by CD Reiss
Asking that of me said more about how he’d feel than how I’d feel. Lying in his bed, sticky and sore, I was thrown by his need.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I said. “This life is hard, Caden. It’s hard on women who grow up knowing what it’s like. I can’t imagine how it will be for you.”
Above me, in the half-light, his eyes were dark and unreadable, but his body language—the deep breath, the articulated fingers asking me to hold on, the squared shoulders—spoke of preparation to say something uncomfortable and serious.
“I’m a practical man,” he said. “A surgeon has to be. If you cut somebody open and you’re careless, you’re going to kill them. It’s not bad luck. It’s not bad karma. If you’re casual or cavalier about germs or how you’re holding the knife, you can kill somebody. That’s just the long and the short of it. So, when I met you, I figured… pheromones. Early imprinting. Reproductive instinct. You meet all the standards for beauty and then some. I’m a straight guy. My brain and my spinal cord and my dick are wired to find a female of child-bearing age. My body reacts to you because my brain releases certain hormones at the sound of your voice or the smell of apples on your skin. It’s all science, until it’s not.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and put his shoes on, continuing as if he were describing a surgical procedure. “You know I had you down for a few fucks and a friendly good-bye. Probably about the same as you had me down for. We’re adults. It’s not like either one of us hasn’t ever had a pheromone-induced hormone rush. But it got weird. Somewhere in those eight days when you were checking on me, it became about more than the chemicals in my brain. I panicked. I went outside the wire because I was afraid I’d lose you if I didn’t. And I’m on that fucking Blackhawk, asking myself what the hell I’m doing, because the way I needed you wasn’t normal. Not for a man who knows how the body and the brain affect each other.”
He’d never told me what happened that night, and it looked as if that wouldn’t change. He stomped his foot on the floor when he was done lacing the second boot, then he leaned over me, placing an elbow on the mattress. “I don’t believe in the Universe with a capital U, and I don’t believe in God. I believe in brain signals and blood. But now? I’m willing to think maybe I’m wrong about everything. This is what it comes down to. You expanded my view of the universe. I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not saying I believe in fate or karma or ‘meant to be’ now, but my thinking got bigger because of you. I feel woken up.” As if he was uncomfortable with his own feelings, he got off his elbow and hunched on the edge of the bed, looking at his laced boots. “I feel ignorant and ordinary but awake. If that means we have a long-distance relationship until you retire, then that’s what it’ll be.”
“Okay.” My voice cracked in two syllables.
“Good.” He slapped his knees and stood. “Do you know when you’re heading out?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
If he was shocked by the compression of our time together, he didn’t show it. “Fine. I’m off work in the morning. We’ll eat, then I’ll take you to the air base.”
He kissed me quickly, then opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air, and shut it behind him. I heard him clop down the three wooden steps, heard his boots crunch on the rocky sand and fade into nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
GREYSEN
Ronin had traveled light, so by noon, he was spending most of his remaining hours in Balad helping me clear out. I picked up the sandwich he’d brought.
Ronin sat next to me and opened his. “We have a nice office in ABG.”
“We’re sharing an office?”
You don’t get far in the army without sharing, but I was a full major in a different unit, and I might need to see patients. Or not. He hadn’t told me much about what I’d be doing.
“You’re on loan to Army Intelligence. We’re pretty much in each other’s business.”
I bit my sandwich. “We’re clear on the other part of this offer, right?”
“The other part?”
“The you and I fucking part.”
“I figured you would have mentioned it if it was on. What’s keeping you? My breath? Different cologne?”
“My availability’s compromised.”
“Let me guess. Cap’n Fobbit.”
“He went outside the wires, so you can stop that.”
“He sure did.” Ronin chewed his sandwich pensively.
I wiped my mouth, choosing my words carefully. “Did you hear what happened out there?”
“Yup.”
“What did you hear?”
As soon as he looked at me, I knew he could tell I had no idea. He picked a limp tomato out of his sandwich and answered, “I heard he overstepped for a Haji.”
Haji was a pejorative for Iraqi civilians. Maybe Caden didn’t want to tell me because he thought I’d be upset with him. Maybe the whole thing had been traumatic.
“He didn’t tell you.” Ronin read me like a book.
Caden appeared at the door in his uniform, cap pushed back on his head. He stood there, holding a rolled-up paper plate with two sandwiches in the curl.
“Hey,” I said. “Is one of those for me?”
He stepped in. “Yeah. But you have one.”
“I didn’t know you guys had a date.” Ronin folded the paper over his sandwich and slipped off the desk.
I took one of Caden’s sandwiches. “I’m pretty hungry. Thank you.”
“I’m going to pack up my trailer,” Ronin said. “See you on the airfield.”
“See you there.”
Caden held out his hand, and Ronin shook it. When he was gone, Caden sat next to me and unwrapped his lunch.
“I’m not going to sleep with him,” I said.
“I know.”
“Then why do you have that look on your face?”
He shrugged. “I asked to be moved up there and got a no. Flat out. No.”
“You seem absolutely stunned by that.”
“I’ve never wanted to be anywhere but where I was before. So, it’s different. That’s all.”
We ate in silence.
“I feel guilty,” I said.
“You shouldn’t.” He cracked open a bottle of water and set it beside me. “I’m going to figure it out.”
“One man against the US Army and the woman who won’t leave it.”
He opened a second bottle and tipped it toward me. “I’d rather take on the army than you.”
He would. He was reckless and brave, like David running after Goliath with a slingshot.
“When you went outside the wire that time?” I said. “What happened?”
He shrugged and counted on his fingers. “Brogue. A guy from Georgia and an Iraqi lady. All patched up and sent to Baghdad. Done.”
I narrowed my eyes at him as if the smaller aperture would bring the truth into focus.
It did not.
Chapter Thirty
GREYSEN
Caden carried my duffel to the tarmac even after I insisted I was perfectly capable.
“There’s no chivalry in the army,” I hissed as he took it from me. “That would ruin everything.”
“I’m a civilian in a uniform.” He hitched the duffel strap up. “Deal with it.”
The Chinook’s rotors were getting started.
“God, I hate these things,” I said as we walked toward it.
“Yeah.” He was agreeing, but he was also staring straight at the open door where Ronin waited, which explained the single-word answer.
“I’m sore,” I said as reassurance, but my words were lost in the din of helicopter blades.
Caden stopped short and dropped the duffel. I reached down to pick it up, but he put his hand on my shoulder.
“What?” I shouted. “It’s not too heavy.”
“Marry me.”
“What?” I must have misheard in the thupping noise.
“Marry me, Greysen. Be my wife.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, knowing full well he was dead serious.
“You said it was a unicorn assignment. You said you never heard of any one you could get out of. Well, maybe if that’s the case, there’s a reason for that. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”
I was thrown. We were supposed to kiss before I got on the helicopter and write letters and then break up.
“I can’t marry you to get out of going.”
“Marry me because you want to. I’ll be the best husband you ever heard of. I’ll take care of you. I’ll stay in the army, and we can dual deploy.”
“No!”
His face fell. I’d spoken too soon, but it was loud and the Phrog was waiting.
“Maybe!” Trying to make it better was making it worse. I wanted him, but he’d caught me off guard. “But you can’t stay.” My cap almost blew off. I had to hold it on.
“I will.” The clipped demand of his voice cut through the wall of noise. “They’re begging me to stay. If you don’t marry me, I’m redeploying.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“It’s the only way to stay close to you.”
“This is weird, Caden.” I glanced at the helicopter.
It was ready. Ronin was waiting. The pilots were waiting.
“Marry me.”
My life was waiting. But this beautiful man was waiting for me too. He was resilient and fragile, made of rock and flesh, with a strength that lunged forward only to tear him apart.
“You can’t redeploy,” I insisted. “That’s off the table.”
“Marry me, and I’ll do whatever you want.”
Marry him. What would I have to give up? What would I gain?
This man with strands of hair trilling in the wind and his powerful voice demanding more from me than I’d thought to give. He held me there, in his gaze, nailing my feet to the ground until I answered.
I barely knew him except by his loyalty, his passion, his vulnerability, his honesty.
I knew nothing of his life, his habits, his choices.
“Marry me. Don’t go with him.”
“Is this about Ronin?”
“No! I just… I have a feeling. A bad feeling about you going up there.”
“You’re lying.”
My accusation rang more false than his denial. He wasn’t lying. If his demand was about Ronin, he would have said it, and if he didn’t have a feeling, that would be the last thing he’d claim. I hadn’t known him that long, but I knew him that well.
“I love you, Greysen.” He raised his voice as much as he had to and no more. Just enough to sound serious and straightforward. “Stay here with your unit. Marry me. I love you.”
I barely knew myself or what I wanted from a man.
What was I supposed to say?
“Major!” The pilot’s voice lifted over the wind.
He’d be here in a moment to hurry me away from Caden, who pinned me in place with his eyes. I’d be torn apart between the two.
His lips made the shape of words marry me without engaging a voice that wouldn’t be heard over the sound of the Universe he didn’t believe in.
Did I believe?
With a glance at the pilot and back to Caden’s eyes, the color shaded by the brim of his cap, I answered.
Part Four
Chapter Thirty-One
GREYSEN
NEW YORK, 2006
A woman in Sweden was walking with her son in her arms. He was three, and they were having a serious discussion about the shape of the clouds as they crossed the street. In the story, her upturned face was the reason given for why she wasn’t looking where she was going. They got halfway across and stepped up onto the median in the middle of the crosswalk’s length, but the mother did not accurately predict the end of the curb. When her foot dropped six inches she didn’t expect, she tried to keep her balance by taking an extra-big step her arms weren’t prepared for, and in the forward thrust, she lost her grip on her son.
The driver making a left turn had calculated his radius to avoid the woman, but the flying boy was a surprise. The toddler couldn’t be avoided and wound up under the front wheel.
The mother, in an act of what’s called “hysterical strength,” picked up the car enough for the driver—who had exited his vehicle in a panic—to free the boy. He was crying in his mother’s arms within a few seconds. Once her brain registered pain, she found she’d shattered five teeth and fractured her jaw from clenching it as she lifted the car.
The important detail in this story that no one ever misses is that the car was a Volkswagen, but the detail they always miss is that it was an old Beetle with the engine in the back.
There’s only so much a person could do with what they’re given. Could she have lifted the back of the VW? Or a Ford?
I’d like to think she’d have tried. I’d like to think it may have cost her a vertebra or two, but nothing would have kept her from using her body to leverage inhuman weight for her kid.
I reminded myself that my naked husband wasn’t as heavy as a car. I needed to get him out of that cold basement. His eyes were open, but his body was completely slack, as if his cells and blood had lost the will to obey his mind. He recognized me, and I recognized him. He was another person. Not the man I’d married. Not the man who’d fucked me with a distant, commanding voice.
He was the man I saw in my husband’s deepest kindnesses. In the rare moments of confusion. In the broken descriptions of his life with his parents.
This was Damon. I didn’t know what the name meant or where it came from, but I knew who I was talking to.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
He blinked, shutting out the sky for a moment, then looked right through me. Not in the way Caden had in all the time I’d known him—not to pierce, but to caress and comfort. I was more sure than ever that this was not Caden.
“Damon? Is that your name?”
His lips parted. He caught a breath, then closed his lips again to swallow whatever he was going to say.
“It’s cold,” I said. “Can you get up?”
I pulled him toward me. His body was a dead weight.
“Can you move your limbs?” I asked. “Where is the paresis?”
No reply. I lifted his arms and let them drop. His legs were bent but fell to one side when his arms landed.
“Caden? If you’re in there, you’re suffering some kind of semiconscious catatonic state from mental trauma. I think the quadraparesis is temporary. I’m going to call someone. Can you wait here?” I leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Damon. Caden. Whoever’s in there. I love you, and I’m going to take care of you.”
I ran out through the speakeasy section of the basement, feeling as though I’d left a part of myself in the bottle room. I’d call for an ambulance, get him a blanket, put on some clothes.
The mental checklist was interrupted by an unintentional glance at myself in the mirror behind the bar. My eyes were bloodshot, and a bruise was blossoming on the side of my neck. I knew my voice was shredded. It was too soon to see if my eyes would get black underneath, but if the paramedics saw any such signs, things would get very complicated, very quickly.
The decision to go back into the bottle room without making a call was burdened with doubts over my lack of doubt.
He’d choked me unconscious, and unlike last time, when my husband had been trying to extend my orgasm, this time he’d been committing violence.
When I got back to the cold, concrete room, he was in the exact position I’d left him in, staring blankly into the middle distance. His beautiful body was rendered still and pale in the room’s flat light. The black hairs on his skin looked like pen marks on a white paper.
I pulled him flat on his back. He didn’t resist or help. His member leaned to one side like a useless piece of meat, the power removed like the magic from a talisman.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” I said. “But in case you can, I’m doing a Ranger roll. Pray I have enough room
in here.”
Getting on the floor, I laid my upper back on his chest, placing my body perpendicular to his. I put his thigh over my shoulder and torqued my whole body toward his head. It took a few tries, but I finally got him over my shoulders and my legs under me. I got him out of the room by using my legs for strength, across the basement, and to the bottom of the steps. I sucked air through my teeth.
Go. Go. Go.
I took the first step.
He’d warned me he wanted to kill me. He’d told me he was scared. I put that into the equation. Someone I loved was sick in a way that couldn’t be managed by medication or talk therapy.
Halfway up, I had to turn to make the narrow passage.
Or was he gaslighting me?
Grunting, I got up to the hallway.
If I looked like an abused wife, wasn’t I? Wasn’t my decision part of the cycle of violence? Wasn’t my conviction that I was better than this part of the problem?
Six-foot-one. Hundred eighty. I couldn’t get him up another flight of steps.
My office door was open.
I promised myself I’d alert someone as soon as I understood what was going on. I’d carefully and objectively note the signs of domestic abuse. Then I’d decide.
Bending at the waist, I dropped him on the couch and collapsed on the carpet beside him. At least it was warm in here.
* * *
The pain came less than an hour later, as expected. Caden/Damon lay under a pile of blankets with a hot water bottle between his feet. I took a hot shower upstairs and took inventory of my body. I hadn’t shattered my teeth, but my jaw ached, and my lower back and knees shot through with pain when I put pressure on them. I took four Advil.
Bright red bled through the whites of my eyes, and dark pink triangles formed on each side of the bridge of my nose. My neck looked okay. He hadn’t put that much pressure because he knew how to cut off my air.
