Fighting With Light (The Coldwell Brothers #2)

29. Liam

29

Liam

I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. When I came back, I found Aelia fell asleep with her chin resting on her hand and decided we both had enough. It was time for bed. I might have found a lead on a flight manifest. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only detail that stuck out to me.

Laying Aelia on her side of the bed, I go around to mine and flip off the light as she wiggles across the mattress, taking up most of it. She tucks her head in the curve of my neck and I slide an arm around her ribs, pulling her into my front. She sighs and I watch her drift back into dreamland.

“Goodnight, princess,” I mutter, rubbing my thumb over her spine. The only answer I get is a soft snore.

Yeah…I’m in trouble.

***

The next morning I wake up with my soft alarm and find Aelia’s eyes already open and looking at me.

“Yoga time?” she asks with a yawn. I groan and roll myself out of bed. I don’t know when this became part of my process for prepping for a competition, but it helps me focus because my mind has a tendency to run a thousand miles a minute and I need to make it calm down. I need to focus on the surf in front of me or the climb I’m about to scale. Yoga also helps with strengthening the small muscles I need to surf or climb well. It’s a win-win .

But with all the peace and focus that yoga provides to me, I certainly don’t have it now as Aelia bends down and touches her toes in a tiny sports bra and purple shorts.

I shake my head and focus on leaning forward and stepping each foot back into a downward dog. She silently follows my lead with periodic promptings. We do our sun salutation and then I wrap things up with a tree pose. I hear movement to my side and peek an eye open to see Aelia with her arms out trying to keep her balance. I smile to myself and close my eye before she catches me.

She curses under her breath, and then I look again as she slowly presses the ball of her foot into the mat and spreads her toes for balance. She carefully drags her other leg up above her knee with her arms still out, holding for balance, and then she brings them into the prayer pose. Her leg wiggles a little, then her arms fly out to steady herself, and I move to catch her.

“You were watching me the whole time, weren’t you?” she grumbles.

I poke her stomach. “Tighten this and hold your shoulders up as if you have puppet strings attached to you.” I put my hand on her butt and squeeze. “Squeeze this while you keep your posture and then keep this leg tucked in, you can move your knee here or here,” I tell her, guiding her knee in front of her or to the side. “Whatever is more comfortable.”

“Is this cop-a-feel yoga?” she grumbles. I smack her butt again and she squawks, almost falling over. I laugh, holding her up and waiting for her to center her balance again before I let go.

Going back to my tree pose, my mind feels like it can breathe as I focus on the waves, inhaling the ocean air, in and out, in and out. Everything goes blank, and it’s one of the best feelings in the world— aside from being with Aelia.

“Are we done yet?” she grumbles. “I’m hungry and dripping with sweat because it’s hot and I’m probably getting dehydrated, and—”

“Yes, princess, we can be done.” I smile at her and drop my leg.

She drops hers, groaning, and goes back into the villa. I roll our mats up and lean them against the side of the wall before following her inside.

“Yes, please, can you get me the pancakes, the variety of empanadas, six eggs, and the chorizo is fine, please throw a ton of fruit in there, a big pot of coffee, and then five bottles of mineral water, please.” My eyes widen, wondering why in the world she would order all of that but my stomach grumbles as if it had ears.

She hangs up the phone and looks at me. “What else are you going to do today?”

“Well, I need to get some surf time in and then I figured we should keep looking into Colombia,” I suggest. She nods and saunters into the bathroom.

When she emerges her hair is pulled up in a messy bun instead of the braid she had it in. She’s wearing another bikini I haven’t seen before. This one is white, and it makes her skin look almost like milk chocolate. I want to take a bite out of her. It’s one of those high-cut bottoms on the hips, and it dips low in the front. The top is a simple triangle bikini, but I like the way it looks on her.

“If you keep looking at me like you want to eat me, you will absolutely not get your surf in,” she says.

“Maybe you need to stop taunting me with those bikinis,” I tell her, lifting my eyebrow, egging her on.

She purses her lips meeting the challenge. “I think you remember what happened last time you said to stop messing with you, I could do that again, and solve the problem right now,” she says, lifting her hand to her neck.

“No,” I grunt, holding up a hand. “I wish, baby, but I need a surf.”

She smiles, dropping her hand from her neck.

“I’m too hungry, anyway. I probably would have passed out.” She grins.

“You passing out would have nothing to do with food, princess,” I tell her.

Her eyebrow ticks up, and there is a knock at the door.

My stomach grumbles as I push the cart to our little table. We don’t bother with pretense and dig in.

I get back to work looking for flight manifests. The one I thought I found ended up being a dead end, it could be for anything legal or illegal, so I dropped it and moved on.

Aelia is sipping her coffee and hunting for a cook site in the mountains. I’m not so sure she’ll find it, but if she does, it would be a major piece of evidence that could lead us to more .

I looked for other private airports and started looking through their manifests, and I found a few that made me take another look. There are ten manifests for the past year with cargo listed and a few of their reported weights stuck out to me. They were consistent shipments all slightly over one thousand kilograms, which is a little over a ton.

This could be anything, but there is a pattern with one specifically, El Rey Café, coffee. But coffee beans are a little heavier, and because of that, they couldn’t put as much weight that’s listed on the plane. I looked up the company, and it’s not a real coffee grower either, it’s a shell corporation. It’s also important to note that the plane being used can’t carry that amount of weight for coffee beans, and they would need a bigger plane. But if you are just flying cocaine to Mexico City, then the size of the plane is fine.

“I think I might have found our plane,” I tell Aelia.

She gasps and rolls over to me sitting at the small table.

I explain what I think is happening and she seems to think that’s plausible, so I grab all the manifests and put them in our file. It’s something, but I’m afraid we’re taking too long. It feels like time is running out because Aelia’s father is going to figure out something isn’t right.

Aelia is searching square by square through the dense mountains without any luck. I help her for another hour until I can’t take looking at a screen anymore.

“I need a break,” I tell her.

“Do you want me to watch you surf again?” she asks and suddenly I feel a little embarrassed that my answer is immediately yes. I feel like a little kid when my mom was standing on the shore watching me practice as a teen.

“Oh uh, you don’t have to if you’d rather do this,” I say, gesturing to the computer.

“Just give me a little longer and I’ll be out later,” she says and turns back to the screen.

“Okay, no problem,” I mutter and move my feet out the door. Idiot. She doesn’t want to watch you surf. It’s boring, Liam. You have a competition to win tomorrow, stop thinking about your pretend girlfriend watching you surf and being your cheerleader from the shore.

** *

I forced myself to focus on the waves and every move I made until my mind finally shut up. The waves are perfect today. I think the only way I can pull in my points is by demonstrating some more technical tricks and skills without error. I’ve had a great season, but after everything that happened with Mom getting shot after Kai and Cordelia’s wedding, I was off my game. I couldn’t stop thinking that someone was coming for me next.

I stayed to get Mom back to normal until she told me to leave her alone. I know I was overbearing but…she’s my mom. She’s the woman that saved me and my brothers. We owe her our lives, it’s why we do the things we do.

Coming from my abusive father, barely getting by for a few months to stay hidden, and then being militarily trained to protect ourselves is an odd upbringing. It’s even more insane that each of my brothers are professional athletes in sports that can be quite life-threatening. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that nothing happens without reason or purpose, even the bad things. So with that logic, we are who we were meant to be, and that scares me. But who else is going to get hurt?

The ocean ebbs under my board as I sit there frozen by my own choices. Aelia knows I’m not exactly good, especially because of how we started. But she hasn’t seen the bloodthirsty man, and I hope she never has to. When my brothers and I have to do something to protect our family, it’s like a switch for each of us. We flip into these different men to get the job done. It’s why we call each other One, Two, and Three. It’s not Dr. Seuss, it’s like an alter ego, it’s the men we have to become to protect what matters. I’m not proud of the things I’ve done, but I would do them again, and I don’t know what that says about me.

It certainly doesn’t make me good enough for Aelia. I feel like that makes me just as bad as her father. A sin is a sin, and I’ve committed plenty of them, God forgive me .

“Liam!” I hear from the shore. I find Aelia standing in the water with sunglasses on and her hands on her hips. I glance behind me with the intention of catching something to ride into shore. I have no idea how long I’ve been out here, I forgot to grab my diver’s watch because I was too busy trying to run away from Aelia.

A wave comes up and I paddle hard, leaping up and giving it my all as I ride into shore. The water dies, and I hop off my board and wade toward her with my board. Aelia meets me halfway in the shallow water. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ve been out here watching you. I called for you because you were just floating out there I thought something happened,” she says.

I shake my head and a small smile grows on my face. “No, I’m okay.”

“Are you ready to come in or do you want to go back out?” she asks.

I stare at this small Italian woman and she makes my insides feel like the warm sun beats down on me, it’s comfortable and it makes you smile.

She is my sun.

“Nah, I think I’m done for today,” I tell her and we start wading out of the water. My heart wasn’t really in it because I was too busy trying to ignore all my other thoughts.

“Do you feel ready for tomorrow?” she asks as we walk through the hot sand.

I’ve tried not to think about it. I would rather focus on her. “I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I tell her.

She reaches for my free hand. “I’m looking forward to it, I think you’re going to kill it.”

I smile and lean down kissing her temple. “Thank you, baby.”