They walked in silence the rest of the block to Lachlan’s apartment. Gina shook her head at the rundown building. After a couple of attempts, Lach got the door unlocked. But ever the vigilant SEAL, even when drunk, he checked the hair-thin silken thread he’d fastened across the door before leaving and found it unbroken. No unwanted guests inside—at least none who’d come through the front door. She wondered if he’d do a sweep of the apartment…and then she got a look inside.
A studio with a tiny bathroom, its door open. A mattress on a metal frame, an old recliner, a small table with two chairs, and a chest of drawers.
“Home sweet home,” Lach said, swinging his arm out. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll just be a minute.”
He walked straight to the bed, flopped down onto his back, and started snoring immediately.
* * *
Afew hours later, Lachlan stirred and placed a hand over his eyes. He looked rough, even after his nap. While he’d been out cold, Gina took the opportunity to look around his place. She’d expected to find a disaster area before he opened the front door, but the apartment was spotless and neat. Even his bed had been made with hospital corners, tight enough to bounce a quarter. Either Lach was hiring a housekeeper (doubtful) or he wasn’t entirely lost to the man Gina remembered.
Maybe she’d caught him on a day when he’d received terrible news and reacted by going on a bender. Her hopes rose.
And they were deflated again when she checked the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. In the cabinets, she found a mostly empty bottle of scotch with two more full soldiers waiting behind it. Two empty bottles of rum in the trash. And enough beer for a keggerless kegger in the fridge, with not much in the way of actual food—just some condiments, a pineapple, and a plastic container full of something that looked like meat in a dark sauce. She was afraid to open it for fear of the stench.
Lachlan rubbed his eyes, looked at Gina as she paced, and groaned.
“I was thinking I’d been dreaming, lass, but you really are here.”
“Great to see you, too.” She stopped pacing and beamed at him.
He chuckled then winced. Lach rubbed his temples. “The worst part of a hangover is lying there so miserable you don't wanna move while knowing that if you would just get your ass up, take a piss, take an aspirin, drink a glass of water, you'd feel better faster.”
Gina sighed, then laughed ruefully. “You know, the road to meeting you all those years ago started withmyhangover.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” And she told him about that morning in her father’s office, something she’d never brought up before. She'd had no idea that she was at the beginning of a long adventure, one whose ending she still couldn't see yet. But one thing she did know was that somehow Lachlan would be part of it again.
She just needed to sober him up first.
Gina had known women who thought it was their life's mission to fix a man. One woman she’d known in college had a real philosophy about it. She thought if she got a man to stop drinking or get a job or quit smoking that she was fixing him up for the next woman to have, and that one day she'd meet the man another woman had already fixed up for her. Gina had thought about that conversation through the years. And as she got older, it just got sadder.
Yet, here I am.
“I saw some aspirin in your kitchen,” she told Lachlan.
“I need a smoke first,” Loch said. He made no move to get up.
As she spoke her next words, Gina wasn't sure for once what her objective was. To fix Lach up for someone else someday? Or to fix him up for herself?
Maybe he didn't need fixing at all, just finding.
“You are no longer smoking.”
“What?”
“Not around me.”
“Fine, I’ll go outside like I always did.”
Gina crossed her arms and shook her head. “And not,notaround me, either. I need you sober and I need you breathing and smoking too much stops people from breathing.”
“Youneed?” His eyes twinkled in a way that raised all her red flags. Dammit, she wasn’t a twenty-two-year-old with stars in her eyes over the big, brave SEAL anymore. She wasn’t even the woman who wanted to marry him anymore. The years had taught her not to trust anyone, especially herself when it came to her heart. People would use you, and God knew she’d used them.
All for the greater goodshe had learned to tell herself, first every day, then as her missions sent her deeper into the darkness, every hour of every day. But lately, she hadn’t bothered saying it at all.
And that’s really why you went to find Lachlan,that younger voice inside told her.
