I laugh, deep and long, so hard that I almost double over, before I pick her up again and carry her to the bed. "I plan on keeping you out of clothes as much as possible, Addy. You're not going to need them."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ADDY
THREE YEARS AGO
I stare at the computer screen, the cursor blinking in the middle of the body of the email, the message empty except for the address my mother gave me. She said that Hendrix is in Okinawa, on the other side of the world.
Hendrix is safely on the other side of the world, where nothing can happen between us. That was my first thought when I heard where he was. It's fucked up that I thought that way. It's fucked up that my first thought was about us, and not the fact that he's a Marine who could wind up in Iraq or Afghanistan. I was relieved that he was stationed someplace so far away that no one could possibly expect me to visit him. That makes me a terrible person, I think.
But my momentary sense of relief was immediately followed by an overwhelming sense of dread, panic at the thought of losing him in the War. I had to count by fours, then by eights, then by twelves, until I was finally calm enough to breathe again.
Why is it that I'm sitting here, filled with the same sense of impending dread now, staring at a blank email to Hendrix? It's only an email – it shouldn't strike fear into my heart.
I begin to type out what I want to say, one word at a time, stilted and disjointed. Then I erase the words and begin again. It's funny how the words flow so easily when I write them in my journal, lyrics to songs I'll never get the chance to sing. But they don't come now that I'm looking at an email to the one person I want to write.
Instead, fear clutches at my chest and I can't breathe.
I wonder when I'll be able to breathe again.
* * *
PRESENT DAY
Hendrix is as good as his word, and I spend the next few days with him holed up in the apartment where I don't wear a stitch of clothing except for his t-shirt when we come up for air. Otherwise, we screw and lie around naked and talk about stupid stuff, laughing the way we use to when we were teenagers. Hendrix's face takes on a lightness, a happiness that I haven't seen from him.
When I get a voicemail from my mother, lecturing me on how all charity donations, especially for things like my clothes, should go through her since she's my manager, I pick up a pillow from the living room sofa and toss it at Hendrix's head. "You donated my freaking clothes?"
Hendrix grins, looking completely and utterly fucking pleased with himself. "You're going to tell me you don't support veterans organizations?"
I slap him hard on the arm. "You think veterans want my closet full of clothes?"
Hendrix laughs. "Vets don't want your designer labels, sweet cheeks," he says. "They're going to be auctioned off and the proceeds donated to a veterans organization. But, I mean, if you want them back…"
"I can't believe you stole my clothes," I say, shaking my head. I can't believe I'm not angry. There's something about Hendrix that makes his completely over-the-top behavior, his over-protectiveness, suddenly endearing. Sex has to be making me stupid.
"I wanted you naked all the time," he says. "It's a small price to pay."
"For you maybe," I say. "I'm the one who lost her closet. You go and do something so terrible and then it's for a good cause so it's impossible to hate you."
"We both know it's impossible for you to hate me anyhow. Relax, sweet cheeks," he says. "I kept the stuff I knew you loved. It's in my closet."
Then he picks me up, his hands under my thighs, and carries me to the kitchen counter. My ass is cool against the marble, and he grins up at me from between my thighs. "I'll make it up to you," he says, touching his mouth to me.
"I don't know," I say, leaning back and closing my eyes, reveling the sensation of his tongue on me, exploring me. "It was a lot of clothes."
"You're a spoiled brat," he whispers, and I pull his head closer to my pussy.
"I'm getting more spoiled by the minute," I say, as arousal washes over me like a tidal wave.
* * *
Reality doesn't intrude on us until a country music festival I can't cancel. In the middle of one of the slow songs during the performance outdoors, I close my eyes and breathe all of it in for a moment, and I remember how fucking lucky I am. When I look over at Hendrix, standing off-stage, he gives me a "thumbs up" and that cocky, shit-eating grin of his. And I feel a hell of a lot luckier.
After the performance, about to get in the limo, when it happens. Fireworks explode -- once, twice, and then a smattering in quick succession. Hendrix's face goes chalk white and he freezes, standing there beside the limo door.
"Hendrix." I touch his arm, and he yanks it away, and he's shaking as another set of explosions go off. Fear grips my chest when I see this normally strong man paralyzed by something I don't quite understand. I take his arm, more firmly this time, guiding him into the back of the limo. We sit in silence on the way home, and Hendrix is shivering. I don't know what to do, but he doesn't push me away when I slide my arm around him. He just lets me sit there beside him, pressed up against him, until the trembling seems to subside.
In my apartment, I take him straight to my bed, strip off our clothes, and climb under the sheets. Neither of us say a word. Hendrix puts his head on my chest, lying quietly against me, and I look up at the ceiling for a long time, not knowing if he's awake or asleep. I don't know what else to do, other than to be here. And I hope that's enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HENDRIX
TWO YEARS AGO
"Cannon, you're writing in that notebook all the fucking time. Thought you were writing letters, but you never send them." Watson kicks the dust on the ground with his boot, spits the juice from his chewing tobacco into the dirt, then takes a sip of an energy drink.
"Fuck off, Watson."
"Touchy," he says. "I didn't know you were such a pussy. Maybe you're just writing in your journal, talking about your feelings and shit? You should go see the head wizard, cry a little on the couch or whatever."
"I'm writing a fucking letter, douchebag," I say, rolling my eyes. "You'd understand that if you had any friends outside of us assholes that are stuck with you."
Watson laughs. He knows I don't mean a word of it. He's a good guy, as solid as they come. He pulls out a letter from his wife Mandy, shows me another photo of their new baby, Amy, the kid he hasn't seen. We get email here, even in the mountains in Afghanistan, but Mandy sends him letters every week, packages too, when they make it. He's from Kentucky, not too far from Nashville, and I like him even though he's redneck as fuck, because he reminds me of home.
"When we get out of here, we're going straight to the coast, Mandy and Amy and me," he says. "We're taking a family vacation, away from her crazy mother, just the three of us. It's been a while since we've gone on a family vacation. What are you going to do when you get home?"
Home. I didn't think of Okinawa, and then Twenty-Nine Palms in the middle of nowhere, California, as home. When I think about home, I think about Nashville. I hated it when I was there, but now that I've been away from it, I've started to remember it fondly, the bad parts of it fading into the past. And the good parts…well, Addison was the only really good part of it.
I still haven't gotten the balls to send the letters I write. They just sit in my notebook. I can't send them, not because I'm afraid for her to know what's in them, but because it seems like the kind of thing you should say in person.
If I get the chance to walk the hell out of here and say them in person.
Here, we're living on borrowed time. Before we go outside camp and set a firing line, I offer up a silent prayer that we'll come back relatively unscathed. We've been lucky, so far.
The casualty count here is higher recently than in other parts of the country.
Casualty count. That's what they call it. It's clinical, sterile, a way of reporting to the higher-ups running the show how many Marines were k
illed in action. A man's death shouldn't sound clinical, I think.
That's the funny thing about death. It's not clinical at all. It's putrid and foul and the stench of it lingers long after it happens, seeping into your pores until you begin to think that you carry it around wherever you go.
I'm afraid I'll die in this hellhole.
I'm afraid that I'll go home but I'll carry this place with me forever, unable to rid myself of the stench of death.
* * *
PRESENT DAY
I stir when the sunlight shines through the window in Addy's bedroom, bathing everything in golden morning light. I'm on my side turned away from her, but she's pressed against me, her body lengthened alongside mine, and her arm is wrapped around my waist. I can hear her snoring softly behind me, her face nuzzled against the middle of my back.
All I can think about is how completely and utterly disappointed Addy must be in me for flipping out over a goddamned fireworks display. A wave of humiliation washes over me, and I lie there, unmoving, thinking about how to best extricate myself from the bed without waking her up. But then she nuzzles her face against my back, her lips on me, applying gentle kisses in the middle of my back. And I'm instantly hard.
I roll over and she smiles, the expression radiant. "Morning," she says, her voice thick with sleep.
"Hey." When I run my hand through her hair, she closes her eyes, pressing her face against my palm. "About last night…"
Addy snuggles up close to me. "You don't need to say anything about last night, Hendrix." She kisses me softly on the lips.
My tongue finds hers, but she pulls away, shielding her mouth with her hand and complaining of morning breath. "I don't care about our morning breath," I whisper. And I don't. I kiss her greedily.
I cup her breast and Addy melts against me, her voice breathy when she speaks. "I want you inside me, Hendrix," she whispers. She's wet when I reach between her legs and the fact that she wants me, even after last night, makes me irrepressibly happy.
I reach for a condom on the bedside table, and I'm on top of her, inside her quickly. I don't want to be anywhere but inside her. Addy wraps her legs around me, pulling me tighter, arms around my neck as she brings her lips to mine. "More, Hendrix, more," she whispers, and I give her more, riding her until she's swollen around me, her pussy demanding.
I don't speak, no dirty-talk of fucking her or how much I want to come inside her. She's quiet, the only noise now the sound of her moans, louder in the morning stillness until she cries out my name. "Oh God, Hendrix!"
I tilt her jaw up toward me so I can watch her come, the face she makes one of complete ecstasy. When I finally let go, it's white-hot pleasure as I come inside her. Afterward, I don't move. I just stay there in her, watching her chest make little heaving movements as she catches her breath. She puts her hand against my face, and I close my eyes, turn against her palm, into her soft touch.
We lay there in the bed for what seems like an eternity. "I tried to email you a thousand times," she said. "When you were gone."
I nod, stroking her hair. "Me too," I lie. I never tried to email. But how do I tell her I wrote her a thousand letters I never sent? It seems like too little, too late.
She's quiet for longer, like she's gathering her thoughts, and when she speaks, her voice is soft. "What happened last night, it was about your deployment, right?"
"Yeah," I admit. "I don't know what to say, Addy. I froze up. It doesn't make me the best bodyguard."
Addy grins. "Schtupping the client doesn't make you the greatest bodyguard either, you know."
I can't help but laugh. "Fine," I agree. "I'm a shit bodyguard."
"You're the worst," she says, giggling.
We're silent for a minute, lying in the bed, and I reach out and run my finger absently down her arm. I don't want to stop touching her. "You're so… light, Addy," I tell her. Each word I speak makes me feel like I'm risking everything. "I don't want to contaminate you with my bullshit."
Addy raises an eyebrow. "You think I'm naïve."
"I think…" My voice trails off as I trace a finger lazily down the middle of her cleavage. "Sometimes I think darkness is the only thing I brought back from that place." I don't know how to tell her about any of it, because I don't understand it myself.
I don't drink, don't do drugs, don't do anything most people would look at and point and say, he's falling apart. But I run toward things that are dangerous, things that could destroy me – literally, during my morning runs. I pick fights and don't care what happens. I'm worried my self-destruction will spread, that it will destroy her. How do you put something like that into words?
"Maybe," she says quietly. "But I guess that's why light exists – to illuminate the dark places."
Then I roll her over on top of me, and she kisses me, and nothing else matters but her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ADDY
ONE YEAR, ELEVEN MONTHS AGO
A wave of heat hits me the second I step off the helicopter. "Whoa," I say.
The Airman next to me chuckles. "It takes some getting used to, ma'am."
"It's like being inside an oven," I say. "Is it like this all the time?"
"Hot as hell now, freezing cold in the winter," he says. "Welcome to Bagram Air Force Base."
I'm in Afghanistan against my mother's expressed wishes, but I had a gap in my schedule and even she could reluctantly agree that it would be good publicity. A nice side bonus of the trip was that there was no way short of Hell itself freezing over that my mother would join me.
But I didn't do this to get away from my mother, although my motives were, I admit, partly selfish. The non-selfish part of me wanted to do a USO tour so I could give something back to the people serving over here.
The selfish part of me missed Hendrix. Present tense, actually -- misses Hendrix. I don't know how you can miss someone you hate so much, how you can loathe someone yet crave them with every fiber of your being, but I do. My mother wanted to arrange a meeting between Hendrix and I, something that would play well on television, go viral on social media -- a dramatic reunion between the country star on her USO tour and her Marine stepbrother. The Colonel said it was a stupid waste of resources, flying Hendrix in from wherever-the-hell he is out in Afghanistan just to see me. When he mentioned that it would be dangerous for Hendrix and whoever was with him to travel, convoy from wherever they were just to catch a plane to see me, I refused to let anyone get in touch with his unit.
Part of me still fantasizes that I'll walk out on the stage tonight, and Hendrix will be there in the crowd, smiling at me with that cocky grin. It's naive, a stupid wish, and even though I know it is, a little piece of me is crushed when it doesn't happen.
* * *
PRESENT DAY
In the back of the limo, Hendrix slides his hand between my legs, and I swat it away. "Seriously," I whisper. "We're almost at the studio. Don't even try it."
He laughs. "Make sure you mention in the interview how totally full of yourself you are," he whispers. "Because I wasn't even attempting to get it on with you."
"Whatever, dude. You're always trying to put your…" My voice trails off and I glance at the tinted mirror that separates us from the driver.
Hendrix puts his mouth close to my ear and it gives me chills when his breath tickles my skin. "Cock?" he asks. "Put my cock in your warm wet pussy?"
He says the words, and it's like an automatic response – I'm immediately wet. "Stop," I order, sliding to the other side of the seat. "Behave."
"Yes, ma'am," he says. But he's chuckling under his breath.
I stick my tongue out at him, and he grins at me. "Careful sticking your tongue out like that, sweet cheeks," he says softly. "Or I'll give you something to lick."
"Right here in the limo?" I ask. "You wouldn't dare."
Hendrix starts unbuckling his pants, and I squeal, louder than I mean to, and the driver cracks the window, asking if I'm okay. Hendrix, of course, is the epitome
of angelic.
"Yes, I'm fine," I say, glaring at Hendrix as the window goes back up.
Hendrix takes my hand and presses it against the front of his pants, showing me his hardness. I should snatch my hand away, but I let it linger there a moment too long. When the car comes to an abrupt stop, I jerk my hand away and look out the window, feigning innocence. Feigning professionalism.
What the hell happened to my professionalism, anyway? I'm a giant ball of need and want and desire, preoccupied with Hendrix. We're like two high school kids, unquenchable in our thirst for each other. I'm surprised my lust for him isn't written all over my face, visible for the entire world to read.
At least, I hope it's not.
I watch him sometimes when he sleeps. He doesn't know, but I watch him as he dreams, his sleep fitful. He hasn't told me what he dreams about, and I haven't asked. But my heart hurts for him.
On the television set, the reporter asks me questions, easy ones about my album and last year's tour. "You recently auctioned off your entire closet and raised half a million dollars for a veteran's organization."
"It's hard to believe I had that many clothes," I say, suddenly embarrassed. It was little more than a decade ago that my mom could barely afford to buy us sneakers. Now I'm wearing thousand-dollar shoes.
"Some people have criticized the move as a blatant act of consumerism, cleaning out the old to make way for the new."
"I –" I pause for a moment. I'm supposed to stick to the script, talk about how veteran's issues have always been important to me, about how I wanted to make a donation that was personally important and not just write a check. Hendrix stands on the side of the set, and he winks at me. "You know, it actually wasn't my idea at all."
A Very Dirty Christmas Page 63
