Enemy of Mine (32 page)
With a snap of Clio’s fingers, Erva fell into a sickening, heartbreaking blackness that consumed everything.
I
t took several attempts at pushing eyelids to do the unthinkable, but finally there was light. The sun streaked its way through the orchard, browned the grass Will laid on. His horse’s back hooves moved nervously close to his head.
“Get his legs.” Will heard Clio’s hurried voice.
“God, he’s big. I thought men of this time were supposed to be shorter, especially weigh less,” another voice said.
“Urania, you lived through this age just like we did. What are you talking about?” an annoyed Erato asked.
He looked up to see Clio, Erato, and another woman who looked almost exactly like them, all clad in Continental uniforms, trying to pick him up.
“I said, get his legs, Urania,” Clio ordered. She looked down as the sounds of fighting nearby suddenly streamed through his consciousness. Smiling at him, she said, “Hi, Will. How you doing?”
“Erva?” he croaked, but then clasped a hand over his heart. Oh, that hurt.
“Oh my God, the first thing he thinks about is her,” Erato cooed. “It’s so cute. They’re so cute.”
“Yes, yes, they’re cute. Now grab his shoulder. We have to get him out of here before his men try to take him from us.” Clio looked down again as she tried to heft him, while Urania, Will guessed the other muse to be—though he wasn’t that knowledgeable about Greek mythology—grabbed his legs and lifted him a few feet in the air. Clio smiled again. “Your men will think we’re Continental soldiers, looting your dead body. Now act dead, okay?”
“Pardon?” he could barely ask. His chest was deeply affected by something, but he didn’t feel an internal wound.
“Ick, looting his dead body? Won’t the British be pissed then?” Erato asked.
Clio nodded as all the sisters finally began walking with his sprawled body between the three of them. “Unfortunately, the Continentals really did rummage his dead body. They got his sword and the engagement ring he had for Erva. By the way, Will, nice choice on the ring. The emerald was especially eye-catching. She’s really going to like that.”
“God, he weighs a ton,” Urania complained.
“Kevlar is heavy,” Erato smiled and winked down at Will.
“When we get him deeper into the woods, we can take off his Kevlar vest, then he’ll be lighter. Plus maybe by then he can walk on his own.” Clio jostled him as the three women walked faster. She glanced down at him again as the trees thickened, making the sun disappear. “You took quite a hit, buddy. You okay?”
“What—what do you mean, Erva’s
going
to like the ring?” he rasped.
“Set him down here,” Clio demanded, and they dropped their cargo, making Will wheeze in agony. Clio knelt beside him and gently cradled his head. “Sorry.”
Urania stood over Clio, arching a brow. “You said he was smart.”
“He’s very smart,” Erato hissed defensively.
Clio rolled her eyes but then smiled at him. “I may have to abide by history’s laws, but sometimes I deter from the
letter
of the law. Just a tad. Unfortunately, you’re dead, Will. At least in this time, but now you can live with Erva in her time. That is, if you want to?”
Erato clutched her hands together and placed them over her heart. In the blue Continental uniform, even wearing taupe breeches, she looked quite comical and cute. “Say yes, Will,” she said.
Urania huffed. “Aren’t you ever going to introduce me? I mean, I just saved the man’s life, and he doesn’t even know who I am.”
Clio and Erato turned to their other sister, both of their dark red eyebrows cast down.
“Not now,” Erato hollered. “He’s got to answer Clio’s question first.”
Urania huffed again and knelt close to Clio, then took Will’s hand in hers, shaking it. “Hi, Will. I’m Urania. I’m going to be your tutor while we take you to Erva’s time.”
“Tutor?” he moaned.
Urania smiled broadly. “That’s right, big guy. You’ll be taking orders from me, because I’m going to get you through medical school in a flash.”
Erato knelt close to the other sisters, right above Will’s head. “But he hasn’t answered Clio’s question yet.”
Urania rolled her eyes. “And you’re the muse of love? Love stories, right? But even I, the scientist that I am, can tell what his answer is.” She smiled down at Will.
He couldn’t help but beam up at the muse.
A
ll the wind had been wrestled from her when Erva woke with what she thought would have been a scream. Without any breath, it sounded more like a bark, a mournful silent gasp. She clutched her comforter—realizing it was
her
sad, colorless comforter—clinging to anything to get some air into her lungs in a dark room—
her
dark room, the only light a pale gray from an early morning sun not yet awakening and the chartreuse numbers from her digital alarm clock. At the same time, she was too scared to breathe. If she did, then that meant she was back in her time. Without Will.
Like the sun that would surely rise, she didn’t ask for it, but it came: the air she needed to stay alive. It shook her body, convulsing her into one giant sob. Then she bawled into her pillow. Maybe she cried for an eternity. Maybe only minutes. But in the midst of dryly weeping, Erva was distracted by her pillow. She’d bought it at her mother’s insistence. It was thin and had some kind of made-from-petroleum fake stuffing in it. Fitting, Erva thought, comparing her pillow with her mother. And that was when she’d had enough.
For years silent resentment had resided in her body, screaming long after she’d had a visit with her mother. Her internal anger had shadowed her everywhere, except with Will when she’d let it go. The way Will accepted her had been magical. It had broken her Sleeping Beauty spell, the curse of repressed anger.
She knew she would cry more for Will, but it felt sacrilegious to do so in a bed not of her own choosing. On a fake pillow. She lifted herself, tears pouring down her face, but the moisture turned into self-righteous fury in a flash. Ripping her not quite gray, not quite beige sheets, pillows, and comforter from her bed, she screamed. Not too loud. Heaven forbid she alert her neighbors. Then Erva thought of the term, heaven forbid—something Will would say, and she yelled again. But she wouldn’t mourn in her apartment. Not the way it was. It wasn’t her, and Will would only want her to be herself.
She didn’t care that she had constant tears rushing down her cheeks. She didn’t care what she looked like. Grabbing a close-by pair of jeans, she flung them on then a t-shirt too. Except lifting her right arm, she winced and yelped. There it was. Proof she wasn’t crazy. It was still bleeding too, her gunshot wound, which looked more like a wide and deep scratch, reminding her of what she’d had, where she’d been, what she’d lost.
Okay, she thought to herself, she had to get some stitches, then she would change everything. Her apartment, all the furnishing, everything had to go. Crap, what day was it? Her iPhone was on her nightstand, where it always was—no longer in a Greek box in New York two hundred years ago. Grabbing it, she read that it was Thursday. Wednesday, yesterday, had been her day from hell before she’d met Will. She hadn’t missed a thing from her time. She sobbed again, thinking she’d call in sick at the university. Hell, she was going to the hospital anyway. She’d just call in sick today and tomorrow too. Because she needed time to change her apartment to match what had happened to her internally. It had to be her place now. Or maybe a place Will would have liked. A place he would have smiled in and curled up with her on the couch.
She nodded as she watched blood seep through her t-shirt, knowing she’d have to go to the emergency room. God, she hated doctors.
*
“H
ow did you say you got this injury again?” Dr. Morgana asked as he finished the last stitch in Erva’s shoulder. They were in a small curtained off part of the emergency department. Everything was a cloying pink color, and the effervescent lights made the color radiate into something psychotic. The only relief for Erva’s eyes was the white floor and Dr. Morgana’s blue scrubs.
She sighed and looked at the clean-as-a-plate shiny tiles under the doctor’s rolling stool. “Just moving things around my apartment. I guess I’m klutzy.”
The thirty-something, hunky-as-hell doctor lifted one dark eyebrow. “You don’t strike me as a klutz. You have an athletic build.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, as a doctor I noticed your build. Of course. I’m not trying to come on to you or anything.” He rolled slightly away from her as a pink color rose up his neck. “Unless you want me to come on to you. Of course not. How unprofessional of me.” But he smiled at her unapologetically.
Less than a week ago that would have done it for Erva. She would have grinned back and coyly tried to see what the doctor wanted. But not now.
She did smile though. A little. “Thanks, doc. But—”
“I should have known a girl like you was taken. Sorry.”
She shrugged, then winced. “Ouch. Jeez, that seriously hurts. Are you sure you stitched this right?”
He silently chuckled. “Just because I stitched your supposedly klutzy wound, doesn’t mean the pain lessens. In fact, it’s often much worse. That’s why I recommended numbing it.”
“With a needle. Come on. That’s crazy.”
He shook his head with a smile. “Are you trying to ask for pain killers? Because if you are, I have to ask you a ton of questions about your behavior.”
“They’re really cracking down on addicts, huh?”
He tried to hide his smile, but didn’t do a very good job. “Uh, actually, it’s a good way to be nosey and find out if the man in your life, whoever he is, is worth you.”
She blinked, not sure if she should think the doctor was a wee bit stalker-ish, or a wee bit sweet.
He pushed his stool over to a countertop and started writing on a notepad. “I do have a prescription here for some antibiotics. You were current with your Tetanus shot, which utterly surprises me, considering your aversion to needles. I want you to take the antibiotics because your wound was pretty dirty when you came in. And I am prescribing you a couple Percocets if the pain is bad. Or for a good time. Your choice. And” —he wheeled closer and looked at her stitches, dabbed at it a little with an iodine swab, then a clear cotton one— “I left my personal phone number on the last ‘script. If your guy is an ass, you can call me. Or” —he looked down into her eyes with a sheepish smile— “you can call for whatever.”
Just then the psychedelic pink curtain flew back. Ben stood absolutely still as he looked her over then the doctor too. Blond and chiseled, he looked more like a bootcamp sergeant than the often happy, silly man Erva knew. After a heartbeat, he lurched for Erva.
“What happened to you?” He wrapped his powerful arms around her, careful of her right arm. Then he lifted her off the emergency room’s bed and settled both their bodies where she had been. “Some nurse with a weird Mediterranean accent called and said you were shot.”
“Shot?” Dr. Morgana asked.
Erva didn’t pull away from Ben. It felt too good to be in his arms. Again, she started crying, while clutching at him with all the might her left arm had. God, she’d missed him, her best friend, and the most creative creature she’d ever met.
“Miss Ferguson told me she was rearranging her furniture,” Dr. Morgana said.
Ben, as if he knew Erva’s heartbreak, cradled her even closer. “You were rearranging that shrine to your mother? I’m so proud of you, honey.”
She grinned, but the tears never stopped. “I need your help. I need to get rid of all of it.”
Ben stared at Dr. Morgana. “What pills did you give her?”
She smiled again. “I’m serious.”
Ben beamed down at her, his handsome face cheery but perplexed. He nodded. “Honey, seriously, what happened to you?”
“Well, I can see you’re in good hands,” Dr. Morgana said, rising from his stool. He looked at Erva with a small smile. “Get better soon, Miss Ferguson.” Then he left the small curtained room.
Ben leaned his head close to hers. “That doc has the hots for you.”
She sniffed.
“He thinks I’m your boyfriend. Want me to go tell him I’m gay? Bill’s coming in anyway. He’s trying to find a parking space.”
“Bill loves you.” Erva smiled at her best friend. “He loves you so much.” For the first time in years, she no longer felt the prickle of envy when she thought of Ben and Bill together. She’d wanted what they had, and now that she’d had it...the barb no longer stung. But tears did roll down her cheeks. She leaned her head away from Ben and made sure to look him in the eye. “I’m so happy you found Bill. He’s a good man. No, he’s a great man. I’m sorry if I haven’t said that sooner, but I will from now on, because I love that you found love.”
Ben smiled and wiped at her tears. “Thanks, sweetie, but you’re freaking me out now. What’s going on? I get a call that you’ve been shot, but you were actually moving your mom’s crap, and now all this sentimental stuff?”
“Hey, I can be sentimental. And that is so weird someone called you to tell you I was shot.”
“Yeah, it was. But...” He never finished. He looked down at her t-shirt. “Are you wearing a Metallica shirt? You haven’t worn that since high school, when you’d sneak it out of your mom’s house and just wear it around me.”
She leaned in and kissed Ben’s cheek. “I love you, you know that?”
“Love you too, but—”
“It’s time for a big change, Ben, and I need your help. Yours and Bill’s. I need everything in my apartment gone. All new furnishings. I’m cracking open my savings for this. And don’t you dare give me a friend discount. I’m paying you what your clients pay. And we can spend all my savings if we need to. I just...I really need this.”
Ben blinked, then his eyes got wide. “You’d let me design for you?”
“It’s about time you did, huh?”
“Anything I want?”
“Anything goes.”
“What about hair and makeup? New clothes?” a voice asked from a few feet away.
Erva looked up and smiled at Bill. His blond hair was a shade lighter than Ben’s, closer to hers, and she wondered if they looked like siblings. Well, to her they were her family. She reached out her hand to Bill who caught it and smiled down at her.
Ben had met Bill through his work, since Bill was a contractor. But it was Bill’s sister, Laura, who had been begging Erva to come into her beauty shop for a makeover.
“Definitely need new hair and makeup.” She nodded.
Bill grabbed his cell from his back pocket. “Laura will scream when I tell her. She loves how long your hair is, how light it is, perfect for what she wants to do with it. Are you really going to let her?”
If she weren’t bleeding inside, Erva thought, she just might be happy right now. The odd thing was thanks to meeting Will she no longer felt hopelessly lost in a world stacked up against her. She was in charge of her own life now. And that felt damned good.
She nodded to Bill, and he started to dial his sister.
As soon as Erva got her apartment in order, new hair, and kicked Dr. Peabody’s ass, she would melt into her bed and cry. Mayhap cry for the rest of her life.
*
B
ut it didn’t work out like that. Erva cried while her hair was processed with the new color, during decisions about her new sheets, and the color of the walls. Thank God, Bill and Ben got used to it within a day’s time. She knew she couldn’t say anything to either one of them about going back in time. But she did tell them that she’d met someone, someone she’d fallen for. She’d fallen so hard she’d thought about fairy tales, and happily ever after, but especially of love. It hadn’t worked out, was all she could say at the end of her story. Ben and Bill gave her a knowing look and let her cry, let her carry on as if it were the end of the world.
Eventually, she turned on her Mac and sat down behind the screen. After a breath, she found the words came so easy. They weren’t about Will, not yet. That’s probably why it was so effortless. But the words uncovered the mask she’d worn for so many years. She wrote of having a break down, of sorts. How she’d lived a life where she struggled and hustled to ensure she was good enough. How she’d taken over her supervisor’s classes without complaint, yet silently resented the hell out of anyone attached to the university, because it reminded her of submitting and feeling hopeless.
She’d lived an odd dichotomy, realizing she’d been in a hailstorm of bullets in Afghanistan, tucked close to Green Berets who tried everything they could to protect her. But she hadn’t protected herself from the threat of never allowing herself happiness, the happiness of feeling worthy.
One reason why she loved history was finding perfect examples of courage—as in the Latin meaning of the word, “to speak from the heart.” Granted, her Will hadn’t said what he wanted to in Parliament, but actions sometimes convey what the heart wants more than anything else. The man had blown apart a slaving station in Africa as one of his first acts of courage, and as Erva knew, it wasn’t his last. And he’d thought her worthy of love.
Him
. A beautiful specimen of courage. It humbled her, but made her realize she was worthy, she was lovable.
On Friday, a large box with fat lettering “Fragile” all over it came to her apartment while Ben and Bill’s crew worked in a fury. It was from the Cresting Estate and a complete mystery to her. Erva waited until the crew left, not wanting any dust on what looked like a valuable container. After gingerly opening the box, she read how the Cresting Estate had been Will’s English manor. Her stomach hollowed, and she had to hold the parcel away from her body as tears splashed down and threatened the precious cargo. Since Erva was the leading scholar regarding Lord General William Hill, the current owner thought she should have a batch of letters recently discovered. They were from Emma to Will. Erva’s heart shattered when discovering Emma had written to Will posthumously, wishing she’d gotten to know her half-brother better.