by Serena Bell
Afterward they walked out to his truck. She snuck a look his way and saw that he was watching her.
“Ever had sex in a pickup truck flatbed, under a blanket, in a field, beneath the stars?”
She shook her head.
“Want to?”
She grinned at him and nodded.
On the drive out on Route 26, the anticipation was sweet, the two of them side by side in the dark cab, knowing what was going to happen.
“Are you thinking about it? What it’s going to feel like?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“I think about me being really wet and you being really big and how good it feels when you first come into me.”
“I think about that, too.”
“I think about when you’re in all the way, like really all the way, so you’re stretching where it feels best.”
“God, Becca.” His voice was rough.
“I think about you kissing me and fucking me at the same time. And being really wet both places.”
“It’s probably not safe for me to drive while you talk like that. Because there’s no actual blood in my brain.”
She laughed. She hadn’t really talked like that to anyone before, and she liked it. A lot. She figured there wasn’t anything she and Griff could do that she wouldn’t like.
She laid off the dirty talk, then, knowing he was right about it not being safe, but she didn’t stop thinking about what was coming.
He spread blankets for them in the back. He boosted her up onto the bed and came in after her. They lay down together face to face and he kissed her and kissed her, his mouth hot in the cool night air. There were stars overhead, a scattered mess of them across a black sky.
His fingers found her—her nipples, then her curls, her slit, her clit, her wet heat, bringing pleasure everywhere. He kept kissing her. She went to work on his jeans, button, zipper, working them down, freeing him so she could wrap a hand around his thickness and squeeze. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love this.”
She felt a little self-conscious about having said love, even if it was just about his penis, but she figured it was probably okay, because he kissed her again, even deeper, after.
He produced a condom from somewhere in the depths of the blankets and covered himself, then kissed her some more. His tongue teased and probed and promised. Then he was nudging her open with his hands and his cock, and she rolled onto her back to give him better access. She kicked his jeans down further, which made him laugh. Then he was inside her. His tongue tangled with hers and his cock was buried in her pussy and she groaned her satisfaction into his mouth. He growled back. Or really it was more of a grunt. His hands were much rougher on her nipples now, but she didn’t mind. She liked it. He was kissing her gently. And he moved slowly in her, a sweet glide and retreat. Tension was gathering itself, not so much between her legs but in some complicated space in her belly that was taking feedback from everywhere else in her body. Her mouth was sending pleasure there, and her nipples. Her clit, and the walls of her pussy.
Everything was going to that one spot and coiling up and getting ready to unleash itself on her, and she felt, suddenly, a little afraid. She grabbed Griff’s arms. Clutched him around the back. Like whatever was coming for her was bigger than she knew how to contain, and he was the thing that could keep her safe.
And that was just how it felt, when the orgasm broke over her, like surf breaking over her head. Like it was bigger than her, too big for her body to contain so it had to get outside of her and she couldn’t stay serene in its turbulence. Like her hands in his hair and grabbing handfuls of his clothes and her voice calling his name were the only things holding her to the earth.
He was holding on, too, hurting her with the strength of his grip, and her name on his lips was a crooked, broken sound that unleashed itself into the dark night.
33
Griff knocked on CJ’s door the next afternoon, and the kid opened it. “What do you want?”
“I’m sorry about the Becca thing.” No point in beating around the bush.
“Some wingman,” CJ said, giving Griff a hard look.
“I should have told you right off she wasn’t available. That’s where I screwed up.”
CJ must have caught something in Griff’s voice, some measure of no bullshit, because instead of snapping back, he nodded. “So it’s like that.”
Was it? He wasn’t sure. Lately it felt like there was so much he didn’t know, like he couldn’t get his bearings. And last night hadn’t helped. He’d come so hard that the stars had spun overhead, and afterwards, driving Becca home to her sister and Nate’s house, he’d wanted something he didn’t want to want.
More time.
He left it at that, though, and said, “I gotta go to Home Depot. Thought you might want to come along. Kill a few hours, do a favor for Jake?”
CJ nodded.
Griff tipped his head and CJ grabbed his wallet, locked the door to his room, and followed Griff out of the building. When they got within spitting distance of Griff’s truck, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and flipped them to CJ. The kid caught them—reflex kicking in—looked down and then at Griff, then tossed them back.
“Hey,” Griff said. “Give it a try?”
CJ shook his head. “I’ve tried.”
“But you’re fine when you’re a passenger.”
“It’s the being in control part that wrecks me,” CJ said. “I freak out. Shake. Sweat.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Easy for you to say. You aren’t the woman sitting in the passenger seat backing further and further into the corner, like, get away from the psycho.”
“Has that happened?”
“Not with anyone else in the car. But, yeah, I mean, I can’t even drive two minutes to the grocery store without it happening.”
“And if you do it more? Like, longer stretches, or more often, you know, get used to it?”
“Fuck that,” CJ said. “You try driving drenched in sweat, shaking, and cryi—fuck that.”
Griff didn’t argue any further. He just climbed up on the driver’s side, started the car, and drove them to Home Depot.
They stepped inside and were instantly hit with sensory overload. The visual clutter, the hollow, echoey sounds, and the smells—lumber, peat, chemicals, new carpet. Griff hesitated, trying to sort himself out, then grabbed one of the big orange plastic carts.
“You want to split the list?” CJ asked.
“Sure,” Griff said. He did it literally, tearing the list into two pieces and giving half to CJ. “It’ll go faster that way.” Griff quickly scanned the items he was responsible for. “Hose nozzle?” he demanded. “Jake’s just messing with me.”
CJ snickered and sped off towards lumber.
Griff headed to gardening, took one look at the selection of hose nozzles, and pulled out his phone, snapping a photo and then dialing Jake.
“What kind of hose nozzle, your highness?”
“One of the fancy-ass ones with different settings for spray, mist, and pound the shit out of some vegetation.”
Griff laughed. “Will do.” He hung up. Huh. There was a voicemail from a call he hadn’t caught earlier. He paused to listen.
His heart did a funny skip-beat thing as soon as he heard her voice.
Marina.
Hey, Griff. Long time no talk. Um, so, I know we talked about this a while back, but it’s a little more urgent now. If you could get your stuff out of the basement, it would be super helpful. Maybe text me some times that would work for you?
He sighed and shook his head. He didn’t even give a shit about that stuff anymore. He should call her back, probably, tell her to just throw it out or something.
Later. He’d do it later. He had other, more important shit to contend with right now, like hose nozzles.
Ugh, who was he kidding? He just hated the idea of having an actual conversation with Marina.
&n
bsp; He put his phone away and found the “fancy-ass” equipment that Jake had spec’d. The thing looked like a deadly weapon, not a gardening tool.
And of course, the next thing on the list was on the other side of the store. Maybe he and CJ should have made some effort to split the list by location.
He took a step away from the nozzle display and the world shattered into sound.
He was on his feet before the last reverberations, before he knew his name, his chest heaving, his mouth dry, reaching for his SIG Sauer. He woke up fully then to the mud hole of a combat outpost where they’d been sleeping, to the swearing of the men around him, everyone grabbing for Kevlar and NVGs, for weapons, for positions, tripping and stumbling over gear and each other and shouting—Fuck, Wake, where are you? The fuck was that? Jesus, Teo, get the fuck down! Gregger, call that shit up, call it up, call it up! The fuck are you thinking?! He could hear mortars, no incoming Hollywood whistle to warn them, no big budget explosion they could see by, just the boom—Fucking fuckers! someone shouted. Where are they? And Over there, over there, no, behind that big ledge. North! The other fucking north! And he kept thinking, I knew, I fucking knew, I fucking knew.
“Whoa, you okay, man?”
Someone was shaking him gently. An older guy with an unkempt beard and an orange Home Depot apron pushing one of those store carts around.
“I dropped a load of PVC pipe,” the guy said. “It hit the ground with a clatter, and you swung around and aimed that thing at me. At first, I thought it was a gun. You scared the shit out of me. I almost called for security backup. We coulda both gotten shot.”
The guy was breathing hard, Griff realized.
“And then you were just standing there. Staring.”
Slowly, the world rearranged itself and began to make sense.
He’d been back there, the night of the surprise attack. Again.
“I’m—I’m okay,” he said.
The Home Depot guy didn’t look convinced. “Do you need me to call anyone?”
“No. I’m fine. It happens, sometimes.”
The attendant was still staring at him with concern in his kind brown eyes.
“I’m okay,” Griff said again. He took a breath. Tried it on for size. “I get these episodes. PTSD. Army.”
The guy’s eyes softened even more. “Yeah. My nephew has that. Marines.”
The thing of it was, Griff had been trying for days to find the words to tell Jake about his episodes.
He’d thought of about ten different ways to start, but in the end, he hadn’t been able to get the words out. Any words.
And then he’d gone and told a stranger.
That was ten kinds of fucked up and also made some weird-ass sense.
“Thanks for your service, man,” the Home Depot guy said.
“Thanks for checking on me. I’ll be fine now.”
The guy nodded and went back to his own business.
“Hey.”
Griff turned to find CJ standing behind him.
“You hear that?” Griff asked. He knew he was pale, his face damp with sweat; he tried his best to control the shaking that always followed an episode, but he could see from the way CJ’s eyes carefully avoided his hands that he’d failed.
CJ nodded.
They stared at each other for a minute. Then CJ shrugged. “You said it. We all have our shit.” He dumped a bunch of short two-by-fours in Griff’s cart. “I should probably get my own cart, huh? Meet you up front in a few?”
Griff finished his shopping—still shaking, damn it—and met CJ at checkout. They paid, then loaded the contents of the cart into the back of the truck. Griff could feel CJ’s eyes on him as he tried his best to steady himself. “You okay to drive?” CJ asked him.
Griff was a hair’s breadth away from snapping back at him, Of course I’m fucking okay to drive, but stopped himself just as he was opening his mouth.
Huh.
He’d just had an idea.
“Not sure,” he said, hamming it up a little. “Feeling pretty shaky. And, um, disoriented. A little—” What was that word Jake used a bunch in group? “Dissociated.” It was when you lost touch with reality. Definitely not compatible with safe driving. Way worse than sweaty and shaking, or at least Griff hoped CJ would think so.
“We could hang out for a little, until you’re better,” CJ said. “Or call someone to come get us.”
“No,” Griff said. “I gotta get back ASAP. I’ve got tutoring in forty minutes. You’d better drive,” he said, tossing the keys to CJ.
CJ’s eyes were big as he caught them. “Uh, this is a really bad idea.”
Griff looked away so CJ wouldn’t see his expression. “I think it’s our best bet.”
Unwillingly, CJ hauled himself up into the driver’s seat. Griff took shotgun. Now he just had to hope that he wasn’t actually going to get them both killed.
CJ started the truck, backed out of the space, and started toward home. True to his word, he began to sweat and shake. His hands gripped the wheel so hard it must have hurt. Griff felt his own hands clenching into fists in sympathy. “You’re doing good, man,” he said quietly.
“This sucks,” CJ said.
“Hang in. And thanks for saving my ass.”
CJ sat up a little straighter at that. And he turned onto Highway 101 without any visible further freak-out.
At the first traffic light he shook his head ruefully and said, “Well, it’s not pretty, but I’m doing it.”
“Doesn’t have to be pretty.”
“Tell that to the woman riding shotgun.”
“You ever thought about just owning it?” Holy shit, he was a hypocrite. He almost shut his hypocrite face before he could go any further, but then he thought about it for a minute. Maybe he wasn’t as much of a hypocrite as he used to be. He’d told Becca, after all. And the guy in Home Depot. And CJ. So he went on, plowing through, because even if he was a hypocrite, he owed it to CJ to make sure the kid didn’t make the same mistake he had, didn’t spend years clammed up. “Just tell her. I was in Afghanistan, this crazy thing happened, and driving makes me a little jittery.”
CJ just grunted—but Griff knew he’d heard. And when they reached the light at Seaside, CJ said, “You were right, it gets a little easier. I guess I never tried more than a couple minutes. Never gave myself time to, you know, settle in.”
Griff smiled, an invisible, internal smile.
By the time they pulled into R&R, the sweat had dried on CJ’s face. He unlocked his hands from around the wheel. “They’re going to be permanently in this position,” he said, holding them up like claws for Griff to see. They were shaking, too—but only a little.
“But you did it.”
“I did it.”
Griff felt a surge of triumph. “And it will get easier.”
“Yeah,” CJ said. “Yeah.”
“You could give me a ride in the Shelby soon, and start using that baby for the purpose for which God intended her. As lady bait.”
That made CJ smile—not a full-on smile, but a hopeful one.
Griff suddenly realized he had completely stopped shaking. He looked down at his hands, and they were rock steady. Huh. Apparently, helping someone else was the best cure.
CJ looked at Griff’s hands, too, and a funny expression crossed his face. Then he squinted up his eyes. “You’re full of it, aren’t you?”
“Who, me?”
“Dissociating? Dizzy?”
Griff gave CJ his best sheepish face.
CJ sighed. “You are an asshole, man, you know that?”
“Been told that,” Griff said, grinning.
“Did you do all this because you wanted a ride in the Shelby?”
“Nah,” Griff said, clapping CJ on the back. “Just being a good wingman.”
34
Jed’s here.
She stared at Griff’s text for a long time before tapping back, So?
I thought you might want to come in and talk to him.
She thought she’d made herself clear the last time they’d talked—she’d given it a try, but now she was done. Nope, she texted back.
Her phone rang.
“Griff, don’t,” she said, before he could say anything else.
“You have unfinished business with him.” He was whispering, so she knew he was in the big tutoring room and that Jed was in there, too.
“I really don’t.”
“C’mon, Becca, give it one more try.”
She pushed a stack of insurance claims forward on the desk, then pulled them back toward her. “Did he ask for me?”
There was a long silence. That would be a no, then.
“Did he ask for help at all?”
“He—no.” Griff’s last word came out on an exhale, almost a sigh.
“He doesn’t want my help. He made that abundantly clear. And one of the things I like about New Becca is that she knows who she is, and she’s happy with that version of herself. She doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone, especially if it means banging her head against a wall.”
On the other end of the phone, Griff took a deep breath. “Hang on a sec.” His voice moved further away. “JoJo, I’m going outside for a minute, can you handle that on your own?”
“Yeah. I got this.” JoJo’s voice drifted to Becca.
There was the sound of shuffling and then Griff’s voice, closer to her ear than before. “You can do this Becca. Not to prove anything. Not because I say you should. But because Jed wants your help, and I know you know what it’s like to be a kid who’s finally fessed up that he’s vulnerable.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Griff. Are you trying to emotionally manipulate me into helping Jed?”
He blew out a short snort of a laugh. “Ha! No.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Why, is it working?”
She laughed. “No. Nope. I cannot be emotionally manipulated. And you cannot use those Jedi mind tricks on me.”
“Dang,” he said. “Because if there’s a way to get you naked on my bed using Jedi mind tricks—”
