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S HEA

Of many far wiser than we...

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE PRESENT DAY

AFTER A PHONE CALL with her editor Pat, Shea had a bit of leniency regarding not only the direction of her manuscript but its deadline as well. Considering she’d spent the night in the hospital, running on restless sleep in a semi-comfortable recliner, and already sick of cafeteria food, Shea had officially called off the mission of writing and self-care for this trip.

The trip was now one of mere survival, and a huge part of her was ready to end her stay at the lighthouse and take Pete home the minute he was released from the hospital.

A groan from the bed alerted Shea to Pete’s wakening. He’d been awake much of yesterday, though Dr. Sturgeon had strongly advised Shea against drilling Pete for details about his fall while he was still heavily medicated.

“The details will come out eventually. We don’t want to stress him out right now. If things look good, he can go home tomorrow.” Dr. Sturgeon’s smile was laced with directive, and Shea had complied.

Until now.

Pete was very aware of her as she met his eyes. There was a clarity in them that hadn’t been there even earlier this morning.

“My arm is pounding,” he muttered.

“That’s understandable.” Shea moved from her place at the hospital room window and slid onto a padded chair with wooden arms that faced the bed. “You’re lucky to be alive.” Shea was taken aback by a sudden onslaught of emotion, knowing how close he’d come to losing his life.

“You did ask me how I’d kill myself if I tried.” Pete’s awful attempt at humor earned him a glare.

“No, I asked you how you’d shoot yourself, and that was for research purposes only. Please don’t make jokes about this.” Shea’s sense of humor was nonexistent at the moment.

Pete glanced at his injured arm, then up at his IV and the monitors that measured his vitals. “When can I get out of here?”

“This afternoon hopefully,” Shea informed him. “But it’s important you keep that arm and shoulder immobilized.” She hesitated, then went for it. “What do you remember, Pete?” Her phone was burning a hole in her pocket, and she’d have no qualms about extracting it to call the police if Pete gave her the name of whoever had struck him with their vehicle.

Pete closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them, he squinted as though the daylight bothered him. “A car?”

“Did you recognize it?” She was careful not to plant the idea that she suspected Holt in any way.

Pete considered her suggestion. “No. I don’t think so. It was a car, though, and Holt drives a truck—if that’s what you’re thinking. I do remember Holt being there after I was hit and calling 911.”

“Were you hit somewhere near the lighthouse?” Shea pressed. “Holt thought you fell from the gallery.”

“No. I mean, I remember being hit hard and sort of rolling there. The car came down the drive and then right into the yard at me. Whoever it was knew what they were doing.”

“Did you see Holt before you were hit?” Shea asked.

Pete gave a little snort, then grimaced from the pain of it. “It wasn’t Holt, Shea.”

“So some random person pulled into the drive, onto the yard toward you, and struck you? Then they just took off...”

“Yep.” Pete wasn’t elaborating, but then it didn’t seem as though he had much more to add.

Shea shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why would someone do such a thing?”

“I dunno. That’s for the police to figure out.”

“Holt said you mentioned Annabel’s name. In fact, that was all you said before you passed out.” Shea provided Pete with everything she knew and then waited while he digested the information.

“I don’t know why I said that.” Pete’s answer was unhelpful.

“Did you see the driver?” Shea asked. “Maybe what happened has something to do with the lighthouse. I mean, Jonathan Marks was killed there after people started nosing around.”

“The car’s windows were tinted,” Pete said, recalling a few more details now. “I didn’t see a face. Just a form. It could’ve been a man or a woman.” Pete ran a hand lightly across his jaw, his palm making a scraping sound against the stubble on his face. “Do I get to go back to the lighthouse with you?”

“Get to go back? It’s not Disney World, Pete.” Shea blew out a sigh. “I’m not sure I want to go back myself. The book isn’t worth all this. Someone tried to kill you!”

“Sure, but...” Pete attempted to push himself up on his pillows and then groaned again, immediately stopping when it was apparent his arm and shoulder protested. “Shea, I’m all in now.”

“All in?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t expound on that as Shea moved to help him adjust the pillow he was struggling with.

“That place is dangerous,” she stated as she eased the pillow beneath his hurting shoulder. “Or more to the point, someone is dangerous. And you saying the name Annabel after getting hit irks me. That’s a weird thing to bring up at such a moment with your life hanging in the balance—the name of a dead woman?”

“Is it?”

“Pete.” Shea leveled a look on him.

“What?” Annoyance flashed across his face.

“Isn’t it obvious? For whatever reason, someone out there is not happy about our digging into the lighthouse’s history and its secrets. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not worth the advance on the book. I’m going to take you home.”

“You know what?” Pete stated suddenly. “I’m kind of done with this.”

“With what?” Shea reared back, perplexed.

“You.”

“ Me? ”

With his good arm, Pete shoved aside the blanket that Shea had just tucked up for him. “Yes, you. You’re bossy. You’re entitled. You tell me what to do and where to go and how to do it. You’re not easy to get along with, Shea.”

“I am too!” He was taking this way too far. Here she was at his bedside, worried about his welfare, and he was taking it out on her.

“And you argue with me all the time.”

“I do not,” Shea retorted. She crossed her arms and glared down at him.

“Listen.” Pete paused and shook his head. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“This!” He waved his hand in a circle. “I can’t do anything right for you, so I leave you alone, and then that’s not even right. What do you want me to be? Casanova? Mr. Darcy?”

So he had been listening at some point.

“I wouldn’t mind a little Mr. Darcy! You don’t buy me roses for Valentine’s Day, you don’t give me a kiss when you walk through the door, and you get more excited about your truck than you do about me.”

“Because if I pay attention to you, I don’t do it in the right way.” Pete’s glower matched her own.

They stared at each other for several seconds, neither one of them blinking. It was uncomfortable, but Shea would be darned if she was the one to break the standoff.

She didn’t. Pete did. “I’m not saying I’ve got it together, Shea. But at least I try.”

Shea’s eyes burned. “I try too, you know.”

“Do you?” Pete pressed.

“Of course I do. I’m here, aren’t I?” Shea sank onto the chair, drained of energy and warring between the stress she’d been holding in the last day and a half and the frustration of a dying marriage.

“But you left me,” Pete went on, sharing more with her than he had in months.

“I left you for a research trip. That’s nothing new.” Shea’s retort sounded weak even to her ears. She tried to strengthen it. “And you don’t like to travel. You never want to come along anyway.”

Pete sniffed. A light sniff that was derisive while also being careful not to jar his ribs. “I overheard you talking to your friend about how you needed ‘self-care.’”

“What’s wrong with self-care?” Shea snapped.

Pete locked eyes with her. “Self-care? Nothing. Self-indulgence? That’s a problem.”

“I’m not indulging in anything but trying to be alone and figure out who I am! That’s even biblical.”

“Really?” Both doubt and sarcasm laced his tone.

“Sure. Jesus went off by himself.”

“To pray!”

“And to rest!” Shea argued.

“Because He needed to prepare to give more of himself, not become one with himself and His own self-importance.”

Agitated, Shea sucked in a breath and pushed up from the chair. Pete was as dense as they came, and this was the evidence of that. Arguing theology while recovering from being hit by a car? That summarized Pete in a nutshell. He never just focused on the root issue—what she needed. It was always something else. Always...

At that moment, the essence of Pete’s argument slapped against Shea’s consciousness. Her needs. What about his? What about his? Shea marched to the window and turned her back to Pete in the bed. She hugged herself as she stared out the window. The sunny spring day was happy. It was pleasant. And here she was arguing the philosophy of self-care with the man she’d tried to get away from to begin with.

“And Holt?” Pete’s question bounced off her back.

“What about him?” Shea’s question echoed off the windowpane.

“You two have a thing?”

Shea looked over her shoulder at Pete with exasperation. “Of course not.”

“But you like him.”

Well, she had before she thought he might have hit Pete with his car. But since Pete had eliminated that possibility... “He’s a nice and helpful man.”

“Everything I’m not?” Pete challenged.

Shea faced him. “He’s attentive , Pete. He cares about what I do. The other night? When that person scared the pants off of me in the lighthouse and smeared fake blood on the window? You were all business. The police pulled up, and off you went to talk to them, whereas Holt stayed behind to make sure I was okay. He made sure I was okay , Pete,” she repeated, hoping he’d get the point.

Pete’s eyes widened. “Really? You wanted me to stay and coddle you instead of taking care of the situation? I’m trying to take care of you, Shea. I’ve fixed your cars, and I drove up here to make sure your windshield got repaired. Then I drove you around and helped you with your research. I spoke to the cops, I mean ... what? You’d rather I stop all that, snuggle with you, and watch a movie? Sure, I can do that. Let’s snuggle when we get back to the lighthouse, and then you can take care of everything else. I’ll just dote on you like the princess you are, and I’ll stop doing everything I do to take care of you—to take care of us !”

Shea swallowed. The fact Pete had strung that many words together stunned her. The fact he was throwing a list of deeds at her as if they were his Get Out of Jail Free card was ridiculous.

“I just want to be cherished, Pete.” She choked back a sob that made its way up completely against her will.

“Yeah? And taking care of you isn’t that?”

“I don’t need to be taken care of—I need to be loved.”

“Maybe I do too,” Pete stated. “Maybe I need to know you respect what I do. That you respect me . That you don’t see me only as your butler or your handyman. I may not be the romantic lead of a movie or the model on the cover of some novel, but if making sure you can live your dream to travel and write while I try to get through my anxiety that something might happen to you—well, if that doesn’t tell you I love you, then I don’t know what will.”

“Maybe say the words,” Shea retorted while simultaneously beginning to feel like a spoiled, mean girl.

“Fine. I love you.” Pete spit them out, and yet Shea knew he meant them. “I always have. I thought you could see that. Every thing I do is so you can be content, so you can live the life you love. But if you want some hunky, doting hero like Holt, then go for it. I don’t know what else I can do. Because we could snuggle and be all sappy with each other, but when stuff like this happens? When one of us almost gets killed? You realize then what you came close to losing, and I guarantee you, Shea. You find out it’s not the romance you’ll miss. It’s that your car started this morning, that there’s money in the bank to pay the mortgage. The fact that we do life together, and sometimes it’s just redundant and dull and stupid. But you know what? There are people in this world—couples—who would kill for a routine life. We’re comfortable. With each other. I’m comfortable with you, Shea. Why is that a bad thing?”

Shea’s chest heaved as her breaths came in rapid succession. She stared at her husband. What Pete said made sense. It was also disappointing. Comfortable was boring, wasn’t it? Comfortable meant there was no more spark, no more interest, didn’t it?

Pete’s eyes glistened, and he shut them as though trying to hide the rare emotion.

“I just want you to want me,” Shea managed to squeeze out around the lump in her throat.

Pete didn’t open his eyes, but his response stunned her. “Yeah. Same here.”