“Time’s what it takes, Win,” she said back, equally soft, the words filled with all of the love she had bottled up inside. “Time will take care of us.”
He knew that. Somewhere inside him, he knew that.
“I thought time would do it, too, but it hasn’t. It isn’t,” he said to her.
Jumping off the floor, Emily sat beside him, her hip pressing up against his. She took his hand and looked at him until he looked back, their lips close enough for a kiss.
“I’m not going to give up, Winston. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
Their wedding vows. She hadn’t sat down to say them. They’d just come to her. They’d promised each other, among other things, that nothing would ever separate them. He was a sailor. They’d been facing a life of him being gone for long stretches on ship. But no matter where he was, in what part of the world or for how long, nothing would separate them. They’d promised.
“I gave up, Em.” He was all Winston now. The man she knew. And loved with every fiber of her being. It was a miracle, the way the stranger in their midst had simply vanished.
“I know this is hard for you—I know you’ve been through hell. You were facing imminent death every second of every day,” she told him. “You’d seen guys you’d cared about be blown up right in front of you. But you didn’t die, Win. And you didn’t give up. You’d never have made it back if you had. But you did make it back. Just like you promised. I can’t tell you why, in a practical, technical sense, your life was spared, but what I know for certain is that when it was spared, you kept yourself alive. You came back to us. And the entire two years you were gone, I could feel you. People would tell me you were dead. Your commander, he said you’d died, but that they couldn’t find your body...but I didn’t believe it, Win. Because I could still feel you. Just like, somewhere deep inside you, you could feel me. It sounds nuts, but it’s always been that way with us, you know that. Even if you can’t feel it right now, you must remember...”
“I remember.”
Oh God, the miracle of this night. She couldn’t help the tears that flooded her eyes, the way her hands shook as she held on to him.
“You’ll feel it again, Win. I’m as sure of that as I am that you kept yourself alive for us, and that I believed you were alive the whole time. It’s who we are. It’s what we do. What we’ve always done...”
She couldn’t stop saying it. The truth was in her core and there was no silencing it anymore. She was fighting for them, and she’d never stop fighting...
“I married a woman in the Afghan desert, Em. I lived with her. I slept with her.”
The words knocked Emily’s heart unconscious.
And she couldn’t fight.
Chapter Eighteen
Winston moved out a couple of hours later. He didn’t take much with him. Just the duffel he’d come in with. A few extra toiletries he’d purchased in the interim. And some clothes. Until their lawyers could put paperwork together, until he knew where he stood with San Antonio and finances, he’d be staying at the barracks.
He’d asked if she minded keeping his things at the house for a while longer.
She’d said the house belonged to both of them and seeing that his things had been there for the past two years, she didn’t think another few months would matter. Or something to that effect.
She hadn’t asked a thing about Afsoon. Not even her name. She’d been in shock. And then she’d just shut down on him.
He’d known what it would do to her—telling her. Hadn’t meant to do so.
But he’d almost made love with her in his sleep.
No way could he do that to her—make love to her with her thinking he was what he’d always been—that he’d been inside no woman but her.
He’d been tested—he wasn’t carrying anything. But with him and Emily, their fidelity to each other hadn’t been one damned thing to do with health.
And their relationship had been everything about truth. Some guys could have a thing on the side—maybe just once in a marriage, even, a true mistake—and say nothing. He wasn’t that guy.
And he could no longer trust himself to live with Emily and not make love to her. His time was up.
He picked up a six-pack of beer on the way to the base that morning. And once he was settled in the furnished one-bedroom unit he’d been assigned, sheets and towels included, he popped the top on the first bottle. He could put them away with the best of them. Just hadn’t done so in a long time.
He did that Sunday. He finished off the six-pack. Thought about taking a walk for more, but ended up lying on the bed, watching football. One game. Then two. On to the night game. He couldn’t say who was playing, much less who won. Didn’t give a rat’s ass about who ran for how many yards, how many completed passes he saw, or who was out with injuries.
He cared about Emily.
When it started to get dark, he called her.
“Hello?”
He hadn’t really expected that she’d pick up. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry, Em. So sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“What did you do today?”
“Bought a wardrobe of clothes for Tristan Dane, three different sizes, sheets and little hoodie towels, disposable diapers and a year’s worth of baby wipes.”
He’d asked.
“Tristan Dane?” She was naming the child after him? Even then?
“I know you didn’t want him to have your first name, but he’s part of you and a boy needs to feel like he’s part of his father. Since I can’t guarantee that you’ll have an active role in his life, I at least want him to know he was important enough to you to carry part of your name.”
Lying on his bed, only the television’s glow for light, he wished he had more beer. “You decided all that today?”
“Most of it. I’d already decided on the name.”
And she hadn’t changed her mind. For the child’s sake.
He’d muted the television, but the game was back on, following the commercial break that had finally pushed him into calling her. It was hard to forget your marriage was over when you were watching an insurance commercial depicting a happy family living a great life.
Maybe if he’d bought some of that particular insurance his unit wouldn’t have ended up on the wrong end of enemy fire.
“Why’d you pick up when I called?” he asked, the beer no longer making him sleepy, but still affecting him enough to allow the question to slip through.
“You’re Winston. I’ve picked up every time since the very first time you called me.”
He figured it would only be a matter of time until that changed. Because everything did.
She didn’t ask him about Afghanistan. About any of it. And since he had nothing that could help her, he rang off.
The next evening, he was right in the same exact place. Lying propped up on pillows on the double bed, a football game on the television. He’d brought another six-pack of beer back to his place, along with a sub, but was only on his second drink.
He’d had a good workout that day, followed by another Coronado beach run. Then a meeting with a group of men and women who were working to keep the United States safe from terrorist attack. He’d had no idea he’d retained so much information during his time in captivity, but was glad he had. At least he was good at the thing he was built to do.
He’d canceled his meeting with Adamson. He’d catch up with her later in the week.
Lobbing the sub bag toward the trash can in a corner of the room, he gave himself two points for making it. And the phone rang.
Emily.
“Hello.”
“I need to know, Winston.”
“Know what?”
“All of it. Who is she? Did you know her before you were captured? How
long have you been...married...?” Sounded like she gritted her teeth on the last word. “Where is she now? Have you been in contact with her since you got back?” Her voice broke then.
Muting the television, he stared at the nondescript beige wall, wishing he’d died that day in the desert, right beside Danny.
“Her name is Afsoon.”
“Afsoon.” Bitterness mixed with tears. It was a sound he would never forget.
“I told you that I went to the village as a traitor to my country...”
“Posing as one, yes.”
The distinction—that she made it even after knowing what he’d done to her, to their marriage—didn’t surprise him. Emily was Emily. One in a million.
Which was why, once he’d met her, he’d never cared to seriously look at another woman.
“I told you that they tested me, the first test being that I kill a US soldier and bring them the body, as a sign of my loyalty.”
“Yes. Danny. You used Danny’s body, dressed in your uniform.” Her tone was stronger. And yet...unknown to him. Lacking in whatever made her Emily.
And he wondered, as he watched a quarterback complete a relatively simple pass, if he’d been sounding that way to her all these months.
While she’d stood by him. Still believing.
If only he’d been able to hold himself in check for a little while longer. Just until her belief had been challenged as his had. He’d so badly wanted her to see, to look at him and know that their childhood fantasies had been just that. Then he wouldn’t have had to tell her all of this. They could have remained friends more easily that way.
And she wouldn’t be sitting home alone so desperately hurting.
He went for a third beer. Uncapped it. Downed half the bottle.
“The remote village I was in was controlled by Taliban sympathizers. Many of their customs... They’re hard for anyone raised in Western civilization to understand.”
He’d lived among it and still didn’t get it. And prolonging things wasn’t making this any easier. He just had to tell her.
“Marriages are commonly arranged, with the groom or his family paying the bride’s family. I didn’t have any way to pay for a bride, but they wanted me to have my own woman. They ‘gifted’ me with a bride about six months after I’d joined them. I determined that it would blow my cover if I didn’t comply.”
They’d have known he wasn’t truly one of them if he hadn’t accepted the gift.
“So you were married, living with her, sleeping with her for a year and a half?”
The pain in her tone burned through him.
“Are you familiar with bacha posh?”
Silence followed his question—a nonanswer to her own. And then, “No.” Even with just the one word, he could tell she was crying.
All of this misery couldn’t be good for the child.
“It’s a fairly common and accepted custom in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan where a family without a boy child raises one of their daughters in that role. She is dressed like a boy, has her hair cut short, and is then allowed in society, to escort her young sisters who have no brother to escort them. She’s allowed to attend school with the other boys and to play sports, sometimes, too.”
He’d had no idea...until he’d met Afsoon.
“When the girl reaches puberty, however, she’s thrust back into the female role.”
Emily hadn’t made a sound. He could still feel her pain, singeing his nerve endings.
“Afsoon was a bacha posh. She’d grown up going to school with a group of boys training to be soldiers. She’d learned all she could with them, wanting more than anything to be a soldier herself. She had great difficulty settling into a more submissive female role. When it came time to choose a wife for me, her family offered her up for free. By that time I’d already figured out who to listen to, and when and where pertinent conversations took place, and I knew that a deal had been made. Afsoon had offered herself up so she could be a good soldier and keep an eye on me. It gave her a chance to meet with the boys she’d grown up with. To report in. To be one of them, even if just for a few minutes a week.”
“Did you love her?”
He understood why she’d asked the question. And hated the foreignness of it at the same time. “No.” He’d admired her, though. Respected her.
“But you had sex with her.”
Thinking of Emily every single second. He wasn’t sure what that made him. He’d done what he’d had to do. And would do it again, given the same circumstances.
“Enough to keep up the pretense, yes.”
“Did you have children with her?”
“No.” She hadn’t wanted his children any more than he’d wanted to give them to her, not that she’d told him so. But they’d both been very obviously careful to make certain it didn’t happen, in spite of a lack of easy access to traditional birth control.
“What about her? What happens to her now that you’re gone? Won’t they suspect she helped you escape?”
“She did help, in a way—though it wasn’t her intention. I’d heard her planning with a childhood best friend, a soldier in the village, for the two of them to run off together. There was access to a Jeep that would take them to a convoy they were joining. They decided to set a fire during a village celebration to buy themselves time to get away. I used their diversion as my own chance to get the hell out of there.”
“Was it good with her?”
“My leaving? She didn’t know.”
“The sex, Winston.”
“Emily. Don’t do this.”
“Answer me, dammit. Was it good with her?”
“It was sex, Emily. Men like sex.”
“So you liked it.”
“No! It was... I got it up, okay, that was it.”
“And afterward. Did you hold her close as you fell asleep?”
“No.” He hadn’t fallen asleep beside her. He’d been lying next to the enemy. His only real sleep had come in the afternoon, when he’d had time alone to pray and study.
“I have to go.”
Emily hung up on him before he’d had a chance to tell her, once again, how very sorry he was.
* * *
For the next week, visions of Winston in bed with another woman, a dark-haired beauty with lusciously tanned skin, stabbed her again and again, throughout the day, and lying in their bed alone at night, too. The woman was there in Emily’s dreams, turning them to nightmares. She found a pair of his underwear left in the laundry he’d sorted before he left, and pictured the other woman washing them by hand.
Not that it would have been the same exact pair, but...
Hands other than her own traveling her husband’s body, knowing his touch, his particular scent, the way he moved his body when he was inside you.
She was crushed. Absolutely flat on the ground crushed. She went to work Monday, but not Tuesday. She spent that day, and the next, at home, lying on the couch, watching television, sleeping on the couch during the day because she wasn’t getting a whole lot of sleep at night.
After the second day of living like a sloth, she woke up Thursday morning, shook herself off and dressed for work.
The idea of Winston with another woman wasn’t such a shock anymore. Acceptance was on its way, she could feel it. The barbs would poke her for the rest of her life; she pretty much accepted that. Anytime she thought of him with her.
But she’d get used to them. Push past them.
And in time, they’d come less frequently, as he was less frequently on her mind.
She just had no idea where she went with the rest of her life without him.
He’d called every day. She hadn’t picked up.
He’d broken their most sacred vow. The rest had been flushed away with it.
But she knew, as she drove to work that
Thursday, a few days after she’d last spoken with Winston, that she couldn’t really blame him for what he’d done. He’d been in a life-and-death situation.
She’d rather he be alive than dead.
But “them.” She’d really truly believed in the sacredness. That they were somehow special, protected. That as long as they each believed, neither of them would ever break their vows.
She called Winston on the way home from work Thursday evening, using her car’s voice commands. It was almost dark. She’d stayed late getting caught up. Had discussed maternity leave in depth with Steve as well, going through each client on her list. She was going to be a mother. She’d had her time to fall apart, and now she had to continue doing all she could to make the most out of life.
The fourth ring sounded through her speaker system. He wasn’t answering.
And then he did.
“Emily? Sorry, I was in the shower. Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine. I’m on my way home and just wanted to apologize...for my behavior earlier this week. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up when you called. I will do my best to never let that happen again.”
She wasn’t making forever promises anymore. Ever. They weren’t real.
“You have no need to apologize,” he told her. “None. This is on me, Em.”
“It’s life.” She gave him the conclusion she’d come to. It happened whether you believed it would or not. “I also want you to know...I don’t blame you for what you did. It was the best choice, given the circumstances.” She couldn’t tell him she was glad he’d slept with another woman. Married her. Lived with her for a year and a half. Her heart was too raw to go that far.
“I’m assuming that the navy, or whoever in the government has the power, has seen that the marriage is legally ended?”
“A lot of Afghan marriages aren’t registered with the government, or in an official capacity like ours are. This one was not. And technically, it was Danny she married. And it is believed that I, posing as Danny, am now assumed dead in Afghanistan.”
Having The Soldier's Baby (The Parent Portal Book 1) Page 14
