The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(85)

“Thank God,” he grunts, and his next thrust is pitiless and entirely selfish and it sends me right over the edge. I cry out and then he pushes once more, hard, and I hear his own muffled cry as he buries his face against my neck.

Eventually, we dry off and find our way to the bed where we repeat everything at a more leisurely pace, sleep like the dead for a few hours, and then wake and do it again.

It’s dark when he rolls toward me and says, “Tell me about the numbers.”

I frown. We’re happy now and it’s not a happy story. “Was I talking in my sleep again?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “No. Not here. But in Dooha, you were. All night long.”

I try to think of a way I can distract him, a way I can turn it into a joke, but I guess the time for that has passed. At this point, failing to answer would feel like a lie.

“They’re bus lines,” I tell him, staring at his chest. “From the last time I went to see my dad.”

He stiffens. “I thought he died when you were young.”

“He did,” I reply, and then I close my eyes and let the story spill free, each piece of it a little uglier than the one before it.

My father was distraught after that bottle hit me in the face. I told my mom the truth because a stupid part of me thought she’d understand how lost my dad was, how much he needed us.

“She said she was taking away his visitation rights, instead,” I tell Josh. His hand slides over my arm, encouraging me to continue. “And he said he was going to do his best to fight it.”

I believed him, little idiot that I was. I believed him and I packed a bag and memorized the bus schedules and left New York, alone. And I was so scared the whole way. I’d never taken a city bus in my life and I was sure someone was going to ask why I wasn’t in school, or that I would get off on the wrong stop, or forget which bus came next. M7 to the 199 to the 88. And I dream about it again and again, those moments before I knew how it would all turn out, when I still was full of blind, stupid hope.

“Did you make it?” I hear concern in his voice, as if this is a story that’s still evolving, that can still change.

“I did,” I reply. I take a single deep breath. “He’d shot himself in the head.”

He stiffens. Maybe he isn’t sure if I’m making another wildly inappropriate joke. Lord knows I’ve made enough of them. I hear the air leave his chest in an audible rush. “Jesus, Drew.”

I shake my head. “I don’t really remember it,” I tell him. “A neighbor came in behind and got me out of there.” What’s left, mostly, is the feeling of being blindsided, of being stunned that he didn’t try like he said he would. He was never going to try, and I truly believed every word out of his mouth until that moment.

Josh holds me for a long time after I conclude. I’m not sure if it’s for me or for him or for us both. “I think it’s why I reacted so badly when I came to see you in Dooha,” I admit. “It just felt like it had all been a lie.” I cut him out of my life because it felt like the least painful option. Until I realized how much more painful things could be.

“I wish I could go back and fix it all for you,” he says. “What happened then. And how I acted when you came to visit.”

“I’m not sure we’d be where we are if it all hadn’t happened just the way it did,” I tell him. I close my eyes. “It’s all gonna come out now, though. Davis knows. Once he discovers I wasn’t bluffing when I fired him, he’s going to tell the whole world, and he’ll find a way to make me look bad. I think I probably need to get it out there first.”

It still terrifies me, but not the way it did before. Those hours I spent thinking Josh might be dead make any other outcome pale by contrast.

“I’ll be there with you, at the interviews, if you want me there,” he says, pressing his lips to the top of my head. “I’ve got two weeks off now, but I’m going to find a way to get out of Somalia permanently. I already put in the request but now I’m going to demand it.”

I blink up at him, my throat swelling a little. “Really? But…I thought it was impossible? What changed?”

“What changed is that I fell in love,” he says. “And I don’t ever want to spend a single night away from you again. It might take a while, but Drew, even if we’re apart, you’re not alone anymore.”

I press my face to his chest and cry. Not about my father, really, or the scare we’ve just had. But about all the lonely years that existed between those two events.

And how relieved I am to discover it’s coming to an end.





50





DREW





Nine Months Later





Our new terrace looks spectacular.

Fairy lights are strung haphazardly overhead. The long plank table is laid out with ten place settings punctuated with wine bottles and vases full of hydrangeas. And Josh stands on the other side of it, which might be the thing I like most.

He grins at me now while helping Audrey, Tali’s daughter, take uncertain, lumbering steps across the grass. Gemma, Jonathan’s oldest child, is trying to teach her somersaults, which might be a little advanced given that Audrey just started walking a month ago.