Chapter 10 Steele Combustible
Laura blinked her eyes repeatedly, dragging her hand down over her face until it came to rest at the base of her neck.
"Why in the bloody hell is your suitcase packed?" boomed Remington, "Were you planning on disappearing into the misty morning?"
Under the heat of Remington's blazing scrutiny, Laura pulled her sleeve back up over her shoulder. She squinted at Remington, his face deeply etched by the shadows. "What are you talking about?" she managed to reply, her voice gravelly with sleep. Noticing his soggy bedraggled state, she reached out and fingered his collar, letting it fall limply from her hand, "Why are you all wet?"
Her nightie whispered off her shoulder again and Remington swallowed hard, but leaped to his feet abruptly and began pacing furiously. After a few fraught turns, he came to a sudden halt and shoved his hand in the direction of the bed where her suitcase sat, "You've made it very plain! You plan to bring our relationship to a halt again, don't you? Once again, you will not give me a chance to explain, will you? Just at the very moment that I have ALL the explanations, you could possibly get from my murky past? Or maybe that wasn't ever it? Perhaps you've just been stringing me along all this time. A fancy frontman for your precious Agency! Is that it, hm?!"
Laura was stunned and then distracted by the intensity of pain in his azure eyes, framed by those black lashes, made more prominent by the dampness that seemed to have permeated his entire being. They were locked in a mutual stare for what seemed much longer than it actually was, he dripping and angry, she tousled and groggy.
Finally, Remington broke their eye lock, and turned, flinging his head back, his eyes sweeping back and forth across the ceiling, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed again. He appeared in quite a pathetic state, but Laura's anger rose up and swept aside the last of the sleepy cobwebs. She stood, whipping off the blanket covering her and snapped, "For your information, MR. STEELE, that suitcase has been sitting there since I returned Friday. Had you come back with me THEN, you would know that!"
"Had I returned?!... Laura, you have no idea what I've been through! I did what needed to be done!"
"And why couldn't you have included me in your...your..." she pressed her lips together, at a loss for words until finally, with a toss of her hands, she burst out, "...whatever enigmatic scheme you were executing?! Why couldn't you trust me?! That alone would have meant more to me than anything in the world! After all these years, all I do is pick up the pieces after you have gone and done some-"
"How can I trust you and confide in you when YOU don't trust ME! It goes both ways, my dear MISS HOLT! YOU are the one with little Faith!"
Laura looked at Remington as if she could disintegrate him with a laser beam. Her lips were mashed together as if some case-closing words were clamoring to escape, but instead, she turned away from him, hugging herself and rubbing her arms with her hands as she said into the darkness, "You don't know how it feels for me. I can't keep doing this. Every time I give myself over to you completely, every time I think we're heading in a good direction, you turn around and pull a stunt like this."
"A stunt?! I did nothing of the kind!" He bellowed indignantly. Laura turned her laser eyes on him again, and they stood there, chests heaving, glaring at each other. Remington relented first as he tried to explain, "It's true in the past I have had to use deceit as a means to an end, but you seem to forget that 'pulling stunts', as you so eloquently put it, was a means to survival for the better part of my life, and that is a difficult habit to shake..."
Laura jumped on the opportunity to drive home her point, "Exactly! And how do you propose we build a future on deception?" She spun away again, and Remington glared at her back, his lower jaw jutting out in pure fury, fisting his hands like steel.
He continued, as evenly as possible, "...but I have worked hard to break that habit, and I have been trying to assemble the pieces of MY past so that we can build OUR future..."
"Future?..." the echo of Laura's voice was suspended in the damp air and suddenly the sound of the rain coming down outdoors was deafening.
Remington felt his blood pumping in his ears and, taking a couple hard breaths, said with great difficulty, "Laura?!..."
Laura, with her back still turned, spoke over her shoulder, "I..." but she struggled to get the words out, "...I have zero defenses left."
At the sound of only the rain, she turned to fully face Remington.
A flash of lighting blanched his face, eliminating every etch, only to reveal naked hurt and fury and disbelief, "Defences? Defenses?!" his voice rose to a pitch unheard from him before, his grip on his own temper tenuous. "I have tried...again and again I have tried to give you what you wanted," he cried. "I have finally found the final piece to the puzzle. I have given you the WORDS you needed and you still feel the need to keep up defenses?! You truly are the most ridiculous, illogical woman I have ever met!" Remington was furious, his blue eyes flashing angrily.
Laura matched his fury head-on, "It's in my nature! Don't you get it!? After all this time, you still don't ..."
Remington cut her off, "Your nature?! No, your nature is to try to control everything and everyone around you. To put everything, — namely ME —," his eyebrows arched in defiance of the laws of nature at that, " — in its place!" The muscles in his neck twitched wildly as he continued, "Your nature is to not trust what your heart FEELS, but to follow what you THINK your head is telling you to..."
"Control!? How do I have control?!" Laura lashed back. "I lost control the moment you stepped into my life and turned it upside down! The only reason we are here today is because I relinquish control a little bit each day, and only because…" her voice came to an abrupt halt, her words left unspoken, and she reached up, gathering the neck of her nightgown and clumping it up apprehensively. With her other arm clamped across her middle, alarm flared in her eyes.
"Because what? Because you feel you need to control me in some other way? Because you can't control my past, so you have to control our future?!" Remington, angrier than he had ever been with her, accused, barrelling forth, all modicum of civility obliterated by the force of his fury and pain. "Like you controlled your Father disappearing? Like you controlled...uh, whatshisname..." he stumbled, rubbing his fingers together as if they would trap the name floating in his memory stash of useless facts, "...ah! Wilson! Did you control his leaving, his abandoning you? And what about Tony?! Oh, you controlled that magnificently! First, you fall prey to the blaggard's seduction, then to his obsession, all which escalated due to your ironclad CONTROL of the situation!..." He froze and spun in time to capture the hurt in her eyes before she turned away. Remington tossed his hands half-heartedly, walking a mini circle, then said, his voice weary, "Look, Laura, I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, we are none of us ever in complete control of our fates."
The storm outside raged ferociously and nothing but a stony silence emanated from Laura. Remington shuffled his feet nervously, fidgeting, his hands traveling haphazardly between his lips and the air in front of him, gesturing mutely in his loss for words. Finally, his hands coming to rest at his hips, he narrowed his eyes at her, and said, "It's late, why don't we go to bed and talk about it in the morning after we are well rest-"
"No..." Laura uttered before he could finish. Her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep, shaky breath, attempting to regain her composure.
"What?" Remington's eyebrows twitched upwards in surprise.
"Nothing….I'm going to bed. I'm taking a guest room." She turned to the door, walking purposefully toward it.
Remington beat her there, slamming it shut with the momentum of his body before she could pull it open, "The HELL you are! This isn't over!"
"Isn't it?" Laura faced him, steely resignation armoring her countenance. He towered over her, but she leaned back, her chin tucked defiantly, glaring up at him coldly. Heat lightning crackled between them, and they were oblivious to the storm that roared outside.
Despite the powerful magnetism he felt towards her —the dichotomy of her, as if the impenetrable facade she presented radiated a heat so intense, it was on the verge of flames— despite all that, he was stunned by her cutting words, and he could not, would not defy them. He lowered his voice to a roiling simmer, "Laura, what are you saying?"
Unable to stand the hurt in his voice, Laura heaved a great sigh as her armor crumbled, and she reached up and began kneading her brows. "I'm sorry..." she grimaced and continued, "Oh, I don't know what's wrong with me. I just feel like I get kicked in the gut when you exclude me from your plans. And it makes me so angry, and, and,...and sad, and like I just want to... KICK SOMETHING!" Her gesturing hands outlined a mini mushroom cloud, then clenched before traveling back up to knead her forehead. Her eyes were concealed from him, her kneading hand covering them, but a bright flash of lightning startled her and she looked up, revealing a network of dampness streaking her face.
The rain hammered the windows and the thunder crashed directly above, signaling the rising intensity of the storm, as Remington just stood there frozen in disbelief.
"Laura?!..." he uttered, his jaw working from side to side, anxiously.
Laura continued, struggling with every word, "The funny thing is, it keeps happening and I keep coming back…I thought I was ready…" her voice trailed off quietly.
Remington couldn't move, a lead weight pulling him to the earth, threatening to pull him underground, "Are you saying you want to call it off?!"
"No, I'm saying-" Laura shook her head, still unable to finish her thought, but he cut her off before she could finish.
"What? What is it that you're saying?" he demanded. "I thought we were beyond all this! I thought once we got past who I am, who I was," he swiped at his mouth nervously before he continued, "that we, we-"
"Look, would you just listen, damn it?!" she snapped at him, splaying her hands, palms up, in front of her, but immediately tucking them under her once again crossed arms and shivering.
Remington froze again and was drawn in by Laura's intense gaze, which she tore away from him before she set out to orbiting an invisible spot in the center of the room. Remington leaned, exhausted and dejected, against the wall.
"What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't seem to matter what you do. I keep coming back….to you. Despite...everything!" she said, her voice getting quieter as she continued. "Despite my fears, despite all my inhibitions. As you've pointed out, I'm realizing that how I feel is more important than anything. And you feel like home."
Remington pushed himself off the wall, unsure of what he had just heard. Laura's back was to him, the small table lamp beyond her silhouetting her shape through her nightgown's gossamer-thin material. He walked slowly towards her, cautiously, almost tiptoeing, as if he might break the spell and her haloed form might vanish before he reached her. He stopped inches from her back, desperately wanting to touch her, but instead, he spoke, ever so gently, "In other words..."
Laura turned to him, dropping her arms, and, lifting her face to him, replied, "As they say, 'Home is where the heart is'..." she stepped up to him, tracing the V of his open collar with the tip of her middle finger, "...And my heart is with you...Come what may, I need to tell you that...You need to know…" Laura's eyes followed the path of her fingers and continued up to his lips, which were now whispering, "Laura!..." just before she was pulled into his arms for a crushing kiss.