumpkin, hell an entire patch.

“Restaurant was full. You know how that goes.” She gives a hard sigh out the window. “You want to go to the dunes?”

My adrenaline kicks in. Lee wants to go to the beach—
our
beach—the dunes. Maybe this is it. Maybe all Lee needed to fully commit was seeing another woman trying to dig her claws in my back.

“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather take you.” I flip a U-turn and head on up. The fog stretches over the beach, thick as a blanket. The sun set about an hour ago, leaving a tangerine sky in its wake. I park and grab the blankets still stowed in the back from our last adventure.

Lee comes around and wraps an arm around my waist as we make our way over to the sand.

I want to ask her about the baby. If she’s having one, if she thinks it could be mine, but don’t see any reason to inject more confusion into the situation.

“You’re quiet.” Lee props her head against my shoulder.

“Just content to be with you.”

“You worried about breaking the rules?” There’s a slight sarcastic edge to her voice.

“I don’t like rules that keep us apart, Lee.”

“I don’t like rules that keep us apart, Mitch.” She matches my tone but ends on a hard note when she says my name. “Or trips, or countries.”

Here we go.  “Looks like I get angry Lee—dishes-wielding Lee.” I tickle her ribs trying to make light of it, but I think we both know I just landed us in a pile of crap.

She stops short and looks up at me. “You don’t need to hang out with me, Mitch.” She pulls away. “In fact, maybe you’d just better take me home. I’m all over the place. Hudson’s outburst really fucked up my entire day.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard an expletive fly from her mouth. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep a smile from blooming. Something tells me it’s only going to piss her off.

“Honest to God, I was teasing.” I land a kiss over her cheek. “I love all of your moods. Believe me, I’m just thrilled to be standing next to you.” I pull her in close. “Holding you, seeing you. That’s the prize Lee, and I already have it.”

Her gaze dips to the sand. “This isn’t enough, Mitch.”

“It is for now. Next week it’s all you. Send Max packing, and we’ll have our lives back just the way they were.”

Lee glances up. She spears me with something just this side of hatred before taking a full step back. “Send Max
packing
? You think that’s all it takes? What about Stella and Eli who know him as their father? Should I send them packing, too, and we can just start over?”

“No.” I reach down to take up her hand. “That’s not what I meant. I know this isn’t easy for you. And, I care about Max, too.”

“Bullshit!” She spits it in my face. “You couldn’t care less if he croaked right there in Townsend field. I don’t like the way you’ve treated him since you came back when what you really owe him is a
thank you!
You know what else I don’t like?” She jerks her hand away. I stare ahead not wanting to provoke anymore of her anger, although mine is picking up at a descent clip right about now.

“This conversation?” Because it’s not my favorite.

“The fact you think I should have waited around in a giant black shroud, hoping my dead husband would miraculously show up.”

“I never said that. I never even implied it.” I never thought it for a minute.

“You wanted that. Admit it,” she shouts into the wind.

“It’s a pointless conversation. You want to go back to the truck? I’ll take you home.” I’ll take myself to my mother’s for the night—let Max deal with the fallout of Colton’s ambush matchmaking.

She gives a hard shove into my chest. “Pointless?” I have a feeling she could snap my neck just for the fun of it.

“Don’t do this.” I back up. “I know your head’s all over the place today. I know you wish you didn’t have to choose. I
know
you love Max. Is that what you want to hear? There, I said it. I know you
love
Max!” The words thunder from me like a curse.

“I do love, Max!” Her voice rivals mine. I’ll hear that echo in my dreams. “But it’s
you,
Mitch! I want
you
back—our whole life. And I can’t figure out how to do this, and nobody in the world can help.”

Lee melts to her knees and presses her hands into her face. I sink to the cold waiting sand and wrap my arms around her as she shakes from grief.

We’ve fallen into a well of deep emotions with nothing but heartache to greet us at every turn. We need the moon, the stars to let us know which way is up.

“I’m sorry.” Her breath blooms over my face. Lee conforms to my body and I hold her like that. “When you came home everything changed,” she whispers. “I thought about what would happen all the way on the car ride back to Mono. I thought everything in my world would change, but nothing did. I couldn’t figure out what to do with Max, and I didn’t want to leave him. He deserves better than this, Mitch I swear to you Max is good.”

“I know he is.” I press a kiss into her temple. “After getting to spend some time with him, especially seeing how great he is with the kids, I don’t feel like Max was the worst decision you’ve ever made. It’s the opposite, Lee. He was a good one.” My stomach clenches, but I mean every word.