The best I could do didn't have to be great. I hadn't believed I was worthy of anything great.
It took several years and an out-of-the-blue decision to take up mountain climbing to find my competence and value. I wasn't certain I'd found it all, but I knew I was more than the person who made Shannon awesome.
And this morning, with the skin beneath my shirt and tie still tender from Wes's scruffy beard, I knew I was more than this firm. I'd never worked anywhere else and the prospect of leaving these loud, abrasive, amazing people who were the closest thing I had to a family was panic-inspiring, but I could. I could leave Walsh Associates, I could leave Boston. I could join Wes wherever his career took him.
What a wild idea.
We could get an apartment together if we moved to a big city, maybe a house if we moved to a less urban area. Chicago would be fun. Maybe Washington, D.C. Wes loved warmer climates so maybe Austin or Atlanta? It could be anywhere. We could go anywhere. We'd explore our new city and develop a short list of favorite brunch locations. We'd find trivia spots and make friends. We'd have dinner parties. We'd go on vacations and celebrate holidays. We'd disagree over glassware and linens, and other blissfully domestic issues. We'd share all these experiences and make something just for us.
Another wild idea? When we moved, maybe I'd send my family an update. Nothing more than a cute postcard announcing my new address but it would be enough to send a clear message to them. They'd know I was living well and living with a man, despite their vigorous efforts to the contrary. They'd know I'd survived everything they'd forced upon me and everything they'd done to me. They'd know and even if they burned that postcard while cursing my name, they wouldn't be able to burn the truth.
A teeny tiny part of me wondered whether they'd acknowledge my postcard, my existence. All these years, I'd held out the thinnest sliver of hope for my sister. That she'd be the one to reach out and acknowledge me. We didn't have to be friends or even family—we hadn't been that in ages—but we could know each other again. I could congratulate her on her wedding, the birth of her children. She could send me and Wes a holiday card. That would be enough.
It was wild—and fully fictional. Wes hadn't suggested anything of this sort. He probably hadn't imagined us together beyond the summer—if that long. He hadn't even hinted where life might take him next and from the looks of last night's surprise meeting with his brother and Jordan Kaisall, I had to believe his life was bound to get much more complicated very soon. What if he was sent to some remote place and I couldn't find a job? What if Wes didn't want me to go because Wes preferred his freedom and independence? That didn't seem outrageous, given everything else I'd learned about him.
And moving somewhere with Wes would necessitate him having a conversation with his family. Wes wasn't doing that any time soon and I wasn't going to hide in plain sight as hisroommate. So, no. This wasn't happening. I wasn't going anywhere.
Even if Wes stayed in Boston,weweren't going anywhere. There was no way for us to go forward, regardless of whether Wes relocated to Chicago or the middle of the Amazonian rainforest. It had nothing to do with jobs or anything aside from the fact I wasn't willing to be anyone's secret and Wes couldn't hold my hand in the presence of his parents.
I still couldn't get over the hot slap of shame I'd felt in that moment. It didn't take much to remind me of the time when I wasn't deserving of anything at all—not a family, not a home, not even an existence. I might've shed some of the skin of abuse and abandonment years ago but trauma stuck around. It lived inside blood and bones and guts, and it didn't go away.
It took me years to grow into the idea of deserving great things but it came with the unintended consequence of expecting great things from others. I wanted my sister to take responsibility for standing by, silent, while I was rejected. I wanted my mother to apologize for everything. And I wanted Wes to resolve his issues with his parents so we could be together without hiding anything.
I knew I was worthy of all these things but I still didn't know whether it was wrong to hope for them.
18
Wes
Since I couldn't slamthe door behind me—sleeping babies and all—I stamped my boots on the doormat. It read House Halsted in theGame of Thronestypeface. My brother was really leaning into his cheeky suburban life.
Unreasonably annoyed about that doormat and furious about everything else in my life, I stomped up the driveway and toward the town center. I didn't know where I was going but I had to get out of that house. It was good of Will and Shannon to put up with me this long and I could admit I enjoyed hanging out with Abby and Annabelle, but I couldn't stay here another minute. I needed a break, I needed some new scenery, I needed—Tom. That was it. I needed Tom.
I knew how to breathe when I was with him.
All the problems piled on top of me were less oppressive. The future was brighter. I wasn't prepared to say the birds sang more sweetly or sunbeams felt warmer but things were good with Tom.Iwas good when I was with him. I was still smarting and salty as fuck from the way things went down with the CIA and not too thrilled with the Navy either but I could see beyond those issues with Tom. I could set everything aside—the busted arm, the living arrangements, the lack of transferrable skills, the conversation I couldn't bring myself to have with my parents—and indulge in the grossly underrated glory of coupledom before taking on the business of sorting out my new civilian life.
I'd had no idea relationships could be like this. I thought it was learning to ignore the other person's obnoxious habits and mediocre sex. No one ever told me relationship sex could be phenomenal or that friends and brunches and game night gatherings would become essential elements of our coupled existence. I hadn't understood the way two people could combine intoweandus,and how thatwecontained exponentially more than we possessed independently.
Hell, I'd spent the last two yearsmarriedand this was news to me. Yeah, sure, it was spy-married but I'd heard operatives insist they knew their mission partners better than their significant others. I'd assumed that was accurate. Now I felt bad for them. Veronica had been an incredible partner and I'd trusted her with my life but two years with her was nothing compared to two months with Tom.
Two months. Fuck me. It seemed like I'd pointed a meat cleaver at him only yesterday, and today I couldn't wait until the workday was through to see him.
Two months was a relationship eternity for me.
I'd never…well, I'd never. My life had been organized around deployments and missions for as long as I could remember, and that structure allowed me to keep a filing cabinet of fuck buddies at military outposts around the world. There was a time when I'd believed I wanted it that way. I'd had it all figured out. There was nothing I'd wanted more than exciting new missions and an untethered, unlimited life.
Wewas a storm that altered geographies and redefined borders, that redefined me.
* * *
It was barely noonby the time I reached Beacon Hill and the row of brownstones on a narrow cobblestone street where Tom's office was located. I knew from experience he didn't stop to eat—if he even managed that—until after one in the afternoon, which meant it was too early to drop by and surprise him for a lunch date with a side of life coaching now that I was unemployed.
I'd thought about catching a train into the city last night and asking Tom to put me back together after my discussion with the deputy director—and then Will and Jordan—but I didn't relish always being the one in need of fixing in this relationship. As long as Tom had known me, he'd been engaged in some amount of problem solving and reassembly, and while my appreciation for his efforts was bottomless, I didn't enjoy being on this rung of the ladder. I didn't resent Tom for being ahead of me but didn't want him climbing down to lend me a hand time and time again.
I didn't go to him with the shards of my life last night and that was for the best. I was still angry as fuck and right there on the edge of picking a fight with anything that looked at me sideways, but when I'd awoken this morning I hadn't felt as gut-punch needy as when I'd crawled into bed. That was an improvement.
To kill time and some of the hyper energy I'd accumulated this morning, I wandered around Boston Common, the Public Garden, and the gold-domed Massachusetts State House. Rows of old townhouses bordered the park, the kind Tom's firm restored.
