Page 18 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)
WEDNESDAY
“Do you know what time it is?”
It had been a while since I had heard Sid's voice. Not since Christmas, I didn't think. And not for lack of wanting to, but simply because my life had been running on a monotonous cycle, a hamster wheel of sorts, and I strayed very little from the normal routine.
Today hadn't been a part of that routine. And now, despite the anxiety tying a thousand knots in my gut, I smiled at the sound of his groggy voice.
“Oh, sorry. Were you sleeping?” I joked as the truck barreled down the road toward Dad's house.
“Listen, Serg, I know it's been a while, but not all of us keep the hours of a vampire,” he replied, sounding a little more awake than before.
“Oh, that's right. Shit … I forgot.”
“Mmhmm,” he grumbled, then yawned loudly. “Fuck, man. The sun isn't even up yet.”
I squinted my eyes upward, noting the streaks of purple beginning to appear across the sky, like paint strokes on a canvas. “It's starting to rise.”
“Oh good. That makes it better then,” he muttered sardonically.
In the background, I heard my sister mumble something unintelligible, and Sid replied, “Don't worry.
Just your dumbass brother deciding I don't need to sleep.” She murmured something else, and he said, “I know.
I'm getting to it.” He sighed, cleared his throat, and said, “Serg, is everything all right?”
Everything was not, in fact, all right .
Melanie had left my office a handful of hours ago, and I hadn't spared a moment to think about anything else since.
Just seconds after she walked out, leaving the room colder than an arctic chill, the time dragged along at a snail's pace while my mind slogged through something like a dream.
Mulling it all over. Trying to make sense of the time we'd spent, the unexpected sex we'd had.
The bristling fact that I had been with a woman for the first time in ten years, a woman who wasn't my wife.
The very woman I had dreamed about for years.
I recounted the timeline of events for Sid, starting from the beginning, and by the time I finished, I was pulling up to the house I'd grown up in.
Sid was quiet, and for a second, I thought the call might've been disconnected.
But then he drawled, “Wow. Okay. Let me make sure I understand this correctly. This is the same woman you said you were crazy about, like, fifteen years ago?”
I couldn't believe he remembered that conversation we’d had, just before the attack that left us both permanently disabled. Sid could hardly remember what he'd eaten for breakfast.
Surprised, I said, “Yes.”
“And by some fucking miracle, she just happens to be the sister-in-law of the creepy guy you work with?”
I snorted, looking out the window at the dark, still house. “Yes.”
“And you went out with her on a date—like a date , date—and you thought she hated you until she showed up at your office to fuck?”
My brow pinched. “I don't know if I'd put it exactly like that, but I guess, in a nutshell, yes.”
“And you did?”
“I did what?”
“You fucked her?”
I laid a hand over my eyes, rubbing at my temples. “We … had sex, yes.”
For another moment, he was quiet, and my patience was wearing thinner by the second. I had called him for advice, not to be goaded.
Shaking my head, I threw the truck door open. “You know what? Never—”
“How do you feel?” His voice was soft, gentle even, and that startled me.
“How do I feel ?” I parroted, heading up to the door.
“Yeah, I mean, this was your first time in … a long time, right?”
I hung my head as I trudged up the porch steps. “Yeah,” I replied gruffly, thinking of Laura and the broken promises we'd made.
“So, how do you feel? You good?”
I fumbled with my keys, finding the one to Dad’s house, and unlocked the door. “Well, I don't really like the feeling that she hates—”
“No, I don't mean about that. You, man. How do you feel?”
Oh .
“Um …” I slid the key into the lock and twisted the doorknob open. “You know, I didn't think I'd be okay, but I'm better than I thought I would be. I feel like … like I should feel worse about it than I do.”
“You feel how you feel, man,” Sid replied. “I don't think there's really a right or wrong.”
“No, I know.” I pushed the door open and was instantly bombarded by a frantic Lido and his windmilling tail. “I think I want to feel worse than I do.”
“You didn't cheat on Laura.” He spoke as my brother and not the foul-mouthed buddy I'd known since I had been a teenager in boot camp.
I scrubbed my palm over Lido's head and ears as he sniffed at my clothes with wild interest.
“I know that.”
“Do you though?”
I held Lido's face between my palms and looked into his curious, warm brown eyes. “Yeah,” I muttered, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder. “I do.”
“All right, good. So, uh, how was it? Was she good?”
I huffed as I closed the door quietly behind me, not wanting to disturb Dad. This was the friend I'd been expecting when I called. The one who wanted to know how it was. If my world had been rocked and if I’d do it again.
“Honestly?”
“Would I be asking if I didn't want you to be honest?”
Lido danced around my legs, tail wagging and tongue lolling from his mouth, as I walked through the living room to the kitchen.
How could I answer that in anything other than sonnets? And how the hell could I say any of that to my best friend without having the shit teased out of me?
I blew out a heavy breath, the impossibility of that question weighing on my chest as I opened the fridge door.
“Oh God, you know, I don't really know …”
“That terrible, huh?” Sid jabbed, a grin in his tone.
Grabbing a bottle of water, I nudged the fridge shut with my hip as I twisted the cap off and took a swig. “It was, um …” I grunted a short laugh and shook my head. “It was incredible, all right?”
He laughed boisterously. “Oh, you are fuckin' gone , bro.”
My laughter dwindled as his own carried through the phone line. I held the bottle between both hands as I looked down into Lido's expectant gaze, and I nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” I replied, my voice hoarse despite the water. “I think I might be.”
The admission left my lungs empty and weak as my eyes fixated on somewhere beyond the dog and the house. Somewhere inside, as if seeking out the answers within my heart, my soul.
Had I lost my damn mind? It was impossible to think about love regarding a woman I'd known for an accumulation of ten, twelve hours, give or take a couple.
But it had to mean something that I felt the same way I had years ago, didn't it?
There had to be some sort of explanation for the way her heart seemed to speak to mine, and I knew it was something beyond lust. If that wasn't love, then what? The promise of what could someday be?
“You think I'm crazy, right?” I asked Sid.
“No more crazy than I thought you were back then,” he replied. “But now, I gotta ask you, Serg … what're you gonna do about it?”
Yeah , I thought, nodding. What am I gonna do?
***
Charlie's little cottage should've seemed out of place in the middle of the old cemetery.
Smoke billowed from the chimney, the windows aglow with life within the stone walls.
A home for the living should have stuck out like a sore thumb, standing on a hill in the middle of the sleeping dead …
but it didn't. Instead, it added a touch of warmth to the landscape of snow and stone, yet I felt nothing but the cold chill of rejection as I walked up the hill to Charlie's front door.
It seemed like the only option this morning, after I'd talked to Sid at length and lost a couple of hours of sleep in the process.
I needed to talk to Melanie, and as I took care of Dad and got him set for the night, I thought I had what I needed to say committed to memory.
I'd recited my lines on the way here, over and over, until I was certain I had memorized them.
But now, standing in front of Charlie's door, I wasn't so sure of myself or the words I'd practiced.
I wanted to run, to forget that any of this had ever transpired. But I hadn't braved hell to behave as a coward in the face of the woman of my dreams.
So, I stood my ground and knocked on the door.
Moments later, Charlie answered.
He blocked the doorway with his frame and seemed to study me as if he didn't know what to say, what to do, how to react, and I wondered what Melanie had told him.
“Max,” he finally said. “Something wrong?”
Of course he’d think something was wrong. It wasn’t like me to show up at his door at all, let alone an hour before I was supposed to work.
“No,” I quickly said, shaking my head and diverting my eyes to the doormat beneath my feet. “Nothing’s wrong. I was just”—I attempted to glance around him into the living room—“hoping to talk to Melanie.”
He grunted an acknowledging sound while shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Was he trying to block my view? Was he trying to shield her from me ?
“She told me you guys had a good time yesterday,” he said, his eyes still holding that hint of skepticism.
I tried to keep my face stoic, neutral. Not wanting him to know what had transpired in the dead of night if he didn’t know already.
“We did. I really, uh …” I pursed my lips, searching for the words. “Felt a connection with her.”
No pun intended.
Charlie nodded, his features unreadable and as hard as stone. “She said the same about you.”
“Is she around?”
Charlie narrowed his dark eyes. He didn't scare me by nature, not in the way he seemed to spook the local kids for his choice of occupation and taste in attire.
But right now, judging from the look in his eyes, I suddenly believed that Charlie Corbin could kill a man.
For the right reasons, that was, and I was rapidly starting to believe that protecting his sister-in-law could be reason enough.
“Let me see what she’s doing,” he finally said, moving away from the door. “Wanna come in?”