Page 69 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Everly
Beckett Benson went down like a building being demolished—one moment upright, the next horizontal, unconscious before his head hit the pillow. In the dim light of the flashlight (being smothered by my hand so as to avoid catching attention), he looks relaxed. At peace. He’s sleeping on his side, his face turned slightly toward me, the lines of his face smoothed away. His chest rises and falls in slow, even breaths.
Cole is on his other side, snoring. Every fourth breath rattles. Every seventh produces a whistling note.
I have half a mind to smother him in his sleep.
The tent flap ahead of me hangs open, giving me a clear view of the empty darkness. And I sit, hockey stick across my knees, keeping watch.
No movement. No footsteps. No flashlight beams. 4:43 a.m. The sky outside the skylights is still black, but the black has a quality that wasn’t there an hour ago.
Morning is coming.
I should be sleeping. My body has filed multiple requests with increasingly aggressive symptoms—gritty eyes, heavy limbs, thoughts losing their edges like watercolors in rain. But every time I close my eyes:
His arm around me in the dark.
His warm hands pulling me close. “I’ll see you soon.”
And in the far distant reach of my mind. The elevator.
You build a life around the secret. People know you as one thing. And the real you is this other thing hiding underneath, and if it comes out?—
Everything falls apart.
I’ve been writing this man for more than just my ice hockey books, and as much as I’m loath to admit it, all my heroes have a touch of Beckett. Heroes with strong jaws and tortured pasts and the ability to disarm bad guys with household objects. Jake Reeves is just my newest version.
And as I sit here, I realize I’ve gotten him (and every other hero) wrong. Not the externals—the jaw, the toughness, the heroism—but the interior landscape. The Jake Reeves in my manuscript is vulnerable because the heroine is persistent and charming. But Beckett Benson opens up because he’s exhausted. Because the filters dissolve when you’ve been running for eight hours, and the truth surfaces not because you decided to share it but because you don’t have the energy to keep it hidden. He told me about his father not because I earned the confession but because the confession earned its way out. The wall came down not because I breached it but because the building fell on it, and the rubble was a relief.
So maybe that was an exhaustion of a different kind too. I get that more than I want to admit.
Beckett stirs. The slow, disoriented surfacing of a man reacquainting himself with his situation. Yes, my man, you fell asleep in an ice-fishing tent in a camping store. His eyes open. Blink. Focus on the ceiling. Shift to Cole (snoring). Shift to me (sitting up, hockey stick across my knees).
“What are you still doing up?” Voice like gravel.
“What do you think? Watching for bad guys.”
“Why didn’t you wake up Cole?”
I shrug, the very gesture taking up all my energy. “I couldn’t do it. He needed the rest too.”
Beckett sits up, runs a hand through his dark hair. “Any sign of our friends?”
“None. It’s been quiet.”
“Maybe they left.”
“In a blizzard? With Cole’s car in the lot and three hundred thousand unresolved?” I raise an eyebrow. “Hardly.”
He lets out a light chuckle. Tired. He looks disheveled. Human. The version of Beckett Benson that exists when nobody’s watching. Except me. Is it terrible that I like that?
“We need another plan,” he says. “What time is it?”
“I think it’s almost five a.m. The mall opens at noon on Sundays.”
“I remember,” he adds, a familiar smile touching his lips, the hint of a shared history between us.
“It’s time for us to get out of here.” I’ve been thinking about this—two hours of silent vigil provides excellent planning time when the alternative is confronting your feelings. “In daylight, they have full visibility. So we need to be out before dawn.”
