Page 74 of Swerve
“I actually do. She never wanted me to be in the military. That was my dream. It blew up in my face and ended up damaging us both.”
There should be something for me to say. I’ve spent years of my life studying how to help people with trauma, people whose lives have been upended by things they never saw coming. And yet, I can find nothing that seems appropriate. Maybe it’s my own trauma, my own current inability to believe what has happened to Mia that has left me empty of anything resembling professional empathy.
Knox turns then, waves me toward the sofa and says, “Let me grab the laptop, and we’ll get started.”
I sit at one end while he disappears into the bedroom, returning a few moments later with a rather beaten-up computer. He sits down next to me, and I realize then we’ll have to sit close for me to be able to see. A table with chairs might have solved that, but there isn’t one, so I try not to think about the fact that our arms are touching. Is it my imagination that I can feel the heat of his body emanating like a force field colliding with my own?
“It looks bad,” he says, “but still works.” He opens the lid, waits for the screen to pop up, then moves the cursor to the top to engage the wireless network.
Once it has, he opens a new screen, cursors up to the search engine bar and types inhotel california.
I look over his shoulder at the first offering, a video for the song by the Eagles. Next, Wikipedia lists the song, declaring it the title track from the 1977 Eagles’ album.
The next listing is the Hotel California in Todos Santos, Mexico.
“Could that be it?” I ask, pointing at the listing.
“It could be, but why Mexico? Let’s see what else we can find.” He traces his finger down the screen, past more references to the Eagles’ song and then clicks over to the next page. It’s halfway down the second page that his finger stops on Hotel California, Loudoun County, Virginia.
He clicks. The webpage features a beautiful old brick mansion, southern in architecture with enormous white columns on the front. A small discreet sign at the entrance gate reads, Hotel California. The heading at the top of the page says: “Known as a getaway destination for senators and Washington, DC, influentials.”
“That’s a lot closer,” I say. “Maybe he had a rendezvous out there?”
Knox cocks his head, throws me a look. “Did you just say rendezvous?”
My face seeps crimson. “Hookup then. Is that modern enough?”
“I guess it’s all the same,” he says, trying not to smile. “Maybe someone out there would remember him. We’ll show his picture around, see if anyone recognizes him.”
We both read the description, noting the fact that it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s about an hour away,” I say.
“Probably a goose chase,” he says, “but it’s worth a shot.”
“Agreed,” I say, wishing I felt more hopeful about it.
He closes the lid on the laptop, starts to get up from the sofa just as I do. Our legs bump, and it’s as if we’ve both been zapped with a jolt of stunning electricity. He looks at me. I look at him. And the air around us is charged with things I’ve never felt before. I want to touch him so bad that I actually can’t even think beyond that single thought. My hand moves of its own accord, as if it doesn’t need my permission to do what it wants. I touch his face, feel the stubble that is evidence of the shave he’d skipped this morning.
Again, feeling jolts through me, hot and searing.
“Emory,” he says on a low, husky note of sanity, the awareness there telling me he knows this is a path we shouldn’t take. And I know it too.
But still, my hand turns so that my knuckles smooth across his jawline. I hear his sharp intake of breath and know a wave of power I’ve never felt with anyone. When it comes to physical relationships, I am all but a novice. I’ve yet to have a single experience that convinced me the hype about sex was anywhere near accurate.
But here, in this moment, touching this man, I realize he’s the one who could show me why I’ve been wrong. What I’ve been missing out on.
“Why you?” I ask softly, as if he knows what I’ve been thinking.
Judging from the look in his eyes, I think he does. How, I don’t know. Maybe he feels it, but I can see that he wants me as much as I want him.
I lean in, so close that our lips are almost touching. We hang there between the urge to give in and the realization that it is a line that once crossed might permanently change our ability to go forward with the reason we are together in the first place.
Mia.
Her name flashes through my brain, and I sit back, suddenly ashamed of even this momentary lapse into my own needs.
“Mia,” I say out loud, my voice breaking across her name. “What kind of sister am I?”
