As You Are

by Claire Cain

  To Jamie, who trudged through NaNoWriMo 2017 with me and wrote her own book while I wrote this one, thank you. Thank you for a thousand things, but on this one, thanks for helping with basically every aspect, and for rooting for Ellie and Jake right along with me.

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  To the Writerly Writers Write group, thank you once again for your insight and encouragement. Let’s keep swapping!

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  To Judy Roth, thank you for teaming up with me again and helping me clean up and clarify this book. Thanks, too, for powering through at the end and flipping drafts so fast!

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  Thanks to Jeff Senter at Indie Formatting for formatting the book and making it look beautiful.

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  Rainbeau Decker, wow. There’s no amount of groveling I can do in print or person that will properly convey my thanks. Your eye, your talent, your generosity, your creativity… wow. Add to that the fact that your models are just astoundingly gorgeous and I cannot tell you how much I love the cover—THANK YOU. You’re helping make my dreams come true.

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  Last but never least, thank you to all the readers who’ve supported this book. As an indie author, your support is what keeps me writing. Please share the book with friends and consider leaving a review. I hope you’ll be in touch!

  About the Author

  Claire Cain lives to eat and drink her way around the globe with her traveling soldier and two kids, but is perhaps even happier hunkered down at home in a pair of sweatpants and slippers using any free moment she has to read and cook. Or talk—she really likes to talk. She has become an expert at packing too many dishes in too few cabinets and making houses into homes from Utah to Germany and many places in between. She’s a proud Army wife and is frankly just really happy to be here.

  CONNECT WITH CLAIRE:

  Website: www.clairecainwriter.com

  Facebook: facebook.com/clairecainwriter

  Twitter: @writeclairecain

  Instagram: @clairecainwriter

  E-mail: clairecainwriter@gmail.com

  Newsletter sign-up: http://eepurl.com/dGuIBv

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  Photo Credit: Michael Cryer

  Want more? Here’s a teaser for

  Don’t Stop Now,

  The Rambler Battalion Series Book 3,

  starring Captain Rae Jackson,

  due out May/June 2019!

  GABRIEL

  The blonde bun in front of me was a perfect swirl of gold and yellow hues, the hair pulled tight and meticulously back from the woman’s face. Her patrol cap was tucked into the pocket just above her knee, like mine. She was holding a plastic container packed with salad bar fixings—spinach, beets, peppers, cucumbers—a lot more but I didn’t want to peer over her shoulder and freak her out. It was all I could do not to let my eyes run over the back of her uniform, but I was determined not to do that here, in the commissary, in front of two dozen other soldiers that were quite likely doing just that.

  Ever since she came into the ER, I’d seen her everywhere. Everywhere. At the gym. At the commissary two days out of the last six. In her car driving in gate one last week. I swore I saw her at the movie theater last weekend, but maybe that was my imagination.

  This wasn’t uncommon. I’d been at Fort Campbell for about a year and a half, and since it was my first time working at an Army Hospital—my first job after getting my bachelor’s degree and then my master’s in nursing—I’d come to expect that sometimes after I took care of someone in the ER, they’d show up in all kinds of places I’d never noticed before.

  But her… it was becoming a problem.

  I’d treated her three weeks ago when she came in for abdominal pain after passing out at the gym. I’m not sure what happened after she left, but she hadn’t come back in.

  She stepped up in the lane ahead of me, the sign above our line claiming that soldiers had priority during the hours of 11am to 2pm, an unhelpful gesture considering everyone in the place was a soldier in uniform. She set a divider down on the little conveyer belt behind her salad and a bakery bag without looking up.

  Part of me willed her to look up and notice me; the other part of me dreaded her doing that and not recognizing me the way I definitely did her.

  I knew her by her light, golden hair, its uniform-perfect bun styled at the back of her head so unlike the loose, messy pile that sprung out in all directions from the crown of her head as she stared straight in front of her while I took her pulse, my brown skin dark against her pale wrist as I counted her heartbeats to establish heartrate. I recognized her compact body, despite being hidden in the looser-fitting Army uniform, much more concealed now than it was in just tight black shorts, a bright white sports bra, and a royal blue tank top that was less an actual shirt and more a suggestion of one. I remembered how her chest would rise and fall under my stethoscope as I listened to her heart, the thin skin visible there flushed from pain or exertion or anxiety.

  Stop thinking about her chest.

  I stepped forward too. Placed my salad on the belt to the left the divider, added a bottle of water because, like an idiot, I’d forgotten mine at home. The byproduct of my Mexican parents was, at moments like these, I could hear my mother in my mind as if she were standing in front of me and not taking her own lunch break in the employee lounge at the Dallard’s of Wyeth, Texas, where she’d worked for the last twenty years.

  My mother hated wasting money and she’d glare at me with her lips pinched in exaggerated disgust if she saw my plastic water bottle, rolling her eyes at my throwing away money just to hydrate at my convenience instead of finding a perfectly good drinking fountain somewhere.

  Or a hose, for that matter.

  I studied my salad through the plastic container, though my eyes wandered to the hand of my check-out line neighbor as her index and middle fingers alternately drummed soundlessly on the lid of her salad while the checker—Alice, said the nametag—handed the soldier in front of her his receipt.

  “Hi there, how you doing?” Alice asked.

  “Just fine, thank you. How are you? Hanging in there with the lunch rush?” She—Captain Jackson—responded with a calm, smooth voice.

  Her voice had been shaky, unsure, in the ER. That made sense since she’d passed out twice in the span of two hours and the second time it took her a few minutes to remember what had happened. Not unusual to be disoriented in a situation like that, but she’d been upset until she put all the pieces together.

  “Are you two together today?” Alice asked, her eyes lifting to me with a grade-a customer service smile, then pointedly looking back at Captain Jackson.

  As Captain Jackson turned to look at who Alice was talking about, I smiled back at her and shook my head. “No, ma’am, we’re not,” just as that quiet voice also declared “No.”

  Captain Jackson looked at me with a polite smile on her face—really nothing more than her lips pressed together and slightly turned up—but before she stepped forward toward the payment console, her eyebrows raised. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, her cheeks reddening as she pulled out a wallet, a card, and swiped.

  “Hi, ma’am. I hope you’re doing better,” I said, because I couldn’t very well ask her anything in detail—not without embarrassing her or violating HIPAA protocols.

  “Yes. I am. Thank you.” Her response was stilted, her hands shoving her card back in the thin, black wallet and grabbing her salad. “Thank you,” she offered to Alice, and then stood there, facing the exit a moment before she walked to it and out the sliding glass doors.

  RAE

  Of course. Of course the gorgeous nurse who’d seen me at my absolute worst was the man standing behind me in the commissary. Of course I blushed when I recognized him. Who wouldn’t?

  I shut my eyes and my grip tightened on the steering wheel, though my keys rested on my thigh and the car was silent. I thought of that awful day, the last time I saw him.

  “I’m not sure when it started, but I know it has
become increasingly… problematic in the last six months,” I explained, my fingers clenching the sheet resting over my legs on the hospital bed.

  “Ok. And it seems to be related to your menstrual cycle?” The nurse’s lips pronouncing menstrual cycle sent a flood of embarrassment through me. I wasn’t ashamed of being a woman, or even having to describe the pain. But I was angry at being there in the first place—angry I’d passed out, angry that I didn’t know why the pain was getting worse, and angry I was spending my time in the ER instead of finishing my workout and heading home so I could get to bed on time.

  “I think so? I’m not on my period now—shouldn’t be for another two weeks.” And that was the killer. The timing was unclear, unpredictable.

  “Are you bleeding now?” He asked, his voice rich and smooth and completely at odds with his bright blue scrubs and the stark white of the hospital.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t usually bleed when it happens.” I flushed again, knowing my chest, neck, and cheeks were bright with embarrassment. Why couldn’t I have had a female nurse?

  “Are you currently pregnant or breastfeeding?” His brown eyes were directed at the laptop resting on his knees where he entered notes as he hunched on the small stool next to the bed. I huffed out a breath.

  “Definitely not.”

  “You couldn’t be pregnant?” I could see his dark, thick eyebrows were raised as he typed away.

  “No.”

  “Not even a chance? Because that would be an important—”

  “I haven’t had sex for the better part of six years, so yeah. I’m certain.” His head popped up when I said “six” and his eyes were searching my face, his lashes blinking as if that might clarify things for him.

  “O-ok. Not pregnant.”

  I let out a breath and leaned back against the bed. What a humiliating topper to a magnificently mediocre day. Not only was my nurse the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, but now I’d just given him a brief tour of my sexual history in a spectacular example of what it meant to over-share.

  A knock on my window sounded and pushed me out of the memory. I looked up to see a wall of green, tan, and brown uniform standing just outside my car door and a brown hand holding a salad container and a bakery bag.

  My bakery bag. Mother effer.

  I unclipped my seatbelt and pulled the door handle, stepping out of the car and forcing him to step back to avoid getting hit by my moving door.

  The awkward attempt at conversation spilled out of my lips. “Thank you, so much.” My words were unsure, my eyes not certain where to land between the bag and his face. He flashed me a white smile, his brows rising as I stretched out a hand toward my bakery bag.

  “Are you feeling better, Captain?” His voice was amused as he handed me the bag.

  “Yes, thank you, Lieutenant,” I said, my voice tight. I was squinting back at him, my sunglasses tucked in the center console of my car rather than saving me from the brightness, and I felt a rush of annoyance as he just stood there, looking at me.

  “Good. I hope so.” His water bottle tucked under one arm, the other holding only his salad now, he didn’t move. I noticed he had an inordinate amount of shredded carrots topping his salad, and then felt another swell of annoyance. Why were we standing there? What did he want?

  “Can I help you?” The edge in my voice was too much, I knew. I could easily sound pissed off, and that combined with my RBF was a dangerous combination, especially as a female leader in the ultimate boys’ club.

  “Uhh, no? I was just making sure you didn’t miss out on your pretzel.” His forehead wrinkled in confusion and the edges of his mouth turned down slightly.

  “Well, thanks. That was nice. But listen, I don’t date soldiers.” I let out a controlled breath as I saw his head rear back and his eyes dart dramatically from side to side.

  “Ok?” The question in his voice was clear, but I didn’t need to explain myself. I was propositioned regularly, and I wasn’t in the mood.

  I gave an exaggerated nod as I put one leg back into my car, one hand on the top of the door, one on the top of the car. “Have a nice day, Lieutenant” I said, my tone final.

  “Uhhh…. You too, ma’am,” he said, his face still bewildered as he stepped back from the car.

  I watched him walk away while my hand dove into the paper sack of its own accord. It pulled out the perfect, golden-brown pretzel, and I shoved a chunk of it into my mouth, gulping down the carbs and waiting for my pulse, my irritation, my embarrassment to slow.