Cindy Gerard - The Way Home

Two hundred fifty-five lines that he counted over and over again so he wouldn’t ever forget, wouldn’t ever forgive.

A cold fear gripped him. A cold sweat enveloped him.

Two hundred fifty-five lines? Two hundred fifty-five days?

It couldn’t be. He wasn’t thinking straight. And yet he knew the number was significant.

“Askar?” Rabia. Her voice sounded far away and full of concern.

“My God.” He dropped to his knees, dragging her down with him. Horrible, excruciating memories shot across his mind’s eye like tracer rounds in a sky lit up with RPGs.

Two hundred fifty-five lines.

Not twenty-three lines in a cave.

Not another twenty-eight days in Rabia’s father’s home.

Somewhere, somehow, had he really survived two hundred fifty-five days in a hole in the ground where he’d been caged like an animal?

No. He wouldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true.

He wouldn’t let it be true. He couldn’t let it be true, because that meant he hadn’t merely survived a month or two before Rabia found him. It meant he’d been lost for nearly a year.

Or was it even more than a year?

“My God, my God.” He started shaking uncontrollably.

How much of his life had he lost? And how many more lines had he made in other holes that he didn’t remember?

Northern Minnesota, August

IF YOU DON’T COME BACK and finish this, I might have to hunt you down and hurt you.

Jess still didn’t know if she should be mortified or proud that she’d issued Ty that ultimatum three weeks ago. Either way, she’d said it. And she’d meant it. Now, twenty-one long days later, she was going to have to make good on her words. Good sense or bad, she could hardly wait.

“What are you looking for?” Kayla asked as Jess rummaged around behind the counter for Bear’s leash.

“Before it gets any darker, I want to take Bear for a quick W-A-L-K.” Since the Lab understood the word walk and went wild with excitement when she said it, Jess spelled it out for Kayla.

“How will you ever be able to tear your eyes away from the clock for that long?” Kayla teased.

“You’re a laugh a minute, you know that?”

“I do, yes.” Kayla counted back change to a customer.

Kayla was right, Jess thought as she got sidetracked by another last-minute sale and stopped to scoop up two ice cream cones and ring up a bag of marshmallows and a bottle of peppermint schnapps. She’d been watching the clock for the better part of an hour, like a teenager waiting for her prom date. The fact that it was almost nine P.M., closing time, was secondary. Ty’s plane had been due to land in International Falls at eight, and she expected him to show up anytime now.

She shouldn’t have missed him this much. She shouldn’t have gone to bed every night and awakened every morning thinking about him. She should have been more mature. And sane. Apparently, however, she wasn’t either. And the deal was, she no longer cared.

Ty Brown made her feel alive and desirable and special. So after the first few days of being mortified by the way she’d all but melted in his arms, she’d decided not to fight it. She’d decided to enjoy it—whatever it was. She was way too wary to call it anything more than chemistry and infatuation, regardless of what it felt like. She only knew that every time her phone rang or her text alert sounded, her heart went a little haywire. He’d called every day. Sometimes twice a day. He sent her silly e-mails and sexy text messages.

More than once in the past three weeks, Kayla had caught her grinning at her phone and called her on it.

“Commando Cutie’s getting frisky, is he?”

“Don’t you have shelves to stock?” was her standard reply, even though Jess knew she wasn’t fooling Kayla.

“When’s he coming back?” was Kayla’s stock retort.

“Who said anything about him coming back?”

“You know, you can go to hell for lying.”

“Oh, for the days when the younguns respected their elders.”

And so it went. But tonight was the night. Ty was coming back, and she felt like one electric, twitchy nerve because of it.

She’d finally found Bear’s leash when the hose at the gas pump dinged, alerting her that she had yet another customer outside.

“You act like you’re looking for someone.” Kayla again. Too astute.

“I’m ready for the day to be over is all,” Jess lied. What she was ready for was for the night to begin.

That was the other decision she’d made. She was an adult. With needs… needs that she’d stored in dry dock too long. Everything would change between her and Ty tonight. It was going to get physical… and she could hardly draw a deep breath thinking about it.

Hearing him talk about Maya that day on the lake, about how he’d loved her, how he would always love her, had somehow made her accept that she could do that, too. She could always love J.R. But it was OK for her to open up to her own feelings now. It made it all right. Ty was moving on with his life. It was time she moved on, too, regardless of what happened between them in the long term, because the long term was something she wasn’t looking for—not with Ty.

She knew where that path led. What she was looking for was a fling with a nice guy, a gorgeous guy, and she wasn’t going to sabotage her chances by overthinking things like repercussions and expectations and guilt. She’d lived in the past for too long. The time had come to live in the moment.

“You know,” Kayla said, as she stepped over Bear to get out from behind the cash register, “I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind. Something’s up. The makeup looks good, by the way. Hair, too.”

Nothing got past that girl. If Kayla suspected that some of the packages she’d brought home from Duluth last week were filled with loot from Victoria’s Secret, she’d never hear the end of it. Jess had made the two-and-a-half-hour trip on the pretense of checking out a craft show. Since one section of her store was devoted to touristy-type knickknacks, she was always looking to replenish her inventory with something unique. And since her underwear drawer was just that, a utilitarian underwear drawer, she’d been in dire need of a little silk and lace.

“I like seeing you this happy,” Kayla announced, looking smug.

Kayla’s statement gave her pause. “Have I really been such a sad sack?”

“No,” Kayla assured her quickly. “You weren’t ever a sad sack. But you weren’t ever… what’s the word? This bubbly before.”

“Bubbly? Oh, please, God, save me.”

Kayla laughed. “What? It looks good on you.”

If her personality change was that obvious, then Kayla couldn’t have been the only one who noticed. And Jess knew it for a fact.

“Something’s amiss. Do you have a secret lover, my little lotus blossom?” Boots teased her every day.

“All right. I confess,” she’d finally told him this morning. “You found me out. I’m having a torrid affair with the bait man.”

Boots slapped a spread palm to his chest, faking a heart attack. “Cooter? You’d choose him over me? Me who buys your coffee and sings your praises daily? That man smells like a fish and looks like a bear. Besides, he’s a grampa.”

“So are you, you old flirt.”

She knew others were also speculating. And she knew her brother-in-law was not happy. Brad had made that clear the morning Ty had flown back to Florida.

“Your life. Your business,” he’d said when he stopped by on the pretense of filling his travel coffee mug, his tone implying that he very much thought it was his business, too. “But you need to remember that you’re a target, Jess.”