I close my eyes against the urgency in his stare, dark green like a forest I’d get lost in. My chest heaves as if I’m running, but the only exertion is staying out of his arms; is not throwing myself on top of him and kissing him like it’s been ten years since I had anything as good as what we had. It takes everything to remain still, mute.
I want to tell him there’s no relationship to respect. There’s nothing to forgive, but if I say any of those things, there will be no barrier between us—nothing keeping the wolf from my door. And if he gets in . . .
With swift steps, I make my escape to the elevator, duck in and press the close doors button. I probably won’t see him again until the announcement. When I look up, he stands there, frustration clearly painted on his strong face.
“Happy holidays, Doc,” I say as the doors close.
44
Lennix
“Merry Christmas, Mama.”
I say it every year here in this place where I whispered her name. It’s not much, but it’s all the closure I have. No body and no grave. A story with no end. I can only hope she found peace because I’m not sure I ever really can.
“Rest in peace, Liana,” my father says, his sober gaze fixed below.
I’d almost forgotten he stood beside me, I was so turned in on my own sadness. He comes every year, though I haven’t asked him to in a long time. They never married and weren’t together when she died.
Guilt stabs at me.
“Dad, you don’t have to keep coming.” I take his hand and squeeze. “You should be home with Bethany. I could have come alone.”
“Bethany’s fine,” he says of the English professor he married after dating a few years. “It’s just an hour and she understands.”
She is pretty awesome. Since she came into my father’s life, Christmas has become festive again with trees lit and tables laid.
“Besides, Liana was a woman who deserves to be remembered.”
I nod. She was indeed. A warrior. Fierce and principled.
“You’re so like her,” Dad says, a gentle smile quirking his lips even though his gaze is trained on the sky, not on me. “She would be proud of you—of how you fought to protect this place.”
“And failed,” I mumble, misery making my eyes burn. “I couldn’t save . . .”
Her. The land. Tammara. Too many losses to name over the years. It makes me tired. I stare at the smooth expanse of dry land, with the pipeline trail cutting over it like a scar, healed, but jagged.
“You can’t save them all, Lenn,” Dad says, slipping an arm around me and pulling me in tight. “But you’re your mother’s daughter, so I know you’ll always try.”
I nod against his shoulder, tears stinging my eyes.
“Just promise me you’ll stop fighting for everyone else long enough to find something for yourself,” Dad says. “Liana never did that, but you can.”
He’s right. It usually feels like everything I want most is for someone else.
Not everything, that damn voice reminds me again.
I clench my eyes closed against the images that flood my mind—images of Maxim and me. My desire for him was a living thing that writhed and screamed and demanded for itself—took what it wanted. Took him however he came. Wanted him with no holds barred, even if it hurt.
But then it did hurt, and I ran away.
The barren land mocks me, an open casket holding nothing more than a whisper and my pain. God, so much pain. Pain I don’t think I can live through again.
Mena says I cut myself off so I never have to feel this again—never have to lose like this again. Does never having someone to lose mean I’ll never have someone . . . at all?
45
Maxim
“And then Lennix says, ‘Happy holidays . . .” I pause for emphasis. “。 . . Doc.’”
David and Grim don’t look as impressed by this last bit of information as they should. They actually look slightly disinterested.
“You get the significance of that, right?” I demand. “Remember I told you she used to call me—”
“Doc Quixote,” they both finish flatly, arms crossed over their chests. They’re slumped into the sumptuous sectional that takes up a quarter of the room. We’re at my place embedded in the slopes of the Aspen Highlands. Neither of them have immediate families, and mine . . . well, it’s obviously complicated.
“Not all the time. Mostly she would just call me Doc, but there was that one time we went—”
“Bike riding,” they say together again, exasperation creeping into their voices.
“I told you guys about that?” I frown. “About the windmills when we went bike riding in Amsterdam?”
“Holy shit,” David groans, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know about you, Grim, but if he says ‘Amsterdam’ one more time . . .”
“Yeah.” Grim reaches for the heavily-spiked eggnog my chef has perfected over the years. “I’ll figure out how to chew my own ear off.”
“Good one.” David chuckles and clicks his mug to Grim’s. “Now, Max, you say Kimba is your main contact for the campaign, right? She still got that great ass? Did she ask about me? I mean, she and I also had a great week in the city that shall not be named.”
“Really?” Grim turns to him, his brows lifted. “You tapped that?”
“Dude . . .” David closes his eyes and tips his head back into the cushions. “Like one of my top ten fucks of all time.”
“Top ten?” Grim does look impressed by that. “Wow.”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “But I was kind of in the middle of asking for your advice.”
“Are we still talking about you?” David frowns. “I didn’t want to say it, man, but Kimba and I had a week, too, and you don’t hear me going on and on about it.”
“Because it meant absolutely nothing to either of you. She passed her goodbye through me on the street and told me it meant nothing.”
David cocks his grin to the side. “But I bet she remembers my dick fondly.”
He and Grim bump fists and their bawdy laughter echoes through the room.
“I was trying to ask if I should call Lennix,” I tell them. “She hasn’t called me Doc since I’ve been back. Hell, she’s barely looked me in the face.”
Through the floor-to-ceiling window, I contemplate the mountains. Nearby properties glitter with Christmas lights, and the moon hangs low in the sky like an Earth-sized ornament, illuminating the snow-dusted rise of mountains. It’s a scene from a holiday postcard, but it doesn’t feel like Christmas. Not really.
I talked to Owen and Millie and the kids yesterday before they left for my parents’ place in Dallas. The kids loved the gifts I sent, and I could hear their squeals of laughter and their Cocker Spaniel barking in the background. It reminded me of Christmases growing up, Owen and I running downstairs at one minute past midnight and tearing into our gifts. My mom and dad would get up with us to watch.
I had a fantastic childhood. I can appreciate that now. Not for the reason people would assume, for all the money, but for my family. I think I blocked some of it so the separation from my father wouldn’t hurt as much, but tonight, I feel it. Dad was busier than I could even comprehend then, but I caught him once assembling our bikes himself so they’d be under the tree when we woke up. He stood there with my mom, bleary-eyed in his robe, grinning when we rode the bikes up and down the halls.