Page 131 of Here and Now
He nods once. “I’m going to assume it’s bad.”
“It is. I’m worried for her safety.”
Doug watches me carefully. “What do you need from me?”
“I’m not even sure, but she needs to be protected until I can figure out who wants to hurt her.”
“Consider it done.”
There are people in this world that you know you can call at midnight on a Tuesday who will answer and be ready to fight, just because you asked. Doug is that person.
Just the same as I am for him.
“Thank you.”
He shakes his head. “You’d do the same. What’s your plan?”
I run my fingers through my hair and pace. “I don’t have one yet. I don’t even have the full fucking information. I guess that’s step one. I need to know who and what exactly has her scared.”
“So she’s on the run from something?” he asks. “I only say that because it all seemed weird to me. Someone just randomly picksEmber Falls? She had no ties here, just a desire to be a barista in a small coffee shop? I was suspicious, but I’m also built this way.”
“You mean we were formed to be this way,” I say, sighing heavily.
“True. It’s done us well, though.”
It has. Right now, more than ever. “Yes, but I wish I had all the tools I needed, and it’s been so long since we were in, there’s this feeling like I can’t do anything. I can’t provide her with the safety she’s so desperately seeking.”
Doug sits on the step at the edge of the porch. “Maybe she doesn’t need that. Maybe she has that already; she just needs you to be there for her.”
“She basically told me, in no uncertain terms, that she’s going to have to leave at some point and she won’t even come to me.”
He falls silent for a minute, and then I sit next to him, a heaviness in my chest that won’t weaken.
“You love her.”
“Yes.”
He grins. “Knew it would happen someday. You with all your bullshit about not wanting kids or a family. Then you fell in love with a girl who would give you both.”
“I love him too, you know? Kai is a great kid and he’s a part of her,” I confess.
“Which probably makes it easy for her to love you back.”
If she loved me, she’d give me a fucking chance to protect her. She’d tell me everything so I wasn’t fighting in the dark with a blindfold on, swinging aimlessly. I could narrow in, focus, and be the man she needs.
“Not enough.” The two words fall out, settling dread through me.
Doug inhales deeply and lets it out through his nose. “You’ve always had this issue, Miles.”
“What?”
“You think, just because you’re you and you’re smart and have always been able to accomplish the things you set your mind to, that things will just happen. If they don’t happen the way you want them, then there’s some reason. Sometimes the things we don’t know are because we’re not meant to at that time. Look, I have neverquestioned your leadership, but when that mission went bad, you blamed yourself over and over because you acted on that intel.”
I fall silent, waiting for the anger that I deserve. When it doesn’t come, I say the only words I can. “I believed them.”
“And we did too. If I really doubted it, I mean to my bones, I would’ve fought you. I didn’t because you were always good at being patient. It was me who would jump off, and you’d rein me in. That didn’t happen that day, and when I looked back, I blamed myself more than anything.”
I turn to look at him, my eyes wide as I take that last statement in. “Blamed yourself, for what?”
