Walker
If in our heart we still cling to anger or anxiety or possessions—anything at all—then we cannot be free.”
I hit the pause button on the meditation that Didi has put on the iPod. Sometimes she’s as subtle as a sledgehammer. I know she’s trying to get me to open up about what happened, but the closer I get to her the less I want to tell her the truth—about what happened in Helmand. I can’t bear the thought of what she’ll think if she knows the truth.
The elevator doors open at the end of the hallway and my ears prick up. It’s Didi. I can tell first by the sound of her heels clicking on the tiles, and then from her laugh when she greets José. I smile at the sound of it. She doesn’t come straight to me. I hear her stop in with Dodds and chat to him for a few minutes, but I can tell by the lack of response on his part that it’s a one-way conversation. I went through the same thing earlier with him.
A minute later there’s a gentle knock on my door.
“Hey, Miss Monroe,” I say.
“How do you always know it’s me?” she asks, and I hear the happiness in her voice, a slipstream of bubbles beneath the surface.
I shrug. “I’m blind, not deaf.”
She laughs.
“But even if you tiptoed like a ninja I’d still be able to sense you.”
“I remember, you told me. You always know how I’m feeling or where I’m standing in a room. That’s quite a party trick.”
“It only works with you.”
“Okay, so what am I feeling now, then?” she asks. “And where am I standing?”
“Well, the second part’s easy. You’re over by the window. It’s where you always stand. I’m thinking it’s because you like to keep the table between us because you can’t trust yourself.” I grin, hoping I’m right.
From the sharp breath she draws in I’m guessing I am. “And you’re happy this morning, but underneath it there’s a little sadness. No, maybe not sadness, maybe . . . frustration? Conflict?” I’m guessing this. It’s actually how I feel. But there is a slight breathlessness to her voice and I know I’m not imagining the electric buzz passing between us.
“You guessed right,” she says quietly. “You’d make a good therapist. You have really great intuition.”
Not that great, I think to myself. If my intuition had been better, five people wouldn’t be dead now. And just like that my mood swerves into darkness.
“You still haven’t shaved,” Didi comments.
I shrug, running a hand over my chin, forcing a smile. “Figured I might see if the Seals were recruiting.”
“Did you ever think of becoming a Navy Seal?” she asks, and I hear her putting her bag down on the chair and coming toward me.
I shrug. “Yeah. But my dad pushed me toward the marines. He was a marine, so, you know . . .”
“I thought he worked in military intelligence.”
“He does now, but he made colonel in the marines. I think he’s pretty disappointed that I’m no longer following in his footsteps.”
“And are you?”
I frown. “What?”
“Are you disappointed? Is that what you wanted? Before, you said that you never thought about becoming a marine when you were growing up, but that when your brother dropped out of school you kind of ended up following the path set for him.”
“Um . . .” I pause and sit down on the bed. “I guess. I mean, I love it. Loved it.” My fingers are twisting the sheet into knots. “At least, I thought I did. But—” I break off. “I thought I loved a lot of things. Turns out I was wrong.”
Didi sits down beside me. Her thigh brushes mine and for a second that’s all I can focus on, the heat of it, the pressure. It’s a welcome distraction from the images that are starting to flicker at the edge of my memory.
“What would you have done otherwise?” Didi asks. “If you hadn’t become a marine?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to do something using my hands.”
Didi laughs under her breath and I grin in response, the dark thoughts vanishing. I can guess what she’s thinking. I elbow her lightly in the ribs. “I’m good with my hands. Woodwork, metalwork, engines . . . other things too.”
She takes a deep breath.
“At the Naval Academy, my degree was in naval architecture. I had this idea that I’d one day design boats, build my own.”
“Really?” asks Didi, sounding surprised.
I nod. “My grandpa had this old boat he used to take us out on when we were kids. Nothing fancy. Wood hull, only twenty foot, but big enough. It was so beautiful. I think it’s still moored somewhere up the coast here. He sold it just before he died.” I smile to myself, recalling all the times my brother Isaac and I went out on the water with our grandpa, every summer spent learning how to sail until our hands were calloused and our skin so tanned and our hair so long and bleached so blond that our own mother didn’t recognize us.
“That was where I was happiest,” I tell Didi, and I realize as I say it that it’s true. I was happier as a kid learning to sail than I’ve ever been before or since. Even Miranda didn’t make me as happy.
“Out there it’s just you and the water, and nothing else really matters. It’s the closest you can get to freedom. To being in the present.”
I can feel Didi nodding beside me.
“It’s just this immensity,” I go on. “Out there, away from land, you realize how small you are in comparison. How insignificant.”
As soon as I say the word insignificant, the image of the boot—the foot still in it, the bone sheered clean through—slams into my mind. The laces were tied in a double bow. Who did it belong to?
“You’re not insignificant,” Didi says quietly, almost as if she’s picked up on the shift in my thoughts.
I turn my head toward her, momentarily confused and disoriented. Why did I think of that and why now?
Suddenly I feel her hand against my cheek, her fingers sliding against my jaw, stroking the stubble. “Do you want me to shave you?” she murmurs softly.
“Huh?”
“Do you want me to shave your beard?”
I nod, my mind still struggling to erase the picture of the boot.
Didi’s hand moves, brushes through my hair. My body releases a sigh at her touch. For a split second I imagine myself pulling her onto my lap, imagine feeling the weight of her pressing on top of me, imagine burying my lips in her hair, losing myself in her, trying to forget everything. But the fact that I’d be using her to try to black out the memories makes me hold back. She deserves more than that. She deserves more than me.
“Come on,” she says, standing up. She takes my hand and pulls me to my feet, then leads me through to the bathroom. She shuts the door to give us more room and sits me down on the toilet seat. I hear her start to fill the basin with water.
I close my eyes. I’m still distracted—I can’t shake the image of the boot—but when Didi starts dabbing shaving foam onto my face and neck I find that my focus immediately switches to her. She works better than any drug or antidepressant at lifting me out of the dark.
Her touch is gentle but sure—surer than it was last time. She stands close, so close that I have to spread my legs so she can stand between them. At one point she kneels, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having to force myself to think about my old sergeant major yelling at me during drills to try to rein in my body’s immediate reaction.
Her hand rests on my shoulder while she shaves my cheek, and I have to check myself again because now I’m imagining her holding onto my shoulders, gripping them tight while I make love to her.
“Why are you smiling?” she suddenly asks me.
“No reason,” I answer, trying to wipe the grin off my face. “Why are you smiling?” I ask her, because I can tell she is.
“No reason,” she answers back, still smiling.
When she’s done, she stands up and dabs at my face with a warm towel to wipe off the remains of the shaving foam, then tosses the towel aside.
“There you go. That’s better,” she says, pressing her hand to my face. She rests it there, and without thinking I press my own hand over hers and hold it in place. Didi takes a long breath in. I turn my head so that her palm rests against my lips and kiss it. She doesn’t pull away.
Fuck. I know this isn’t what we agreed, but I think we crossed the line a while ago, and right now my brain might be wiring messages at me to stop but they’re not making it through.
Didi’s free hand slowly slides through my hair, sending a shiver down my spine. I drop her palm and take hold of her hips, drawing her closer and hearing a sharp intake of breath in response. Her hand falls to my shoulder, squeezes it tight, and I hear her murmur something. I think it’s my name.
I stroke my hands over the curve of her hips, loving the feel of them through her jeans, realizing simultaneously that she’s more petite than I imagined but curvier too, and the combination is a total turn-on. I have to fight the urge I have to explore the rest of her. I make do with stroking my thumbs over her hip bones and following the dip of her waist. She’s breathing faster now, matching my own heartbeat.
I press my lips to the flat of her stomach through her blouse. I’m content to stay like this, breathing deep, trying to control the rising heat in my body, but Didi wraps her arms around my shoulders and pushes her hips closer against me, and all my efforts to keep control fly out the window.
I lift the edge of her shirt, running my fingertips along the top of her jeans, feeling her skin—soft, smooth as silk—contract into a tight shiver. I follow my fingers with a trail of kisses and Didi lets out a small moan that takes my imagination to another level.
I tip back my head, trying to catch my breath, though I keep my hands on her hips, holding her in place, not wanting her to move away. I’m not ready to let her go. I’d be happy to stay like this for the rest of the day, in fact, but Didi suddenly shifts away from me. She’s backing off, and disappointment makes my shoulders slump, but the next thing I know she’s thrown her leg over mine and is lowering herself down onto my lap. Holy shit. She has to be feeling how turned on I am. There’s no disguising it now.
I wrap my arms around her waist, enjoying the weight of her, the feel of her, after so long just imagining it. My imagination failed. The real thing is infinitely better. I trace my fingers up her spine through her clothes. Her back arches in response and she lets out another groan, this one louder, and pushes closer against me. I wonder if she has any idea what she’s doing to me, and then wonder briefly what the hell will happen if her dad walks in again. We need to stop, but honestly my willpower is shot to pieces.
My lips are level with her collarbone and I can’t resist kissing her, tasting her skin. She smells of coconut and spice and something else too, not her normal perfume, but whatever it is it makes me want to pick her up and carry her over to the bed. It makes me want to strip her naked and inhale every inch of her. Fuck. I reach her shoulder and Didi dips her head. Her hair is tied back so it doesn’t tickle me, but her breath does, hot and feathery against my neck. I tense. Is she going to kiss me? Her cheek rests briefly against mine and I close my eyes and find myself holding her tight, like a man clinging to a buoy in a storm-swept ocean. She’s keeping me afloat. How do I let her go after this?
“Walker?” she murmurs into my ear, her voice shaky and uneven.
“Mmmm,” I answer.
“I think I need to kiss you. Sooner rather than later.”
I nod. “Yeah.” My body’s as taut as a guitar string.
Didi takes a big breath in and pulls away from me. I wait, on edge. She takes my face in her hands. She’s the one in control again.
I wait, but the kiss doesn’t come and for a second I’m confused, but then I realize that she’s doing it deliberately. She’s taking her time, teasing me, enjoying the way my breathing is hitching and my fingers have tightened around her hips.
I hear her lips part, can feel the heat of her, know she’s barely millimeters from me, and it’s pure torture, but it’s also the sweetest torture I’ve ever known. And then, after however many seconds it is, she finally presses her lips against mine, and any doubt that we might not fit, that we might not have chemistry, evaporates. Instantly I let go of her hips and take her face between my hands, hungry for more, tasting her, kissing her until she’s breathless, until she’s begging for more, until every thought and image in my head is erased for good. She responds as hungrily, her fingertips running along my jaw, her legs wrapping around my waist.
I knew from when I traced her face with my fingers that her lips were perfect—soft, heart-shaped, the bottom one slightly fuller than the top—but kissing her makes me appreciate them in a whole new way. She opens her mouth to me and I start to explore her with my tongue, and what started off as a gentle, almost tentative first kiss becomes a hungry, almost desperate attack. It’s as if all the pent-up energy of the last few weeks is tumbling out, and now that we’re finally touching, have done away with those flimsy, half-hearted barriers that separated us, we’re struggling to catch up. We could be up against the clock for how we’re acting.
Didi’s hands wander unhesitatingly over my stomach and chest, though on top of my T-shirt, and so I do the same, letting her set the pace and following her lead. I keep my hands above her clothes, though I’m burning to stroke more of her bare skin.
But it can wait. For now, this is enough. Having her in my arms, finally kissing her. It’s more than enough, more than I expected, and definitely more than I deserve.
And then there’s a bang on the door and both of us jump apart as if we’ve been electrocuted. Didi is off my lap in the next second.
“Noel?”
My head is still spinning from that kiss, and it takes me two or three seconds to come back to the present and figure out that it’s Angela calling my name from the other side of the door. What the—
“Noel?” she calls again.
“Um, yeah?” I say, aware that my voice is hoarse and unsteady. My whole body is actually shaking, now I focus on it. Blood roars in my head, adrenaline rips through my body. I can still feel Didi’s lips against mine, can still feel the perfect weight of her in my lap.
“I just wondered if you’d like to try some of my tres leches cake? I made it especially for you.”
I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to get a handle on my breathing. It sounds like I’ve just run a five-minute mile. “I’m actually kind of busy,” I say, grimacing to myself. There’s no way I can go outside in my present state. Angela might take it as a sign and offer me more than just her cake.
“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed. “Well, I can wait!”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’m going to be a while.”
I grimace again. What will she think I’m doing in here? Actually, I don’t really care what she thinks I’m doing. Let her think I’m waxing my privates. Whatever gets her out the door so I can turn my attention back to Didi, who has taken my hand and is squeezing it hard.
I caress her palm with my thumb, trying to reassure her, because I can sense she’s in a panic and now I’m mad that Angela has ruined the moment. We could still be kissing.
“Oh,” says Angela, sounding disappointed. “Well, if you’re sure.”
“Yep, I’m sure,” I shout through the door. “I’m taking a shower. Thanks, though.”
“I’ll just leave it on the side in your room, then, and I’ll come back later.”
“Okay,” I say, my attention already back on Didi. I tug her toward me and my hands start exploring her stomach again, her thighs and her ass, which is probably the nicest ass I’ve ever come across. God, I could spend all day exploring her body with my hands, another whole day doing the same with my lips. I wish we could just lock ourselves in this room for a week, her dad and everyone else in the center be damned.
We listen to Angela leave the room, closing the door behind her, and Didi lets out a long exhalation. “That was close,” she whispers.
I stand up and pull Didi toward me. She has to go up on tiptoe and I have to bend my head to kiss her, but we fit, perfectly.
She pulls away within seconds, though. “I have to go, Walker,” she says, and I hear the note of anxiety in her voice. Immediately I become anxious too. Does she regret what’s just happened? Is she having second thoughts already?
“Okay,” I manage to say.
Her hand lingers on my cheek once more, just for a second, before she turns to the door. I hear her open it and my arms fall to my sides.
“Bye,” she says, and then she darts back and quickly presses her lips to mine.