Two nights later, I finally got the call. I hadn’t heard from Ash, or any of Lynn’s friends, for forty-eight hours. I was out of my mind with worry. The phone rang, and I rushed to answer it.

“Hello,” I barked.

“Mason?” a strong voice replied. It had a hint of gravel in it.

“This is Mason. Who is this?” But a part of me already knew, and my insides were already warming.

“It’s Charlie, you asshole.”

The vise that had been clenched around my heart for forty-eight hours eased a little. “Charlie who?” I replied, trying to be playful.

“Fuck you,” she spat back.

Charlie was a soldier, and she had a vocabulary of unused dirty words sitting in her arsenal, just waiting to be fired. She was tough. She liked to drink beer and shoot the shit. She ran ten miles every morning, rain or shine, and she could probably bench press me if I gave her the opportunity.

“Are you still in town?” I asked, already grabbing my keys from the bowl on the table Lynn kept next to the front door.

“Yep. Want to come have a few beers?”

“I’d like nothing more.” I stepped out my back door and into the garage, where my car waited. “Are you still at the hotel?”

“The one on First Street. Room 302. I’ll meet you at the bar, though. I’ll be the soldier with the empties next to her.” She hung up on me.

Fuck. She hung up on me.

I rushed to put on my seatbelt. It had been four years since I’d last seen Charlie and I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t happy to hear from her.

I drove as fast as traffic would allow and paid the valet to park my car. Then I went straight to the bar. I saw her sitting there talking to the bartender. She had her hair in a bun, taming the long strands that were the color of an evening sunset on the beach before the purples and blues take the sky over. That sandy color that meets the horizon, when it’s all lit up by the rays of the sun, that’s what her hair looked like when it was free. I knew it. I’d held it in my hands enough times. I’d had it cascading over my body.

The bartender leaned close to her, getting all up in her personal space. She leaned back and scowled at him. I stood in the doorway and watched them. The bartender suddenly took on a ferocious frown. She chuckled and flipped him the bird.

“Charlie!” I called from across the room.

She spun around to look over her shoulder. “Mason, you asshole,” she said loudly. A couple at a nearby table frowned at her, but she didn’t care.

I opened my arms and waited for her to step into them. She didn’t. She just looked at me. Finally, I closed my arms and let them fall down by my sides. I let my eyes drift across her face, to the tiny scar over her eye, to the pock mark on her chin that she got when she had chicken pox at the age of nine. I knew that’s what it was because the last time I’d seen her, I’d traced her body like a study on a canvas, noting all the freckles, lines, and scars. I’d touched her everywhere, and kissed her in more places than I could count.

“Damn, I missed you,” I said.

She nodded and took a sip of her beer. She motioned for the bartender to bring her another.

“I don’t think he’s your biggest fan.” I nodded toward him as I hitched my ass onto the stool next to her.

“He asked me out. I said no. Some men can’t take no for an answer.” She tilted her head and stared at me. “You know any men like that?”

“I know a lot of men like that,” I admitted. Unfortunately, in my practice I saw a lot of stubborn bastards who liked to hurt women.

“You wouldn’t happen to be one of them, would you?”

I tried to fight it off, but that question hurt. “Why would you ask me something like that?”

“Just checking,” she said. She glanced at me without turning her head, out of the corner of her eye.

I nodded toward her beer. “How many of those have you had?”

“Enough that you’ll need to catch up.”

“No problem.” I motioned for the bartender to bring me a beer. “So, what’s up, Charlotte?” I asked pleasantly, although I had a feeling I was being ambushed.

“What the fuck’s up?” she sang out loud. “Four years and that’s the best you’ve got for me?” She snorted.

I took a sip of my beer and leaned my elbows on the bar. “Who pissed in your corn flakes?”

She said nothing, just glanced at me over the rim of her frosty mug.

“You should tell me what I did, because I honestly have no idea what it is that has offended you.”

“Did you tell Lynn that we fuck when I’m in town?”

I shook my head. “No.” I turned to glare at her. “Did you?”

She stared at me. “No. I didn’t,” she said softly. “I probably should have.”

“What purpose would that serve?”

She huffed. “None.” She pushed her beer back from in front of her. “I’m a morose bitch when I’m drunk, apparently.”

I looked at her from her head to her toes. “You’re not drunk.” I knew what drunk looked like on her. And this wasn’t it. “The question is why would you want me to think you are?”

She grinned. “Maybe I wanted an excuse to clear the air. Drunks always get a pass, don’t they?”

“You can clear the air with me whenever you want. You don’t need to lie. Talk. I’ll listen.”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“Try me.”

“I’m flying back to Afghanistan tomorrow,” she said.

“What’s it like over there?” I motioned for another beer. For me, not for her, because she was apparently finished.

“Stark. Empty.”

“I’ve heard it’s busy in the kind of place where you live.” I drummed my fingers on the bar top.

“I was referring to the state of my soul, Mason. Keep up.” She snapped her fingers at me.

“What went wrong over there?” I asked.

“Everything. Nothing.”

“Then why are you struggling?”

“I’ve seen too much. I’ve done too much. I don’t know if I can ever come back from it.”

“What have you seen? What have you done? Talk to me.”

“I’ve done too many bad things.” She stopped and shook her head. “This conversation just keeps going south.” She nudged me with her elbow. “How are you? How’s work?”

“My wife is missing. Work is fine.”

She laid her hand on my arm. “Lynn’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” She thumped her fist on her chest. “I’d feel it in here if she wasn’t okay. I know I would.”

“Do you think she’ll come home soon?” Please, let her come home soon.

She rocked her head back and forth like a metronome. “Maybe.”

“I just wish I knew why she left.”

“Shelly said she’s scared.”

I froze. “Scared of what?”

She shook her head. “She wouldn’t say. She said you had pushed Lynn into something she didn’t want, and now she’s sorting through it all in her head.”

I threw up my hands. “I didn’t push her into anything. She makes her own decisions.” I pointed to my chest. “If I had any say-so, she’d never have taken off in the first place.”

“Shelly says Lynn’s angry at you and doesn’t know what to do.”

“About what?” I looked around when I realized how much my loud voice had carried, and dropped it down to a vehement whisper. “Do about what? What are you talking about? Will someone please tell me?”

“That’s all Shelly told me, that you were trying to change Lynn’s life without her consent.”

“Shelly’s a bitch from hell,” I muttered.

She laughed. “No argument there.” She stared at me. “So I don’t have to be mad at you? You aren’t trying to change her life? You don’t want to make her get rid of her friends? You didn’t tell her that she had to stop talking to us?”

“Never,” I bit out. “Never. Ever.” They were all such a big part of her life. And my life too, for that matter. I wasn’t sure if Lynn could live without them. Not forever. She needed them. Hell, I needed them. And not just for fuck buddies.

“Good.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a folding wallet, taking some bills from it. She tossed them onto the bar top. I shoved them back toward her.

“I’ll cover it,” I said, tilting so I could take my wallet from my pocket.

“I’m a soldier. I can buy my own drinks. And yours too, asshole.”

She stood up. She was wearing jeans, a white t-shirt tucked into them, and heavy boots. She opened her arms to me. I smiled and pulled her to me, sad to tell her goodbye, but I assumed she was going to bed. “Can I come and see you tomorrow?” I asked quietly.

She shook her head.

“I’ll drive you to the airport.”

She shook her head again. Then she stood up on her tiptoes and bit the base of my ear, nipping it gently with her teeth. Heat shot straight to my groin. “You think Lynn would mind if we did it one last time?” she asked.

“One last time?” What did that mean?

Charlie went to some dangerous places. I always worried she wouldn’t come back alive, but if I never, truly, got to see her again, I’d miss her.

“Just in case I don’t come back,” she whispered. She stared into my eyes, and I saw hurt looking back at me.

“Are you here to tell me goodbye?” I asked, taking a step back from her. No. I wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t.

She shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”

“What do you know?”

She shrugged. “Nothing yet.”

“When will you know?”

She shrugged again.

I couldn’t help but feel like this whole conversation had been one big riddle. “You want to fuck me?” I asked. The hairs on her arms stood up.

She reached between us, going for my crotch where no one could see her, and she grabbed it in her palm, squeezing gently. I was hard. I had been ever since she’d nibbled my ear. “Yes.”

“This isn’t the last time,” I warn.

“If you say so,” she sang out.

She turned toward the elevator as I drank the last few swallows of my beer. Hers was half full, so I tipped it back too. I tensed when the sweet flavor of iced tea hit my tongue. I hated iced tea. Why was Charlie pretending it was beer?

I didn’t have time to mull it over. She was almost to the elevator. I followed her. Her steps were precise, like she was modulating all of them. Left, right, left. Left, right, left.

We got to the room, and she stepped in before me. I turned and pressed her against the wall, my lips searching for hers. Suddenly, she slapped me. It stung like a sumbitch. I rubbed the side of my face. “Too fast?” I asked, opening and closing my jaw to ease the sting.

“I don’t want to, Mason. It’s wrong.” Her breaths fell harsh and heavy, and her eyes sparkled with anticipation.

She stared into my eyes. So that was how we’d play this. Okay. I was in it to win it.

I grabbed her by her shoulders, and swung her onto the bed. I landed on top of her, my thighs spread around her, holding her still. “Safe word?” I asked, my lips hovering over hers.

She shook her head, trembling beneath me. “I don’t want one.”

“I won’t continue without one.”

“Baby,” she whispered. “That’s my safe word.”

Charlie didn’t use terms of endearment, not when we did what we did. So if she ever used a word like baby, sweetie, or honey, I’d know something was wrong, even if we didn’t decide that ahead of time.

“Baby,” I repeated, and I bit her lower lip, tasting blood. She flinched.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. What I was about to do to her would hurt me, but it was what she needed. She needed to give up control. And I needed it to be with me, always me, only me.

“Do you remember the first time we did this?” she asked.

“Like it was yesterday,” I replied. And I did. All of it. Every touch. Every single pinch. Every command.

I gave her what she needed. Even if it hurt.