Page 39 of Coming Home

"What's happening? Ralph, look at me."

Nothing. He was drawing air strictly through his mouth—shallow, dry, ragged gasps—his jaw locked so tight the muscle was jumping. A fine sheen of sweat was breaking along his hairline despite the cool coastal breeze cutting through the courtyard.

"Talk to me. What is it?"

Still, he couldn't form the syllable. But his gaze finally locked onto mine, and the sheer volume of what was transpiring behind his eyes hit my chest so hard I nearly took a step back. He was utterly terrified.

I placed my palm flat against his forearm. I didn't lighten the pressure. His skin was burning hot through his sleeve, the dense muscle beneath trembling with a fine, electric vibration.

"I've got you," I murmured, my voice going low and fierce, protective in a way I didn't know I had in me.

"I'm right here, Ralph. I'm not moving."

His respirations slowed by a single, agonizing degree.

His eyes remained anchored to mine as I reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his heavy ring of car keys.

"I'm driving," I said.

He didn't offer a single word of protest. And that silence alone told me more than anything ever could.

I guided him toward the SUV, my hand resting firmly against the small of his back. His gait was painfully cautious—each boot placed with deliberate concentration. I popped the passenger door, and he lowered his large frame into the leather. His palm searched out the dashboard, then the center console, orienting himself. He wasn't looking at the interior controls. He was feeling for them.

Something icy and sharp slid through the center of my chest, dread arriving as raw instinct, a question already taking shape in the dark corners of my mind.

I climbed into the driver's seat, pulled the heavy door shut, and fired up the engine before pulling out of the clinic lot.

I didn't take the highway back to the house.

I don't even remember making the conscious choice to alter our course. My hands simply steered the wheel toward the coast highway without consulting my brain, choosing the quiet route that tracked the shoreline south of Santa Monica—the long stretch defined by vast, open horizons, crumbling bluffs, and the heavy roar of the Pacific bleeding through the vents.

I drove in absolute silence for twenty minutes. Ralph didn't utter a sound. He sat with his head thrown back against the headrest, his eyelids tightly closed, his breathing gradually leveling into a steady, heavy cadence.

I pulled the SUV into a small, neglected dirt turnout at the edge of the bluffs. It sat empty in the midday lull, cracked asphalt giving way to a weathered timber fence and then the wide, open sweep of the ocean. The water was a deep, restless gray today, the swells rolling in long, powerful sets that shattered into white foam against the wet sand below before retreating with a low, gravelly sigh.

I parked facing the water and cut the engine.

A heavy, intimate quiet settled over the cabin, broken only by the rhythm of the tide, the wind buffeting the glass, and the slow tick of the cooling block.

I reached across the console for the radio and hit play.

The rich, melancholic chords of "Bésame Mucho" filled the small space, and I watched Ralph's eyes slowly open.

He stared out at the gray horizon through the windshield, then turned his head toward me. His face looked raw.

So vulnerable it undid me.

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked.

"Because your soul has always lived at the water's edge," I murmured, leaning back against the door, turning my entire body to face him.

Since we were children. Theo always chased the noise of the boardwalk. I wanted to hide in the tide pools. But Ralph... Ralph always just wanted to sit on the sand and watch the sets roll in. He was always the loudest, most dominant presence at every meet, every backyard barbecue, every dinner table we shared. But the second his feet hit the beach, he went beautifully quiet. It was the only force on earth that could make him sit still.

He looked at me, and the faintest ghost of a real smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"You used to call me your little mermaid," I said softly, the memory warming my cheeks. "Do you remember that?"

"You always swore up and down that you hated it."