Some Kind of Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Except it wasn’t.

  She put her hand on my thigh and started heading north, up the leg of my shorts, and I wanted—so badly—both for her to touch me and for this to be real. For her to have finally recognized that she loved me, too.

  But I stopped her, because I didn’t want to be her fuck you message to Brad. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be her Karen Possingham.

  Apparently, I was the first boy in the history of Lisa to say no.

  And I kept saying no, because I wanted her to love me. I had to be the guy who didn’t sleep with her. So that’s what I did. In August, she went to LA. I visited her on weekends during my senior year, and I’d bring a bedroll and sleep on the floor of her dorm.

  I hated acting—I liked the backstage stuff—but even though I hated performing, I auditioned for the same school, and got in. In hindsight, it wasn’t as boneheaded a decision as it looks. Even though my test scores were high, my grades were shitty because I just didn’t care, so the alternative was community college or the armed services. I was good at stage managing, and you could argue that learning how to act would help me deal with actors. But bottom line, I was majoring in Lisa.

  So, in the longest ’80s movie plotline ever, in August after I graduated from high school, I moved to LA, too. I didn’t have the money for a dorm room, but that was okay, because I just moved into Lisa’s room, where I slept on the floor—assuming she didn’t have an overnight guest.

  Seventeen months after I first turned Lisa down, she told me that she didn’t think she could live without me. And she asked me to be her boyfriend instead of just her friend. And then, for a while, I had everything I’d ever wanted, because Lisa loved me, too.

  Shayla looked up from her computer. “Let’s delete assuming she didn’t have an overnight guest. Maddie doesn’t need to know that her mother did that to you.”

  “Trust me,” Peter said, as he cut open the tape that sealed another box. “Lisa wasn’t doing it to me—she wasn’t thinking about me. At all.”

  “Still.” Shay kept it to herself, but she was pretty damn certain that Lisa had hoped Peter was listening at the door.

  “That change is fine with me,” he said, so she made the deletion and hit send.

  “Okay, Maddie,” she murmured as she also sent Maddie a text: Just sent another email. “Send me something back.”

  She and Peter were in his garage, where yesterday afternoon the SEAL candidates nicknamed Seagull and Timebomb had neatly stacked all of the boxes of Lisa and Maddie’s belongings that had previously been in the Palm Springs storage unit.

  They’d made the decision to multi-task and have Shay type Peter’s Chapter Three while he opened and searched through boxes. Neither of them knew what he was hoping to find, but they both agreed that doing something was better than nothing.

  Whoever had done the actual packing of those boxes hadn’t taken the time to label any of them. They’d also packed weirdly random things together, like piles of junk mail in with the coffee mugs. A small garbage pail filled with dryer lint had actually been packed in with a mound of unfolded laundry.

  Maddie’s computer was indeed deceased—a casualty of the quake. So after Shay had changed into garage-rummaging clothes—an old pair of shorts and a tank top that clearly dated from 2008—she’d brought over her own laptop. She sat with it now, in a folding lawn chair, in the shade at the open door of the garage.

  “What happened to make Lisa change her mind? Seventeen months after graduation,” she asked. Something must have happened.

  “Her mom died,” Peter told her.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah, it was rough. Not completely out of the blue, because she’d been ill, but…I went back to San Diego with Lisa. There were so many of her relatives in town, we ended up staying at my mother’s house. She assumed we were together, so she put us in my old room. It wasn’t a big deal, we were sharing a much smaller space in LA and I was fine with sleeping on the floor. But Lisa was really upset, and…” He cleared his throat. “We ended up sharing more than a bed—whoa! Hey! Look at this.”

  He held up a book, and whoa indeed, it was Harry’s War. The familiar red, white, and blue cover was from the first hardcover edition that had come out four, no, five years ago.

  But Shay was too freaked out by what Peter had just told her to really comprehend. Lisa had been upset—the way Shay had been upset after the earthquake. And sex had happened in both instances, because he was too kind and well-mannered to say no.

  It was stupid of her to be freaked out—it was exactly what she already knew. She’d been in need of his comfort and pity, and she was clearly female enough so that he’d run his bar hookup pattern and—

  Wait. Which was it? Pity fuck or bar hookup? Or maybe, in her case, a weird mashup of both?

  “Lisa was a Shayla Whitman fan,” Peter said, pulling more of her books out of the box. His ex had what looked like ten of them, most in paperback. “I’m reading this one—” he held up Outside of the Lines “—right now.”

  “What…?” Shay said.

  He stacked the books in a neat pile. “Yeah, didn’t I tell you?”

  “Noooo.”

  “I’m pretty sure I did. I downloaded it the night we met.”

  “You definitely didn’t tell me that.” Oh, my God.

  “I really like it,” he said.

  Oh, shit. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “Well, yeah, I know,” he said. “But I mean it. It’s well written, the characters are great—I could swear that I know them, that I’ve worked with them. You got that FBI team dynamic really right. But I think what I like the best is that it’s fun. It’s wildly entertaining—every time I pick it up, I can’t put it down. It’s like reading a really good action movie, with porn thrown in.”

  Whoa! Wait! “Romance is not porn,” she told him. “Porn is sex without an emotional connection. Romance is all about the emotions. I mean, yeah, insert tab A into slot B, but the end result isn’t just a balloon-drop with confetti. There are massive feelings happening, too.”

  Peter nodded. “Fair enough. But it’s also true that the feelings ping-pong everywhere. They aren’t quite You complete me.”

  “Well, yeah,” Shay said. “Because that’s bullshit. People—particularly women—don’t need someone else to be whole. They need someone else to stand beside them and help them be the best person that they can be. To support—and enhance who they are. Not to fill in some mythical missing piece.” She made a raspberry sound, muttering, “You complete me.”

  He was laughing at her. “I suspect I hit a hot button. I apologize.”

  “Believe me, I’m very familiar with the disrespect this genre gets.”

  “So why not write something different?”

  “Why are you a SEAL?” she countered.

  Peter smiled. “Got it.”

  “So, what part are you up to?” She couldn’t keep herself from asking.

  “The scene in the utility closet,” he said. “During the gala at the marina?”

  Oh dear.

  “Your characters have a lot of sex. Not that I’m complaining. Just observing.”

  “People, in general, have a lot of sex,” she pointed out.

  He opened another box. “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “I’ve had more sex in the past twenty-four hours than I’ve had in the past…hell, I-don’t-know-how-many years. And your characters are even busier than we’ve been.”

  Wait, what? Really? Was he saying…? Back in the truck, after that awkward friends-with-bennies conversation, he’d asked her about Carter. Was he now telling her…No, that was ridiculous. This man had definitely had sex—and a lot of it—post-Lisa. Bar hookup pattern, he’d called it. But bar hookups, by nature, were one-and-done—which made for generally shitty sex. Okay, maybe not shitty precisely, but certainly not transcendent.

  “This guy Jack,” he continued.

  “The book’s hero,” she said. “Romances have two main
characters—the two people who fall in love and win their HEA—actually, I prefer to say earn. They earn their happily-ever-after.”

  He lifted the box, which made the muscles in his arm do amazing things, and set it into the I have no clue if the contents are Lisa’s or Maddie’s pile before turning back to her. “Right, but Jack’s got this penchant for tossing Loretta up against whatever wall is nearby, and he’s always got a handy condom in his pocket.”

  “Safe sex,” Shay said as Peter moved toward her. His worn-out T-shirt fit him just fine, as did his ripped and faded cargo shorts. She cleared her throat and checked her phone. Still nothing from Maddie. “A lot of my readers are young women. Girls, really. Some are younger than Maddie. The message I want to send is that strong, smart women always have protected sex. And that one of the things that makes hot guys extra hot is their respect for the safety of their partner.”

  “But the wall-tossing part,” Peter said, reaching down to take the computer off of her lap. “That’s where I’m feeling the pressure to suspend a little too much disbelief.” He closed it and put it onto the concrete floor, on the far side of the boxes. “Sex like that can’t be comfortable for anyone, especially Loretta.”

  “It’s not about comfort,” she said. “It’s hot. It’s I need you now, and I can’t wait. Don’t get me wrong. Beds are great. They’re lovely, and yes, you’re right, most people make love in the glorious comfort of a bed, but I write those non-bed scenes to show the height and the power of the characters’ need and emotion.”

  He came over to her and held both of his hands out. “Come here.”

  She put her hands into his. He had very nice hands—big hands—with long, broad fingers. He had even nicer eyes, and she met his gaze as he pulled her out of the chair so that she was standing in front of him.

  He gently tugged her over to the stacked wall of unsorted boxes, and turned her so that her back was to them. But then he backed them both up about four steps as he said, “Okay, so when they’re in the utility closet, Loretta’s here.” He let go of her hand and took another few steps backward, putting a few feet of space between them. “And Jack’s here. And they’re talking, yada yada…”

  Shayla laughed. “You’re not seriously going to try to mythbust a scene from a romance novel…?”

  “I am, yes, so shh. You’re telling the story at this point through Jack, right?” Peter said.

  “It’s called POV—point of view,” she said. “And yes, that scene’s in Jack’s, but seriously, Peter…”

  “So we know what Jack’s thinking, and he’s mad at Loretta for taking that risk out on the balcony with the killer, what’s-his-name—”

  “Alfred Sinclair,” Shay said. “And he’s the suspected killer. They don’t know for sure yet that he’s—”

  “Right. But we know he is. And Jack’s a smart man, and in that moment when he was watching her with Sinclair on that balcony, he was terrified and now his fear has turned to anger, but he’s also relieved as fuck that she’s all right. And that’s brilliant, by the way, because relief can really bring you to your knees after a high-stress situation. Plus since we’re seeing her through his eyes, and she’s wearing that dress, and we know just how much she turns him on, so when she says Shut up and kiss me—or whatever it was she said, I’m paraphrasing—it makes total sense that he’d be, Game over.”

  “Thank you.” She was delighted. “That was exactly what I was attempting to communicate with that scene.”

  “What was it that she said to him…?” he asked.

  “Oh, God, I don’t know,” Shay admitted. “I wrote that book a long time ago. But the subtext was definitely Shut up and kiss me.”

  Peter smiled as the words left her lips, and she realized she’d played right into his ridiculous mythbusting hand. He moved toward her—fast—and kissed her, exactly as Jack had kissed Loretta in that fiery scene from Outside of the Lines.

  He wrapped his arms around her, which was a good thing, because the way he was all but inhaling her—his mouth hard against hers, his tongue damn near down her throat—made her weak in the knees. He lifted her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, and God, he smelled so good and she’d been sitting there all that time, watching the play of muscles in his back and arms and dying to touch him. So now as she kissed him, she did just that, and she felt him push her back so that she bumped up against that wall and—

  Whoa!

  The stacked cardboard boxes shifted and moved beneath their combined weight, and Peter quickly regained his balance, stepping away, and setting her back on her feet.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought I could prove my point without any risk of hurting you. I thought the boxes would provide a little give—just not that much.”

  Shayla was standing there, out of breath, with her heart practically pounding out of her chest. She could still barely stand by herself, and all she could think was that this must be what it felt like to get hit by lightning. How could he kiss her like that, and then…just…talk like normal?

  “We need a real wall,” she somehow managed to say. “So I can prove my point.” She made her legs walk and she forced herself not to stagger or weave as she went toward the back of the garage, looking for…“There.” She pointed.

  Hidden back behind the towering cube of unsorted boxes was a flat metal door that led to the backyard. Seagull and Timebomb had obviously taken care not to block it, instead creating a corridor with the boxes on one side, a real wall with utility shelving on the other, and the door down at the end. She put herself a few steps in front of it. “Let’s try that again.”

  Peter shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not going to slam you against that.”

  “You don’t slam. You connect. You use it to brace yourself, and me. Loretta. Jack does, I mean.” Oh God, she was getting a little too into this.

  “You used the word slam,” he said.

  “But before I did, I switched point of views,” she told him. “Right at Loretta’s line of dialogue. Kiss me—boom. New scene. For the actual sex, we’re now inside Loretta’s head. You were reading the ebook, right? Sometimes scene changes aren’t clearly marked in the e-format. I hate when that happens. Trust me, Jack doesn’t slam her. He kisses the shit out of her, yeah, but he’s always careful—in fact, he’s too careful for Loretta. She feels like he’s always holding something back. Still, when he grabs her and kisses her in this scene, it feels to Loretta like a slam. For her, that’s a really good thing, because not only does she like sex a little rough, she desperately wants this man to lose his mind over her.”

  Peter was paying attention—doing that thing where he really listened—and now he moved toward her. But slowly, unlike before. He leaned in, gently touching her chin and lifting her face up toward him, but then just barely brushing his lips against hers as he said, “So he kisses her, and she kisses him back.” He moved her arms up around his neck then put his own arms around her. “And he does this—” he lifted her up, his hands supporting her derrière, same as he did before, only slowly this time as he talked them through it “—so she does this—” her legs went around him “—as meanwhile, he’s doing this.” He carried her forward—his forward—until her back gently bumped up against the metal of the door.

  It was surprisingly warm. She’d expected coolness, but then realized that the midmorning sun was beating down on it, on its other side.

  And there they stood—not just nose to nose, but body to body. Shay could feel him hard against her and had to work to keep from melting into a little pile of begging protoplasm.

  “Okay,” he said. “It makes sense that as long as he doesn’t drive toward her like a linebacker, she won’t get hurt when she hits the wall. And I see how these mechanics work.” He shifted against her. “But he’s also gotta not drop her while they’re having sex.”

  “I think that’s what makes it extra hot,” she said. Compared to him, she sounded embarrassingly out of breath, considering she was the one being held, not doing t
he holding. “The idea that he’s giving her this—” she now moved against him “—while he’s doing this…” She ran her hands down his shoulders and arms and chest, where he was very definitely getting a workout.

  “This is extra hot?” Peter asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  He smiled and shifted all of her weight into one arm—what…? That was crazy that he could do that. But then he used his free hand to pull a condom from his pocket. “And I hear on good authority that this makes it even hotter.”

  Oh, thank God. Shay laughed. “My panties just burst into flame.”

  Peter laughed, too, but then he frowned. “Maybe this is where we bust the myth, because if I’m supposed to put this on with one hand, while kissing you…?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “You put me down—just for a few seconds, while we…”

  He did and she shucked off her shorts and her panties while he unfastened his shorts and tore open the condom wrapper. As he covered himself, Shay glanced toward the open garage bay door, but the pile of boxes shielded them completely from the street. In fact, someone could stand right in the driveway, and not know they were back here. It was really not that different from having sex in a tent.

  Peter was as perceptive as always. “Want me to close that?”

  “No.” What was her line? She smiled and said, “Shut up and kiss me.”

  Shay was right.

  This was fucking hot.

  Pete held her, her back against that door as he pushed himself inside of her.

  They both had their shirts on and she was still wearing her sneakers, but even that was weirdly hot, too. And the garage door being open added something dangerously sexy as well.

  This kind of sex not only put Shayla completely into Pete’s hands, but also completely at his mercy. He alone controlled how slow or fast they moved—she had little to no traction, save for her ability to pull him more deeply inside of her by applying pressure around his butt with her legs. But even then, it took almost no effort for him to resist her.

  Unlike Jack from her book, Pete took his time. Maybe he was showing off—look at how long I can hold you like this. But Jesus, he loved the way it felt to surround himself completely with her softness and heat, and then to pull himself almost entirely free and then do it again and again and again, while he gazed into her eyes.