Chapter 6

Two years later…

Danny took a seat beside her family, as she waited for Catalella’s renewal of vows ceremony to start. She couldn’t stop staring at Eyvette—with an “E”, DJ kept reminding everyone. She was beautiful and kind of reminded Danny of Catalella. However, the difference was, although you could obviously tell both women had been through a struggle, Catalella didn’t wear it on her face the way Eyvette did. Evie, as DJ called her, was quiet and mostly stuck to herself when she wasn’t trying to avoid DJ. It was easy, from the physical appearance, to see why DJ liked her. However, falling in love…maybe it was because Danny didn’t think her big brother knew the meaning of the word.

Sometimes, Danny didn’t feel like she understood the meaning of love. She stared down at the plain white gold band around her ring finger. No one had asked about it, maybe because no one knew she had someone in her life. Barely, that was, and not honestly. A chance run-in with Kit two months before, followed by layers of lies upon lies had led to the ring. Danny did feel guilty but told herself that the misunderstanding would be cleared up once Kit arrived. However, it had all worked out for the best, for her, that was. What girl didn’t want to be engaged to the man she was in love with? She told herself, the white lie was just a means to a blissful end. It had forced Kit into a position he’d never thought he would be in. Later on, he would be happy about it. It was the getting mad part that she didn’t look forward to.

“Hi!” Chris sat next to her, and Danny let out a breath of exhaustion. Chris had that effect on a person. He could wear you out with a single word or a look, and when his brain was sober enough to actually form a sentence, he was just annoying.

Before Danny could slide onto the next chair, her mother took it. Reining in her annoyance, she turned to Chris with a stretched-out smile and said, “Hi.”

“How have you been?”

Danny found herself waiting for the hidden insult or the nonchalant jab against his twin brother. At times it was hard to accept that the two had once shared a womb. They were the perfect example of yin and yang.

“Great.” Maybe if I keep the answers short, he will get the idea and go away. But Danny wouldn’t be that lucky. As if picking up that she had no desire to talk to him, Chris decided that he would listen to the sound of his own voice for the whole ceremony. Danny had to look away embarrassed a few times, when her mother patted her, asking her if her “friend” could be quiet.

At the end of the ceremony, they all rose to their feet, applauding the bride and groom as they walked out with their children in their arms. Two years before, Danny had given up on the fantasy that one day it would be she and Kit celebrating. She had decided that Mrs. Henry would not be her name; she would never be known as the mother of Kit, Junior. However, now, in a room that exploded with applause and laughter, she had hope that one day it would be her and Kit being celebrated. That was, if he forgave her for technically lying. Danny liked to think of it as not correcting an assumption and omitting the important part of the information.

It had been four weeks since he’d left, a whole month since they had said “I do” to each other, just the two of them with a justice of the peace. The lie didn’t seem that big, considering that their families and friends weren’t there to witness it. Even so, it was a lie sure to turn every responsible man into hyperdrive and cause them to make instantaneous—and not all that smart—decisions.

Two months ago…

Danny sat in her shop, staring out the window as the rain beat a rhythm against it. The song that came from it was soothing, relaxing, and welcomed. It calmed her frenzied mind and her lovesick heart. It had been almost two years since Kit had walked out of her home in the middle of the night. They had broken up, apparently, which always sounded ridiculous to Danny, considering that according to Kit, they weren’t in any sort of relationship in the first place. But her heart still ached, and there were the occasional nights where she cried herself to sleep, followed by mornings she wished she was waking up in his arms, and more nights where she dreamed, she was making love to him.

Danny had decided quickly that she would at least try to move on. So, when Solomon had come into the shop the next morning, she went out on a date with him right away. She thought she could treat the situation with Kit the same way she’d dealt with her heroin addiction: by replacing once vice with the other. In this situation, Kit was her heroin, and she only hoped that Solomon could be her alcohol. So far, he wasn’t meeting her expectations. He had failed to rid Kit from her head and heart, and honestly, he was starting to wear her out and annoy her. Maybe that was the reason why she’d let Sarah send her on blind dates again. Someone better than Kit had to turn up, Danny was beginning to fear that she wouldn’t be able to get over her addiction.

A knock on the door and Sarah walked in with a here-we-go-again look on her face. Solomon walked in after her, an obscene bouquet of roses in her hands. Danny looked around her already small rainforest and wondered where she would put today’s offering. As much as she would have wanted to reject Solomon and the tiny flower shop he had started in her office, Danny didn’t. This was her attempt at keeping an open mind.

Danny gave him her cheek and tried not to duck when he put his arm around her. “Thank you,” she mumbled as she accepted the flowers.

“Do you have time for dinner tonight?” he asked, a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

“Nope,” Sarah answered before Danny had a chance to. “She is booked solid for business diners for the next two weeks.”

A ridiculous exaggeration if Danny had ever heard one. Danny didn’t have business dinners. She found it better that way. It always made clients uncomfortable when she didn’t take wine with her dinner. And Danny wasn’t into explaining the reason why she didn’t drink at all. Besides, having lunches meant she wouldn’t have to stare at the wine set before her, even after she had turned it down.

“How about lunch?” Solomon asked.

“Booked solid too,” Sarah said.

Danny chuckled to herself. Impressed at the lengths her friend would go to to run interference with Solomon. She felt a little bad for the man. So, this was one of the few times she let her sensitive side lead her. “I have today free. It’s not exactly lunch.”

“Late-lunch-pre-dinner is fine too.”

“Let me just grab my bag.” Danny tried her best not to laugh at the faces Sarah was making behind Solomon’s back.

As she walked out, Danny whispered to Sarah, “I need to get over him somehow.”

How long did Danny expect to go on like this for? She needed to move past Kit and that truth did hurt.

As usual, when she sat down for a meal with Solomon, her attention was directed everywhere but him. Once they get out of the tiny, enclosed space of the car, she never had to struggle to start up or participate in a conversation with him. That was probably the only thing she liked about Solomon: he could carry a conversation by himself.

Danny pushed aside the wine list. The act had become habitual. Solomon cleared his throat uncomfortably, as he normally did, when he picked up the card.

“Are you sure you don’t want to try a Bordeaux?”

Danny shook her head in response. She never told Solomon that she was an alcoholic, not in those words exactly. But on their first date, she had said she didn’t have a tolerance for alcohol. Each time they went out, she felt that he’d misunderstood her words. He probably thought the fastest way to get laid was to get her drunk. The fact was, Danny’s tolerance was remarkable and better than a man three times her size. She was shocked that her liver was that resilient. But her problem was she could handle her liquor all too well.

“I don’t drink, Solomon. I’ve already told you this,” Danny said, trying her best to keep the annoyance from her tone. “I’ll just have a juice cocktail.”

“A cocktail for the lady and red wine for me.” Solomon handed the waiter the menu.

The fact that Solomon drank was a good reason not to kiss him. It worked out well for Danny and had even kept her from the pity kiss.

When the drinks came, Danny stared at hers like it was the plague and yet the most attractive thing she had ever seen. It had been almost three years since Chris had tricked her with the spiked orange juice. Danny had a handle on her addiction, but that didn’t mean a certain thirst didn’t strike her each time she saw an alcoholic beverage. She grabbed the waiter’s arm just as he was about to turn around and leave. “What is this? I asked for a fruit cocktail, not an alcoholic cocktail.”

The waiter turned to Solomon, “But sir—”

“You can go. She’ll drink it.” Solomon waved the waiter away, a sly smile on his lips. He must have thought he was the smartest man in the room. “One cocktail won’t hurt. Just drink it and we can have some fun tonight.”

Danny didn’t know what offended her most, that he had just called her boring, or that he had no intentions of listening to her wishes. “Listen, Solomon—”

Danny squealed when she felt her chair being pulled back. Fingers circled her arm, and she was forced to her feet. She spun around to her assailant and when she looked into his eyes, she immediately wanted to flee. Danny lifted a hand, her first intention to slap Kit, but instead she cupped his cheek and caressed him with her thumb. He was still as beautiful as ever and always seemed to appear from nowhere to save her. Staring into his eyes, she came to realize why her first instinct had been flight. She was locked in a trance, and he could probably get her to do whatever he wanted.

“Who are you?” Solomon growled.

Danny exhaled the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She stumbled back but not out of Kit’s grasp. Danny was thankful to Solomon, for the first time ever, for breaking her out of the spell.

“A demon sent to torment my existence,” Danny mumbled, and Kit smiled in response.

Kit had always been devilishly handsome in just jeans and a T-shirt, but seeing him in his blue uniform, he was the most striking she had ever seen him.

“What are you doing here with him?”

“I’m on a date.” Why am I whispering, she thought. “Solomon is my boyfriend.”

“I doubt that. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be trying to force that drink down your throat. Let’s go.”

Danny dug her heels into the ground. “Go where? I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Kit was more terrifying than Solomon could ever be. Danny wasn’t worried about her sobriety, but her sanity. “Why are you here?”

“I was having dinner with my superiors. Now come with me. If they see I can’t handle a woman, they may never give me my own command.” Kit grinned.

Danny looked past his shoulder and sure enough, they had an audience: not just a table full of military men but the whole restaurant. She waved and smiled awkwardly. “But I thought you didn’t want to handle a woman. That’s why our fake relationship ended.”

“It wasn’t a fake relationship.”

“Well, the ‘whatever’ we were doing. Kit, let go. Solomon might be an asshole, but he is ready to give me everything I want.” Danny tried to pull out of his grasp but that seemed to aggravate him.

“Don’t fight me,” Kit hissed under his breath.

“Hey!” Solomon tried to step between them, but a threatening glare had him backing down.

Danny shook her head, wondering if there were any good points to this man. Kit led her out of the restaurant, and they stood at the sidewalk, silently waiting for a taxi. The ride home was filled with awkward silence. Danny sneaked a couple of glances at him, only to see his clenched jaw and his unblinking eyes staring straight forward.

When they got to her home, Danny thought of making a run for it, and locking the door behind her. But of course, Kit would either outrun her or break the door down. There was absolutely no point in scheming. Resistance seemed to be futile. When she opened the front door, Kit walked right past her and to the bedroom. Old habits seemed to be dying hard, because when they’d been together before, each time they would walk into the house, he formed a straight path to the room. Usually, she was either in his arms or over his shoulder.

Danny decided to stay in the living room. It was safer there. She got herself a glass of water and waited for Kit to come out. Her hands her trembled so much that she had to place her water on the coffee table. It was half an hour before Kit walked back into the living room. He had taken off his uniform jacket and seemed to have taken a shower. Danny wondered why she hadn’t heard the water running. It was probably because of the blood rushing in her ears, and the erratic heartbeat that had silenced everything else around her.

Kit leaned on the wall across from her, his arms folded on his chest, making his biceps bulge a little too much. He looked like he was posing there for her benefit, a temptation that dared her to turn him down.

“How’s work?” Danny finally asked.

“If I told you, I would have to kill you.”

Really. “Calm down, G.I. Joe. I was just trying to make conversation.”

“How’s work?” he asked.

“It was awesome right before you embarrassed my biggest client in front of a whole restaurant.” Kit walked toward her. Knowing his intention was to sit next to her on the sofa, Danny stood up and moved away. “Did you really have to do that?”

“If he can’t protect you, he isn’t the man for you.” Kit followed her.

“Well, not everyone is a god, so take it easy on us mere mortals. Ouch!” Danny yelled when her back came into contact with the wall behind her. However, before she could get her bearings, Kit had closed in on her. “Move,” Danny said with her eyes closed. She was too terrified of being enchanted by his grey-blues.

“Why are you running from me?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know.”

“Look at me.”

“Why? I’ve already seen your face. There is nothing special about it.”

“Dammit Danny!” he yelled.

“What!” she yelled back. “Why are you here, Christian? I thought when you left two years ago, everything was clear between us.”

“I shouldn’t have left like that. In the middle of the night, without saying anything. I was just…my head wasn’t in the right space. We didn’t break up the right way.”

“Are you referring to break-up sex? Normally I wouldn’t mind, but I’m an addict—”

“A small taste and all you will want is more. I’m kind of hoping for that.” Kit smiled as his lips lowered toward hers. At the last second, Danny turned her head away and he ended up kissing her cheek.

“Tell me why. Why can’t you be a husband, a father, and a SEAL?”

Kit stepped back and stared at her. “Already, that order of words feels wrong to me.”

“SEAL first?” Danny asked, suddenly frightened. And when he nodded, her heart sank. There was no point to this conversation. His mind was dead set, and Danny wasn’t about to come second to a faceless Uncle Sam. Danny laughed at herself. “Okay.”

“So, what now?”

“What do you mean, what now?” Danny asked, confused. To her, everything seemed very clear. But apparently not to him. “We are done.”

“Can’t we just try?”

“Try what? What exactly would our relationship be? I’m not the lighthouse girl. I won’t be standing by the shore, waiting for your ship to come in. I have already waited long enough to get my life started. Asking me to start a relationship with an absentee partner is not what I need and is completely unfair.” That was when Danny realized exactly how unfair she was being to him. “And I think me asking you to pick me over you job isn’t fair, either.”

“But do you understand why I can’t be all those other things?”

“You are a career man?” Danny wasn’t sure she cared. She sat down on the sofa and didn’t try to run when he sat next to her.

“I want to be there. I don’t want to be just a husband and father in pictures. Don’t ask me to go back to corporate New York, I don’t belong there. The SEALs is where, for the first time, I felt at home. Then here with you.”

When Kit took her hand, all Danny did was stare at it. Everything he was saying should have made sense to her. But her heart didn’t want to accept that there was something more important than her when it came to the man she was in love with.

“I get it,” she lied.

“But that doesn’t mean that I can’t try. I won’t always be a SEAL.”

Danny pulled her hand away when he said that. Danny didn’t believe in hope. To her, it was just an emotion that crippled you and left you completely defenceless to the intentions of the universe. She’d heard about men who were just like Kit. In love with the uniform, always setting a date of departure but pushing it back because they couldn’t see themselves being anyone other than a serviceman.

“No, I think for the sake of my sanity, you shouldn’t make me any promises you can’t keep. Or won’t be able to, when the time comes.”

“I’m leaving for DC in the morning. I will be back in about a month. Think about it. But until then…”

One month later…

Danny jumped to her feet, startled, when Sarah burst into her office, causing the door to bang against the wall. “What the hell, Sarah?”

Sarah dropped a drug store bag on her desk. “We are best friends, right?”

“Not really.”

“You have to take it with me.”

“Take what with you?” Danny emptied the contents of the bag. Boxes of pregnancy tests landed on her desk, one by one. “Do you really need this many? Wait a minute, are you pregnant?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need the tests.”

“Why do you want me to take it with you? I’m not pregnant.” Danny just had her period, so she was very sure of it. Plus, since Kit had left, she hadn’t had any sex. “This is a weird favour to ask, Sarah.”

“Please.”

“Okay.”

Danny took Sarah to the bathroom. She didn’t have any intention of taking the test. Being in different stalls, there was no way for Sarah to know. Three minutes of an agonizing wait and the result was negative.

“Can we go back to work now?”

“I’m sorry, I thought…a baby. Can you imagine that? It would have been—” Sarah went silent suddenly and stopped walking.

“It would have been what?” Sarah seemed to be frozen in place. “Sarah, are you okay?” Danny followed her gaze into her office. Her heart dropped to her belly as her lungs ceased to function.

Kit was standing in her office, the boxes in his hands and a mask of fury on his face. He tossed the boxes back on the desk and grabbed Danny’s purse. He then marched toward her, grabbed her hand, and dragged her out of the shop.

An hour later, Danny was married, and an hour after that, Kit was gone.

It wasn’t exactly as romantic as Catalella’s wedding. The perfect word for it would be abrupt. Kit hadn’t said two words to her. And at times, Danny had felt guilty. She should have spoken up, even though Kit kept telling her to shut up. In one breath, she could have cleared everything up. However, the little selfish part of her didn’t mind how everything turned out. But here she was, the lighthouse girl she hadn’t wanted to become. In all fairness, Kit was a husband and thought he was going to be a father, two things he didn’t want. So, his two outweighed her one.

She would tell him the truth when he came back. He was stuck with her, ’til death did them part.

Danny was back at her parents’ home, trying to muster up the courage to tell them she was married. She obviously wasn’t going to tell them the circumstances of how it had happened. It would be too ironic and funny, considering her mother had gotten married the same way. Well, in her mother’s case, there had been an actual baby. One week since her own wedding, and the nerve had yet to come to her.

She paced up and down her room, rehearsing, when Chris’ call broke her concentration. For a moment, she thought about not answering the call. But the last thing she wanted was for him to turn up at her home, just because she’d ignored him.

Taking a deep breath, wishing for patience, she answered, “Hello?”

“Your hero is dead.”

Then the line, and her whole world, went silent.

***

One year later…

Danny heard footsteps approaching. She turned around and tried to run in the other direction. It was hard to do, considering her vision had doubled and her feet were refusing to cooperate. She blew air into her palm and took a sniff of her breath. The scent of alcohol was pungent, but as long as she kept a safe distance away there was no way that they could smell it on her. Now the hard part was to look sober.

“Feet don’t fail me now,” she muttered, under her snort.

“Danny?” It was Reno.

Danny closed her eyes and counted down to ten before responding. “What?”

“You can’t get married.”

“What?” That again. Danny turned around to face her big brother. She wasn’t quite sure what expression she was displaying on her face, but whatever it was, Reno wasn’t liking it. His whole face frowned, and Danny couldn’t help but giggle. Then she hiccupped. “Excuse me. What were you saying?”

“Are you drunk?”

Danny jumped, startled. The rage in Reno’s voice echoed in their parents’ house, hitting her like a ton of bricks. “Use your inside voice.”

“I swear to God, Danny!” Reno’s fists banged down on the dining room table, sending most of its contents flying to the ground, making a crashing medley. “You just left rehab.”

“I know, and it wasn’t as posh as I remembered it.”

“Do you think Christopher is going to marry an alcoholic?”

“Do you think he cares?” Danny stumbled toward the bar. She grabbed the whiskey bottle but couldn’t lift it. Her hand shook each time she picked it up. “Big brother, help a sister out.”

Reno grabbed her arm and spun her around. “What is happening to you? What do you think Kit would say?”

The mention of his name seemed to awaken Danny’s reserve strength. She pushed Reno away but not before slapping him. “The traitor abandoned me.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He left me!” Danny screamed.

“He died!”

That silenced her, and miraculously managed to sober her up. Danny was angry. She had asked Kit not to go, but he had chosen his career over her. They had parted with a lie. She had tricked him into doing something he swore not to do because his career came first. Danny thought she had won. For a moment, she had dug into the Kent cunning business chest and brought out a trump card. Kit never turned his back on responsibility. So, she’d lied, and she’d won. For a moment she had beat the Navy. But now the Navy had taken him from her. “Don’t…he’s not…he is M.I.A. He doesn’t want a wife or children, so he is hiding. But they’ll find him. Then he will be marshalled… I mean, court martialled. It’s illegal to be a coward, you know.”

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be marrying his twin brother.”

Danny’s knees gave out. She dropped to the ground and sat there, staring at the bamboo floors. Reno sat next to her, but Danny moved away. “Don’t. I’m not really interested in DJ’s kumbaya session.”

“It’s been a year. They haven’t found him, Danny.” Reno cupped her cheek, and she pushed his palm away. “Marrying Christopher and drinking won’t help you move on.”

“I don’t want to move on.” Getting on her hands and knees, Danny tried to push herself off the ground, but failed. “Pointless, it’s all pointless. For two years, I was happy. I had Kit, I had a home, a job, my sobriety…and poof, it’s all gone. I kissed my sailor goodbye and waited for him to come back, but he didn’t.”

“Danny—”

Danny moved out of Reno’s reach. “I don’t think I can…I don’t know how to face another day without Christopher and the alcohol to trick my mind into thinking he looks identical to his brother. My heart is being shredded every single sober second. I can’t let the fog clear, because then I start to think, to rationalize, I start to make sense of it and I’m afraid I’m going to accept it.” Danny cleared the emotion from her tone. “It’s not easy to pretend, to forget and to feel numb when I’m sober. I need to survive. It’s not killing me, it’s keeping me alive…alive for Kit, for when he comes back. He has to come back.”

“He is not.”

“Don’t say that to me.” Danny shook her head as if trying to get the truth out of her head. “You don’t understand. If he doesn’t come back, I don’t come back.”

Danny leaned into her brother’s embrace and cried.

It had been a year ago, after she had chased everyone from her room when she’d found herself at the Henry residence. Chris had let her in and left her undisturbed in Kit’s room for the night. It worked out well for her, because everyone was either busy worrying about Kat and her early labour or DJ and his problems. For a while, she liked the solitude, the fact that everyone was too busy with their lives to comfort her or keep an eye on her.

Danny didn’t know exactly how she’d gone from Kit’s bedroom and found herself in the Henry’s bar. Her heart and body were going through myriad emotions she had never felt before. She never knew a person could feel both numb and in great pain at the same time. Danny didn’t know how long she had been standing there, staring at the whiskey bottle. Danny told herself she could stop at any time and Chris had echoed that belief. Soon, he was the only one she felt she could depend on, the only one she believed was on her side.

Chris was the only one who would support her habit and agree with anything she wanted. So, when he’d asked her to marry him, her obvious answer was yes. Besides, he looked so much like Kit that staring at his face was comforting.

So, no matter how much her family was against it, Danny was still going to go ahead with the marriage. It was the only way she could survive.