Page 78 of Steal My Breath Away

After making up Matt’s room for Paige and changing my bed linen, I checked all the windows and doors and then made my way to the garage to open it up for my car.

Although our neighbor had turned on the heat when I called to say I was coming, the garage was cold enough to make me shiver. I reached for the button to raise the door when I noticed five large black containers stacked near the stairs, all sealed up with tape. The sender address was the Joint Personal Effects Department at Dover Air Force Base.

Matt’s belongings.

Again, I shouldn’t have been surprised they hadn’t been opened. Mom had packed all Dad’s things away in containers the week after he died and never opened them. Covered in dust, they took up most of the shelving on one side of the garage.

I’d come home to support Paige and to ground myself, not to stir up painful emotions, but my conversation with Chad kept playing over in my mind, and the memory that I’d let slip free was still there, painful edges dulled to leave warmth behind.

“I’m not going to open them,” I said out loud. Still, I didn’t move. Matt was in there. Pictures, clothes, the instant camera I’d given him in case he ever lost his phone, maybe even the old MP3 player with all the songs I’d helped him choose to deal with the pressure when he was away.

I don’t know if I changed my mind because I’d thought I was going to die in that warehouse and now I had a second chance todo things right. Or maybe it was because I’d lost Ace again and there was no room left in the black box where I’d put all my pain. I don’t even know if it was because Mom had tried to erase Matt’s memory, but he’d stubbornly refused to leave. He was still there, etched into the floorboards like he was etched into my heart, and now he was waiting to see me again in a stack of black boxes by the stairs.

I went back inside, pulled on my jacket and hat, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and returned to cut the tape and open the top container.

And there he was.

I studied Matt’s military picture, soaking in the familiar smile, the blue eyes, and the dimple at the corner of his cheek. A wave of sadness swelled inside me, stealing my breath away.Breathe. Breathe. You’re fine.

This time I didn’t lock the feeling away. This time I let it fill me, take me into the darkness, tumble me around and pull me under again. I drew in a breath and then another, feeling the pain and loss eddy and swirl through my body until I was floating, calm in the dark sea.

I put aside a letter addressed to Ace and went through the pictures of Matt and Ace with their military buddies, one of him and Ace at their high school graduation, and an old family picture from one of our camping trips. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a picture of my dad, but he looked exactly as I remembered him with his ear-to-ear smile, the blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, and the strong arms that had always made me feel safe. A wave of nostalgia washed over me, and I was back in the darkness struggling against the current until I stopped fighting and let it carry me to a time when I was safe and loved and I was my daddy’s baby girl.

I managed to get through the first box—clothes and shoes, a few odd items that must have held meaning for him, the instant camera and his MP3 player, and at the bottom, in a velvet pouch, Dad’s high school ring. I remembered fighting with Matt overwho would get the ring when Dad died, never imagining that only a few years later he’d be gone and the loss would be so overwhelming, something so trivial wouldn’t matter.

But now, for some reason, it did.

I wanted Dad. I wanted his memories. I wanted to touch his things and smell his scent and see the things that had been important to him.

I made my way over to the shelf and pulled out one of the gray boxes that held my dad’s things, dragging it across the concrete floor into the light before I pulled off the lid. Inside I found his aprons, recipe books, certificates, potholders, and some of his clothes. I pressed his favorite camping shirt to my face, and I smelled him—pine and barbecue sauce, campfire smoke, and the lingering spicy scent of the cheap cologne I’d given him one Christmas. He always wore it camping to scare off the bears.

This time the darkness roared like a monster wave sweeping me off my feet and crushing me under. My shoulders heaved and my lungs burned as I fought for breath. Tears spilled from my eyes and a sound ripped from my throat, a sob that was more a howl, eight years of pain rendering my soul in two.

“I’ve got you, bug.”

Soft arms wrapped around me, a warm breath on my cheek, my nickname a whisper that I could hear despite the crashing waves, a voice deep and soothing. Familiar. It grounded me. My feet found earth and I held fast as the water swirled around me, through me, washing my soul clean and taking the darkness with it.

I didn’t ask Ace why he was there.

He just was, like he had always been when I truly needed him.

CHAPTER 33Haley

Ace hadn’t come to Riverstone alone. He’d brought Maverick as backup, and Paige hadn’t stopped drooling since she’d come from the hospital.

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” I whispered as Ace and Mav walked through the house, checking the doors and windows I’d already checked. “At least try to pretend you don’t want to rip off his clothes and jump into bed with him.”

“I mean…” She waved vaguely in Mav’s direction, unable to even finish her sentence. “It’s like someone jumped into my head, plucked out my fantasy man, and created him in real life.”

“I still think this is overkill,” Mav said after they’d finished their security check. “You think Haley is in danger because a journalism student and his student hacker sidekick put together some crazy conspiracy theory based on a posting they found on the dark web and information your wannabe journo got from threesomes he had with some White House interns?”

“Chad’s been having threesomes with White House interns?” Paige laughed. “I thought his weekend trips were for his investigative journalism project.”

“This is his investigative journalism project,” Ace said. “I just can’t believe the FBI wouldn’t take him seriously.”

“I can’t believe Tony and Jordan took it seriously.” Mav added another log to the fire Ace had built to warm me up after I’d gotten a chill in the garage. “But I’m not complaining. I’ve never been to Virginia before. Now I can check it off my list of states to visit. Your town is very festive. I’ve never seen so many lights.You’ve even got lights on your roof and no one is living in the house.”

“My dad put ours up a few years before he passed away,” I said. “Ace and my brother helped him. It was so much work, he decided to just leave them up year-round. Mom didn’t like the idea of Christmas lights in summer, but you can barely see them, and she did like just having to flick a switch in November when the town lights go on.” It was a memory an ordinary person might share about someone who passed, but I’d never been able to talk about Dad before, and the words, as they dropped from my lips, felt shiny and new.

---