by Laney Powell
“Any of it true?”
Her eyes met mine, and I could see that she looked a lot older and sadder than I thought she was. Taylor nodded. “Yes.” Her tone indicated that the true things seen in a coffee cup were off limits.
“So what brought you here?”
She took a breath. “I didn’t want to really talk about this, but I don’t like to lie, so I’ll tell you.”
I felt my shoulders brace as they did before I took the jump from the chopper. Whatever was coming next would be a wild ride, and there was no sure landing.
Chapter Eight
Taylor
Jesus. I really didn’t want to talk about my sad past, but I meant what I said. I didn’t like to lie. And I’d done enough of that dating Kasper. All sorts of little white lies at first, and then bigger, and bigger—until I was telling whoppers, pretending that everything was fine and dandy with me, Kasper, and life in general. I didn’t want to let that habit continue. “I haven’t even been back here a week. I grew up here, but I left when I was eighteen.”
“College?” Raif asked.
I shook my head. “No, a boyfriend. Who turned out to be a loser. Then there was another loser, and then,” I took a breath, “I met Kasper.”
Raif’s eyes narrowed, but his voice, so smooth and kind, didn’t change at all when he said, “The most recent ex?”
I nodded. “He was… he had a lot of problems.”
“How so?” Raif’s voice was still steady.
“He drank. And… and other stuff. I thought he was clean, he was trying. But he left, and he did… I don’t even know what he did. I didn’t know where he was until I got a call from his mom that he was in the hospital. In a coma.” I risked a glance at Raif. He looked calm.
“He still in a coma?” Raif asked.
I nodded. “His mom told me I needed to stay, but I’d decided that it was actually time for me to go. He was in a really bad way.”
“Did he hit you?” Raif sounded gentle.
“No. Not ever. But he was scary. I didn’t even know him anymore. I was thinking about it on the drive here, and I haven’t known him for a long time.” I sat back and crossed my arms. “So now you know. I’m… I don’t even know what I am. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have said yes to meeting you. But I…” I looked down. “I wanted to. And it’s been so long since I did something just because I wanted to.” I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup.
A hand came across the table. Raif’s hand was large, and tan, and when he touched my hand, all my senses flared into life. He cupped his hand around mine, and I looked up.
“You got out, Taylor. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“After three years. I put up with this for three years,” I said.
Raif shrugged. “We put up with things all the time that other people look at and think, What the hell? I used to do a job where I jumped out of a chopper into the shittiest situations possible. Sure, it was to help others, but I easily could have died every time I jumped. It was my choice. I didn’t see it that way. You saw something good in the guy until you didn’t. Everyone works on their own time.”
“Somehow I don’t think my ex and your job are the same.”
“Well, yes and no,” Raif said. He put his other hand around mine. “Both defy understanding for some people. They look at me, and at you, and think we’re insane. You understood it. And when you had enough, you left.”
“I had to,” I said. I was distracted by the warmth of his hands on mine, the way they made me feel. I looked down at them, and a moment later, Raif pulled his hands back. It made me feel a bit bereft, which was stupid. I’d just met him.
“Exactly.”
“Are you going back to the PJs?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I have to take time to heal and see how I feel. I can’t go back to active duty. Too much of a risk of reinjury of my leg.” He scowled. “So now you know. I’m washed up, at twenty-nine.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” I protested.
“Oh, I can teach. I can be support back at the base. But I’ll never jump again.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Thanks. It sucks. What’s worse is…” he stopped.
“What?”
Raif shook his head. “That’s enough about my sad bag of shit. What are you planning to do once you get things settled?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s so strange. I was always concerned about someone else and built my life around that. Now, I don’t know.”
“Being on your own isn’t a bad thing.”
I smiled. “I wouldn’t know, Raif. It’s a completely new thing.”
He returned my smile. “That’s a good thing.”
Without saying anything else, we turned to safer, less personal topics. He told me the story of the turkeys that tried to kill me yesterday, and I told him about the bakery. About an hour later, he looked at his watch. “I hate to leave, but I have to.”
“You need to get back?” I asked.
“After picking up chicken feed,” he said. “I’d like to see you again.” His eyes met mine, direct and open.
I felt myself smiling. “I’d like that, too.”
“Then I’ll text you?” He stood up, and we walked out together.
As we left the Beanery, he reached down and squeezed my hand. “I’m glad I met you,” Raif said.
“I’m glad you decided to stay,” I replied.
We stood together on the sidewalk, a feeling of awkwardness settling on us. That was weird, because I hadn’t felt it before now.
“Well, I’ll text you,” Raif said. He let go of my hand and turned to walk down the street.
I watched him walk away, marveling at the beauty of his form, his arms, his ass. I’d done a good job, I thought, of not climbing over the table and throwing myself at him—but I allowed myself the freedom to watch this gorgeous man.
Over the next two weeks, I worked in the bakery. Once or twice a week, Raif and I would text one another, and we’d meet for coffee, or we’d grab something to eat and go sit out by the lake. Neither of us seemed willing to make any major moves, and I found that comforting.
I mean, I was still dying to jump him, but I was nervous. I’d even reached for him a few times, when he wasn’t looking, and I pulled back. Something held me from making the move. For the first time in years, I listened to that.
My mom had also made me appointments—yes, read multiple—with a therapist. I went twice a week, and honestly, spent a lot of time either crying, or smashing my fists into the pillows Nadine kept on the couch in her office. I didn’t talk about it with anyone. Not my mom, not Beezie, and certainly not Raif. This part of it was on me to address.
Holy shit, it was slow going.
When I’d first gotten here, even after meeting Raif, my first thought was for Kasper. Was he awake? Where was his family? More importantly, his mother? Gradually, over a couple of weeks, Kasper and his problems were not my first waking thought.
Raif was. Sometimes it was the bakery, and how nice it was to see how much Beezie and Link enjoyed what they did. Sometimes it was what I wanted to do. But mostly, it was Raif. One morning, I woke up with my body spasming and my heart pounding. I’d been dreaming of him, of his hands and his mouth on me, on that cock that I occasionally saw the outline of. I wanted to touch it, to suck it, to pull him to me and let him inside me—but something held me back.
The only person I told about Raif in any detail was Nadine. Her lips pursed a little, and she said, “Do you think this might be too soon?”
I nodded. “Sure. But I like his company, and he hasn’t done anything to make me think he’s going to push it.”
“Nothing?” Nadine asked.
“He’s held my hand.”
“Nothing else?” Her eyebrows went up.
“No, nothing.”
“Have you talked about it?”
I shook my head. “No. Not even a litt
le bit.”
“Then that’s your homework over the next week, Taylor. Talk about where he sees this going.” She changed the subject then, moving on to speak about the fact that I was worrying over Kasper a lot less.
We discussed ways to keep that going, but my mind was stuck on what she called my homework. Over the next week and a half, I tried, and I wasn’t able to bring it up. Nadine was giving me hell, and I found I was all kinds of focused on this. I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk. Then Nadine asked me, “What are you afraid of?”
The question haunted me. What was I afraid of? I wasn’t trying to fix Raif. He wasn’t a project, wasn’t broken, wasn’t a mess—I stopped as I was taking a tray of cranberry orange muffins out of the case. He wasn’t dependent on me.
Holy shit. Was that it? All my other relationships had me in the role of taking care of my boyfriend. And the house. And our relationship, and all the things. With Raif, he handled his own shit. The only shit I was expected to handle was mine.
The thought was in the forefront of my mind for the rest of the day. When Raif texted me, asking me to meet he told me to meet him out in the park by the lake we’d been going to. I drove over, my mind turning over how I needed to bring this up. For the first time since I’d met him almost a month ago, I was ready.
At least, I thought so. Maybe if I got this out of the way, we could do more than occasionally hold hands. My heart sped up at the thought, and I felt my panties get damp. I mean for God’s sake, the guy was in my dreams, making me wake up hot and bothered. It was time to move this forward.
When I got to the park, Raif’s truck was there. He was sitting out at a table, and he turned when he heard me get out of the car. He got up, walking toward me, and I marveled, as I always did, at how beautiful he was.
“Hey,” his entire face smiled at me. “How are you?”
“I smell like a muffin, even though I showered,” I said automatically, without thinking.
Raif stopped, and then he came close, and wrapped me in his arms. I wasn’t expecting it, but I leaned against his chest, smelling the warmth of the sun on his shirt. He sniffed my hair in an exaggerated fashion. “I don’t think you smell like food at all, but if you did, it would just be a bonus.”
We both laughed, and I could feel the rumble in his chest. It hit me in that moment that I was closer to him than I’d ever been before. I looked up to see him looking down at me, and the look he was giving me made my panties melt and fall right the hell off. I reached up, and brushed against his face with my hand, letting my fingers reach the back of his neck, and pull his head closer to me.
One arm went from my mid back to down around my waist, and he pulled me to him. His other hand went to my neck and tangled itself in my hair. As if in slow motion, his head bent to mine, and his lips brushed against me. My other hand went to his neck, and I pressed my lips harder to him, wanting to feel more.
The hand in my hair drifted down to my waist, and Raif lifted me, allowing me to wrap my arms around him. I kissed him hungrily, wanting to taste him more. His tongue darted in and out of my mouth, strong and demanding, meeting my hunger with his own, going where I led.
Raif let me slid down his body, and I felt his cock. It made me moan, just a little, and he looked down at me. “You’re making me crazy,” he whispered. “Come sit down before I throw you over my shoulder and have my way with you.”
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” I whispered, not sure if I wanted him to hear me.
His head whipped around. He’d heard me. “Don’t tempt me.” He drew me down onto the bench at the picnic table.
“I think I want to,” I said.
Raif looked down and took a breath. “There is nothing I want more, but I think we need to talk before that.”
I threw up my hands. “Have you been talking to Nadine too?”
“Who’s Nadine?”
“My pain in the ass therapist.”
Raif looked at me for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Here I thought I was the only one going to the shrinker.”
“You’re seeing a therapist?” I asked.
He nodded. “I have to. Well, I don’t have to, but I’m a big dumb ass if I don’t.”
“Because you got hurt?” I knew that he was on medical leave, and that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he hadn’t pressed me, and I’d given him the same space. I wasn’t going to press. I knew what it felt like to not know a thing about what you wanted for your future.
“That was part of it.” A spasm of pain crossed his face.
I took his hands in mine, scooting closer to him on the bench. “What is it?”
“It’s more about how I got hurt,” Raif said.
“What do you mean?”
“I got my teammate killed,” he said, his voice raw, his eyes dark and haunted. “He’s dead because of me.”
Chapter Nine
Raif
I watched Taylor carefully. Over the past month, we’d been meeting, always in public places, always low key. It had been a month of me going home and jerking off, because being near her, whether she smelled like muffins or not, was insanely difficult when there was no touching involved.
But I’d been able to tell that she needed to move slowly. I had no idea what the future held for me, or her, or us. I did know that if I pushed things, Taylor would be out of there faster than shit through a goose, to put it bluntly. So I smiled, kept my distance, even though all I wanted was to kiss her sadness and self-doubt away. To love her until she realized that she was worth every effort, that she deserved nothing but the best, and until she screamed my name until the walls shook.
You know, simple goals.
It didn’t help that my shrink from D.C. had called and told me to get my ass to another one. And that I was dealing with physical therapy in the form of Pris, boss and taskmaster. I hadn’t told Taylor the entire truth about why I wasn’t on my team anymore. It was hard to talk about, and I was just managing it in therapy.
Freeze, Axel, and Jensen had been great. PT aside, so had Pris. I couldn’t ask for a better boss, or work. They gave me time for the shrink and made sure I got time for PT with Pris. Since both Axel and Jensen had been down this road, they were encouraging. Although the jokes about getting my ass kicked by a chick were nonstop. I could live with it.
Now, however, I had to be honest with Taylor. I hadn’t expected to kiss her like that, to have her kiss me as she had. She wanted me as much as I wanted her, and I thought I might burst, or die, or something. Taylor kissing me hungrily was the sexiest thing I’d ever experienced in my entire life. I knew that no matter what, I’d never forget that. Never.
“How?” she asked now, her gray eyes wide. She didn’t let go of my hand and run away screaming, so that was a good thing.
“I couldn’t save him,” I said quietly, and I felt my throat ache as the memory of that night hit me again. “Morrison was ahead of me, and we were supposed to stay within ten feet of one another. But I landed further away, and it took me almost a minute to get to him. There was enemy fire that wasn’t expected, and I think he looked up to see where I was.” I stopped, seeing Morrison’s body on the ground, still and unmoving. “And he was hit.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Taylor said.
“I’m a combat medic. And I’m special ops. There was no reason he should have died. Thankfully, the person we were after was rescued. He wasn’t hurt. But Morrison—” I shook my head. “He shouldn’t have died. But he did. Because I didn’t get there fast enough.”
“How did you get hurt?” Taylor asked.
“When we landed, I got fouled up in my chute. Stupid, rookie mistake. It took me extra time to get untangled. I also hurt my hip, fractured it. Tore some ligaments. Again, stupid mistake. I knew better.” I looked up over her head. “So I was off by at least sixty seconds, and that’s all it took for him to go down.”
“Things happen,” Taylor said, reaching up to put her hand on my cheek, forcing m
e to look at her. “It’s horrible, and tragic, but you didn’t do this. You didn’t pull the trigger.”
“I put my team at risk,” I said. “I stopped, and I was turning Morrison over, trying to see what I could do for him, and I got hit.” My left hand let go of Taylor’s and went up to rub at the back of my neck. “The doc told me one more centimeter over, I wouldn’t be here.”
“You risked your life to see if you could help him. That doesn’t sound like the actions of someone who wanted to harm him,” Taylor said.
“But he died,” I said.
“Was that part of the risk?” Taylor asked.
“It always in when we go in somewhere that’s hot.”
“And you almost died.”
I nodded.
“This isn’t your fault, Raif.”
I grabbed her hand again. “Your ex’s overdose isn’t yours.”
She took a breath. “I know.”
“You do?” I felt myself smiling despite the somber moment. This was a big deal.
Taylor nodded. “It’s really hard for me, but there was nothing I could do for Kasper, or to him, or anything. He’s an addict, and he didn’t go to rehab, he never stopped using. What I did didn’t matter. What I didn’t do didn’t matter. Kasper was in charge of Kasper. I was only in charge of me.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “How hard was that?”
“Really hard,” Taylor said with a rueful grin. “Nadine finally made me see that I wasn’t the center of the universe, and it wasn’t my job to fix everyone around me.”
“No, that’s on each of us,” I said. “But I’d fix you if I could.”
Her hands came up to cup my face. “I’d fix you if it was possible, Raif Garzon. It’s not, though. I do have to do something else, though.”
“What?” I was wary. Her voice held a note of determination.
“I have to ask you where you see this going?”
“Where do you?” I asked.
“No,” Taylor shook her head. “I asked you first.”
“I want it to go wherever it can. I like being with you. I want to be with you more.” I let my hand drift down her side, my fingers trailing along her body. “A lot more,” I lowered my voice.
