by Mila Ferrera
I take his hand and lead him to the couch. I think his bed would be more comfortable, but after what I did last night, I don’t want him to think I’m trying to tease him or use him. I do want to be close to him, though. Despite the fact that we’re both half-naked, it’s not sexual at the moment. I can’t fight the desire to hold onto him, to offer him whatever comfort I can. He seems willing to accept it, too, because he sinks into the cushions and rests his head on my chest. His arm coils around my waist, and I slide my fingers into his hair, wondering at exactly how well we fit.
“A few weeks after it happened, after his family had been notified, after his remains got sent back, his fiancée contacted me through Facebook,” he says, the heat of his breath warming my skin. “She said that Sam had considered me a good friend, and she knew I was from Michigan.”
“He was from Elkhart,” I murmur.
“Whoa,” he says, raising his head a little. “Wait—how did you—”
“That night, when you were so drunk. You seemed to think you were in Elkhart.”
He melts onto me again. “I had promised Jen that I would come and talk to her and his parents. And they … they’d been told enough to know I was there when he was killed. They wanted me to go and tell them about his last moments.”
I stroke my hand down the taut muscles of his back. “Did they have any idea how hard that might be for you?”
“They knew it would be hard for all of us.”
“I get that. But for you, being right there—”
“I should have been able to do that for him. Jen said it—she said I owed it to him, and she was right. He would have done it for me.”
I feel a trickle of moisture on my chest and realize that it’s a tear. It only makes me hold him tighter. “But that night, it was too much. You weren’t ready.”
He shudders against me, a dry, noiseless laugh. “So much so that I only made it as far as the gun dealer in Stevensville, and then I made a very different kind of plan. Threw my phone out the window like a jackass and bought a bottle of bourbon like a fool. God, I’m so—”
“You were in pain,” I say, kissing his forehead. “Someone you loved was killed right in front of you, Nate. No one with normal feelings would walk away from that okay.”
“He didn’t have to move. He should have let me get shot. He might have been able to nail that motherfucker. And if I hadn’t been so oblivious, if I’d been paying any attention at all, I could have made the shot. I could have saved him and the others. I failed them.”
“So you’ve found a way to make all of it your fault. Because you were oblivious. And a jackass. And stupid. You’re being awfully hard on yourself.”
“Did I mention that I didn’t need a second therapist?”
I sigh. “I’m sorry, but it kills me to hear you tear yourself down, when I think you’re one of the best people I know.”
“Maybe you don’t know me very well.”
I stare up at the ceiling as the floor above us creaks. “Maybe I know you just enough, but not nearly as well as I want to.”
“Don’t say that shit because you feel sorry for me, Sasha. It makes me feel worse.”
Frustration zings through me, slicing at the ache of sorrow and sharpening my voice. “You know what? Sometimes you are an idiot.”
He snorts. “So we’re on the same page—”
I lightly smack his cheek. “No. Listen to me. I see you, Nate. You hide a lot of stuff really well, but I see how hard you’re trying to be okay for everyone around you. Now I understand better just how difficult that must be, and it hurts me. Because I want to make it better and I worry that I do the opposite.”
“That’s not your job.”
I tilt his head up and meet his eyes. “Maybe I want it to be.”
He blinks at me. “You don’t—”
“Shut up,” I whisper, and I kiss him. He breathes deep as he cups my face in his hand, as my tongue slips across his lower lip. Desire glows inside me like a lit coal, hotter by the second, ready to burst into flame. I open my knees as he tilts his body. His weight presses me into the couch, and when he shifts his hips, I feel the hard pressure of his erection against me. It draws a whimper from my mouth, and when he hears it, he groans and deepens our kiss.
I wrap my legs around his hips, my thoughts singular and buzzing. It feels like I could never have enough of him, the curves of his muscles, the soap-and-sweat scent of him, the scrape of his stubble against my neck. When he kisses the sensitive skin of my throat, I gasp and writhe against him, until I feel him right where I want. Only a few thin layers of fabric keep us apart. He bucks against me, and I grab his ass and hold him there, desperate to feel him inside me.
Nate curses softly, his hand closing around my hip. He pulls back and sets his forehead on mine. “Sasha—”
Ping.
Both of us pause, staring at each other. He opens his mouth to speak again but is interrupted by another ping. “It’s yours,” he says, rolling off me.
“Probably Aunt Cathy,” I say breathlessly, reaching down and feeling around for my phone, which ended up on the floor beneath the couch last night. I hope you had a great night, she’s texted. Will you still be home by 7?
“Crap. I feel really bad,” I say as I text her back. On my way. I’m supposed to be home twenty minutes from now.
Nate’s sitting up, his elbows resting on his knees, breathing hard. “She seemed happy to help last night.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never asked her to be with Dad in the morning, and she might be getting more than she bargained for. I’m so sorry about this, but it’s not always—”
“Sasha, stop.” He looks up at me. “You don’t have to explain why your dad needs to be your first priority. Just tell me what you need.” He stands up, then sees the way I’m gaping. He peers down at the very obvious evidence of his continued arousal and clears his throat. “Give me a second.” He disappears into the bathroom as I stifle a laugh.
A few minutes later, I’m in my stained dress and he’s wearing sweats and a T-shirt. “You want me to drive you home?”
I shake my head. “I just need to deal with this, and you probably don’t want to deal with my aunt. She’ll be way too excited to meet you. And my dad …”
He takes my hand, suddenly looking a little shy. “I like your dad. And I wouldn’t mind meeting your aunt. She obviously loves you.”
“She’ll love me less if I burn her out by asking for too much. I’m already planning to ask her for some help the day after my dad’s next big round of appointments. We have to go to Ann Arbor next week.”
“She goes with you?”
“No, that would definitely be too much. I go by myself, just me and Dad, but I’m pretty thrashed after.”
He frowns. “What day?”
“Next Friday.”
“Want me to come?”
“You … that’s … too much.” I can’t believe he’s even offering.
His grip on my hand is firmer now. “Are we friends?”
I watch his thumb caress the back of my hand. “I’m not sure what we are, Nate.”
“But at the very least, friends,” he says. His smile is sweet and sexy and happy, and oh, God, I want to see that expression every single day.
“Most definitely.”
“All right, then.” He fixes me with a faux-serious look. “I’m in kind of a weird position right now, and I could use your help. I’ve got no job. I’m not in school. I’m basically a bum, and all I’m doing for the next two months as I wait for next semester to start is hanging out—and going to therapy. And climbing the walls. You’d be doing me a favor if you let me go with you next week.”
I take him in, this man in front of me. Too good to be true, whispers a voice in my head. Don’t get attached. But I can’t help it. In fact, I can’t do anything right now but smile and tell the truth: “I would love that.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nate
I’m online, reading up on how
to talk to someone with dementia, when there’s a knock on my door. Half-hoping it’s Sasha even though she’s never able to come over in the evenings—she needs to be home with her dad—I open the door and find my brother there, holding up a six-pack of beer.
“Are you busy?”
I step aside to let him in. “What’s up?”
“Stella’s got a thing,” he says, setting the cans down on my table and plucking two from their plastic collars. “And we haven’t talked much since you moved in.”
I accept the offered can and pop it open. “We haven’t talked much ever,” I remind him.
My whole life, our interactions have been mostly physical. It’s been a struggle for dominance—body checking each other on the ice or wrestling in the living room—much to my mom’s chagrin, and usually while my dad cheered us on. Usually, it’s been me trying to hold my own, because even though I’m as tall as Daniel is, he’s always been bigger. When I’ve won, it’s always been out of sheer determination and a willingness to tolerate the pain. Once we grew up, we went out drinking together a few times. Even got drunk and tattooed together right before my first deployment. But it never involved deep conversation.
Looking at him, I’m wondering if things have changed. He gives me a funny look before striding over and plopping onto my couch. I sit at the other end, and we both face the TV. “Mom and Dad are worried about you,” he tells me. “You haven’t been around much—I usually go over there for dinner once a week. I think we were all hoping you’d do the same now that you’re home.”
“I’m kinda busy—”
“No, you’re not.” When he turns to me, his jaw is set, like it always is right before he rams me with a shoulder and sends me careening into the boards. “She’s really sick, Nate. She’s heading back into chemo in two weeks and talking about how she’s not sure she wants to go through it again. Both of them need us. I think Dad’s losing his fucking mind with worry—and you’re not helping.”
I sigh and lean my head back against the couch. “I’m trying, okay? It’s not that I don’t care.” I do. So fucking much. “I’m adjusting to being back. I haven’t wanted to worry them.”
“You think ghosting your own family keeps us from worrying?”
“Maybe.” If my parents knew that a few weeks ago I was so fucking certain I was going to end my life that I threw my phone away because I didn’t think I’d need to communicate ever again … “When’s your next dinner with them?”
“Stella and I are going over Friday.”
“Oh. I’m not sure …” I didn’t ask Sasha when we’d be back from Ann Arbor, but it’s a three-hour drive, one way. “I might have to take a raincheck.”
His eyes narrow. “It better not be some bullshit excuse.”
“I already had plans, okay?”
“With Brent and Aidan?”
I focus on my beer. “Nope.”
“With … wait, do you even have any other friends? Army buddies or something?”
I roll my eyes. Daniel’s always been the one with busloads of people to hang out with. Me, I’m no hermit, but I’ve never been outgoing. I have messaged a few times with one or two army buddies, but we’re in different worlds now.
“I have other friends,” I say. Well. One other friend.
“Want to give me some names? Maybe I know them …?”
“What’s with the interrogation?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Sips his beer. Aims for casual but overshoots by three hundred yards easy. “I talked to Marcus the other day.”
I scoff. “And what did he have to say?”
“In his own ever-so-eloquent way, he informed me that you cockblocked him in a fairly egregious fashion after my party.”
“He’s saying I cockblocked him.” Oh, there’s that anger again, just like on Saturday night. Fucking guy deserves to be dragged. “He’s a friend of yours? I thought you had better taste.”
“I never said he was a friend. But he did say Sasha was drunk and you took full advantage.”
“What. The. Fuck.” I feel a trickle over my fingers and realize I’m crushing my almost-full can. “So which is it—I cockblocked him or took advantage of a drunk woman? Or is he basically admitting that if he’d had his way, he would have taken full advantage himself?” Because that’s what it was. She’d turned him down before, and he saw his chance to finally have her when she was drunk and vulnerable.
“I don’t care about Marcus,” Daniel says. “But I do care about Sasha. Especially because it was my party where all this happened.”
“You actually believe I would—”
“I called him a fucking liar, if it makes you feel better. But Nora said she saw you practically carrying Sasha back to the building after she’d tried to leave the party.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I snap. “You’re all sitting around that fucking co-op, talking about how I’m probably a rapist?”
“Nobody really knows Sasha well enough to ask her if she’s okay,” Daniel says. “Marcus said he tried, but she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Why the hell would she want to talk to him?”
“He said they had plans that night.”
I set my can on the floor before I throw it against the wall. “If she had wanted to be with him, there’s no way I would have stopped her.” A giddy feeling wriggles in my chest—she didn’t want to be with Marcus. She wanted to be with me. But that’s nobody’s business but ours. “And she had the chance. She straight up said she wasn’t going with him.”
Nope-nope-nope. I almost laugh at the memory.
Daniel leans into my line of vision. “And then you brought her back here. Both Marcus and Nora said she could barely stand up.”
I pivot so I’m facing him. “She trusts me. We’re friends. And you know me well enough to know that I would never fucking ever go where I’m not wanted.”
He chuckles. “I guess Dad rammed that into our skulls in high school, didn’t he?”
“Mom, too.” I shake my head. “It was fucking embarrassing to get the lecture in the kitchen while my prom date waited in the dining room, but I think she wanted Carrie to hear it, too.”
We’re quiet for a bit, and then he says, “So. About Sasha. Caleb spoke up for you. He said he saw you guys together a few weeks ago, and that she looked happier than he’d ever seen her. He pointed out that Sasha’s blows off her work as soon as you show up, and she doesn’t seem to mind in the least. You want to tell me what’s going on? Because this is unprecedented.”
I bow my head, because a stupid smile threatens to give me away. “You heard me say we’re friends?”
“I guess I did.” He punches me in the shoulder. “But your ears are bright red right now.”
I scoop my dented beer from the floor and chug it before tossing the can in the sink. “Like you said that night in the co-op. She’s really private.” I turn around, and my shoulders sag. “And honestly?”
“I’m listening.”
“I think she felt sorry for me. That’s how it started.” I haven’t talked to anyone about this. Haven’t really had the chance. It’s been weighing on me, and I don’t know how to sort it out. But it’s also too humiliating to get into details, so I stick to the bare bones. “She knew I was struggling with Sam’s death. She—” She probably doesn’t want me saying anything about Ryan. Fuck. “She’s been really great. But I don’t really feel like I’m pulling my weight, you know?”
Daniel tosses back the last of his beer. “Nope. Do tell.”
“If you’re making fun of me—”
“I’m not,” he says. “But I’ve never seen you not pull your weight, Nate.”
“She doesn’t need me,” I say. “And I don’t have much to offer her.”
He chuckles. “You sound just like I did earlier this year. I wanted to swoop in and be Stella’s hero, and she basically told me to fuck off.”
I blink at him. “I can’t imagine the word fuck coming out of that girl’s mouth.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. But what I mean is, I wanted her to need me. And that’s the opposite of what she wanted. To this day, she’s sensitive about her independence. Hence my presence here tonight, by the way. She’s got her own life. Her own friends. And I wouldn’t really want her any other way.”
“But how old is Stella? Twenty-one? Sasha’s older. She has her shit together.”
Daniel arches an eyebrow. “Please don’t make me kick your ass.”
“Okay, I’m sure Stella has her shit together, too. But you know what I mean.” Sasha’s not only taking care of herself—she’s taking care of her dad, who is not exactly an easy character.
“My point was, why do you need to be needed? Sasha’s a grown-ass woman. She can take care of herself. What if she just wants you around? Not because of what you do for her, but because she likes you?”
“It doesn’t feel … equal, I guess.”
“Why do things have to be equal all the time, though? You’ve only known each other for, what? A month?”
“Seven weeks.”
Daniel snorts. “Give it time. Everybody’s got their soft spots. And maybe she’ll never need you to be her knight in shining armor—excepting last Friday—” He gives me a pointed look. “Or maybe, little brother, you do more for her than you think.”
I thought today would be harder, but it’s actually been pretty fun, even with all the waiting. I drove over to Sasha’s early and joined her and Tom for breakfast. I thought about joking with him about the over-sugared coffee before I realized he has zero memory of that morning, or of me. I think that if a stranger showed up and put me in a car and drove me across the state, I’d be kind of uptight about the whole thing, but Tom seems fairly relaxed.
I’ve lost count of how many times he’s asked me for my name. Every time he does, Sasha tenses next to me, like she expects me to get fed up and irritated. I remember the look on her face when she told me how Ryan started giving Tom a bunch of made-up names, like it was a game. I’m hoping that, at some point, she’ll realize I won’t do that, even though it looks like Tom will never remember me or my name. As long as he’s cool with me being around his daughter, I’ll introduce myself ten times a day if he needs me to.
