All for You

by Jessica Scott

  He hadn’t gone in to work. He’d thought about going out. Thought about calling up Teague and Foster and going out to wreck the town. But he was sober enough not to want to drag them down with him.

  He kicked his feet up on the table and tossed back another pull from the bottle.

  “I’m not going to make any decisions tonight, Sergeant Iaconelli.”

  Fuck, the memories were in fine form tonight. He’d heard those words before. A different officer. The same disappointment. Three of his soldiers had died on the Thunder Run to Baghdad almost six years ago. The mission where he’d run out of ammo and water and waited for Claire to come and bail his happy ass out of a hot spot. The first of many rescues.

  His commander had threatened to relieve him then, too. In the middle of the fight for Baghdad, Reza had been read his rights.

  Man, Claire would kill him if she saw him tonight. He’d thought he could beat the alcohol all by himself. Tonight, when Colonel Horace had handed him his paperwork, he realized he was a fool for even trying. He fucked up fewer things when he was drunk.

  Things didn’t hurt as bad when he was drinking.

  If he closed his eyes, the green haze of looking out through his night vision goggles danced across his vision. Countless faces looked back at him.

  He took another drink. Maybe rehab wasn’t such a bad idea if he was seeing shit while he was awake. Nightmares were one thing. Hallucinations? Yeah, that wasn’t fucking cool.

  He held up the bottle. The clear liquid glittered from the single light in the kitchen. Two thirds of the half-gallon were already gone.

  Fuck. Why couldn’t he just go to sleep and wake up Monday morning and face his fucking sentence? Office call first thing Monday morning. Because the brigade commander wasn’t going to make a decision while he was still furious.

  Someone beat on the door.

  He took a long drink, wondering if he’d locked the door behind him or not. Teague would just walk in.

  The knocking came again, louder this time.

  He closed his eyes, seeing the field of eerie green darkness. He opened them right back up again at the sound of more knocking.

  “Fuck,” he mumbled, staggering to the door. He wrenched it open. It hadn’t been locked.

  Emily stood on the other side.

  He was always surprised by how different she looked in civilian clothes. A simple black long-sleeved t-shirt hugged her curves. Dark jeans that made him want to peel them down her hips. She looked elegant and put together.

  She looked pissed off and ready to fight. A small frown gathered between her eyebrows as she took him in.

  He held on to the door to keep from swaying.

  “Obviously, you’re having a crappy night,” she said by way of greeting. She didn’t come in.

  “I’m not fit company tonight.”

  “I think we’ve had this conversation before. The one where you’re drunk and I’m an idiot for being here.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I’d like to skip it if it’s all the same to you. Right now, I’d like to make sure you don’t die in a pool of your own vomit.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be looking for romance. Telling the hero you hope he doesn’t die in a pool of his own vomit isn’t exactly romantic.”

  “Yeah, well, romance isn’t always hearts and flowers. Sometimes, it’s hard work.” She looked pissed, he decided, not just mildly irritated.

  “So we’re having a romance?” He leaned against the door, something warm unfurling inside of him at the sight of her. Maybe he wouldn’t have to spend tonight alone after all.

  “I don’t know what this is, Reza,” she said, her voice wavering. “But I’m worried about you.”

  There it was. That tiny note of concern that broke a little piece of his heart. “You shouldn’t waste your time. I’ve been drinking since before you were born.”

  “Now you’re just being an ass. I’m not that much younger than you are.” She shifted and folded her arms over her chest. “Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  * * *

  She flinched at that single word. He hurt her. Good. He couldn’t deal with her tonight, no matter how well intentioned she might be.

  He closed his eyes, willing her to turn around and walk away and let him drown his sorrows by himself. It was all he was good at.

  He’d tried to do the right thing. He’d tried to make sure one of their boys was honored the right way.

  Turned out, no one cared about doing the right thing. He still didn’t want her here. He wanted to get drunk and pass out and piss away his last weekend of his military career. It was over.

  Because if she stayed, she might see the worst of him. The side of him he’d hidden away from everyone he’d ever cared about. There was a reason he’d never gotten attached but now this stubborn woman who’d run from the good life to join the army threatened to get behind the barriers he’d held in place through sheer orneriness.

  And what an inglorious end his career had come to. No more war. No more retirement.

  Just a whimper at the end.

  Emily took a single step toward him, closing the distance between them. She lifted her hand, placing it over his heart. Her skin was warm, strong. She was tougher than she looked. He realized that now.

  “Too bad,” she said softly. She lifted her chin, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

  * * *

  He had no intention of letting her in. She saw that clearly from the moment he’d opened the door.

  Emily considered her options as she stood in his doorway, her palm burning where she touched him. She knew about addiction.

  Right now, none of that mattered. What mattered was Reza was hurting. She’d never seen him as broken as he looked right now. He was a man who radiated strength, who was power and confidence.

  And tonight, she caught a glimpse of the man he tried so hard to hide from her. More and more of the pieces fell into place, revealing a complicated man who hid so much more from the world than she’d ever realized.

  All the pamphlets, all the research said she was supposed to force him to choose: his addiction or her. She was supposed to walk away and leave him, cutting him out of her life if necessary.

  She knew about cutting people out of her life. She’d done so before and had no qualms about doing it. But the sudden thought of her life without Reza?

  They weren’t going to have that conversation tonight. Not if she could help it.

  And what if he chose the bottle instead? What if he wasn’t willing to give up the vice he turned to every time the world went to hell around him?

  She couldn’t live like that. And she couldn’t stand there and watch him slowly kill himself either.

  Her throat tightened. No, her life would no longer be the same if Reza Iaconelli wasn’t in it. But drunk or not, she couldn’t leave him alone tonight. Maybe that said more about her own personal weakness than it did about his.

  Reza was worth fighting for.

  “Let me in?” She hesitated. “Please.”

  Reza sighed hard, lifting his hands to scrub his eyes with the bottle still gripped in his hand. “Fuck it.”

  He turned and staggered back to the couch, sinking down into it and kicking his feet up on the coffee table, bottle cradled between his thighs.

  Emily followed him in, closing and locking the door. He held the bottle out toward her. She shook her head. She wasn’t there for shots. She settled on water and curled into the other end of the couch.

  Silence was heavy and thick between them. Beneath his unspoken anger, his pain was a palpable thing.

  “So what happened?” she finally asked.

  “Beat up my company commander yesterday. Got my ass handed to me last night by my brigade commander. Pissed off the one sarn’t major who still believed in me by disobeying a lawful order from a commissioned officer.” He raised the bottle. “Typical day at the office.”

  “Why would
the sergeant major be mad about that?”

  Reza said nothing, refusing to look at her as he took another pull from the bottle. “You’re fucking adorable, you know that? You say sergeant major. Like the full word. Everyone else who has been in the army for more than a day says ‘sarn’t major.’ Not you.”

  “And your point is?”

  He leaned forward in a rush of energy, slamming the bottle on the coffee table before he twisted and faced her. “My point is that you have no idea what life is like in the brigade combat teams. The commanders and the sarn’t majors are the be all and end all. If Sarn’t Major Giles told me to pick up his dry cleaning, I’d do it. If he told me to take his daughter to the prom, I’d do it. And enlisted men don’t disobey orders. And we damn sure don’t beat the hell out of the men giving them.”

  “These people aren’t God, Reza.”

  He sneered angrily. “You don’t understand the power a brigade commander or a sarn’t major wields. They can save your life or ruin it. All with a word. One order. One directive.” He snatched the bottle back up from the coffee table and sank back into his corner of the couch.

  “Why do I think you’re not talking about Colonel Horace?” she whispered, fear slithering up her spine.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “And maybe you’re not. What did Captain Marshall do to make you hit him?”

  Silence greeted her question. It hung between them, heavy and filled with a thousand unspoken words.

  It was a long time before Reza spoke.

  “Marshall is just like his boss. Just a kiss-ass officer trying to make his own report card look good so he can get promoted and turn around and have someone kiss his ass. It’s how it works.”

  “There are good officers out there. I’ve met some of them.”

  Reza snorted. “You know who the good guys are? Guys like Teague. He’s a smart-ass who will tell you straight up that a plan is stupid. He won’t get promoted because of it. He can’t get a company to command because he hasn’t kissed the right ass. He went on the line for us yesterday so we could have the memorial for Sloban.” He pointed toward her with the bottle. “You think you know how the army works. You only know how you think it works.”

  “I know how it’s supposed to work,” she whispered.

  “And it doesn’t work anything like that.” Another pull from the bottle. He said nothing for a long moment. An impossible silence hung between them as a thousand emotions rushed across his face.

  “I fucked up, Emily. Sloban is dead. Wisniak is in the hospital. Marshall is under investigation.” He took a long pull off the bottle. “My career is over. Maybe it should be.”

  Emily scooted across the couch, sitting by his side. He kept his face covered. He didn’t acknowledge that she now sat shoulder to shoulder with him.

  “They’re throwing me out of the army,” he whispered.

  When he looked at her, his eyes were red and heavy lidded, his face flushed.

  * * *

  He hadn’t meant to say that. And the vodka had lost its appeal.

  Her hand slid up his back and stopped on his shoulder. She rested her cheek against him. No questions. No nagging. He expected them. But she said nothing.

  She simply sat with him.

  And in doing just that one simple act, she broke him.

  “Ah fuck, Emily. Why couldn’t you just go?”

  “I wouldn’t be much of a friend then, would I?”

  He shifted to look at her. There was worry on her face. Worry, but no judgment. “Is that what this is, then?”

  “Maybe we should stop asking what this is and just accept that I’m here right now. Despite you being an ass.” She smiled weakly.

  He wanted to reach for her but his bones were frozen. His body refused to obey the want pulsing through him. Because he knew he was going to screw this up, too. It was only a question of how much he was going to hurt her. “Maybe that’s more than anyone has ever done for me.”

  She nuzzled her cheek against his palm. “That’s really sad, Reza.”

  He shook his head. “Not really.” A slight frown but she didn’t pull away. “I’m not cut out for the role of significant other.”

  “So you keep saying,” she said. “But you were doing well enough. Until tonight, anyway.”

  “By getting half lit and pouring out my soul?”

  “Consider it a bonding experience,” she said lightly.

  The words he needed were there, just there. Everything. The violence of his father. His fear until he was big enough to take the man on. The pain of the beating when he realized he had to be bigger and stronger to beat the monster inside his dad. He wanted to tell her how the war had made him a man, a man he thought would do the right thing. The nightmares. The death.

  A man who turned away from others’ demons because his own were too fucking much to deal with. Wisniak deserved his support. Instead, Reza had stood silently by while the younger man broke. He’d never really thought about things from Wisniak’s point of view. That the kid had wanted so badly to be a soldier, to not think of himself as a fuckup anymore.

  Reza knew that kid. Because he’d been that kid, once upon a time.

  And Reza had done nothing, nothing, to help him.

  Blame and shame and guilt and fear twisted a furious, wild riot inside him.

  And the words were stuck in his throat.

  He wanted to lay it all out there for her, all the crazy, all the rage and the hate and the madness that threatened to smother him. But it was too much to ask of one person.

  He looked away from the compassion in Emily’s eyes. It was too bright. He was selfish enough to want to keep her near him so that maybe, just maybe, he could sleep. Which was a completely bullshit fantasy. There wasn’t some magic formula that would keep the nightmares at bay. Hell, there wasn’t enough alcohol or pills that could keep the nightmares at bay.

  “You should go.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m not some special project for you to save.”

  A sharp intake of breath. A direct hit. “I’m not here because of some noble desire to save you from yourself. I’m here because you’re hurting and I care about you. There’s nothing more than that.”

  “Why? So you can see the big sarn’t break down? So you can have me as some kind of case study in fucked-up GIs?”

  She flinched beneath his anger and the shame squeezed a little tighter on his throat. “That’s uncalled for.”

  “That’s exactly what this is!” He shoved away from the couch, staggering to his feet. “I’m not some fucking conquering hero. I’m a goddamned infantryman who is only good at three things in this world: drinking, fucking, and killing. I’m no good at anything else, so if you’re looking to save me and break me out at dinner parties as your personal hero, you’ve got the wrong man.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off. “Don’t stand there and tell me this isn’t some bizarre fetish about a man in uniform. That maybe you can be a personal hero to the man you claim to care about. I’m not a friend. I’m a fucking project for you.”

  “If this is the real you, I’ve been missing out,” she said softly, her words a mask of hurt.

  “What you see is what you get. I’ve never hidden that.”

  “Like you hide your tattoos?” She lifted her chin, defiant, just like the first day he’d met her. “Don’t go half asshole. Go all the way to full-blown asshole.”

  “You don’t get it. I don’t want someone to save me.”

  “I’m not here to save you, you ass!” She shot off the couch and stepped right to him. “I’m not here to be your shrink or your fucking head doctor. I’m here because I care about you, you idiot.”

  “And so what if you do?” He sank down to the coffee table, staring at the empty hands in front of him.

  She shocked the ever loving shit out of him by kneeling in front of him. “When I first met you, I thought you were a powerful man. Intimidating. And you are. But you’re more than you give
yourself credit for.”

  “I didn’t see Sloban heading for the wall.”

  “No one can see that.”

  “Everyone could see that.” He jabbed his thumb into his chest. “Except me. I fucking failed him.”

  “So getting drunk is a great way to atone for that?”

  “Fuck you, Emily.” He shot to his feet again. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “You’re right. Because you’re really good at keeping things light and fun, aren’t you? No deep soul searching. Not our boy.” She stepped into his space. “Did you ever think that maybe you drink so much because you’ve been trying so long to be so strong for everyone else, you forgot to take care of yourself?”

  Reza opened his mouth to argue but Emily cut him off. “I know about your history. I know what you’ve been struggling with.” She placed her hand over his heart. Right over his mother’s name. “I’m here anyway. You said I can’t see the real you but you’re wrong. This isn’t the real you. This isn’t the man I care about. But if it’s all you can see, I can’t fix that for you.” She took a single step backward, her heart lodged in her throat.

  “Enjoy your bender, Reza. Call me when you want to have an adult conversation.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It had been a week since her fight with Reza. A week she’d tried valiantly to stay busy and ignore the gaping wound somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

  It hurt that he’d walked away so easily from what she thought had been growing between them. She’d avoided the gym, changing her routine to avoid any chance of running into him. But still, when she’d gone for a run out by Engineer Lake, the disappointment that he hadn’t been there had stung. It wasn’t like she expected him there but a tiny piece of her heart had hoped.

  Hoped that he would make the next phone call. That he cared enough to try again.

  But her phone had stayed silent and she had thrown herself into work, doing her best to ignore the pain. To try and move on.