I miss it terribly now, though. In my dream, I’m hungering for him to be with me. To sit here and talk. To help me make sense of why and how everything is the way it is, and why he had to go like that.
But before I let my dream-self feel that too much, I hear my dad’s voice again. But this time it’s coming from below me in the dream. Below the cliff. I look down anxiously, eagerly. I don’t care how close I am to the edge, or how dangerously my fingertips caress the abyss. Dad’s for sure down there.
And he’s down there with a war going on— a full-size skirmish. Although part of me knows that this shouldn’t be possible, my heart’s pounding. He’s shouting up at me now. He’s using my cadet name, as he called it. Jules. “Jules! You’ve got to come down here and give me back up, honey! You gotta come help me fight the enemy!”
Rapid gunfire goes off, and I actually hear and see it striking the rock around him as well as the cliff face below me. I actually feel and smell the smoke, the embers. I even see shadowed enemy soldiers clambering out of the wispy sunset all along the cliff face. All around him, they’re preparing to strike. Kill. Maim.
Dad looks up at me as if I’m his only hope, his only means of rescue— of living, instead of dying. “Help me, Jules! Back me up. Help me subdue the enemy so I can come home to you. So I can see the view from up there with you!”
Without a second thought, I jump feet first. “I’m coming, Daddy,” I scream. Almost immediately, I feel my body pitch forward. I’m falling feet first, but then tumbling mid-air and quickly going down the cliff head-first now, without any hesitation or fear.
“I’ll help you!” I scream this in my dream, but it really only comes out as a shout in my dead ears, in my numb brain.
Just as I’m about to fall into the middle of the action — the war zone going on around me and Dad — a pair of strong, sturdy arms wrap themselves around me and pull me back. The same arms that grabbed me from the back earlier on the same cliff, except I was awake and really there then. Not asleep and just dreaming about it.
But I was just as sunk into myself, and dangerously close to losing myself to the abyss at the foot of the mountains. If not for him.
Chapter 7
Brandon
She’s been screaming, and now her eyes fly open. She’s covered in sweat, and even as I hold her tightly to me, I can feel her heart slamming away in her chest. She screams and claws at me as I hold her. But I won’t let go. As it is, she’s almost about to fall out of the bed at first.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, hoping my voice will snap her out of it. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
These words help, at least a little, but she still struggles against me. Fights to get down to something. Even so, I don’t release my grip on her. I hold her tightly, moving her back onto the bed some. Just so long as she’s not falling. “You’re safe. I promise.”
Finally, she comes to. Shakes out of her waking nightmare. And when she does, all she can do is apologize.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry for all of this.”
“Sorry,” becomes a soft, urgent mantra under her breath. When her eyes meet mine, they’re like two frightened dots on her face. “I was having a bad dream. A really bad one,” she says. She shivers in what’s left of my hold, feeling even more fragile. “It was so real.”
Though I want nothing more than to run my hand through her hair — stroke her cheeks and the top of her head — I resist. No matter what my protective, almost fatherly instincts are toward her, I know she doesn’t like me getting too close. I’m a stranger to her. But maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to be a scary stranger anymore. Maybe she’ll understand now that I just want to protect her.
“You were having a night terror,” I say, feeling like she needs to know this specific piece of information. “They can be your body and mind’s response to a traumatic event.”
She nods, but I can tell she’s not really with it. She doesn’t completely understand what I have told her. She just hears it. “How do you know?” she finally asks. “How do you know that’s what’s going on with me?”
I shrug. In my head, I think, I used to be just like her. Night terrors every night after I returned from being deployed. Terrible stuff. All of it. But I don’t want her to have to worry about that yet. Or at all. I just want to be someone she feels safe around. Not someone who is a fellow “survivor.” She needs me to be her hero right now, and I can’t really do that if she knows that I was once where she is. Maybe later, but not right now.
Returning from out of my thoughts, I decide to ask her a blunt question. Probably too blunt, given how long we’ve known each other, but I have to ask. I have to know.
“Are you having a mental breakdown right now?” The woman avoids my eyes. Tries to shift in my grasp. What’s left of it. “Just be honest with me, please. I don’t mean to be rude, or to put my nose in business that isn’t mine, but I need you to tell me if you’re feeling suicidal, okay?”
Silently, I’m grateful for Harlow’s training on how to deal with someone in distress. It’s coming in quite handy at the moment. I just always thought that when the time came for me to try out the training, it would be on a fellow vet. Not a mysterious woman, I think.
“I wasn’t on the cliff because I was gonna kill myself,” she says. “I was just going there for the view. Because my dad and I used to go there all the time when I was little… And I was just… I don’t know… Wanting to go back to a good time. A good memory.” She sighs, and I hear the tremble of sadness in it.
“That’s a very isolated place to go for a look-out point,” I tell her, half incredulous, half impressed.
“My dad was in very good shape,” she says. “And we both liked to hike.”
I nod, letting the fact that she was speaking in past tense sink in. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell her.
“I feel guilty. I wish I would’ve been able to tell my dad how much I appreciated the view, appreciated the time with him, but I was young and dumb. And now…” She pauses, swallowing something heavy. “Now, I just wish he could still see that view with me…”
At this revelation, my heart begins to pound. Since we made contact, this is the most she’s ever said to me. This is the most she’s ever opened up. Not just to me, but probably to a lot of people in her life. And now that she has, it’s like her words are coming out in a stream of consciousness.
Part of me wants to keep her talking about it, even though I know it’s painful for her. In the end, I know that that’s going to be one of the only ways she can heal from it. So, I say, “Your dad sounds like a great guy. What happened to him?”
She’s mumbling now. Barely paying attention to me again. She’s lost in herself. And worst of all, she’s gone quiet. Not even mumbling anymore.
Great. I guess I jumped the gun on that.
But at least now I understand there’s a reason behind this state that she’s in. She’s not just some loon looking to commit suicide. She is someone going through a lot of grief and tragedy. And that is something I can completely understand.
Chapter 8
Juliet
I’ve retreated into my head again around him. But it’s not into the abyss. I just can’t believe what I’ve told him. A complete stranger, nonetheless! Sure, he saved my life, but to open up about my dad like that? To talk with him about our special place? Our special routine, our ritual together? That’s not something I even told my closest friends. Not even the people I went to beauty school with in New York know about that.
I can’t believe I’ve just shared all of that! I wipe at my eyes, feeling my whole body shaking— from the remains of my nightmare, which I guess was a “night terror” from what he just explained, and also from thinking about Dad again. Just even admitting to the guilt I’ve felt — that’s enough to make a squishy sponge out of my heart, and a leaky faucet out of my eyes. But I don’t share any of that with him.
Why is he being so nice to me anyway? Why care so much
about someone you don’t even know?
I study him, a little frustrated and embarrassed at myself that I’m actually admiring his towering, bulky form. Appreciating the muscles I can see in his chest, his arms and the little bit of light coming in from the hallway through the open bedroom door. Just a little while ago I was afraid of that bulkiness.
I still should be, I think. For all I know, he could be being nice to me so he puts me into a false sense of security. So that when he tells me I can’t leave tomorrow — or ever again — I’ll be into him enough to not mind being captured.
These thoughts aren’t allowed to continue uninterrupted, though. My angel from the woods has started talking to me again. Maybe he’s been talking to me the whole time, but I’m just now hearing him. “I know what will help,” he says.
Immediately, my mind turns to more food, so I say, “I don’t need any more to eat. Or drink.” In my head, I see myself wolfing down the sandwich and chips. Guzzling the milk down mindlessly. “You gave me enough the first time. And I ate like a pig.”
Like a great white shark is more like it, I think, but I don’t bother to make that comparison. It’s probably not something this nice guy would like to picture: having a great white shark type of girl in his bed, at his dinner table.
“I’m not usually like that,” I say. “Not usually so ravenous, you know.”
To this, my savior just chuckles. “I don’t mind a girl who can eat,” he says. “And anyway, sometimes when we let our emotions get the best of us, we forget to take care of our bodies. Our minds. So, don’t worry about it.”
He lets me go, getting up from his kneeling position near the bed. “But no, when I said I had an idea for something that would help, I didn’t mean more food. I was thinking more of a bath.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why, but this seems a little funny to me— hilarious even— and I start to laugh a little bit. “A bath. Right.”
I look down at myself. I’m still in my same T-shirt and sweatpants from earlier. Though he offered his own clothes, I didn’t bother to change into them. I like this combination, but I can’t remember how long I’ve been in it. I suppose since yesterday, because I slept in it the night before last. At my own house, and now his too. My days and nights are starting to blend together and I’m losing track of time.
I’m really starting to lose track of everything. And that includes what I’m dressed in, what I’ve been thinking or feeling. One quick, elusive smell at myself, and I know I’m in bad shape. You can really smell the sweat, dirt and musk in everything— something I’m suddenly hoping my savior hasn’t smelled and used that as his excuse to offer me a soak.
I stand up and get out of bed, deciding I’m going to make sure he doesn’t have time to smell me, now or later. I do smell him, though. The minute I get up, I smell a waft of pine, wet earth and sweat from him. It’s oddly intoxicating and comforting to me. It smells a bit like campfire, I guess. Except without the smoke.
Like he’s done most of the night so far, he takes any movement from me as his cue to show me to the next area. “I’ll get you started with a bath,” he says. “You can stay in there as long as you like. Even put more hot water in if you want or need.”
I don’t answer him. I just follow him out of the room and down the hall. As I do, I take this as my opportunity to look around, to see where I’m really at. I know I’m in a cabin, but getting a look at it now, I see that it’s really much more majestic than that. It’s not small or cramped by any means.
It’s not rinky-dink, the way most people probably picture cabins. It’s rustic, but with style. Almost like his house used to be a fancy ski lodge in some place like Aspen, Colorado or something, but instead it got dropped here. In New Mexico. In the middle of the Tijeras Mountains.
Breathtaking would be a great word for the kind of cabin I see around me. Along with its stately, dark wooden, intricately carved beams and panels, there is a certain New Mexico flair. Colors and patterns in line with a south-of-the-border vibe. Reds. Oranges. Bright blues. Yellows. There are cacti and horse motifs in some places, coyotes and desert landscapes in others— mostly in paintings and carvings.
“Well, here we are,” says my savior, as he throws open the door at the end of the hallway. Even without seeing inside, I can tell by the soapy, perfumed smell that it’s the bathroom. Though it’s not the girly type of perfumed. It’s masculine, like aftershave. Cologne.
Smelling this, I can’t help it: my mind undresses him from the back. I imagine that I can see through his tight, clingy tee, and down to his skin. How smooth and velvety it must be. How muscled and toned his shoulders and back must be, to grab onto his shirt like that.
Before I can stop myself, I imagine what it would be like to run my fingers along his body. Down the center of his back. How it would feel to lay my head on him there. Fall asleep on him, feeling his skin cool and warm at different times during the night.
Soon, though, those thoughts turn to static in my head. They get jumbled just as I step into the bathroom. He’s already put the light on and started the water. I tell myself that the jarring sound of the water running is what’s caused the static in my brain— or part of it, anyway.
The other part is my dad’s training. The part of his voice I can still here in the back of my head telling me to be wary. To stop thinking about this person that way, because he might be the enemy. He might be getting ready to ambush me, like Dad was ambushed.
Get a hold of yourself, I think, forcing myself to pay attention to the bathroom— to the walls and textures around me. I know you feel like you’re slipping, like there’s nothing to hold onto, but we don’t know anything about him. We don’t know what he intends to do to us, or what we really are to him, Juliet. The best predators are the ones who can masquerade as completely normal people. Remember that.
Still, even with these thoughts, I find myself watching him. Watching the way my hero bends over the tub, dutifully checking the water. Stirring it around, so that everything is evenly heated. He’s even gone so far as to put in a few pearls of something. Bath salts maybe? Whatever they are, they smell amazing.
They’re much too girly for someone like him to have, but for some reason, I get the sense that these aren’t his. They smell like something belonging to a mother or a grandmother. Very rosy. Lilac and vanilla.
After a little bit longer, he turns off the water, and gets up from his perch on the side of the tub. “It should be just about perfect for you, I think.”
He dries his hands on a small hand towel. And, for some reason, I enjoy the smallness of it. The juxtaposition between that tiny piece of cloth and his big, rough but tender-looking hands.
“I’ll be around if you need anything.” He gestures to a little cabinet. “There are towels in here for you, when you’re ready to use them.” He pauses, searching my face.
I lower it, not wanting him to have any chance of seeing what’s been in my head. My desire to touch him. My fixation on his big hands and the tiny towel. “Thank you,” I mumble.
“No problem,” he says, and leaves me to it.
On the other side of the door, once he’s closed it, he reminds me that he will be around if I need anything. And to not hesitate to ask him for help if I need it.
I don’t answer, deciding he’ll take my silence as answer enough. He has for the last couple of hours, so he should have no problem doing so now, either.
Sure enough, he doesn’t wait around long for an answer. He just heads down the hallway. Slowly. Calmly. And I’m oddly comforted by hearing his footsteps out there. Probably because it reminds me of what it used to sound like when Dad would walk away from my bedroom after tucking me in for the night. Or when I would be taking a bath like this after a weeklong camping trip.
I shake these thoughts and memories out of my head, deciding to focus on getting out of my clothes. I don’t want to think of my dad right now because the memories just make me sad. And I don’t want to think of the stranger right no
w because it just… turns me on, which is weird, since I’m so sad about my dad.
And anyway, I think, as I step out of my sweatpants and underwear (they practically blend in with the sweatpants) and into the hot bath water, however you’ve been thinking about him, that’s… Just as I’m about to think, “that’s got to stop,” it kicks up into high gear, instead.
I start fantasizing about him. About his tall, firm physique. His thick overwhelming arms. His hands. How it would feel to have those hands on my small, sensitive bits; my vulnerable, shaken pieces. Those parts of me that never quite came back together again after falling apart.
I shiver, both from the sadness of my shattered self, but also from something new and scary: how strong my desire is to be near him. To be touched by him. And in more than just the way he does when he’s trying to “save me.” To be really touched by him. Held. Caressed.
You just are craving human contact, I think. I say a version of this out loud to myself, but my mind isn’t with that program. Even as I say it to myself — even as I try to convince myself of it — I’m fantasizing even harder about him.
I’ve even brought my fingers down below the water, and into the folds of my pussy. It’s a place I haven’t touched in ages, and it shows. Even with the lightest caress, it’s already jumping, twitching under a violent pulse of pleasure and pain. My lips and clit are so starved, I think I can feel the ridges in my fingerprints down there because of how strongly everything reacts. But that’s not what I’m really thinking about or reacting to.
In my head, I’ve jumped unceremoniously into the abyss of my sexy savior: of his big, strong hands. His commanding arms bringing me to him, holding me to him, as he takes down my pants, and brushes up my shirt and bra. But it’s not in a forceful way. Not like he wants to violate me, but rather like he wants to help me. Heal me. At least, that’s what I’m imagining he’s saying to me.
Hold Onto Me_A Secret Baby Romance Page 4
