He, however, seems at ease, comfortable, and just like always he finds the right words for the situation. Standing, he straightens and motions with his shoulder to the beach. He heads toward the water and I can’t help but notice that he walks with the same stride he always has—slow and steady. I study him as I follow behind. The muscles in his shoulders are much less pronounced and the span of his back seems narrower. I’ve never seen him this lean. He must not have been anywhere where he could surf.
Keeping my distance, I don’t want to get too close . . . don’t want to touch him. This interlude is so strange because this is the one place we always held hands. Every time we walked over this bridge in the past our hands were connected, since we were five years old. But now, those fond memories are all blurred by the fog of utter confusion that his return to my life has brought. My stomach feels uneasy again as I continue down the path that I know can only lead to imbalance—an encounter that may just turn my world upside down.
The beach stretches for miles but he heads toward the water. When he stops near the shore, I can hear him sigh before he turns around to face me. As he twists his familiar features become clearly recognizable—the fine chiseled nose, square chin, and eyes that could talk to me without him ever speaking a word. As they do when I watch them dart to my wrist and narrow in on the Cartier bracelet he gave me the night he died.
“You’re still wearing it,” he observes.
I promptly cover it with my left hand, as if that could make it disappear. My action only makes his gaze intensify as he now stares directly at River’s ring—not his ring—on my finger. A sudden pang of guilt scorches me but he says nothing and neither do I.
The water slushes up over his flip-flops, but he doesn’t seem to notice. As the moonlight cascades down upon us, he takes a deep breath and rubs his bloodshot eyes. Scrubbing his hands in his face, he says, “I’m glad you came. I wasn’t sure if after yesterday I’d ever see your gorgeous face again and I’ve missed it so much for so long.”
He moves as if to cup my cheeks, but I step back. I put my hands out, signaling for him to keep his distance. I feel conflicted, torn, not sure what to say or what to do, but I don’t want him to touch me.
He instantly freezes. “You don’t have to be afraid. It will all make sense soon, please just hear me out.”
It’s the same voice I’ve always known. The same guy I had spoken to every day for almost twenty years, yet he sounds like a stranger.
Retreating from the water, he drops down and sits in the sand with his knees bent and motions with his head for me to sit next to him. I fall to the sand beside him and escape his steady stare by untying and removing my sneakers. I curl my bare toes in the sand, hoping to find comfort. I bend my knees and wrap my arms around them. Resting my chin on my legs as I stare out at the vast ocean, I can feel his eyes on me. I have yet to speak a word. I’m sure he’s interpreting my silence as confusion because he thinks he knows me—does he? Or have I changed?
Trapped in my own thoughts, his voice catches me by surprise. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, just listen. Okay?”
Again, I nod my head.
“What I had to do wasn’t easy, but I did it all for you. To protect you. I just hope you can see it that way.”
Twisting to the side, planting my hands in the sand, I finally find my voice. “What are you talking about?”
He rubs his palms over his shorts and I can tell he’s nervous. “Fuck, I don’t even know where to start.”
I level my head to look at him. “The beginning. How about you start at the beginning? Why you made us all think you were dead, when you weren’t.” I can hear my own voice sounding sad and that scares me.
He takes a deep breath, leans back and shoves his legs out in front of him. He looks around and then finally at me. “That’s just it. I don’t even know anymore where it all started. But two weeks before the awards ceremony is probably the beginning. Caleb called me and I remember the day like it was yesterday. You were at work and I was writing from home. His call was a surprise; I didn’t even know he was back from Afghanistan. We met and he told me an FBI task force approached him when he arrived home and he was asked to assist them in taking down a big drug ring. After a few weeks on the job, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He didn’t like the way the task force was operating and that’s when he called me.”
Feeling even more confused, I chime in to ask, “What did that have to do with you?”
Ben pulls his knees in, resting his elbows on them, and leans forward. “It had everything to do with me, with us. He asked me to write an article for The L.A. Times. And of course I said I would—who could say no to a story like that? He told me what he knew and I started researching. And son of a bitch if every time I found one thing, it didn’t easily lead to another. Before I knew it I had collected a shitload of incriminating information. What I didn’t know was that the investigation and my article was putting both of us in danger.”
“I don’t understand. Why would writing a story put you in danger? And what does this have to do with you pretending to be killed?”
“I found out things, traced the money, the drugs. I had the operation figured out. Caleb and I thought publishing my article would bring the cartel’s drug ring down faster than the FBI could. But we were wrong. The cartel found out and wanted the story stopped, so I said I’d kill it. But Caleb giving the information to them wasn’t enough. I was in danger. You were in danger.”
My eyes flash to his as the shock of what he’s saying hits me. “Ben, you were a journalist. That makes no sense. Journalists investigate stories all the time. Why would your story be any different?”
He rests his hand in the sand and his muscular arm draws my attention until he answers. “Because I had gotten closer to the truth than anyone else before me. I knew the ins and outs of the operation and they didn’t like that. How they found out—I’m not sure, but they did. Maybe a tip-off, maybe a data trace. I don’t know. But they knew about me, and they knew I had information.”
“Okay, Ben, let’s pretend I understand. So where does the shooting come in? Why,” my voice breaks, “did you have to die?”
“To save you. They threatened me. I had to protect you. It had to look like I died so they’d leave you alone. They had to think I was dead, or eventually you and I, we’d both be killed.”
My thoughts were racing as I tried to comprehend what he had explained. Trying to determine whether this wasn’t some wild fabricated story. I anticipated further imbalance from our conversation, and listening to him only reaffirms it.
He looks at me and continues. “Once I agreed to the plan, Caleb took care of everything. He arranged for someone to take the fall for shooting me, arranged my new location, my new identity, he arranged it all.”
Raking my fingers through the sand, I turn to watch a surfer as he rides a wave. “Wait—so Caleb knew this whole time that you weren’t really dead? He helped you?”
“Yeah he did. He also promised me he’d watch out for you.”
I have to ask, “Did he also know you were coming back?”
“No he didn’t. I saw him for the first time yesterday. He hasn’t been involved with my case for a while.”
Shaking my head, I’m still trying to understand everything. Ben is a case? Is he still working with the FBI?
He inches closer to me until he’s much too close, it feels too familiar, and I need to put some distance between us. But he captures my attention and I don’t move. He hesitates for the slightest moment, stopping inches from me. “So now do you see—I left for you. It was the choice I had to make.”
Gasping in disbelief, I move back and the apprehension I felt earlier turns to anger. “What do you mean ‘choice’? You had a f**king choice? Dying was a choice? Leaving me all alone was a choice?”
Talking over me with the same commanding tone he always used when I’d get riled he says, “Choice wasn’t the right word. Just calm down.”
I can’t take it anymore. “No, I’m not going to calm down!”
He tenses, his shoulders rising. “Dahl.”
“Don’t call me that! You don’t get to call me that anymore!”
“Okay. Alright. Just let me finish.”
I swivel in the sand to narrow my eyes at him. “No Ben, it’s my turn. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? What you put me through? You died in front of me and you weren’t even dead? You aren’t dead!”
Watching the different emotions pass over his face is too much. I divert my gaze to the water. Staring at the waves, I can feel his eyes on me. “I don’t know. I only know what I went through and can only imagine what you had to endure was much worse. I’m so sorry you had to live with my death for so long. But I had to disappear.”
I snap my head back up and look right into his deep blue eyes, feeling the anger seep through every pore of my body. “You didn’t just disappear, Ben—you f**king died in front of my eyes. I saw him—the ass**le that shot you. I saw the coroner take your body away. I went to your goddamn funeral knowing we had to have a closed casket. And you weren’t even in there! While I cried for you, mourned for you, loved you, missed you. At times I just wanted to die without you. Are you kidding me?” Trembling, I scream even louder, “Are you f**king kidding me?”
He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know writing the article would lead where it did. If I had, I never would have stuck my nose into it. I swear I would have just let the FBI deal with it.” He leans closer to me and I stand up. He grabs my hand and forces me to look at him. A strange feeling runs through me, but it isn’t love.
I step back, forcing him to drop my arm but it doesn’t stop his words as he stands and says, “I’m so sorry that I didn’t share my secret with you before I left. No, actually sorry doesn’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling right now. I don’t think I will ever find the right way to express the remorse I feel about what I’ve done.”
I shake my head and open my mouth to say something, but he moves forward and touches a shaky finger over my lips. “Through everything, after all this time, you need to know . . . I have never ever stopped loving you, not for one second. And it scares the shit out of me to think that you don’t still love me. That you might actually love someone else.”
That’s when I lose any sense of control. Unable to listen to anymore I scream, “‘Might love someone else’?” After taking a deep breath I continue, “What did you think would happen? You died three years ago and it took me so long to move on. Getting past the grief, the sorrow, wasn’t easy, but I was finally able to move forward. So yes, I’m in love with someone else. You can’t come back here thinking . . . ,” I motion between us, “. . . that we’re going to just pick up where we left off. You can’t possibly believe that! Why did you even come back?”
He steps into me. He runs the tips of his fingers over the scrape on my cheek before I can move away and says, “Because I finally could, when I never thought I would be able to. Dahl the FBI caught the people that were after me. The ones who threatened your life. They f**king caught them. And I was free to come home. Don’t you get it?”
“I get it, Ben, but it’s crazy—FBI, free to come home. It’s just crazy.”
“I know it sounds that way, but it’s all true. All of it. It’s one big clusterfuck. You were never supposed to know any of this. I was dead—you were safe. That’s what was supposed to happen. But they suspected there was still information out there and they wanted it. They broke into our house looking for it, how they knew I have no idea. Then when the paid-off shooter was released, they went after him for it. He was scared and told them he didn’t have the information, but I was alive. They wanted to know where I was so they threatened his family if he didn’t find me. He went after you assuming you knew where I was.”