“Nothing. Never mind. It was a bad joke.”
He disappeared into the changing room, leaving her feeling completely alone. He was two feet away and he might as well have been on the other side of the world.
“Patrick?”
He didn’t answer. She didn’t expect him to.
She stood on the other side of the curtain. It would be so easy to step inside. To cross that threshold and wrap her arms around him and ask him to help her.
I
’
m sorry.
But the words wouldn’t form in her throat.
Because there was so much for her to be sorry for, and she didn’t know where to start.
But she was tired. So tired of feeling like a dead thing going through the motions.
She stood there, on the other side of the curtain, unable to move, unwilling to leave.
Stuck. Just like always.
And she was so damn tired of being stuck.
***
He felt the air move across his bare back a moment before she stepped into the changing room.
His pants hung open. His shirt was in his hands.
Her coat was unzipped, revealing the red fleece vest she wore over god only knew how many layers of clothing.
“Sam.” Her name was a whisper. A plea.
A moment before he would have loved for her to step into this dressing room with him. Would have enjoyed standing a little too close. Running his lips down the edge of her ear the way he knew she liked.
But right then, he needed some space. He wasn’t ready to have the conversation she probably expected the moment she stepped into that changing room.
“I’m finished,” he said. “I’ll get dressed and we can go.”
Her eyes betrayed her. He saw the unasked question looking back at him.
It was his own fault. He shouldn’t have opened his damn mouth.
But he’d been teasing her, and she’d been responding. Slowly, like a flower first stretching in springtime, he’d seen her, really her, not the shadow that had been masquerading as her.
Then he’d slipped up.
He hadn’t meant to tell her he couldn’t have kids.
But there was no taking those words back now.
And she wasn’t about to let it go. “What did you mean?” A hushed question.
He closed his eyes. Dropped his hands to his sides. “Last deployment. There was a mortar attack.”
“You never told me.”
He swallowed hard. “Since we weren’t married, they didn’t notify you.” He looked away. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want you to worry.” He paused, searching for the words to explain what happened. It was hard, so damn hard to put something like that into words. “I got hit. Some things didn’t make it out okay.”
She said nothing for a long moment. “I never noticed.”
He smiled sadly. “It’s not like you spend a lot of time inspecting my bits and pieces these days.”
The truth. Not meant to be unkind. It was a painful truth. Then again, weren’t all truths painful? Things had started changing between them long before her deployment. After his last tour, he’d just been happy to be home.
He hadn’t noticed the distance growing between them. Not until she’d deployed two weeks after he’d come back.
They’d literally done a battle hand-off with Natalie’s schoolwork and contact information, and she’d been gone.
They’d spent almost two years apart between their two back-to-back deployments.
He swallowed. It was too much time lost, too many hours spent working and not nearly enough time tending to the thing that had drawn them together to begin with. They’d simply grown apart, and now? Now here they were, trying to figure out who these two strangers in a room were.
Strangers who shared the only daughter Patrick would ever have.
“You could have told me,” she said quietly.
He shrugged and the gesture felt empty. “It never really came up. Hard to fit ‘oh, by the way I got blown up and my balls got rewired’ with ‘where’s your spaghetti recipe,’ you know?”
Her response was not what he expected.
She laughed. She covered her mouth and laughed until she doubled over.
Patrick stood there, not sure what to do or what he’d said that was so damn funny.
“I guess my emergency neutering is funny. Okay then.”
She straightened, tears running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. It’s just the way you said it and…” She doubled over again, laughing until she slid down the wall and covered her face with both hands.
He watched her, amazed at the sound of her laughter. In that moment, he realized that she hadn’t really laughed in… He couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like this. Slowly a matching smile spread over his lips, and he stood there and simply savored the moment.
It was something he’d forgotten. Something that had slipped away as the distance between them had grown wider and deeper.
He’d enjoyed making her laugh once upon a time. A thousand memories surfaced and tormented him with the pleasure of her laugh. God but he loved the way she used to smile.
She swiped at her eyes, looking up at him from the changing room floor. “I’m sorry.”
“For laughing at my neutering or my being neutered?” he asked lightly, holding his hand out to help her up.
“Both.” Her palm slid against his.
He gave a gentle tug and she was on her feet, close enough that he could see the moisture sparkling in her eyes. “It’s been so long since I heard you laugh,” he murmured.
Her mouth was a breath from his. Warm air brushed against his skin. He could almost taste the laugh on her lips.
She smiled ruefully. “There hasn’t been a lot to laugh about lately.”
Her hands came up, braced against his skin. Her palms were cool on his bare shoulders, sending a shiver through his veins. It had been so long since he’d touched her. Since she’d touched him. This. This was opportunity.
In a perfect world, he could kiss her then. Rock her world and remind her of all the things that had once been right between them.
But this wasn’t a perfect world. This was a flawed and damaged world.
But it wasn’t hopeless. No, he hadn’t given up hope yet.
He stood there for a moment, his eyes locked with hers. Her lips were parted, the slightest space. He wanted to nibble on her there, to suck gently until she sighed.
Instead he lifted his hand. Ran his thumb gently, so gently over her bottom lip. She was soft and smooth and warm. It was meant to tease them both. It was meant to control the situation, to keep himself from deviating from his game plan of trying to lure her out of the darkness and shadows where she’d been for too long.
Instead, Sam took over.
She’d never been a passive lover. Her tongue slid over the bottom of his thumb. A gentle rasp of heat on heat. It was warm and wet against the roughness of his skin.
So long. So fucking long since he’d touched her. That single gesture drove his resolve away, turning his plan on its head and sending him headlong into the abyss of sensation. She slipped her tongue around the tip, swirling a teasing pattern, her eyes never leaving his. She sucked him further into the warmth of her mouth and he gave himself over to the sensation.
This. This was always good between them. This was always right.
He backed her up against the wall, his thumb slipping out of her mouth with a soft pop. It was just them, alone in the bright lights of the changing room. Their breath mixing as they stood, his bare skin pressing against her clothed form.
He lowered his forehead to hers. Stroked her cheek gently with his thumb.
“I miss you.”
S
am waited outside for him to finish checking out. Snow was already falling, big fat flakes that stuck to everything. A gust of wind from Moosehead Lake sent it swirling around her. She huddled deeper in her jacket.
In the end, he’d decided on a couple of pairs of heavy socks, a couple of wool sweaters, and two pairs of jeans, along with, yes, a flannel shirt. And somehow, damn it, Patrick made flannel look sexy.
He wasn’t exactly a flannel kind of guy. He wore expensive button-down shirts and loafers. He drank aged scotch and listened to classical music and pretended to be a cultural omnivore when he was in public. She knew his secrets, though, knew he listened to heavy metal when he was at the gym.
And she remembered how to make him beg when they were alone.
But the flannel shirt he wore now beneath the heavy Patagonia jacket made him look more rugged. Less polished.
Less like Patrick the soldier and more like someone else.
Someone else who had just pinned her to the wall in a changing room and sent her blood spiking.
It was that Patrick that she was drawn to now. That Patrick who instead of kissing her had simply stood for a moment, his heat and warmth surrounding her, urging her closer, urging her to
feel
for the first time in forever.
She didn’t know what to do with all the feelings he’d aroused in her. There was an ache deep in her belly that made her crave more. An ache she’d once not hesitated to satiate with him.
So why was she hesitating now? Why hadn’t she leaned forward and kissed him when he’d been so close? God, but she’d loved seeing his eyes go dark when she’d run her tongue over his thumb. She’d pushed him closer to the edge. Closer to taking.
But he was too much of a good man to do that.
She knew that.
And yet, standing there in the swirling snow, waiting for him to step outside, she felt the darkness stalking her. The numbing sensation was wrapping around her, chasing away the awareness and arousal he’d sparked in her and leaving her with nothing but the memory.
She was clawing her way toward the surface at the bottom of a long dark well. She could see the light. She wanted to be in the light.
But it was so far away.
The bell on the door behind her jingled as he stepped into the cold.
“Hey.” His voice was thick. His breath froze on the air in front of him. He looked up at the darkening sky. “Looks like we didn’t miss the storm.”
She nodded toward the rental car. “Does that thing have four-wheel drive? It’s about to get nasty.”
He looked at the sedan. “I have no idea. Do cars come with four-wheel drive up here? Are they specially made for living in the great north woods?”
She shook her head. “We should get going before the roads get worse.”
“We’ll be able to get home, right?”
She smiled. “The road crews up here are pretty busy in the winter. The main roads are usually fine.”
“I hear a but in there.”
“But we probably don’t want to tempt fate. We’ll end up sleeping in the parking lot ’til morning if there’s an accident.”
He stepped closer to her, his coat rustling in the falling darkness. “I’d keep you warm.”
She lowered her eyes from the temptation in his. “I have no doubt.”
They walked in silence to the car.
“I cannot get over how cold it is up here. How on earth did you grow up and not freeze to death?”
“Listen, Florida boy, not all of us are used to sunny weather and sandy beaches all the time.”
It felt good, teasing him. To have such a normal conversation that felt like things weren’t so irreparably damaged between them. Like maybe there was a chance she wasn’t completely broken.
Maybe she could hold on to this normalcy. Maybe she could claim this moment and cherish it.
Maybe she could hold on long enough to climb out of the well.
The snow was falling faster now, looking like the streaks of stars when the
Millennium Falcon
jumped to light speed. Visibility sucked and was likely to get worse. “So, want to tell me about when you got hurt?”
“There’s not much to tell. Shrapnel in a very special place, the docs said things were probably destroyed, and wow, isn’t this a fun and entertaining conversation.”
“Probably destroyed?”
His knuckles whitened where he gripped the steering wheel. “I could have gone back to Germany and had surgery to try and save the boys.” He released a deep breath.
It was not an easy conversation to have.
It was even harder now.
She should have let it go. She should walk away from the edge of the argument teetering just in front of them. But she couldn’t. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because it felt wrong to try and keep my balls in good working order when other guys were losing arms and legs and eyesight.” He ground his teeth. “And I had Natalie,” he whispered. “It sounds fucked up, but I wasn’t overly worried about it. I didn’t die, the important thing still works, and it just seemed more important to stay in the fight.”
She watched him while he spoke. Watched the tension crank higher and higher until his hands looked like they were going to break the steering wheel.
“I thought I was okay when I made it home. But I wasn’t.” He swallowed hard. “Spent some time talking to a counselor off post,” he said cautiously.
She looked down at her hands. “You never mentioned that.”
“It’s a hard thing to admit that you’re not okay. Everyone pretends that everything is fine when it fucking isn’t.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I got my head straight and, well, it never came up. Maybe it should have. Maybe if I’d been honest with you about what I’d gone through…” He stopped suddenly.
“What?” A broken whisper.
“Maybe you wouldn’t have felt so alone. Like you were the only one who’d ever had trouble coming home.” He brought their vehicle to a stop as the taillights of the tanker truck in front of him lit up. Finally, he glanced over at her. “Maybe you wouldn’t have felt like leaving was the only option.”
***
The admission hurt: it was staring at the reality of his own failure. He’d tried to be strong, tried to keep from laying his own burdens on her. In doing so, he’d left her alone when she needed someone, anyone to lean on.
He’d never thought that she’d leave him. Maybe it was his own naiveté that they’d get through the war and figure things out on the other side. He’d always respected what she stood for, what she needed. He’d never pressured her to get married. He knew how important it was to her to keep her name, to feel like she could do things on her own. She was stubborn like that.