Page 22 of Coming Undone
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who told the math teacher that his trig lecture was the biggest bullshit ever.” He flipped on one of the TV screens that broadcast the plane’s progress with an updated arrival time and he saw they’d be landing in fifteen minutes.
He wasn’t sure if he would be grateful to touch down for the sake of ending an awkward conversation, or very worried that returning home would only initiate a whole bunch of other ones. No doubt his family would all want to know what was up with his renewed relationship with Stephanie.
“Sounds like you’ll have plenty to talk about.” She recapped her water bottle and set it on the table as the plane continued its descent. She hesitated for a moment, then blurted, “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that I didn’t make an effort to get in touch with you after I came home. I really regret missing out on your calls.”
“It’s not like we made plans to see each other again,” because he was a dumb ass. Why the hell hadn’t he locked down some kind of commitment from her before she left? “I’m sure you were overwhelmed. There were probably a lot of other people who wanted to hear from you besides me.”
She shook her head. “Not really. My mother was so ill, I spent all my time at the hospital.”
That’s right. She’d been with the compulsive mom who’d been so involved with the drama of the kidnapping, she’d made herself sick.
“I hate it that you escaped one nightmare and came home to another.” Danny knew he shouldn’t pass judgment on that whole debacle, but damn. Someone should have been comforting Stephanie instead of the other way around.
“Yeah.” Slowly, she nodded. Something about her expression struck him as more serious than he’d ever seen her. “Me too. But you know what?” She slid her feet back into a pair of navy flip-flops with big yellow plastic flowers on the strap. “I feel better knowing you were mad on my behalf.”
He raised an eyebrow, unsure where she was going with that.
“I mean,” she added quickly. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry for your brother that he got hurt. But I had to keep the story quiet for so long that I missed seeing anyone be outraged about what happened to me. My father was scared for my mom. Mom was ill. And when my book came out to finally share what happened, the media focused on such a small facet of the experience that the rest of the ordeal got lost. So, to hear you say that you were upset about what happened to me… in a weird way it makes me feel like I wasn’t alone back then.”
She spoke quickly, as if she was used to not dwelling on that time in her life. Yet maybe shoving the past behind her so fast hadn’t been such a good idea after all. He hadn’t planned to let her see how much her captivity had made him crazy, hoping they’d be able to move forward. But what if her mother’s ordeal when Stephanie came home had robbed her of the chance to come to terms with what had happened to her? Maybe she deserved to know how freaked out he’d been.
Danny took her hand, shifting his focus for these next few weeks together. He was no shrink, but he knew enough about human nature to know that bottling up the dark stuff inside probably wasn’t helpful. Perhaps he wasn’t doing her any favors by trying to move past the event that redirected both their lives so dramatically.
“Outrage only scratches the surface of what I felt.” For the first time he didn’t try to hide the fury that ruled his life that whole year of her abduction. “When I heard you were taken, I was ready to swim the Atlantic with a knife between my teeth to get you back myself. I didn’t sleep for weeks.”
She looked ready to interrupt, to thank him for his concern and be done with it, but he didn’t think about that time too often himself and this wasn’t a topic he was willing to revisit.
Now or never.
“I was a walking powder keg when I didn’t know what was happening to you,” he continued, remembering vague arguments he got into with everyone around him. “My father and brothers travelled a lot, meeting with powerful people we knew in the Middle East through the resort business to see if a ransom would help you and Christina.”
“She was family,” Stephanie said haltingly. “That only makes sense.”
“For me, it was about you.” Sure, he loved his cousin Christina like a sister, but he’d been focused on Stephanie, knowing Christina had the whole rest of his family looking out for her. He’d only suffered through the “diplomatic channels” crap because he thought it might help them. “I was less than diplomatic in those meetings,” calling a sheik a lying bastard hadn’t been his wisest move “I just really needed to find out if you were okay.”
Looking back, he was lucky it didn’t cause an international incident. The Murphys had been damn fortunate to get that meeting in the first place. It has been their last hope for trying to arrange a private negotiation with the insurgents who held Christina and Stephanie.
Now, Stephanie studied him like she’d never seen him before, as if trying to make this glimpse of his dark side fit with her understanding of him.
“My brothers had to take over the negotiations.” Actually, both Ryan and Jack had wrestled him out of there, and even then, they nearly hadn’t been able to hold him back. The fact that Danny hadn’t slept and had hardly eaten for three weeks had ultimately made him easier to subdue despite his fury. He’d been completely depleted and living on adrenaline by then. “At the end of the day, I decided negotiation was a lost cause and that I’d rather fight for you.”
He’d still wanted to put his knife between his teeth and sneak into the extremist-held small town himself. But his brothers had convinced him he might be in the way of well-trained specialists who actually knew what they were doing.
So he’d done the next best thing.
“I flew home and signed a Navy contract.” He figured he’d at least be able to support the war effort somewhere. His brother Jack was so concerned for his mental health that he’d joined the service too.
“My God,” she said softly, breathing the words more than saying them out loud.
His laid-back image was shot to shit. And he’d probably lost whatever chance he had with her now that she understood what a basket case he’d become back then. “Don’t ever think for a second that no one was outraged on your behalf. If I had my way, I would have scoured the country myself until I found you or died trying.”
Chapter Eight
“If you have second thoughts about being here, I understand.” Danny’s voice sounded stilted next to her in the luxurious BMW sedan that was waiting for them at the private airfield outside of Chatham, Massachusetts. “You’ve been quiet since we landed.”
She hadn’t said much since he’d revealed his real reaction to her kidnapping. She was too busy trying to figure out what it meant that he’d cared about her a great deal more than she’d ever realized. Why hadn’t the p.r. agency she’d hired to handle her reader letters ever forwarded the note that came through from Danny? It bothered her to think she’d missed something personal from him.
Still, just knowing that he’d made the effort to contact her touched her. Soothed a place inside her that had been a raw wound for a long time. It also made the fling that she wanted a lot more complicated.