Page 40 of Grant’s Blaze

While the compliment was backhanded, I pretended it wasn’t. Once Elijah was parked in his garage, I gave a little curtain call just beyond the passenger-side door.

“I’m going to change and take a walk down by the water. Want to come?” he asked.

“Yeah, all right.” The evening air was balmy for the first week in June, and the beach was relatively quiet because schools were still in session. Give this place another few weeks, and it would be at maximum capacity every day.

We walked on the shore, neither one of us wearing shoes. The beach at night was a completely different experience than the beach during the day. Some creatures that lived in the ocean and right at the water’s edge were only visible at dusk, and others when there was just enough moonlight overhead. So many things were there to be discovered just by shifting the hour of day you went.

“Grant?”

“Yeah, man?” I replied quietly.

All afternoon, I could sense the guy working up the courage to ask me about my abduction. And damn it, after everything he’d done since dragging my ass back from Catalina, I owed him the truth. At least the best that I knew it.

“I’ve been trying to add stuff up about last week.”

“I know. And I really appreciate that you haven’t given me a ton of shit about it.”

“How did you get to Catalina? Do you know?”

Fuck. Me. I had to chuckle because this was such an Elijah move. The man always dug right in on the hard parts. “Yeah. I know. The problem is, when I tell you, you’re going to think I’m blowing smoke up your ass.”

“Well, why don’t you just spill it, and I’ll decide what I believe and what I don’t believe?” my friend responded. “At this point I deserve the benefit of the doubt, right?”

“You absolutely do.”

I let the assurance settle between us for another handful of steps. White foam washed over my feet, becoming a strange but accurate analogy for the life I’d once known. The way I’d looked at all aspects of that life. All the shit I’d considered so important…now dissolved and washed out into the sea of new perspective. It was poetic and probably a little pathetic, but it lent a boost of fortitude that I was badly in need of right now. Especially in pushing volume back up my throat.

“So, you know all the training exercises you’ve always told me about?” I went ahead and asked him. “All those badass courses you’ve taken, including the dos and don’ts of being a prisoner of war?”

“Of course,” Elijah murmured. “What about them?”

“They’re bullshit.” I chuffed. “All of that goes right out the window when it really happens.”

“Like what?” he inquired. “What do you mean, specifically?”

For a few more paces, I scoured my mind for an example that wouldn’t have my bloodstream feeling like a seething lava pit.

“I tried to pay attention to the direction we were heading by finding a star or a landmark,” I finally said. “But a storm was forming that night, and I couldn’t see a single star. Since it was the middle of the night, I couldn’t see anything, actually.”

We continued to walk along the water’s edge, but I looked over at my best friend every few feet to ensure he was still beside me. I knew this would be hard to have to explain, but it was feeling even worse than I’d expected. No wonder I was having such terrible nightmares every night. I was around other people all the time but had never felt more alone in my whole damn life.

“Look how dark it is out there.” With my chin, I motioned out to the wide-open ocean. “And we are here on land, so we have all this light pollution to create a glow.”

I spun on my heels and looked back to the line of beachfront homes. Many were lit up, life spilling out of the sliding glass doors and onto the back decks and private beaches just beyond. After a few seconds, I turned back to face the water.

“But out there?” I stared out beyond where the waves were breaking. “Man, it’s so dark at night. When those bastards boarded our yacht, we were still in international waters. Out about two hundred miles or so.”

Elijah kept quiet, nodding when appropriate but not saying much more. My guess was he didn’t want to interrupt now that I’d started talking.

“I was so worried about Rio. And dude, I’m talking about being beside myself with worry. The look on her face when they dragged me out of our stateroom…it nearly broke me. We’d spent so much time on the cruise working to break down her walls. All of them. But her issues…they’re so raw and new for her. I wasn’t sure she would survive alone. I could barely keep my shit together.”

We turned and walked on once more. I needed some time to gather my thoughts, and Elijah seemed to need some processing moments too, though I already knew he was readying more questions. Hell, I hadn’t even answered his original inquiry. If I knew my best friend as well as I thought I did, he’d go right back to it when he worked through the stuff I did say.

Yet again, the man assessed me from head to toe. I wasn’t sure he saw what he needed to, since the better part of a minute passed before he spoke again. “You doing okay?” he finally muttered. “Is this too much? Reliving this shit?”

“Nah, I’m solid. I’ll let you know if it becomes too much at any point, though.”

“Fair enough. So, you never really answered my question. How did you end up at the back side of Avalon?”