Page 76 of Fixed Asset

“Smart-ass.”

Yup.

That was me.

Totally a smart-ass with zero concern I had to pretend I was someone I wasn’t.

I was me.

And Jack Donovan T-totally loved me.

Chapter Twenty-One

“It’s beautiful up here,” Cat said, craning her neck to look out her window down the steep ravine. “I know California’s not the only state like this, but I’ve always found it interesting that you can be at the beach, then an hour later be deep into the mountains or a vineyard. You can see the most beautiful redwoods, then a few hours later see a castle.”

She wasn’t wrong; the juxtaposition was striking. The traffic was horrendous but the natural beauty was, in my opinion, only second to what Idaho had to offer. Though Idaho didn’t have beaches, they had lakes, and it won out mainly because there were fewer people and less traffic. I’d give up the year-round nice weather and the beach not to spend my life stuck in gridlock.

“Have you spent much time here?”

“Not really. I did a temporary duty assignment at Fort Irwin and some training at NAS Lemoore and a two-week stopover at Travis. When I left Lemoore, I rented a convertible, took three days, and did the whole touristy thing. Drove PCH from San Francisco to San Diego and flew back to Bragg out of SD.”

She paused, and I felt her gaze come to me.

“For the record, I rented a Ford. I fell in love with the Mustang and decided one day I would own one.”

There was something behind the Ford comment that was more than a dig at car manufacturers.

“What about the Ford made you fall in love?”

“It was the first time I felt free.”

My heart clutched at her soft admission.

“I went from . . . well, you know, I told you about it . . . to the Army. My life was not my own. I was told what to do, where to go, and when I got there I was given more orders. But I found I liked the structure. I needed it after so much disorder. I think that’s what I saw in Steven when he came home to visit. He was settled, it changed everything about him. I wanted that. I needed a break from the chaos and worry about where I was going, who next was going to take in the poor orphan. Not that Lina ever gave me the impression she wanted me to go, but it was still in me.

“But those three days with the top down, cruising down PCH, my life was mine. I was in control. I stopped where I wanted, I saw what I wanted to see, I slept where I wanted. I was free. Every decision was mine. I had three days to think. Three days with myself to reflect on the life I’d been given—from my parents dying, losing my grandmother, to the assholes I was forced to live with. Lina, Steven, Lars. All of it. Somewhere around Morro Bay, things started to come clear. I stopped for the night in this place called Goleta. Before I left, I stopped at the beach. There’s this long wooden pier. I walked to the end—mountains and ocean. It was so beautiful, I stayed out there for a long time thinking.

“It was there I realized that my breaths were finite. I only had so many of them before they were gone. I could spend the rest of them dwelling on the assholes in my life, or I could stop giving them precious headspace and move on. I gave them one final breath on that pier and moved on. I got back into the Mustang, turned the radio on for the first time since I’d started the drive, and spent the next two days with the music blaring, using my breath to sing at the top of my lungs.

“By the time I turned that rental in, it was gone. All the resentment, the bitterness, the anger. So while my life belonged to the Army, my breath belonged to me.”

The puzzle that was Catarina Keys clicked into place, and the whole picture formed. And I wondered if she had any clue the strength of mind she possessed. With the way she’d told the story of a life-changing epiphany, I doubted it. She’d made it sound like her mental fortitude was commonplace instead of extraordinary. Most people did not have it in themselves to face the past—what’d been done to them, what hadn’t happened, what they missed out on, regret. It’s easier to bury the pain instead of facing it, reflecting, then freeing it from their minds. The problem with that was, it festered. The lesion was always there just under the surface, filling with poison. But the pain of bloodletting the trauma was so excruciating, for some, living with the toxin was easier.

I’d lived on both sides of that coin. I still had shit buried I would never unpack from my days in the Navy. Things I saw, but mostly what I’d heard—the screams, the sobs, the tremble in voices, the last breaths. Shit that I couldn’t force my mind to relive.

“Favor, baby.”

“What’s that?”

“Twice now you’ve given me important pieces of you. Twice I’ve been driving and can’t give you the attention I want when I learn more about your remarkable strength. Do me a favor and next time, wait until I’m not behind the wheel and I can properly tell you how fucking astoundingly special you are.”

“I think you just told me,” she whispered.

“I haven’t scratched the surface, but as you wisely said last night, we’re playing the long game, so I have a lifetime of showing you.”

“And I’m not special,” she parried.

“You are very wrong about that, Catarina,” I told her and pulled onto the dirt road that led to Pete’s mountain compound. “But we’re here, and this is one of those conversations that shouldn’t be had while I’m driving.”