coffeemaker, blender, and the magnet bottle opener stuck to his refrigerator. On the wallpaper that would not get replaced.
When Max emerged once more, he carried a duffel bag and his rucksack in his hands. A grim line twisted one corner of his lips, confirming her worst nightmare. Even before he opened his mouth, she knew what he was going to say.
“I have to go, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
She picked up Baby, then rose to stand before him. “When or if, you mean.”
“We’ll talk when I return.”
She shook her head. Since the beginning, she’d wondered what she would do when this moment came, and now she knew. “I can’t do this, Max. I love you, but I can’t live like this. I won’t be waiting for you when you get back.”
“Don’t do this, Lola. We can make this work.” He set the bags on the floor and moved toward her.
She put out her free hand and stopped him. “No,” she said, even as her heart told her to throw her arms around his neck and hang on. To hang on and never let him go. “I don’t understand why you have to go,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “Only that you
“Don’t leave like this, Lola.” He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. The agony in his gaze cut clear to her soul. “We’ll talk when I get back. Please stay.”
“Say something to make me stay.”
He took a breath and let it out slowly. His hands fell to his sides. “I love you.”
No fair. Those were the three words she’d been waiting to hear. Now they shredded her heart and left her bleeding inside. She was almost sure he’d never said them to another woman before, but they weren’t enough. She felt sorry for him. Sorrier for herself. Sorry for the life they would not have together. “I deserve more. I deserve a man who loves me enough to want to grow old with me.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is, Max.”
“No!” His hands at his sides clenched into fists. “You’re asking me to give up my life for you. You’re asking me to turn myself into someone other than who I am.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. I am telling you I love you too much to watch you kill yourself.”
“I’m not going to die, Lola.”
“Yes, you will. Maybe not this time, but you will. And I won’t live my life wondering if today is the day.” She looked one last time into his beautiful blue eyes and forced herself to leave the room, leave Max standing in his kitchen, telling her he loved her, and begging her to stay. Walking away from him was the most difficult thing she’d ever done.
With her dog held to her chest, she walked upstairs into Max’s bedroom and grabbed her Louis Vuitton overnight bag. As her breaking heart urged her to stay, to stay because living with him under any circumstance was better than living without him, she quickly dressed. She half expected to hear the sound of Max’s footsteps coming up the stairs to tell her he’d changed his mind or to ask her again to stay with him. They never came.
Before she left, she glanced about his bedroom one last time. At the double bed with the plaid spread. On his dresser sat a single photograph of him and his father standing on a crumbling porch, an old rosary hanging off one side. Beside it, the picture she’d given him of her and Baby. It was sad and lonely, and she turned from the room and walked down the stairs. Max was in the parlor, looking out the front window onto the street.
With dry eyes, she gazed one last time at the back of his beloved head and the width of his strong shoulders. If he had turned and looked at her, she wasn’t so sure she would have had the strength to walk out the door. “Good- bye, Max,” she said.
But he didn’t look at her, and with her knees quaking and her hands shaking, she walked out of his townhouse. She placed her bag and Baby into the passenger seat of her BMW, then climbed in and fired it up. Without a backward glance, she drove away. She didn’t cry until she’d driven half a mile. She didn’t fall apart until Fredericksburg.
She had to pull her car off the highway into the parking lot of a Best Western. As tears streamed down her cheeks, she placed her arms on the steering wheel and let go. Big sobs racked her chest and pinched her heart.
Until that moment, she’d never known that love could feel so bad. She’d been in love before, but not like this. Not the kind that felt as if she’d been ripped apart.
Lola didn’t know how long she sat in her car before she realized that she couldn’t make the four-hour drive home. Her head pounded and her eyes were scratchy yet watery at the same time. She pulled her dark sunglasses out of her purse and headed into the lobby of the Best Western. She and Baby checked into a room, near the ice machine, and she turned on the television, hoping for a distraction. But nothing distracted her from the pain of losing Max. If she’d thought he’d still be at home, she might have called and told him she didn’t mean it. That she’d changed her mind, that she’d take him under any circumstances for however long it lasted. But she knew he wasn’t home, just as she knew that if she didn’t get out now, this scene would play out again and again and again.
Baby whined and licked her face as if he, too, mourned the loss of Max. As if he, too, felt lost and empty inside. Lola lay on the bed and wrapped her arms around herself. The horrible emptiness ate a hole in her stomach and she reached for the telephone book, flipped to the yellow pages, and dialed.
“Delivery, please,” she sobbed into the receiver. “I’d like a medium meat lover’s pizza, an order of bread sticks, and a small order of chicken wings. Do you have diet Pepsi?”
Within thirty minutes, she sat at the small table by the closed curtains, gorging on fat, greasy comfort food. She’d eaten two pieces of pizza, three bread sticks, and half the wings when she pushed the food aside. It wasn’t helping. Just making her feel worse. An old and familiar voice urged her to purge all that fattening food, but she tuned it out. Baby jumped up on the table and snitched some pepperoni. Lola didn’t have the heart to scold him. She understood his pain.
There was nothing to make her feel better.
Nothing to take away the pain and emptiness she felt clear to the depths of her soul.
The C-130 banked port and descended to thirty thousand feet. The interior lights shut off, pitching the craft into darkness. The pilot cracked the hatch, and from inside his wet suit, flight coveralls, life vest, and fifty pounds of gear, Max felt the temperature plunge about a hundred degrees in less than five seconds. He took steady breaths through his oxygen mask and could sense his fog-proof combat goggles frosting over as the C-130’s ramp lowered.
Three other men stood within the aircraft with Max. All of them former SEALs, all of them tethered to the bulkhead with yellow safety harnesses. Max had worked with two of the men before, and they both were seasoned warriors. The third, Max had only heard about by reputation. His name was Pete “Boom-Boom” Jozwiak, and he was supposedly the best demolitions expert around. He was Max’s swim buddy on this trip, and Max hoped like hell the kid was as good as his reputation. Five miles below, on an island south of Soledad, a group of anti-American terrorists where holed up with two nuclear warheads they’d appropriated from the former Soviet Union. The U.S. government wanted those warheads out of terrorist hands, yet in order to keep relations with the world on an even keel, they could not do anything overt. They had to retain deniability, and they figured the wisest choice was to send in black operatives. For five days, Max and the other men had met with the powers that be and had come up with a tactical operations plan that would make the warheads disappear. At least that was the objective, and as always, failure was not an option.
The four men pushed the rubber combat raft toward the end of the ramp. A parachute, communications package, and the team’s assault gear were lashed to the assault raft, as were the engine and fuel that would take them to the island. Max checked the GPS on his chest to make sure it was working and waited for the green cargo
