by CD Reiss
Her head snapped back to me, eyes on fire, formidable. “Why would he think that?”
She said “he,” but she meant “you.”
“He took you away from your family. Away from the military. He didn’t know if he’d do something to push you too far. He was afraid of losing you every minute of every day.”
“That’s ridiculous. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t have come.”
“I know, but he worried. In any case, one of the other things I knew, or sensed, was an emptiness around the idea of your finger. Then the notion kind of coalesced into a ring of a certain color, which I’m debating about.”
“I’m confused. I don’t have a preference. I’m not a jewelry person.”
“He knows, but he thought a ring was important. He had a very clear idea in mind, which is probably why I could see it. Color. Cut. Size. What I’m debating about is doing anything he wants after what he almost did to you. On the other hand… it’s perfect, and you should have it. Not on your anniversary. Now.”
“You were going to give it to me on our anniversary?”
She said “you” this time, instead of implying it, and I had to look away. I didn’t want her to see my reaction or notice her therapist’s curiosity parsing my expression. In doing so, I saw a dim reflection of my face in the plexiglass. Not my face. His face. Which was my face. I didn’t have another.
How could she not think I was him? I looked exactly the same.
I was the face of the love of her life.
Maybe I should accept that.
Maybe I could use it to give her everything, including her peace of mind.
“I was going to give it to you on our anniversary,” I said, taking apart her reaction to the pronoun.
She wore full therapist detachment.
Like I said. Formidable.
“I’m not a creative man,” I continued. “I was a little stuck on the setting. But yes, the situation with the ring was getting fixed. I just think now is better than later. It’s been a rough few months.”
I pulled her hands out from between her legs. She accepted, folding her palms over my hand.
“It has been rough,” she said. “But we’re going to get through it.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t. You don’t have to buy me things to keep me. You don’t have to worry that I’m ever, ever, ever going to leave you.” She squeezed my hand. “The man I married is honorable, strong, brilliant, loving. He has a sense of duty that was never drilled into him. It’s just a part of who he is, and I admire it so much that sometimes it hurts to think about. He’s out of my league. If anyone should worry, it should be me.”
I could only shake my head. How could such a perceptive woman not see her own perfection? How was she not the person she measured everyone else against? It couldn’t be false modesty, because nothing about her was false.
“Fifth and 57th!” the cabbie called, stopping. The meter ticked out a curled paper tongue of a receipt.
I shoved a fifty into the slot in the plexiglass. He could keep the tip. The cab ride had been worth more than even a rich man could pay.
Chapter Thirty-Five
GREYSEN
Caden had talked about a ring sometimes, asking me how I felt about huge stones or special settings. Apparently it had bothered him enough to seep into Damon’s consciousness.
I’d never been inside Tiffany. The store was as quiet as a church, with lighting that made everything sparkle.
The sales staff knew their jobs. They pinpointed us as big spenders inside five minutes and brought us to a lounge in the back. The velvet couches were robin’s egg blue, and the walls were papered in a textured off-white. They offered mimosas and water from Antarctic glaciers in crystal glasses. Amy, our saleswoman, was a white woman in her middle years with straight, black hair and sensible makeup. The man occupying my husband’s body consulted with her out of earshot.
When Caden had first promised a ring, I shrugged it off. They looked silly with camo, and they distracted patients. The simple gold band was more than enough for me. My husband was the prize. Not the ring.
Damon didn’t stand like Caden. His posture was more relaxed. Still confident, less rigid. The way he moved his hands was more expressive, and when Amy spoke to him, he looked at her as if he was listening fully, not formulating an answer before she was done.
Same perfect body. Same sky-colored eyes. Same full lips.
But different.
When he’d touched me at lunch, it was the same casually possessive stroke as Caden’s but with a consideration, as if he was giving me the touch, not taking it.
I liked the Damon in Caden. I had to remind myself that when the illness was peeled back, they were the same person, and he needed help.
Amy went to the back. I sipped my water as Damon came to the couch.
“I told her I want you to have it now,” he said with Caden’s mouth. “Unless you want something custom?”
“No. I’m sure they have nice things ready.”
He took a mimosa off the silver tray. Caden wouldn’t have drunk in the day. If Damon was doing it, did that mean Caden wanted to? What had held him back?
“What time are you on call?” I asked.
“Tonight.”
“Damon?”
“Yes?” He put down the glass.
“Do you know how to perform surgery?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“This kind of thing… this disassociation… knowledge and expertise don’t always transfer between—”
“Yes, Greysen. All that stayed with me. I can still crack a cage.”
“Before the MFI?” I barely knew what I was talking about, but that wasn’t important. He had to know.
“Before the myocardial infarction and after you give me an MIDI.”
Myocardial Infarction During Intercourse.
“You’re not old enough for that.”
“I will be. And it’ll be you.”
The tension release felt like cool Arctic water on a hot day. We had time. He wouldn’t kill anyone, and we had time. I didn’t know which fact reassured me more.
As if he felt my relief, he smiled and ran the back of his hand along my arm, clasping his fingers around mine at the end. “Did you think I’d cut someone open without knowing how?”
“No. I guess not.” He tugged my arm, and I laughed. “Maybe.”
He smiled and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him. Brushing his lips on my cheek, he kissed my earlobe before whispering, “Silly Grey.”
He ran his mouth back along my cheek and stopped at the corner of my lips. Our faces were so close his eyes had merged into one window to the sky.
“You can’t,” I said, and he jerked an inch away. “Promise me. No surgery.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. But it’s not safe. If you’re retaining only ninety percent of what you need to know, or even if you know a hundred percent and your reaction time is different? Or your decision-making is different? You could kill someone.”
Sitting back fully, he seemed to consider it. “I don’t want to do that.”
“My husband loves the operating room, but—”
“I’m your husband,” he insisted.
“I know. But listen to me. Look at me. Do you love it? Right now. When you think about it, are you excited? Or can you live without it?”
He thought for a long time. Longer than Caden ever thought about anything before making a decision. “I’m supposed to love it. I know I am. But when you say I can kill someone? It bothers me. It hurts me to think about it. I don’t know how I’d live with myself.”
“It never bothered Caden.”
“Do you think that’s normal?”
“He was never normal.”
Isn’t.
He’s not dead.
If the man sitting across from me noticed my use of the past tense, he didn’t show it. Nor did he react to the un
acknowledged flip side of my statement.
My husband’s not normal. He’s exceptional.
No, the gorgeous man who’d brought me to Tiffany for a ring wasn’t hurt or excited. He wasn’t insulted or resistant.
He was relieved to be normal. Not worse. Not inferior. Normal.
“So, it’s a promise?” I put my hand on his knee. “No surgery?”
He gathered me in his arms, and I slid close to him. “It’s a promise.”
“Kiss me.” My demand came in soft breaths against the fullness of his mouth.
The single eye got narrow when he looked down, and I thought he might refuse me, but he tilted his head and put his lips to mine slowly and carefully, as if savoring every moment.
Or maybe that was me.
He cupped my jaw in his hands. His mimosa was sharp and sweet on my tongue, warming the effects of the cold water. Rumblings of desire shook my spine, the space between my shoulders, my thighs, and the core between them. He kissed as if he meant it. Every graze of his tongue was intentional.
The door clicked open, and Amy came in with a tray.
* * *
A square-cut emerald with a deep blue cast. Army green mixed with sky-colored eyes. Diamonds inset in the platinum band. A flawless stone. No price mentioned.
“You like it?” he asked as I watched the light in the gem dance on my finger.
“I can’t even believe how much.”
“Good. That makes me happy.”
Amy brought a leather folder to the table. The part he was to sign stuck out, but the price was hidden under a flap. He lifted it to check the number then picked up the pen.
In the moment when the pen tip hovered over the receipt, a drop of tension resurfaced.
Damon might not have the same signature.
I didn’t care about taking the ring home. It was nice but not necessary. But I didn’t want him to be embarrassed if they didn’t let him out the door with it.
He signed. Caden St. John. Every stroke was perfect. Same signature.
I had to take a sip of water to hide a smile I didn’t want to explain.
* * *
“Let’s walk,” he said when we stepped onto Fifth Avenue.
Arm in arm, we navigated the late afternoon traffic of tourists and businesspeople. We looked in windows, imagining each other in suits and dresses. He decided I’d look great in everything, and I admitted the same for him.
The ring reweighted my hand, making me pay attention to it. At the steps of St. Patrick’s, I couldn’t help but stare at the way the emerald shone in the sunlight. “I really love it.”
“Good.” He took both my hands. “I want to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I think you should call me Caden.”
“Really?”
“It’s just that I’m your husband. I know you think of me as some kind of sickness, but I’m still the guy you married. I love you just the same, I have the same… I don’t know, skills, language, history. Same voice. Same face. It’s me… just a different part of the same person.” His hair dropped onto his forehead when he kissed my hands.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said. “You’re different enough. I notice all the ways.”
“Please try.”
“Why is that important?”
“I want you to look at me the way you look at him.”
Putting my hands on his cheeks, I laid my nose astride his. “He’s my husband.”
“So am I.”
He was, and he wasn’t.
But what if the other Caden didn’t come back? The sharp surgeon who weaponized lovemaking and detached his mind from his emotions at will was the man I’d married. He was the duty-bound child of a dead abuser and found salvation in saving lives.
I didn’t know this man on the church steps. Not really. I liked him. I enjoyed him. I lusted for him, but I didn’t know him.
But did I know Caden? We hadn’t been together long, and the circumstances were intense enough to skew both of us.
And Damon was a part of him, not a different person.
“I have an idea,” he said. He took the first step up and pointed at the gilded double doors. “Come.”
Tourists were pouring in and out of the cathedral. We went up the stone steps hand in hand and entered the dark narthex.
“Wow,” I said with my face turned to the ceiling. “So high.”
I’d been raised with a simple Methodist structure of stucco and industrial carpet. This nave echoed with marble and carved stone, with pews of dark wood worn at the edges. The stained glass wasn’t smooth, printed color, but solid colors cut into leaded borders.
Damon led me down the center aisle. Trusting him to guide me, I kept my eyes on the ceiling. It was caught in a ribbed web of curves.
“It’s so gorgeous,” I said when he stopped.
“Look at me.”
We faced each other at the foot of the platform that raised the gilded altar. His hands were under mine, holding them up.
The ring glistened when he put the tops of my fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “Be my wife.”
“I am already.”
“Say, ‘I do,’ Greysen. Say it to me.”
A tinge of confident demand edged the last word. I’d become so used to it with my husband I didn’t hear it anymore. When it was gone, I hadn’t known enough to seek it out in Damon’s voice. But there it was, banging like a gong.
He was Caden. The man standing before me, holding my hands, was the love of my life, and the man speaking to me was as much Caden as the man who couldn’t leave me in Iraq without a promise.
It was him, and he needed to know I wouldn’t leave him.
“Be my wife,” he repeated. “Please.”
Always. Always him. Two words for him.
“I do.”
He looked down as if praying, gratitude shaping the contour of his shoulders.
I picked up his face in my hands. “Be my husband.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I do.” He swooped me up in his arms, and my squeal echoed over the chamber. “You bet I do.”
He carried me down the aisle and out the door.
* * *
He carried me up the steps, refusing to kiss me until I laughed. By the time he put me on my feet inside our door, I was one giant hormonal throb. He peeled off his coat, and I kicked off my shoes. He slid my coat off my shoulders, and I put my arms around him. He picked me up under the arms until my legs were wrapped around his waist and brought me up to our bedroom.
* * *
“I want you to kiss me,” I said in the waning light of our bedroom. “Caden.”
Before I had his name all the way out, his lips touched mine, brushing against them slowly, savoring every movement. He kissed my lower, then my upper, running his tongue against the sensitive pink skin.
The kiss wasn’t a kiss yet, and he owned me. Every touch was devotion and care. He took nothing for granted, and as a result, I was swept up in a whirl of his attention.
He groaned, and I was lost. Therapeutic detachment had been left in tatters at the church and was shredded with that groan.
Having sex with this version of my husband was a bad idea in every way. I had no idea how the other personality would react. It might show preference. He was sick and needed my help.
Hands around my waist, testing the skin under my sweater, he put his tongue in my mouth, using it as a tease to draw me closer.
We were teenagers sprawled on the bed, making out in our parents’ basement. It felt that new and unexpected. When he unhooked my bra, he paused as if making sure he hadn’t done anything wrong. Still connected with him at the mouth, I nodded, and he ran his hands around me. I gasped when his fingers ran over my hard nipples, gently bending them. He pulled away so I could see him.
And I did.
He wasn’t any man I’d met before.
He was the only man I’d ever loved.
I lifted my arms, and he pulled off my
sweater and bra in one move.
“Say my name.”
“Da—”
“No.”
I was breathless, thoughtless, broken in ways I hadn’t unpacked. “Caden.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
DAMON
I felt him with the first appearance of the sun. The sky was orange, and I was buried inside Greysen for the fifth time since we’d walked in the door. She rode me, leveraging her arms against my chest.
He was stronger than I expected. More powerful. A horn blast at the ear of the soul.
He was heavy. Patient. Everywhere at once. Watching me fuck his wife.
Our wife.
He didn’t speak, but he was there, and I was afraid.
I spit out a hitching breath that sounded like a hard ch.
Greysen picked up the pace, lifting her body and impaling herself. She was looking at me. Staring past me. What did she see? Who did she see? Was I imagining she saw anything past her senses?
Yes, I was afraid, but I wouldn’t be intimidated. Only one person mattered, and she was straddling me.
“Make it hurt,” she whispered.
“Make…” I couldn’t finish. How could I hurt her?
“Please. Hurt me.”
I felt his desire to answer her call, but I didn’t know what to do. I’d sensed what Caden did when he caused her pain, but I didn’t know how he did it. Mostly, I was sickened by the pleasure he got from it.
I pressed her clit harder. “Like this?”
She didn’t answer. I took that as a yes.
“Come for me, darling.”
She leaned on the headboard, sweet little breasts hanging in my face. I took one in my mouth. I felt him there, in the infinitely small space between her nipple and my tongue, as if he wanted to push us apart. I dropped my head back, watching my wife come in a series of sighs and groans.
“Say my name,” I said as the pressure built.
“Caden.”
