Allison leaned back, disappointed that she didn’t get the touchy-feely, good-for-newsclips sentiment out of him. As such, she turned to other topics that focused more on his mission. I was grateful that all I had to do was sit numbly and listen to Brock recount how they had been in Afghanistan so he could train his counterpart—an Afghan doctor in field medicine. The doctor, who had become his friend, had asked for Brock’s help treating a patient in a local village who wasn’t able to travel. Brock had agreed, and their vehicle was attacked by a radicalized faction during their journey. The doctor and another American soldier—both Brock’s friends—lost their lives. The attackers took Brock because he had survived and was an American. They thought they could use him as leverage. For three days they questioned and tortured Brock. It was a child who was fond of American soldiers because they played soccer with him and gave him his very own soccer ball who ended up telling the SEAL extraction team where they could find Brock. I would be forever grateful to that little boy.
Most of the specifics Brock had to leave out, as they were classified. Especially those surrounding the rescue itself. And I didn’t think he wanted to articulate any of the grueling details. Details I knew he was thinking about constantly when locked up in his room. Or when he did emerge, I noticed the vacant stares. Behind the stares I knew he was replaying the horror he’d lived through.
I had heard the story he’d given the media so many times, my mind started to wander. I didn’t even realize when the line of questioning shifted back to both of us. It caught me off guard when Allison, out of the blue, asked, “So was it love at first sight for the two of you?”
Without thinking, I lied and said, “No,” while Brock said, “Yes.”
I was so stunned I whipped my head his way. From how red his cheeks were, it was obvious he was more surprised by the admission than I was.
His brooding eyes locked with my own, and confusion and pain swirled in the sea of blue. Had he lied, like me? Was he looking for a way out? Of course he was—he didn’t want this marriage. He certainly didn’t love me. Even when he’d gotten off that plane and during the days we’d spent after holding on to one another, he’d never said he loved me. We talked about the future, sure, but those three words had never been spoken between us. Though I’d loved him since the day he sat next to me my sophomore year in college during our abnormal psychology class. He was a senior, and there was something about him that had drawn me in. I could tell he was different. He cared about school. He’d paid even more attention than me during class. We ended up being study partners. Even back then, we only ever flirted while I watched him date every beautiful woman who came calling his name. Yet it was me who helped him study for the MCAT. Me who had his best interests at heart. Even to the point of coming up with my “Dani test” to weed out the ridiculous women who clamored after him. Honestly, though, in the past year I had given up and gave any woman my stamp of approval. If Brock was stupid enough to consider them, I’d figured he deserved to date them.
Allison laughed at the situation, though there wasn’t anything funny about the lies we had both just told. “Sounds like there is a story there. Please elaborate. How did you know from the first moment she was the one?” she asked Brock.
Brock’s eyes stayed locked on my own. How he was going to get out of this I had no idea. That’s the problem with lies, they only lead to more lies. More misery. Hence my life.
My own eyes begged Brock to make the lie as painless as possible. I almost answered for him in that teasing wife way and said, “He’s not remembering it right. Let me tell you the real story.” I would ramble about how we had been friends and I had set him up with women. However, Brock beat me to the punch.
He turned from me and faced Allison. “To know Dani is to love her.” It was the biggest lie we had told yet.
~*~
I lay awake that night, which was something, considering I’d taken doxylamine—normally used as a sleeping aid—for the nausea before I went to bed. Tonight, though, my mind was racing. It was made worse by the fact I had to spend the night at Brock’s. By the time we’d done the interview and had dinner at his parents’, we’d gotten back late. I was too tired to drive the half hour back to Pine Falls. Besides, it was too suspicious. Not that Kinsley and Ariana didn’t have their suspicions that all wasn’t well in paradise. My excuses for sleeping at the loft had been that I had huge projects at work and I hated driving back so late in the dark through the mountains. And I was giving Brock time to heal and rest after his ordeal. They weren’t really buying it, but I’d begged them to drop it. I knew Jonah had even tried to talk to Brock about it, but Brock had basically told him the same thing I had told Ariana and Kinsley.