Man Down (A Rookie Rebels Novel) Read online

  Man Down

  A Rookie Rebels Novel

  Kate Meader

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Kate Meader

  Cover by Michele Catalano Creative

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Kristi

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kate Meader

  1

  October

  Gunnar: Remember when we’d look at each other and you’d ask without saying a word: is this crazy? And I’d tell you silently: probably but do it anyway.

  That’s how I feel every time I send one of these texts to you.

  I’m waiting for the dots. I’m waiting for those dumb emojis you’d add to every sentence, even though you’d laugh at me because I never understood what half of them meant. Still don’t.

  Born old. That’s what you said about me when we met. Born old but I think I’m going to die young.

  I can’t do this without you, Kel.

  I can’t do this without any of you.

  The cell service here sucks. Half the time the messages don’t go through and when they do, I wonder: is this crazy?

  Probably. But I’ll keep doing it anyway.

  I’ll keep sending because if I stop then it’s over. We’re over which means … I don’t want to go there.

  How about I tell you what I did today? I’ll take your silence as encouragement :)

  I chopped wood.

  Don’t laugh. Honestly. There’s a mountain of logs out back of the cabin, enough to get me through winter. I’ve turned into one of those weird survivalists, the kind of nut jobs we used to laugh at, complete with small-animals-a-nesting facial hair and a wild-eyed look that would scare off grizzlies. Now I’m guessing all those crazies have their reasons because here I am. Chopping wood in the middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire.

  Kurt says hi. Actually, that’s a bold-faced lie. My brother would summon the men in white coats if he had any idea of the state I’m in. He already thinks it’s bad enough I won’t stay with them at the lodge. How can I tell him I can’t look at his beautiful kids? That every time I hear my niece and nephews’ laughter I want to smash something.

  How can I tell him I’m currently in a complicated texting relationship with my dead wife?

  Gunnar: Dante Moretti called today. Remember him? The Beast, Italian badass, amazing cook. Used to be the scouting manager in LA but now he’s the General Manager in Chicago. Guy’s a trailblazer, one of the good ones. I let it go to voicemail so I don’t have to talk to him. I don’t talk to anyone but you.

  You would put your doctor hat on and tell me it’s unhealthy. I can see that elegant eyebrow arching as high as your hairline, see it as clear as if you were standing right in front of me. You’ve got to go back, Gunnar. You’ve got to move on.

  I have moved on, or as far as this forest. The world’s not big enough to disappear into. People will always find you. Moretti wants to talk about bringing me onto the Rebels. All their legends have retired and they’re rebuilding.

  Perfect timing, you would say. Rebuild a team, rebuild a life.

  Sounds like Moretti’s looking for babysitters. That’s not for me.

  Gunnar: Happy anniversary, Kel. Ten years! Who would’ve thought it? You didn’t think much of me when we met. Too many pucks to the head, were your exact words. (I laugh now but I didn’t then!) We made it work, didn’t we?

  Gunnar: Harper Chase called, hot-shit CEO, the Rebel Queen herself. Must be scraping the barrel in Chicago. Tommy’s being a dick but then that’s what agents do. He sees “potential” in my comeback story, aka dollar signs. I think you’d have a good laugh at that.

  Gunnar: I wish I could hear your voice again. I wish we had another day, just you, me, Janie, and Danny. I wish I’d taken your advice and let that asshole pass me sooner on that road. I wish a lot of things.

  Gunnar: It’s been a few days. Maybe a week? I’ve lost track of time. Just lost track.

  Kelly: Hello! Sorry, but I think you might have the wrong number?

  2

  Gunnar Bond opened the drawer and stared at the phone he’d locked away yesterday morning. For two years, it had been a lifeline, a tether between his precious old world and sharp new reality. Now the link was broken. Kelly was gone and the message from the stranger confirmed it.

  Recycled. The fuckers had recycled her number.

  He should have paid to keep it. A while back he’d asked Kurt—or Kurt had offered, he couldn’t remember—to take over some household stuff. Paying bills, selling the house in LA, putting everything in storage. His brother must have changed his wireless account from a family plan to a single man plan because that’s what he was: a single fucking man. Why the hell would a man without a family keep an extra line for his dead wife?

  Kurt probably thought he was doing him a favor. Another person encouraging him to move on.

  Some stranger had been eavesdropping on his private conversations with Kelly. Every dream, every wish, every grievance—he’d typed it into the small screen and watched it bubble and pop into the ether. What was left of his imagination had fired off enough neurons to conjure an alternative reality: somewhere his wife was reading it, smiling down at him. He wasn’t stupid or deluded or insane enough to expect a response. He knew she was incapable of communicating with him through a phone, but his heart felt her presence. His soul knew she was listening.

  Until she wasn’t. Until this other person answered back.

  Buzzzz.

  He picked up the phone. Only a text from his agent, Tommy Gordon.

  Call me when you can. Chicago very interested, but won’t be for long.

  Well, he wasn’t interested in them.

  Back on the message list, he touched the line with Kelly’s name. So odd to see an incoming text on the other side of the screen, that ghostly gray bubble instead of his life-affirming blue. Her name in his contacts but not from her.

  It vibrated again and he dropped it.

  A new message appeared. Kelly: You okay?

  Not from Kelly but from the thief who had taken her place in the mobile numbers matrix. That first message had made it cle
ar this person knew this. Knew they were intruding on a private moment. Knew they were in the wrong. Kelly’s number had been recycled and that’s all there was to it.

  Now here they were asking if he was okay. The fucking nerve.

  No, I’m not.

  I’m drowning.

  Texting my dead wife was keeping my head above water.

  You’ve taken something from me.

  He didn’t type any of those things. Instead he inhaled a jagged breath, which felt like ice shards drenched in gasoline. So the stranger wasn’t to blame, but that tentative “you okay?” texted volumes. This person knew something about him, whether it was from the messages they’d read or the desperation sweating through the phone or the long silence.

  He should block the number. Cut the cord that bound him to the past. But something stopped him from taking that perfectly logical step, maybe the fact that none of this was logical. He’d been texting his dead wife for eighteen months. Logic was in short supply.

  Gunnar wasn’t religious. Not before his world was destroyed and certainly not after. No benevolent being would allow this much pain to befall one man.

  But he did believe in … signs, for want of a better word. Kelly had agreed to go out on a date with him a month into his sophomore year at Vermont and he’d won his next game. Scored two goals after a losing streak of three.

  He knew Kelly was not on the other end of the line, but he wasn’t ready to shutter that window on his old life. He picked up the phone and reread that last message.

  Kelly: You okay?

  He tapped out, I’ve been better.

  Delivered, but he had no idea if it was read. Maybe he’d never hear from—

  Kelly: Know that feeling. And then, What do they say? Better days are ahead.

  Something reared in his chest. Hella presumptuous.

  Gunnar: Shows what you know.

  A short delay. Then, Yeah, I suppose that sounds like junk. Only if you’ve been better, you know what it feels like. You know you can get there again.

  Okay, someone must be punking him. What ridiculous after-school special BS was this?

  He prepared to tell them so, but took a second to think on it. Sure, intellectually he knew that if he was happy once, and that happiness had deserted him, it meant he had the capacity to be happy. Everyone did. Gunnar wasn’t a sad sack by nature. Circumstances had driven him to hell. Maybe new circumstances could punch his return ticket.

  But that required embracing the possibility. The potential.

  As long as he was living in the woods, refusing to talk to his brother or his agent or Dante Moretti, and having one-sided conversations with his dead wife, possibility felt improbable.

  He didn’t want to think about a time beyond the now. Not yet. The pain kept him going.

  Gunnar: You don’t know anything about me.

  The small screen magnified his belligerence.

  Kelly: No but I saw your messages.

  Gunnar: How long have you had this number?

  Kelly: A month. Maybe six weeks.

  He scrolled back to check when this cheeky upstart might have started listening in, assuming a month meant at least two. Yeah, plenty of misery fodder there. But not the worst of it. Not the early days when he could barely tap out a few misspelled words and everything was filtered through a haze of Jack Daniels.

  Gunnar: It belonged to my wife. She’s dead.

  Bluntness was the one trait Kel said she enjoyed about her husband but suggested he might want to temper in company. Not everyone appreciates your searing wisdom, G. *wink emoji*

  Right this minute, he didn’t care. Anger surged, a sucking surf in his chest. He wanted to shame this person who had come into possession of something that didn’t belong to them. With all the More You Know drivel, he suspected a her. She should feel embarrassed for reading those private messages.

  No response. That shut her up, though that wasn’t relief overwhelming him, more like pettiness. He didn’t feel proud of it, but neither did he have it in him to soften.

  That would be the last he heard from this stand-in. Though “stand-in” wasn’t right. What did you call the person who took over your dead wife’s phone number? His mind was a fog of pain.

  He opened up the contacts, ready to expunge it and assign it to the bowels of history. He would be closing the door on his talks with Kelly but that was done. Ruined. After over two years of numbness, he didn’t like this new feeling. This rage. He’d gone through this stage in the so-called grieving process, so why was it back? Why did he feel worse?

  Just as his finger hovered over the block option, another message came in.

  Kelly: Fucking AT&T.

  He blinked through the sting of tears. Read it again. His hand shook.

  An unfamiliar noise erupted in the dead silence.

  It was him. Laughing.

  Merely a reflex, a biological reaction to the stimulus of a smart-ass comment, but a laugh all the same.

  Fucking AT&T. That was it. That was her response to him gutting out that his wife was dead.

  He stood there, frozen, partly because the laugh had cracked something open and partly because he had no clue what came next.

  The words were on the screen before he could second guess them.

  Gunnar: Yeah. Waste not want not. That was his response. Kind of bland but he had no idea what to say.

  Kelly: Still, have a heart, soulless corporation. A (much) wittier comeback.

  He added with a shaking finger, Unreasonable to expect them to never use the number again. Only so many number combinations, after all.

  9 million, this know-it-all said.

  Gunnar: Really?

  Kelly: Well, 9 million for the 7 digits, not counting the area code. (I Googled it!) So each area code could have 9 million potential numbers. LA would need more, what with everyone being so important and all.

  Right. This person was in LA.

  And suddenly, out of nothing, in the middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire, Gunnar Bond was enjoying himself.

  More precisely he wasn’t not enjoying himself, which while not quite the same thing, was better than the thick, heavy mud of before. The tightness in his chest had eased to the level he could breathe without a sharp draw of pain.

  Gunnar: Are we making excuses for the soulless corporation?

  Kelly: LOL. I think we are! Coming up with unused numbers is a tough business, even for those fuckers at AT&T.

  We. He’d started it but she picked up on it. They were suddenly a team, united in their mutual disdain for a multinational corporation.

  Maybe it was a guy. The swearing with abandon to a total stranger hinted as much, though that was probably sexist. And what difference did it make? He wasn’t going to be getting friendly with this person.

  Yet he found himself not quite ready to quit. He found himself feeling something other than pain, grief, and despair for the first time in over two years.

  Gunnar: AT&T is absolved. Sure they’re thrilled.

  Kelly: Yes! They’re probably reading along. YOU’RE OFF THE HOOK, ASSHOLES!!

  He chuckled, the sound so surprising he looked around the room, worried someone might have heard him. That Kelly might have heard him.

  There was that feeling again, a lightness of spirit. He couldn’t trust it, especially with that crush of guilt nipping at its heels.

  Gunnar: Anyway, sorry to bother you, he typed in, needing to end it before … he wasn’t sure what.

  Kelly: No bother. Just chilling.

  Gunnar: Bye … and thanks.

  Nothing, then dots. Gone, then dots again.

  Finally, from the ether: Take care.

  He decided to do just that. On a deep inhale, he left the phone on the dresser, pulled on his Nikes, and headed out for a run.

  3

  “Now, it’s time to get real because you know I’m all about speaking my truth. Let’s talk about: Keeping. It. Tight. And you know what I mean by that? Yeah, ya do! Tight-as-a-vise pu
nanis, my friends! And how do you get there? Well, let me tell you a little secret.

  Dried. Fruits.

  That’s right, dried fruits are your punani’s best friend. Daily doses will keep everything nice and snug where we need it. I know it seems counterintuitive to be eating something shriveled and low in moisture for your vaginal health, but the anti-oxidants are amazing! And now, my fabulous punettes, you can buy punani fruit right from my website …”

  “At only $49 a pound,” Sadie muttered as she made the cut in the video and pulled in the transition slide that took viewers from Allegra’s Malibu smile to the relevant page on her website.

  Prunes. The woman was selling prunes, no more or less shriveled than the ones available at grocery stores across the nation, but with one major difference. These were repackaged by one of Allegra’s many suppliers of feminine wellness products to appeal to her demographic. Blue state women between the ages of 25 and 49, with hefty disposable income. They adored Oprah, Gwyneth, Michelle Obama, Marie Kondo, and Chrissy Teigen in that order. Forty-three percent took Barre and Bowka classes three times a week (yeah, she had to look it up, too). Sixty-five percent believed happy hour appletinis were a constitutional right.

  Sadie applied herself to the task of editing the latest video for Allegra McKenzie’s YouTube channel, Punani Power. As personal assistant to a lifestyle guru, this was one of the fun parts of a job more often focused on ordering or fetching or smoothing over all the things that made her boss’s life easier. She liked the creative aspects of tightening up Allegra’s brand (punani puns? you’re welcome!) and crafting content that appealed to women, even if the message was suspect.