Page 37 of Cover Up

Dei turned his head left and right, probably compensating for his missing eye, then pulled out onto the road and started following the quiet tones of the GPS, which was leading them to their rental. Felix had chosen someplace near the water, missing the Pacific waves and sand and feeling some type of way about being able to share it with Dei. He knew the man was well traveled, but the way he was looking around, it was obvious he’d never been there before.

“So. This is LA?”

“Barely, and we’re getting the fuck out,” Felix told him. “The 5 is going to suck balls, but once we’re away from the main city, we won’t need to worry about it until we’re heading back for our flight.”

Dei’s smile soon became a grimace when they got trapped in total gridlock, but his mood didn’t seem too down in spite of all his yawning. “I forgot how much flying fucks me up,” he said after the fifth time his jaw nearly cracked.

Felix laughed. “You were on a plane a lot?”

“Yeah,” Dei said, and oh, there was some tension. “Got deployed more’n once. Stationed in Okinawa for three years.”

Felix’s eyes went wide. “How was that?”

“Pretty fuckin’ cool for the collective three months I was physically there,” Dei said with a small chuckle. “They didn’t like to keep us in one spot. I’d like to go back one day now that I’m a civvy. Get to enjoy all the shit I didn’t get the chance to see while I was there.”

Felix couldn’t imagine what his life was like. It would be odd to love a man who was never around, though for Dei, it would have been worth it. But Felix was coming to learn he was a pretty clingy guy, and he would have missed him painfully.

“What you thinkin’, shug?”

Felix blushed and shrugged. “That dating or being married to someone in the service must be hard.”

“Harder’n some, better’n others. I know CEOs who are gone a fuck of a lot longer than I was.”

Felix smiled and shrugged as the car finally started picking up speed, and the GPS told them he was twenty-two miles from their exit. “I guess I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t good at dating before my brain injury, and my life is obviously not great for dating after.”

Dei made a soft noise like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t, and Felix wasn’t sure if he appreciated it or not. He wanted someone to defend him, but he also wanted honesty, and there was a clear reason—more than just Dei being busy—why they were only doing this for pretend.

They settled into comfortable silence, and then eventually, the exit for Santa Bella came into view. Dei took the cloverleaf with one-handed ease, which dumped Felix onto a street that should have been familiar, but he didn’t recognize much of it. He wasn’t sure if it was just time or if it was his brain, but the sensation wasn’t comfortable.

“You okay? You just went real pale,” Dei said.

Felix took a calming breath. “I grew up here, but none of it looks like home, you know? But I can’t tell if it’s my brain being all fucked-up or if that’s what happens when you move away.”

“It might be a bit of both. I went back home a few years before my injury, and it was all strange. It’s like you know the streets with muscle memory, but none of it’s familiar anymore.”

That was it. That was exactly it, and Felix didn’t feel like he was totally nuts. He watched the roads as they passed, and as he scanned street signs, things started to make better sense.

“My sister lives down there,” he said, passing a Circle K on the corner of Coral Ave. “I helped her move in when she and her husband bought the house.”

“Is it nice?”

Felix laughed, shaking his head. “It might be now. It was a total piece of shit when they bought it. It was piss-yellow with two bedrooms, and someone had ripped the bathtub out, but they were too broke, so they took standing showers over a hole in the floor.”

“Christ,” Dei said.

Felix shrugged. “This place is kind of a nightmare, but they seem bound and determined to live and die in here.”

“And you chose different,” Dei said.

That wasn’t the first time Felix had heard that, but it was the first time he felt proud. “I don’t think the island is where I’m meant to be forever, but for now, it feels good.”

Dei just smiled at him as he took a turn up a hilly road and eventually pulled into a circular driveway. The front yard was perfectly manicured with big river rock and succulents, and over the fence, he could see a ton of citrus trees that he knew surrounded the pool.

Dei let out a low whistle as he leaned against the car, half-braced on his prosthetic. “You spending big bucks, darlin’?”

“I wanted to have something nice to come home to since we have to deal with my family,” Felix admitted. “Maybe I went overboard.”

“Honey, I’m not gonna turn down being spoiled on this trip,” Dei said, then gave the roof of the car a pat before shutting his door and leaning on his cane.

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