"Jesus Christ, warn a guy," Deacon replies.

I smile faintly. The sight of him, sweat making his T-shirt cling to his body, isn't enough to cool my relief at finding him here.

The universe is a strange thing.

Before I spoke I stood there for a long moment, in the pulsing pounding noise of the music, watching him work, absorbing the vision of the man in front of me.

His T-shirt is ripped. Just above the waist of his jeans, I can see the ridge of his hip. I remember what it felt like to run my fingers over his skin. The heat of his skin against mine, of being encased in those arms. What it felt like to be lifted against the edge of a bunker, to feel the cold concrete behind me, his strong hands on my ass as he held me open before he slid in, deep and big and smooth. God, he was so fucking smooth.

I remember him, wearing his full kit. The body armor protecting his chest, the helmet secure around his head. A man in his full primal warrior state of existence. There is just something so goddamn raw about a man in his body armor and helmet and weapon.

Not every man. But a man like Deacon? He owned it. And it's no damn wonder that my panties got wet every time I was around him.

He clears his throat and I realize that I'm staring. Well, not entirely at him. At the memory of him.

"Sorry." But I'm not. My brain isn't working too well right now. I'm really having a hard time thinking about anything other than his hands dropping that crate and instead drawing me closer.

It would be fast. And hard.

But for a few minutes, I would feel again. Maybe the sensation of being alive would linger for more than a moment. Maybe the fog of not sleeping would clear and I could make a rational decision about how to get back to centered.

I know that's a lie. It never lasts. It would be a fast hit, a tease of something fleeting, like a drug flashing through my system then leaving me in need of another hit.

Something broke inside me a long time ago. And a quick fuck won't bring it back or make me whole again.

Nothing will, no matter how hard I try to keep pretending that I’ve got my shit together with yoga and meditation and ujjayi breathing.

"You're here early," I remark when I'm confident I can speak without begging him to do terrible things to my body.

He lifts one shoulder, then drops it. I'm struck by a sudden sense of him…waiting. Like a predator, stalking his unaware prey.

Except that I am very much aware of him. Of everything about him.

"Couldn't sleep; figured I'd put my insomnia to good use." He frowns then, finally noticing my yoga mat over my shoulder. "What's that for?"

"I was going to an early morning class, only to discover they'd changed the schedule." My voice breaks. The frustration at not having a class ripped at the tattered edge of my sleep-deprived brain. I may have cried about it, but I'm not going to admit that to Deacon. I've been blown all to hell and back and I didn't cry. I'm damn sure not going to cry about missing a fucking yoga class. “Nalini is doing some remodeling or something, I think.”

A girl has to have some pride. But it's a close thing.

"So you decided to come here? Doesn't seem very yoga-y."

"You'd be surprised." I turn and look around the basement, glance over my shoulder at him. "I never feel alone here."

He frowns, watching me intently. "You're not. Not here."

I offer a half-smile. "Sure." I have a feeling he's talking about something else. I don't know how to tell him that I just didn't want to be alone.

And that I was hoping, praying that someone – him – would be at work this early.

But I say nothing instead. I can't admit this to him. Can’t form the words that admit I’m not doing okay.

That I might need some help.

I can’t do it.

"Well, since you're here, do you want to grab a few boxes and help? Or are you going to do yoga over there where I can pretend not to watch you?"

That does make me smile. "That's pretty forward of you."

He drags one hand through his hair. "Yeah, well, I'm not really known for beating around the bush."

"I remember."

He frowns, his hand braced on the back of his neck. He opens his mouth, then closes it and turns away. The suddenness of his movement snaps me out of my haze and I move toward an adjacent storage room, stacked with crates filled with empty bottles.

I step into the room and roll out my mat. It's a purple Manduka. People either love them or hate them. One of the girls at my yoga studio recommended it and while it was a pain in the ass to break in, I've been a loyal devotee ever since.

I kneel, scrolling through my phone to find the audio of the sequencing I want to attempt.

"How long has it been since you slept?"

He fills the narrow doorway, his broad shoulders cast in silhouette from the light behind him, his shadow falling against the concrete floor and cinderblock walls that remind me of some of the old buildings in Iraq. The ones that used to be office buildings or prisons before we moved in.

"I'm running on about four hours of sleep over the last two days," I admit. But I can't deal right now. Not with the raw concern in his voice. I don't want to need it. Or him.

I can't. Needing him is what got me to where I am today.

It's not his fault. I wish there was some solution but there’s no finding my way back to Deacon. Not for anything more than a quick screw up against a wall.

And he deserves better than that.

Maybe I should get really hammered one night and come on to him. At least then I'd have an excuse to have his hands on me just once more and I could play it off in the morning when cold reality hit me once again.

When the memories came.

Because they would. They always do. They're always lurking. The pleasure so intimately tied to the fear because we were literally caught with our pants down the day our base got attacked. I’ve tried to forget it. To move on once we got back from Iraq. To fuck him and pretend that everything was fine. That the erotic power of his touch didn’t spark the nightmares I couldn’t admit to him.

I love it when you fuck me but then I freak out after you fall asleep. The fear crashes into me, seizing the air from my lungs. Ripping the calm from my veins, replacing it with frigid cold.

Deacon is still watching me. "I'm fine," I say finally. I set my phone down at the edge of my mat. I settle into place, crossing one leg over the top of the other.

The deep voice of my favorite online instructor echoes against the concrete. We will open our practice today with the sound of three oms.

One of Deacon's lips cocks to one side. "Are you going to do that?"

I open one eye to look at him, then close it again. "Depends. Are you going to laugh at me?"

He looks at me and I can feel heat burning through my skin. Darker than the memories of Iraq. More intense than anything I've felt since. I swallow, hesitating, wanting to cross the space between us. Needing to feel his hands on me once more.

Unable to move from the terror that might surge if I do.

"There are a million things I'd like to do with you, Kels. Laughing at you isn't one of them."

He turns away before I can come up with a smartass response, leaving me hanging, suspended in that moment, unable to break free.

If I thought for a second she was playing games, I'd have walked out and never looked back. But Kelsey doesn't play games. She never has.

I have to put space between us.

It would be easier if I didn't know what the problem was. If I hadn't been there when she got blown up, if I hadn't been six months behind her when we'd come home.

It would be so much easier if I could rail at the world and be pissed off at her for playing stupid games.

I hesitate near the wooden rack of expensive whiskey, waiting, hoping that she'll find the courage to make the next move. That maybe she'll step off that mat and span the gap between us. But there is only the echo of her recorded yoga class greeting my fervent hope.

I know she's not playing games.

Kelsey is too straightforward for that but I can't stand here and pretend that it doesn't hurt. That there are no ties of blood and sex and violence that bind us together anymore.

I steal a glance back at her. Through the doorway I can see she's moving, her hands and feet spread, her ass in those glorious leggings pressed into the air.

I swallow. Hard.

There are a million things I can imagine doing to her in that position. And yes, I know what downward facing dog is. I've been to a yoga class.

One, and it was on a dare. I've never gone back, either. The om chant at the end crawled up my spine and vibrated in my chest. I had the worst fucking nightmare that night, too. It could have been a coincidence but I never went back.

But watching her now? Yeah, I really kind of wish I had spent more time learning the language, learning the words that send her body moving as a single fluid unit.

I have the sudden urge to move with her, to feel her body arch and bend against mine, to feel the slick slide of her skin against mine.

I'm a starving man, dying for a taste, a single bite.

But I can't. Because I won't take from her. Not unless she lets me. Unless she says the words. Explicitly. Clearly.

And one hundred percent sober, which I am reasonably certain she may rarely be.

She's not the same Kelsey I went to war with.

I don't think anyone really ever entirely comes home from war. Some of us were already fucked up before we went. The scars on my chest are hidden now. Sometimes I even forget about them beneath the ink.

She asked me about them once. On one of the few nights we managed to sneak into my trailer or hers and actually spend a few hours together instead of stealing a quickie in a bunker.

I told her about the car accident my junior year of high school. Of waking up upside down, suspended by my seatbelt, glass embedded in my skin.

I told her about being alone in a car that had three of us in it before I fell asleep as we drove away from the party.

About the crow that had stared back at me from the shattered window and haunted me for years.

Once I drew him into my skin, I stopped thinking about him. About that night. I told myself I was fine. That there was nothing left to unpack with that accident.

But Kels…there's something more. She's fighting so hard to hold on to normal, she doesn't even realize how close to the edge she is. I've been watching.

I know she's lying about how much she's not sleeping. I can't blame her. I don't admit it when I don’t sleep, either.

I want to help. I fucking need to.

Because I failed her so badly when we were in Iraq when she needed me most.

I glance over at the small space, watching her lift her chest into the air, her skin slick despite the cool damp air around us. She flows again, lifting one leg this time and arching it until she looks open. Ripe.

I turn away from the vision of her body moving in slow, flowing rhythm, closing my eyes and leaning my forehead against the wooden shelf, wishing. Regretting every choice I've made up until this point with her.

Wishing I could fix it.

Needing. Needing her touch. Wishing she would walk up behind me and press her body to my back, feeling her soft in places I am not. Her hands would slide around my hips, slipping beneath my shirt. Her hand would slip into my pants, finding me, squeezing me. I know exactly how good she'd feel, her fingers fisted around me.

I want this fantasy. I want her hands on my body. Her palm stroking me, her breath moving with mine.

I want this to be fucking reality. I swear beneath my breath and stalk off, needing to get away from her before she catches me acting like a twelve-year-old boy.

My thoughts for her are decidedly not childish.

The sun is sliding over the old tobacco factory east of The Pint as I step into the daylight. I drag my phone out, needing a distraction from the painful erection in my pants. I refuse to deal with it. I can't. It feels wrong, fantasizing about her when she clearly wants nothing to do with me.

I stalk away from The Pint, putting space between me and the woman who haunts my sleep. I can't do this anymore. It's been months since she moved back into my life. I've been patient, waiting, hoping she would reach out before she crashed. And every day I've watched her get closer to the edge.

I can't do this anymore. I won't.

I stood by as she self-destructed once before.

I won't do it again.

I need a plan. A war game, if you will.

And I suppose that first involves defining what winning would look like.

What do I want? I want Kelsey. I want to hold her while she sleeps. I want to be there when the nightmares come. I want her to forgive herself for the sins she couldn't control.

I want to atone for my own.

I want to help her put the war behind her. To finally come home from the war.

And maybe then, I can, too.

I walk into 1984 for the second time this morning. I love the smell of a coffee shop and books. My old first sergeant always told me I was a fucking nerd. I grin, thinking of First Sarn't Sorren. Of course, he meant it with such love.

He was such a rough-around-the-edges son of a bitch. But he loved us.

It dawns on me then that I'm a fucking dumbass.

And I pick up my phone and fire off a text.

Hoping like hell that I can figure out how to unfuck things with Kelsey.