Still...
Clara and Harold were incredibly lucky.
As had become habit since Winston came home, she climbed into bed before he came into the room, leaving the bathroom light on for him. It was too late for television. She had to be up in six hours. And had been halfway across the country and back since she’d last slept.
Had she been alone, she might have dropped right off. As it was, she lay there, listening. Waiting. While he’d been appropriately moved in front of the Garrisons earlier in the day, Winston had been fairly tight-lipped since they’d left the other couple’s house.
Getting on the right road, dealing with traffic and getting back to the airport had consumed those first minutes. And then getting through security in time to catch their flight. Then there’d been the woman sitting in the aisle seat, preventing any real conversation between them. She’d figured him for as exhausted as she was in the drive home from the LA airport.
Too tired to deal with any of it.
She heard him in the office. Opening a drawer. Figured maybe he had another thing or two to pick up. The hall light went out and he was there, in the bedroom with her.
He made short work of the bathroom, grabbing a toothbrush out of the stash of extras—dentist giveaways—that she kept on a shelf in the closet. A cool breeze hit her skin as the covers lifted. The mattress dipped and Emily closed her eyes.
She woke up an hour or so later, with Winston spooned behind her. Not holding her. Just close. Turning over, she put an arm around his waist and he rolled to his back, sliding his arm beneath her shoulders. Settling her head on his chest, with his arm around her waist, her whole body pressed against him down to their feet, she went back to sleep.
* * *
Winston was awake when Emily got up and showered in the morning. Dressing in fresh clothes from his closet—some he’d left until he had more space—he went in to make her tea and get her vitamins down out of the cupboard they’d appeared in a couple of months ago. When she came into the kitchen, dressed in navy pants and a loose-fitting blouse beneath a cropped jacket, he asked her how she was feeling.
And told her he’d lock up behind her as she left.
He didn’t tell her he’d be there when she got back.
She didn’t ask, either.
He figured they both knew he wouldn’t be.
* * *
Winston got the call from Emily at nine thirty that morning. There was an active shooter not far from her office building just south of LA. Six miles, actually, but if he wasn’t caught, a guy could travel six miles in a number of minutes.
“Stay down, away from all windows,” he told her, grabbing his keys. Thank God he was still at their house when she’d called. He was halfway there already. “And stay inside,” he added, out the front door and heading toward the car. “I mean it, Em. Don’t go outside, for any reason.”
Bullets ricocheted and there was no predicting the path they’d take.
“Winston, I’m fine,” she said. “You don’t need to come. No one has been hurt, thank God. It’s a kid from the high school. They have him cornered, he’s just not in custody yet. I just wanted you to know, in case you heard something on the news, that it’s all okay.”
He’d heard her the first time.
“I’m on my way,” he told her.
“There’s nothing for you to do here.”
He knew that. He wasn’t losing his mind. But he wasn’t going to lose anything more, either.
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he said, thinking on the fly. “Do you have time to go to lunch?” He was heading toward the freeway entrance ramp, easily ten miles over the speed limit.
“Of course. I have to eat.”
“I didn’t know if you had a business lunch planned.”
“Not today.”
Yeah, fate had a way of controlling things that way when she chose to do so.
He might be stubborn, and a bit too fond of being in charge, but he wasn’t completely dense. There was too much piling up for him to be able to continue existing in the emotional freezer he’d somehow built for himself-calling it reality. Because he couldn’t keep pretending he was unaffected. The reality was...he hurt so bad he didn’t know how to handle it. And so he hadn’t.