Chapter 14

 

- LOGAN -

 

 

When I wake up, my arm is resting on Allie’s shoulder and I’m sporting morning wood. Not cool. Not good at all, especially since I really should pull away from her, but everything in me wants to lie this close to her a little longer.

The snore that escapes her is anything but ladylike, and for me, it worked better than a prescription sleep aid, the kind that’s highly addictive with plenty of nasty side effects.

But there just aren’t any adverse side effects when it comes to Allie. No drama. No pretense. Hell, rarely even any makeup, I think with a smile looking at her now with her face only inches from mine.

She is what she is. And what she is, is perfect for me.

I wish I were perfect for her.

Her lashes are longer than most women’s, and I’ll bet her friends envy her for that. I see these women wearing their trendy false eyelashes these days, and they’ve got nothing on Allie’s real ones. Her cheeks are full; I’d even call them plump, though never to her face because I doubt she’d like that. Yet they give her face a softness that I just want to touch. Her hair flows down her neck falling to the top of the nightshirt that she must have changed into after I fell asleep. I’m almost embarrassed by how quickly I drifted off and how hard I slept.

And speaking of hard…

I press my lips together in a frown, forcing myself out of the bed to get my body back under control.

I slip into the shower and the cool stream of water brings me instant relief till it eventually warms up to a better temperature. A film of Kosmo’s fur and saliva washes down the drain. Half of the day yesterday, I sat with him at the hospital, since they allowed me to pet him and keep him company. I got plenty of appreciative licks for it. Apparently, he’s like me. He doesn’t like to sleep alone either.

Anxious to pick him up, I rush to brush my teeth and shave, hoping the hum of my electric shaver doesn’t wake Allie in the next room. I flick off the power momentarily, and hear her unmistakable snore coming through the bathroom door. Smiling, I turn the shaver back on. The girl sleeps like the dead. I envy the hell out of her for that.

By the time I emerge from the bathroom fully clothed and ready for the day, the snoring has abated and I see Allie stirring slightly, moving from her side to her back. Her breasts rise and fall under the sheets, and the sight of it makes my jeans feel a lot tighter in the crotch.

“Hey,” she murmurs as her eyes open and rise to mine.

“Morning. How did you sleep?”

Smiling, she moves back to her side, revealing a hint of stunning cleavage as her breasts press together between her arm and the mattress. “I think the bigger question is, how did you sleep?”

“Like a log. I owe you more than you know.”

“Stop it. You owe me nothing.” She rises from the bed, and I can finally see a nightshirt that reads, “I sleep with dogs.” The oversized shirt has no shape to it, but it’s about the sexiest thing I’ve seen in a long time. “Mind if I jump in the shower?” she asks.

“Go right ahead,” I reply, grabbing my phone off the charger and checking for messages. “The vet hospital opens at 8:30.”

“Great. I won’t be long.”

After we’re ready and packed, her car follows mine as we drive to the hospital, and Kosmo is ready for us when we arrive. He looks so vulnerable, still heavily drugged, with his chest shaved and a fresh incision healing up near his heart.

When he sees Allie with me, his tail wags, but he doesn’t rise. Allie immediately gets down on the floor with him and presses kisses to his cheeks. Lucky dog.

I go over the post-op instructions with the nurse, sign the paperwork, and make a follow-up appointment for three months from now to make sure that the surgery was a success. He still has trouble walking, so I gather him up in my arms and lay him down in the back seat of my truck on a blanket that he likes to sleep on from home. I’ve never been so grateful I bought a four-seater truck as I am right now.

Allie is waiting for me, leaning up against her car as I settle him in. Approaching her, my heart is filled with something more than gratitude. For the first time since being on the Teams, I feel like someone has my back.

“Thanks again for coming, Allie.”

“No problem. I’ll follow you home.”

“How about I follow you?” I suggest. Truth be told, I’m not sure how many miles her ancient car has left, and if she ends up on the side of the road, I don’t want to miss it.

“You think you can keep up?” She winks as she slides into her car.

“I’ll try my best.” I slam her door and wait to make sure she locks it. Climbing into my truck, I glance behind me at Kosmo, who looks like he had one too many. “We’ll be home in a few hours, boy.”

I try to keep my truck at a close distance to hers, and even when I lose sight of her, I can tell she’s close by because of the drone of her muffler. Her car really needs some work. No, I correct myself as I look at the rusty rear end of it. Her car needs a grave.

It’s just old enough that I’m not certain whether she even has airbags, and if she does, I can’t imagine they are very good. She definitely doesn’t have a back-up camera, and with her being around dogs, one might come in handy.

I heave a sigh as I hear her engine sputter when she presses her foot to the accelerator to pass someone. Frowning, I talk to Kosmo just because he’s a pretty captive audience right now. “She needs a new car, boy. Don’t you think?”

I nod at his silence. Silence, after all, means tacit agreement. “Yeah, I agree, boy.”

The angle of the sunlight on Allie’s car showcases the streaks of dog slobber covering her windows.

No, what she needs is an SUV or a van. Something that she can transport dogs more easily in. I’ve seen her pile three or four dogs into her car and it’s a little like watching clowns at a circus piling into an old VW Beetle.

I wonder how much she’d protest if I bought her something more suitable. If I tell her it’s for her dogs, I might get her to accept it.

The drive is long, just long enough for me to make plans to head to a dealer on Monday morning and take a look at some options. She’s got a nonprofit. I can donate anything I want to a nonprofit, can’t I?

I’m surprisingly happy when I pull alongside Allie in front of the townhomes. “You’re home, Kosmo,” I tell him, glancing behind me to see his eyes are half shut.

Allie greets me at my car door, extending her hand. “Want me to open the door for you guys?”

I nod, handing her my key, and stoop to lift Kosmo. He seems to shun my help, though, and stumbles out of the truck on his own, half wagging his tail as he approaches the front door. He staggers straight to my leather couch and looks at it with longing, unable to make the jump up on his own.

I bend over and lift him onto the couch. “You’re home now, boy.” I scratch his neck lightly and kiss his cheek. “Now get some rest.”

Allie is standing by the door. “He seems happy to be home, huh?”

“Yep.” Me, too, I realize. “I better grab my mail. Want me to get yours?”

She nods. “I’ll get a bowl of water for Kosmo in the living room in case he’s thirsty.”

“Good idea. Thanks,” I say over my shoulder. It’s almost noon, but the birds are still in high form, singing their hearts out. I can hear the creek babbling behind the backyard and imagine yesterday’s rainfall is making it flow a little harder than usual. The gravel crunches beneath my feet as I feel remarkably content after a good eight hours of sleep. I crack a smile. More like ten hours, I realize, doing the math. I certainly wasn’t much company for Allie last night.

And Allie was the best company I could have asked for.

I grab a couple envelopes out of Allie’s box first, all junk mail from the look of it. In my own, the usual stack of bills greets me. And a card.

My heart seizes up as I see the return address.

I don’t hear the birdsong any longer and the cheerful babbling of the brook has been replaced with a loud, droning sound from the surge of blood flowing to my head. I know what the envelope is. Instinctively, I know.

Walking back into the house, Allie says something to me, but I don’t know what. I’m not even sure if I shut the door behind me, and only with the knowledge that I don’t want my dog wandering off, do I force myself to check it.

I set the mail down on the counter and lift the card. The handwriting is neat, probably Clare’s, each letter proudly created with a calligraphy pen. There are no tears on the envelope. Now isn’t a time for tears.

Now is not the time for rage, either, but it’s what I feel building inside of me.

“What’s that?” I hear Allie ask me, but I can’t even come up with an answer. I open it, seeing the words on the card. Even though I already know what they’ll say, each one cuts into me like a knife.

“It’s a graduation announcement,” she answers herself, since apparently, I seem unable to.

My hands are shaking as I flip it over and a wallet-sized photograph falls to the counter from behind it. It’s small and posed, like most high school senior photos. And God, the kid looks just like Torres.

I can see him now, ducking behind the Humvee, his leg shot up and his hands covered in blood as he struggles to stop the bleeding from Crosby’s neck. But there’s no panic in his eyes. There was never any panic in his eyes. Nor in mine; it was what we were trained for. No panic, even as I made the call that would end his life.

“Who is that?”

Her voice seems so faraway to me now, and I feel like I have to crawl through a tunnel back to her world to answer her. “Son of one of my brothers in the SEALs.”

A silence hangs between us for a moment, and I feel myself sinking again into a memory till her voice tugs me back. “And his dad died?”

I’m surprised she figured out that much, and I almost glance at her except that I can’t pull my eyes from the photo of a young man who is graduating without a dad because of me.

“My fault,” I say, and I’m shocked to hear the words fall from my lips. It took six months with a shrink before I could say that to him, and I never was able to admit it to anyone outside of his office on base.

I wait for her questions, but they don’t come. Instead I feel myself talking again. “We were on a mission and got hit by an IED followed by some heavy fire. We had two men down, and I was pinned behind a Humvee with them. One was bleeding pretty bad, shot in the neck. It didn’t look good. Torres was shot in the leg. We had another Humvee coming up behind us and needed to get to them, but the vehicle couldn’t make it to where ours had fallen off the side of the road.”

My palms are wet, caught up in emotions as this kid’s picture slices my soul open and raw emotion pours out of me. “I had to get them to safety. But I’d have to do it one at a time. Crosby was worse, so when our backup started firing to cover me, I grabbed him and ran. I had thought I could make it back to Torres in time, but I was too late. He was shot in the head.”

“You couldn’t save them both.”

I snap back to reality, the colors and contrast of the world suddenly so sharp to my eyes that they burn. “I couldn’t save either one of them. Crosby died only minutes after I pulled him away from the Humvee. There was nothing I could have done to save him. I could have saved Torres. If I had taken him first, he would have lived. And this kid,” my hand is shaking as I wave the photo in Allie’s direction, “would have his dad at his graduation rather than in a fucking casket.”

I wish she’d leave, and I want to tell her that. But I can’t. All I can do right now is feel the two hands that she’s planted at either side of my face as she looks into my eyes. “You couldn’t have known Torres was going to get shot again. Anyone else would have taken the other man first, too. He was in the most trouble. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. If you had taken Torres first, you’d be feeling guilty about Crosby because you wouldn’t have known that he was going to die anyway.”

“Yeah, no shit, Allie. But at least this kid would still have a father. It’s about him, not me. Who gives a shit how I feel?”

“I do!” Her eyes are harsh now, unlike the sweet girl who rescues dogs in her spare time. I don’t want to see the anger in her. This is why I can’t be with her. There’s blood on my hands and I can’t wipe it clean, no matter how many shrinks I see.

I grasp her hands, probably too firmly, and pull them off my face. Her gentle touch burns me right now. I don’t deserve her compassion. She should save it for Torres’s kid. He’s the one in pain right now. He and his mom.

I feel the rage burning inside me—rage I feel at the world, not at Allie. But she’s the only one around and if she’s smart, she’ll get the fuck out of here now. “You want to know why I’m up at night?” My voice sears my throat as the words escape me. “That’s why, Allie. That’s why I can’t be with someone like you. Your world is different than mine.”

“We live in the same world, Logan.”

“We don’t. Yours is full of a future. Mine is still sinking in the past.”

“So stop it. It’s not what Torres would want. Or Crosby.”

My eyes narrow on her and I can’t help the anger I feel toward her optimism. “Save your dogs, Allie. Don’t try to save me. I’m not worth it.” My tone is biting and I hope it’s enough to drive her away. I don’t care right now if I hurt her feelings. I’ll hurt her more if I drag her into the nightmare I live in each day.

Grabbing my neck, there’s a fire in her eyes that I’ve never seen before as she pulls my face down to hers.

“Fuck what you say, Logan. I think you are worth it,” she says, and then presses her lips to mine fiercely.

My body feels like it’s been torched as I spin her around, pinning her against my counter. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Her teeth scrape against my chin as she moves her mouth downward. “Bringing you back to my world.” Her breasts are pressing against my chest and I can feel her nipples harden against me. My fingers drop the photograph and find their way up to her head, tunneling through her hair and grasping the back of her neck like I’m holding onto her for dear life.

I start to protest, but she’s pulling off her t-shirt and I’m seeing skin that I need desperately to taste. My lips drop to her delicate collarbone as I cup her breasts with my hands.

I shouldn’t do this. I know I shouldn’t. But I also know that I desperately need to sink myself into her just to feel human again.