Page 84 of Damaged Desires

He turned, dragging me by the hand back to the path, not letting go of my fingers as we walked toward the house. Our sweaty palms were sticky, but it didn’t prevent the energy between us from surging back and forth like always.

I wondered if he needed the touch to stabilize him. Like I often used touch to center me back to the world I was in when the anxiety got to be too much. I wondered if this was somehow Nash’s response to what he’d lived through in Africa, finding Darren and the others dead. I wondered if I’d somehow looked like them and triggered a response he hadn’t been prepared for. My heart leaped, beating a thundering tune. More remorse filled me until I thought it would burst from my chest.

We said nothing until we were back at the house. He would have gone in without a word, but I couldn’t do that. I pulled on his hand, halting him, doing what he had done for me in the elevator by rubbing a thumb on his palm.

“Tell me something good. Something about your childhood.”

His face turned dark. “Nothing. I don’t have good memories, Dani. Not a single one that isn’t tainted in some way.” Then, he dragged himself away and went inside.

My heart pounded harder, tears burning at my eyes, even though I wouldn’t let them fall. He’d lied to me. There were good memories. I saw them in the way he talked with Maribelle. I saw them in the way he talked about the flower fields. They were there. Goodness and light. But he’d surrounded them in a box of unhappiness. It was achingly hard to watch.

When I opened the door and went in, it was to find Maribelle sitting at the small kitchen table with a cup of something hot. Coffee, by the smell in the room. There was no Nash.

“Good morning,” I said, my voice shaky with emotions.

“Good morning. You were both up early,” Maribelle said, that playful tone in her voice once more, and I wanted to dissuade her of any ideas she had of Nash and me.

I filled my water bottle before crossing to her at the table, taking her in with her white hair glowing in the halo of sun filling the room and making her pale skin almost translucent.

“It’s not that way with Nash and me.”

She nodded. “So, you’ve said.” Her smile slowly disappeared. “I worry about him.”

“Me too,” I said before I could keep it back. Did I? Worry about Nash? I guess I did—even more than just whatever had happened this morning. I worried about him losing the people he loved most and still trying to function as if nothing was different. I worried about his career and what he’d do without it. I worried about him not telling a soul he actually had a family.

“He was full of piss and vinegar this morning. He didn’t pick a fight, did he?” she asked.

“I…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand him sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” she laughed. “That boy could baffle the toughest of minds.”

“I… He…” Then, I stopped. Nash wouldn’t want me to talk to her about it. I wouldn’t want him to talk about what happened to me in the elevator. “Never mind.”

She watched me. “Where did you all go?”

A hand referred to my sweaty apparel.

“I jogged down to the plant and came back before he joined me at the pond.”

Her body froze. “The pond? Nash was at the pond?”

“Well, I was there, cooling off under the willow trees, and he… he stopped,” I said, trying to deflect, brushing the memory of his pounding heart from me.

“He went all the way to the trees?” Her voice was squeaky and unsure, and now all of my signals were going off. I’d seen too many people in Washington try to hide things to not see this for what it was. A secret. A dark secret. One that had her stuttering and repeating herself, and one that had had Nash freaking out as if he’d never gone through SEAL training.

I nodded and reached my hand across the table to squeeze her hand. “Is everything okay?”

She brought herself back, much as Nash had, from a memory that neither of them could bear. She removed her hand from mine before patting it. “Yes. Of course, it’s all fine.”

But I knew for a fact it wasn’t.

Nash

SECOND CHANCES

“I won't break you,

I will not let you down.