Undertow (18 page)

I made my way to the garage to find what few power tools my father owned and returned to the room, laying them out neatly with the rest of my provisions. Eyeing the assortment on the floor, I smiled internally, thinking that my dad would be so pleased to come home and find my fixed-up room and mended bed. Maybe even he would see the metaphor there.

It was no easy task, but after a couple more hours, I had the bed bolted and bracketed back together. It was Frankenstein-esque, but once made, you could barely see the scars that the fight had left behind. I was tired, but uncertain as to its stability, so I opted to make some dinner and rest on the couch instead. The bed may have been fixed, but I didn't think it needed to be tested right away.

I put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta I'd purchased and set the sauce to low so it could warm slowly. Stirring it brought a mild sense of deja vu that was most unwelcome. I had spent the day doing my best not to think about either Damon or Decker, both men leading to questions I didn't have answers to and situations I didn't feel like addressing at that moment. The police had told my father that I would need to go down to make a statement soon, but I just wasn't ready. As for Decker, I was torn. While my mind told me that I was headed down a path of destruction, my heart told me that maybe things weren't so cut and dried, so black and white. I was so used to facts and absolutes, doing my best not to allow my actions to be driven by my gut or emotions. Trying to rationalize my feelings for him despite my better judgment was a war that seemed to have no end in sight. Avoiding it altogether was far easier.

Or at least it was until the subject of that battle showed up on my doorstep.

The ringing doorbell made me jump, and I scolded myself as I made my way to the front entrance, unsure as to whom I would find standing there when I opened the door. When I swung it open to find Decker looking every bit as appealing as he always did, I felt the tides start to turn in my heart's favor.

“I didn't have your phone number,” he said plainly, his deep brown eyes as intense as ever.

“Well, I'm not sure I actually know where my phone is, so I guess that wouldn’t matter anyway,” I replied, trying to remind myself of everything I had realized in the truck the night before.

“I wanted to see you . . . ”

“And here I am,” I replied awkwardly.

“Can I come in?” he asked, looking past me slightly into the house. “I think you're burning something on the stove.”

“Crap,” I muttered as I turned to run to the kitchen, my sauce burning to the bottom of the pot. “Yes. Come on in.” I looked over my shoulder as I frantically stirred the pot to see him already striding into the room to join me.

“You looked a little frazzled last night when you turned down my help in escorting your father to the car, ” he said, pulling out a chair from the table behind me. “ Is everything okay?”

“I'm fine. I was just tired.”

“I've seen you tired before, Aesa. That wasn't what I saw.”

“Maybe it was the stress of everything getting to me,” I said with a shrug, still unwilling to stop what I was doing and address him face to face. “Last night was a bit of a debacle.”

“I was there, remember? I know how things played out,” he reminded me calmly. “You were fine when we got back to the bar, but something changed as the night went on. I want you to tell me what that something is.”

“That something is nothing. You're reading into things,” I lied without hesitation. “Like I said, I was tired. Beyond that, my dad was drunk and I wanted to get him out of there and home to bed.”

“Without my help.”

“You were having a good time. There was no reason to disrupt that.”

He was silent for a minute, not responding to my explanation right away. Instead, he waited before providing one of his own.

“I embarrass you, don't I?” he asked with no hint of emotion in his words at all. It was a simple question to him that only required a yes or no answer. I was so jarred by both his question and the lack of emotion attached to it that I wheeled around to face him, needing visual confirmation that he was as unfazed by his own words as he'd sounded.

“Why on earth would you ask me that?”

“Listen, I'm not trying to make you mad, Aesa. I just wanted to know if that's how you felt. If you do, it's fine. I just want to know now.”

“Seriously, Decker. I don't even know how to answer that other than to state the obvious that,
no
, I'm not embarrassed by you. At all.” My voice sounded harsh, almost angry as my frustration with his question bled through.

“Good.” It was his only response as he sat calmly in the chair, studying my reactions to him.

“Do you care to expand on that question at all, or do I just get to be left utterly baffled, trying to sort it out on my own? Is that why you wanted to come and see me? To ask me that? I made out with you in front of half the skippers in the fleet, Decker. How embarrassed could I possibly be?”

“You did,” he replied. “And the second you knew you had an audience, you squirmed like a Catholic girl in church with a nasty secret. You did practically everything you could to avoid me when we returned to the tavern, and you made it a point to nearly break your ankle trying to help your father out of the bar rather than accept help from me.”

“I didn't accept help from anyone, if you recall,” I retorted, turning back to the stove to throw the pasta in the boiling water. “I wasn't trying to avoid you, Decker. I just . . . I had a lot on my mind.”

“I know you did. That was very apparent. What I would like to know is why you're avoiding me now.”

“What? How? How could I possibly be avoiding you when you're sitting in my kitchen?” I asked, furiously stirring the pot before me.

“You've barely looked at me since I walked in,” he observed more astutely than I would have preferred.

“I'm trying to make dinner.”

“Yes, that does seem highly important compared to the subject matter we're discussing, doesn't it?”

“Why are you picking a fight about this?” I asked, turning to face him to contradict his claim.

“I'm not picking a fight, Aesa, merely making an observation,” he replied, his face calm, body relaxed against the kitchen chair.

“You're way off—”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me something, Aesa. What exactly have you been telling yourself since we kissed to make you want to run away from how I know you feel?”

I froze. It was disturbing how he could read me. It was then that I saw his angle. He never thought I was embarrassed by him at all; he just wanted to force me to admit that my mind had been weighed down by things—things that involved talking myself out of how I felt.

“Decker, I'm not trying to run away from you. I swear I'm not.”

“And yet you are,” he said softly as he pushed the chair back from the table, the familiar sound of the legs dragging across the linoleum ringing through the kitchen.

I sighed. It was clear that he saw through my armored expression, knowing what lay behind it. I was battling my uncertainty and losing, even as he sat right in front of me in all his rugged beauty.

“It's complicated . . . ”

“Life always is, Aesa.”

I turned away from him. His words were all too true. I didn't need him to see that reality dance across my face.

He approached me from behind when I moved to get something from the fridge; I avoided his reach by the slimmest of margins. The kitchen seemed to be closing in around me, getting smaller by the second.

“I'm sorry if you feel shut out, Decker. That's not my intention. I just have a lot on my plate, and I'm trying to sort it all out.”

“So let me help you,” he replied, taking me gently by the shoulder and turning me to face him. The second I was eye to eye with him, our bodies nearly touching, it made it so much harder to have the discussion we were engrossed in with any clarity of thought.

“It's not a 'help you' kind of thing,” I explained, the cold air of the refrigerator on my back helping me keep my head clear. “I'm leaving to go to Anchorage soon. You'll be heading back out to sea. I just don't see how it can work, regardless of how you or I feel.” I walked past him to the counter, forgetting to close the fridge door behind me. I placed the parmesan cheese down on the counter in front of me with a little more strength than the task required, then hopped up to sit beside it, forcing myself to meet Decker's gaze again.

“Is it just easier not to try?” he asked, his face still a study in calm as he pushed the open door shut.

I shrugged, not knowing how to answer him. The clinical answer to his question would have been an emphatic “yes.” The real world answer seemed far more difficult to conclude.

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Is that why you really left before? Because it was easier to leave your issues behind and start over than face them?”

“That,” I said, my emotions rising, “is too complicated a situation for you to make accusations about.”

“I'm not accusing you of anything, Aesa. I'm trying to understand how your mind works.”

“I left before because staying was not an option, plain and simple.”

“And it's not an option this time? Anchorage isn't that far. It's not like I live up here year round.”

“It is an option,” I started, my mind racing with conflicting ideas of what to do. “I just don't want to take something good and ruin it, Decker.”

“And you know that would happen?” he probed, moving toward me slowly as I sat on the counter, wanting to be anywhere but there answering his questions.

“Of course not. Nobody could know that for sure.”

“Then why run from an outcome you can't possibly bank on occurring?”

He moved closer still, his hips pressed against my knees as if asking to gain entrance between them. While my heart raced and my mind raged, my body felt dissonant, caught in the crossfire of my emotions and my rational thought. I wanted to scream at him to leave and tear his clothes off at the same time, creating a frustration within me that was rapidly growing to a fever pitch. My control was fading, and I gripped the countertop hard, hoping to ground myself somehow. I needed space, a little distance from the immediacy of the situation, to make a well thought out and rational decision.

I always needed space . . .

But he wasn't giving me an inch, unrelenting in his quest for answers. It confounded my mind even further that someone I knew so little about had me so figured out. The best way to catch a stressed and frightened animal was to trap it in a corner. The downside to that approach was that the cornered animal tends to lash out—and Decker was about to learn what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that.

“Aesa,” he prompted, pressing against my legs until they finally gave way, allowing him to slide between them, his face nearing mine. “Why run?”

“Why?” I exploded, yelling at him with my face only inches from him. “Because I don't want to be left behind anymore. I left that life for a reason. It hurts. It hurts to say goodbye constantly. It hurts to let people close to you only to lose them to alcohol, depression, their jobs, or worse yet, the sea. I did that for nearly two decades, Decker. I can't keep doing it.”

“I'm not asking you to,” he said softly, a look of sadness playing on his face.

“Yes, you are. That's exactly what you're asking me to do, and it scares the shit out of me,” I argued, blood rushing to my face in anger. “I can live with the what-ifs; I can't live with the loss, can't you understand that?”

“I do, Aesa,” he replied, his eyes staring me down, warm and intense. “But you can't ask me to like it or agree with it. At least with loss, you've played the game. What you're doing will eventually lead to that same sadness and isolation that you feel you're escaping, only you won't have had those moments of joy along the way. We could have those moments together, if you choose to. But it's clear that you're not ready yet.” He brushed his palm gently along my face then leaned in and kissed my cheek softly. “I'll let go, if that's what you want, Aesa. I can't be the only one who wants this.”

With those words wrapping around my heart and choking it slowly, he gave me a sad smile and walked toward the front door, not saying another thing. Every step he took was a nail in the coffin of a relationship that never had a chance, sealing its fate forever. I shut my eyes tightly, still gripping the counter for the stability that I so clearly lacked. As he turned the knob to the front door, I cracked.

“NO!” I screamed as I flew off of the kitchen counter and ran to stop him. When I rounded the corner to the foyer, he was standing impassively, looking at me as though my outburst hadn't surprised him at all. I stopped only feet away from him, contemplating my next move. My heart had won the battle; that was clear. But did it have a game plan beyond that?

“No what?” he asked calmly, still holding the doorknob in his hand.

“Don't go,” I said softly. “I don't want you to go.” My breathing came hard, as though I'd run farther than I had to halt his escape. My body was a mess of stress hormones, making it impossible to think clearly. All I could do was react.

“What do you want?” he asked, cocking his head slightly to the side. For whatever reason that tiny movement set something off in me, and I knew why my heart had won. I wanted him. I wanted him for all that he was and all that he promised to be.