Suzanna's Surrender

“I'm sorry.” Instinctively she put her hands on his shoulders to soothe. “If anyone knows how painful it is to dredge up old wounds, it's me. Why don't we go back? I'll see if I can find you a clean shirt.”

“No.” His jaw was clenched, his body tight as a spring. “You want to know, you've got a right. I tossed it in because I couldn't handle it. I spent ten years telling myself I could make a difference, that none of the crap I had to wade through would affect me. I could rub shoulders with dealers and pimps and victims all day and not lose any sleep at night. If I had to kill somebody, it was line of duty. Not something you want to think about too much, but something you live with. I saw a few cops burn out along the way, but it wasn't going to happen to me.”

She said nothing, just continued to rub at the knotted muscles of his shoulders while she waited for him to go on. He kept looking out to sea, smelling her, and the dusky scent of the wild roses that were at peak.

“Vice takes you into the pits, Suzanna. You get so you understand the people you're trying to wipe out. You think like them. You have to when you go under, or you don't come out again. There are things I'm never going to tell you, because I do care. Ugly things, and I just...” He closed his eyes, and jammed his hands into his pockets. “I just didn't want to see it anymore. I was already thinking about coming back here – just sort of kicking it around.”

Suddenly weary, he lifted his hands to rub the heels over his eyes. “I was tired, Suzanna, and I wanted to live like a normal person again. The kind who doesn't strap on a gun every day or make deals with slime in back rooms. We were on a routine investigation, looking for a small – time dealer who we thought we could pressure information out of. Doesn't matter why,” he said impatiently. “Anyway, we got a tip where to find him, and when we cornered him in this little dive, he snapped. Turned out the jerk had about twenty thousand in coke strapped under his clothes, and more than a couple lines in his system. He panicked. He dragged some halfstoned woman with him and bolted.”

His palms were beginning to sweat, so he wiped them against his jeans. “My partner and I separated to cut him off. He pulled the woman out in the alley. With us on either end, he didn't have any hope of getting away. I had my weapon out. It was dark. The garbage had turned.”

He could still smell it, rank and fetid, as the sweat began to run down his back. “I could hear my partner coming up the other side, and hear the woman crying. He'd sliced her up a little and she was balled up on the concrete. I couldn't be sure how bad she was hurt. I remember thinking the creep was going to be up for more than distribution. Then he jumped me. He had the knife in before I could get off a shot.”

He could still feel it ripping through his flesh, still smell his own blood. “I knew I was dead, and I kept thinking that I wouldn't be able to come home. That I was going to die in that damn alley with the stink of that garbage. I killed him as I went down. That's what they told me. I don't remember. The thing I remember next was waking up in the hospital feeling like I'd been sliced in half and sewn back together. I told myself that if I made it, I was coming back here. Because I knew if I had to walk down another alley, I wouldn't come back out.”

Suzanna had her arms tight around him now, her cheek pressed against his back. “Do you think because you came home instead of facing another alley, you failed?”

“I don't know.”

“I did, for a long time. No one had put a knife in my back, but I came to understand that if I stayed with Bax, if I'd kept that promise, part of me would die. I chose survival, do you think I should be ashamed of that?”

“No.” He turned, taking her shoulder. “No.”

She lifted her hands to cup his face. In her eyes was understanding, and the sympathy he couldn't have accepted even a week before. “Neither do I. I hate what happened to you, but I'm glad it brought you here.” Offering comfort, she touched her lips to his. Slowly, with a sweetness that was unbearably moving, she felt him let go.

His body relaxed against hers even as he pulled her closer. His mouth softened even as it heated. Here, at last, was the next level. There was not only passion, not only tenderness, but trust. As the wind whispered through the wild grass and the bright, brave flowers, she thought she heard something else, something so quiet and lovely that it brought tears to her eyes. When he lifted his head, when she saw his face, she knew he'd heard it, too. She smiled.

“We're not alone here,” she murmured. “They must have stood in this same spot, holding each other like this. Wanting each other like this.” Filled with the moment, she pressed his hand to her lips. “Holt, do you believe that fate and time can run in a circle?”

“I'm beginning to.”