Chapter 21

He was the first one to hear the crying. At first he thought it was a child, and he ran toward the sound.

A woman. Behind a wall of rubble, but if he peeked through, he could just see her, crouched there, babbling in Pashto. Her eyes panicked in the dark.

Her pleas…

Her eyes…

He never let himself think about the way Dee had died. The violent, dirty surprise of it. The pain, the dust, the debris. She would have been buried. If the explosion hadn’t killed her, she would have been crushed or suffocated.

She might have known she was dying.

She would have looked just like this woman.

Suddenly he was digging, clawing, as if he were trying to claw at the thing that had him around the throat, around the chest, as if he were trying to rip away the thing that had stolen his breath.

He had to get her out.

He might have been calling her name.

And in the darkness he saw her, her face, her eyes—

And when the second explosion came, he had time to see the expression on her face, shocked and accusing.

Dee’s face.

The world slid away.

He was awake in the dark. For a long moment, he couldn’t remember, drowning in panic. Where he was. Why he was there.

There was a body beside his.

A woman’s body.

His heart jangled against the cage of his ribs.

Not a body. A living woman.

Not Dee.

Trina.

The clock glowing on Trina’s bedside table said it was five a.m.

He’d walked her back from the tree house last night, late, both of them stumbling and giddy. He’d tucked her into bed in the guest room, then lain down beside her, just for a second. But then she’d rolled close and kissed him and he’d had no way to resist her pull. He was armorless.

The dream felt real, and what had happened last night in the tree house felt like a dream.

“You okay?” she whispered in the dark.

“No,” he said.

She rolled toward him, wrapping her warmth around him. But where last night it had felt like such a gift, her body giving to his, this morning it felt like a threat. He couldn’t help it; he flinched.

He felt her equal and opposite reaction, the way she withdrew and stiffened, and he wanted to take it back, but he couldn’t.

“Hunter, what is it?”

“I remembered. I saw her. She was buried in there, and she couldn’t get out, and I was trying to save her.”

“To save the woman who was buried under rubble?”

“To save Dee.”

She made a small, shocked noise.

“It was Dee. I saw her in there, and—I’d never thought about it before. How she died. I’d made myself never think about it. And I couldn’t save her. It was Dee.”

“In the dream?”

“No. Not a dream. A memory.”

“You couldn’t have remembered her there, Hunter. She wasn’t there.”

His chest hurt. Where he’d been split open, but everywhere else, too. A squeezing, twisting sensation. “She was there, the day I was injured. In my head. It was her, and I couldn’t save her.”

“Hunter,” she repeated. “It wasn’t Dee. It was some other woman. It wasn’t Dee, you couldn’t—”

“I know!”

His voice was sharp in the dark. It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to her, and he felt her flinch.

He took a deep breath. “Dee did this thing. She—she’d change herself. For me. Like she cut her hair and put highlights in it, and she said, ‘I know you like Tanya Freeny’s hair.’ I’d once said that, but only because she said, ‘What do you think of Tanya Freeny’s hair?’ and I said, ‘I like it.’ She lost weight, even though she wasn’t really heavy. Just—solid. And then she said, ‘I know skinny’s more your type.’ I never said that. I know I never said that. I’d never say something like that. It’s not even true.”

He’d never told this to anyone. He could tell he’d never told Trina before, not only because of the surprise and pain on her face, but because of how the words felt coming out of him. Squeezed and narrow. But even though it hurt to say it, he couldn’t stop.

“One time she took cooking classes. She said, ‘I know you wish I were a better cook.’ Even though I swear I never said anything like that to her. I tried never to say the things in my head, the doubts—but she heard them anyway, somehow. She didn’t say, ‘I thought if I did this, you might fall in love with me,’ but it was so clear. It was like she was shouting it all the time. Every time she baked me cookies or came home with a six-pack of my favorite beer or—there were things she didn’t like to do in bed, and I said she shouldn’t, she didn’t have to, but she did, because—”

His voice broke, remembering. All the times she’d come home with a new look or newly gained knowledge or a gift. The way she’d gagged, trying to take him deeper, trying so hard to be the woman she was sure he wanted.

The futility of it.

“She was trying to make me love her. I couldn’t love her, Trina. I tried. And tried. And then—

“We had a fight, right before she deployed. Where she said, ‘Just tell me, Hunter. Tell me what I can do to make this marriage work.’ And I knew. I knew I had to tell her the truth. Not right then, because she was leaving, but I had to tell her I wanted a divorce. Because it was so damn unfair to her, what I’d done to her. I had to give her another chance. To find someone who would love her the way she deserved.”

Trina was very still, very quiet. “But she didn’t come home.”

He shook his head. “No. She didn’t come home.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Hunter. You did the very best you could.”

“It was,” he said. “It was my fault because I knew, even that first time I had sex with her, that I couldn’t do what she wanted me to do. But I wanted her, so I lied to myself. I told myself that I could do it, that it would just take time, that I would fall in love with her. As if all it would take was an effort of will. No one is going to—”

His voice broke, but he pressed on, because he had to, because it was penance. It was only what he deserved. “No one will ever love her the way she deserved to be loved now. I took that away from her. Maybe I didn’t kill her, but because I was selfish, she will never have that life.”

“Hunter. Those things weren’t in your control. That woman’s death. Dee’s death. How much you love some—”

“Don’t try to fix it, Trina. Okay? Don’t fucking try to fix it.”

It was so quiet in the room that he could hear the wind blowing through the trees outside.

“Do you want me to make you stop thinking about it?”

He did. Desperately. He’d remembered and forgotten all the wrong things, and he knew she could make it better, if only for a little while. But—

She slid down the length of his body, and he felt his resolve slipping. She rucked his T-shirt up and her breath swept the flat of his abs, above the waistband of his boxers. Her fingers were much surer now than they’d been earlier. “Lift up,” she instructed.

He hesitated.

“I don’t know what’s in my own head. I shouldn’t.”

“Then don’t listen to your head right now. Lift up.”

He did, and she slid his boxers down, and came back to nuzzle his cock, growing heavy now, reaching for her. She opened her mouth and let him in, but this time she kept him there only long enough to make him slick and hard, then released him and rose up over him.

She reached for the box of condoms on the nightstand, rolled one on him, and eased herself down on him, her body parting to admit him, and then lowered herself in an abrupt plunge that made his stomach sink and swirl like a roller-coaster plummet.

And it was so good, so sweet and dark and hot and wet, and she leaned down and matched her mouth to his, so they could feel each other that way, too, vulnerable parts to vulnerable parts, the intimacy so fierce and raw.

Then she eased back, taking him deep and—rather than rising and plunging—rubbing herself tight over his pubic bone. He saw the look in her eyes, that searching-for-something-just-out-of-reach expression.

“What do you need?”

She cupped her breast and he took the tight nipple in his mouth, his fingers stroking the other one, and she made a hoarse sound and her movements got more ferocious. She rode him like that, her breasts in his mouth and his hand, his other hand curved from her hip around her ass, an ache blooming hard up his spine until he came just a second ahead of her, his last fierce push to inhabit her fully pressing her over the edge until he had to stifle her cries with his mouth.