Running Back (New York Leopards 2)

And then I closed my eyes and said it one more time, because I didn’t know if I’d ever say it again, and I wanted him to know it, and I wanted to know I was capable of this. “I love you.”

He didn’t answer, but when I opened my eyes he was staring at me with a strange combination of wonder and humor and something else. His eyes were bright, his smile soft, and his hand lifted and brushed a strand of my hair very slowly behind my ear.

“Natalie. Do you remember the day you told me you didn’t tell believe in love? You listed off some chemicals and then asked me why I cared. And then later on you said you believed in it but not in forever.

“And I was so mad. Because you made me want everything you told me didn’t exist. And the more time I spent with you, the more I wanted it. When I left, you cut me to the quick. You looked at me like we were nothing, like we weren’t even worth getting angry about.”

I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. I get it. I’ll leave.”

He caught my hand. “Natalie. I was so mad because I love you so much, and I didn’t know how to deal with you not feeling the same way.” He lowered his head so his forehead rested against mine. In the shadows of our faces his eyes gleamed like amber. “You are not broken. You are not too much work. And I believe that we will be together until I die. I believe it enough for both of us.”

“That’s too heavy,” I whispered.

“Then I will change your mind. I will stay with you, and love you, until you know that this is not going to change, that we will not fizzle, that we are every single chemical out there and that they are bound together so tightly that they will keep us warm.” His hand cupped my cheek and he kissed me until I wanted to cry, and past that, until I’d wound my arms around him and my heart had lifted, and I did believe him.

And around us I felt the grass and the sea and the sky, and the last of my doubts disappeared. For the first time, I felt light and free and real. My eyes were open, my head was straight, and I loved Mike O’Connor with every part of my being.

Epilogue

Eight Years Later

“Natalie! Get over here!”

The faint cry came as a relief. I’d been troweling all morning, and my back ached from bending over to get at the basket remains. It was a great find; the carbonized cloth remained in such good shape we could see the threads. A conservationist from NUI was coming in this afternoon to work on it, but until then I was the lead.

Still, I was happy to straighten my shoulders, roll my neck, and lope across the field toward one of our new units. We’d just moved over to a new area in the northwest, since the entire site seemed to slant this way. This unit was the farthest one yet, after we’d used a different geophysical testing that handled the dense soil better.

People waved as I jogged past. We were nearing the end of our eighth season, but Kilkarten wasn’t slowing down. We now had a crew of three dozen, and for the past two years we’d hosted a field school for the local archaeology students.

My crew chief beamed up at me from inside the unit, her copper curls caught up on top of her head. I crouched down on the dirt ledge and peered into the unit. Seven feet and still going. At the bottom, a pile of blue-green circular disks spilled out of a cracked container. The oxidized metal pieces were scattered in the dirt.

The sight swam before my eyes and I leaned back on my heels. “What is that?”

Anna laughed. “Free money.”

“Don’t be cute.” I slid down into the unit. Under the dirt and grime of age, I could make out the shape of a wreathed head, the embossed, familiar letters.

Roman coins.

A cache of Roman coins.

And then my gaze slid away to the curves right next to it. This wasn’t the only vessel here; I could see the outline of amphorae in the dirt. My vision narrowed on one of them, with familiar handles and a familiar lip, and a very distinctive white inlay on the black background. An inlay that had been very popular in Rome in the first century BCE.

I let out a rush of breath, and then gave Anna a fierce, elated grin. “I’ll be right back.”

And then I was running across the fields.

Mike met me halfway. He wore a Kilkarten Field School T-shirt and jeans. He’d been the leading force behind the school since he’d retired from the Leopards two years ago. He joked that he liked teaching kids who were even more clueless about archaeology then he was. Also, some of them were young enough he thought he had a chance of convincing them that football meant touchdowns.

I let out a shriek and threw myself into his arms. He caught me and spun me about. “What is it?”

I pressed my lips against his jaw. “I don’t think that’s part of our site. Maybe it’s why we have a site.”

He set me down and brushed the strands of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail back, grinning at me the whole time. “What are you talking about?”

“Kilkarten’s sixth century. But there are coins over there from long before that.” A laugh bubbled up and out of me. “And there’s a vase that is almost definitely first-century.”

His eyes widened. “So...”