by Skye Taylor
“Then what?” His heart was not behaving the way it was supposed to.
Meg re-wrapped her partly-eaten sandwich and dropped it back into the cooler. Apparently neither of them felt much like eating. Ben helped her collect the uneaten picnic. Then they sat, close enough to touch, but not touching. The candles flickered as darkness fell. Kip came back from his foray and settled at the foot of the blanket, his head up, alert and watchful.
“What’s wrong, Meggie?” Ben reached out and took her hand in his.
“Remember the first time we ever made love?”
Not the subject Ben had expected. “How could I forget? The back seat of that damned Mustang. What was I thinking?” He tried for humor, desperate to banish the dread creeping up his spine.
“You always promised me you’d wait for me to be ready for sex, but I didn’t really believe you.”
“You didn’t trust me?” Where is she going with this?
“I trusted you. At least about most things. But you were all grown up when we first met, and I was just a kid. You were so beautiful I just knew there were tons of girls who’d have jumped into bed with you in a heartbeat if you’d hit on them.”
“Men aren’t beau—” Ben cut off his standard comeback. “I didn’t want tons of girls. I wanted you. I was willing to wait.” His chest felt so tight breathing hurt.
“You were the same age as CJ, and I know he’d hooked up with half a dozen girls before he married Sarah. He talked about it when he didn’t think I was paying attention. Him and Stu. Stu played around before he was even out of high school. I wanted to believe you were saving yourself for me, but it just didn’t seem like you could. I mean, most guys don’t wait until they’re nearly twenty-five.”
“I’m not most guys.”
“I know.” Meg’s voice came out barely more than a squeak. As if her breathing hurt as much as his.
“Meggie?” Ben cupped her chin with his free hand and turned her face toward his. His heart was flat out racing as he tried to figure out what was going on in her head.
“We promised there would never be anyone but each other. Ever.” Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she was fighting them. His Meg, still trying to be tough. No matter what kind of pain was going on inside her. “Ever,” she repeated, her voice catching.
“And there never has been.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know what you think went on between me and Anne Royko, but I can assure you there was never anything like that. She hit on me, but, Meg, I promise you, I never strayed. I never wanted to.”
“I know that. And I know all the crap she’s been up to while I was away was about what she wanted. I know you wouldn’t ever cheat on me.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
A tear dribbled down her cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb.
“Why are you asking about the first time we made love and about me waiting for you to grow up? Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Yes, you are.”
Meg shook her head hard as if she could stop the flow just by denying it.
Ben spread his legs and tugged her over until she was sitting between them, her own legs stretched out inside his. He tipped her back to rest against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “Tell me what’s wrong, Meg. Whatever it is has been wrong since you got home. I kept thinking you’d tell me when you were ready to talk about it, but I think the time is now.”
Meg trailed her fingers through the sand beside Ben’s leg. Then she dusted the sand off and let her palm settle on his thigh. Her other hand crept up and settled on his forearm where it rested across her chest.
“I’m waiting,” Ben reminded her. He tightened his arms about her.
“It’s not about you. It’s about me.”
Ben’s heart lurched to a painful stop in his chest. Then it shuddered just as painfully into an uneasy rhythm. He sucked air into his constricted lungs and forced his mind to stop jumping to conclusions.
“What about you?” He forced himself to breathe evenly. “What about you?” he repeated softly.
Please, God, don’t let her tell me she’s fallen in love with another man. This John she mutters about in her sleep. Please, God, I can take anything. But not that.
“It’s about me and John.”
This time his heart really did stop. Ben was sure of it. But he refused to let go of Meg. He couldn’t bear to look into her face right now. He was glad her head was resting against his chest and she was facing the other way. He didn’t want to see what was in her eyes. Not if she was going to break his heart.
Maybe he shouldn’t have demanded she tell him. He could have gone on forever without ever knowing and pretending everything was fine. He could have gone on believing John was just her friend and nothing more. And he would still have had her in his life. And in his bed. But he’d pushed, and now the truth was coming whether he wanted it or not.
Meg tipped her head back and looked up at him. He kissed her on the forehead. “What about you and John?”
Meg grabbed his wrists and pulled his arms apart, freeing herself, then scrambled onto her knees facing him.
Moonlight and the flickering of the candles played across her face. He couldn’t make out her expression, but the fact that she no longer wanted him to hold her seemed to tell him everything. His heart cracked and shattered. Strange that he couldn’t hear the broken shards falling, but only the soft chuckle of waves breaking on the sand.
“It’s not what you think.” Meg sat back on her heels.
His head throbbed. His heart had gone AWOL. Ben tried to reach for her hand, but she pulled it back into her lap and wrung her hands together nervously.
What am I going to tell the boys? Or my parents? How am I going to go on living without her?
“I only told you the half of it when you asked me about John that first day.”
That much he’d known for weeks. But he hadn’t wanted to know what was coming.
“You mean, about being friends? About becoming friends after his father died?”
She nodded.
“What else is there that you need to tell me now? That you maybe should have told me back then?” It amazed him that he could speak so calmly with so much havoc going on inside him.
Meg stared at her hands as she twisted her wedding ring around and around on her finger.
“Were you—are you and John—” Ben swallowed hard. “Are you in love with him? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Meg’s head jerked up, and her eyes went wide. The expression of shock on her face was plain even in the flickering light of the candles she’d set out. She shook her head vehemently. “Noooo . . .”
“No?” Suddenly breathing seemed a little easier. “You’re not in love with him?”
“I care about him. I care about him a lot, but not like that. I don’t love him. Not any more than the rest of the men and women I served with.” The words tumbled out, almost running over themselves. She leaned toward him and repeated herself. “I never loved John. Not like I love you.”
Ben swallowed again, hardly believing he was going to ask her this, but knowing he wouldn’t ever be at peace again until he knew the truth.
“Did you sleep with him?”
Again she shook her head as if an angry swarm of bees were attacking her.
“Then what?” He was completely confused now. It was about John and about Meg, but they weren’t lovers, and she’d not cheated on him. So, what was it? What could possibly have her tied up in knots like this?
“I wanted to.” Meg’s voice was so tiny and brittle Ben could barely hear her.
“You wanted to what?”
“I wanted him to make love to me.”
T
hat stopped Ben’s recovery in its tracks. “You wanted him to make love to you, but he wouldn’t?” Adultery was an offense punishable by court martial. That much Ben knew. Perhaps this Captain Bissett cared more about his career than about Meg.
Ben tried to picture Meg propositioning the man and being turned down. Tried to understand why she might even do such a thing.
But Meg was still shaking her head.
Ben swallowed hard and tried to erase all the questions careening about his brain.
“Then suppose you start at the beginning, because I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
Meg sat motionless for several interminable minutes. Ben could swear he could hear his heart beating out the seconds. Then she squared her shoulders. She glanced at Kip, then brought her gaze back to meet his.
“We were just friends. That’s all we ever were. That’s all we are now, or maybe not even that anymore.” Meg took another deep breath.
Kip glanced at Ben, then Meg, and then back toward the darkness of the beach, keeping watch.
“When Scout was killed, I was convinced it was my fault.”
“You told me that before, but—”
Meg leaned toward him and pressed a finger over his lips.
“I know it’s not. It was never really my fault. But at the time I felt like it was. I’d been trained to expect booby traps and buried IEDs. It was my job to spot likely places and guide convoys around them.”
“But it was Scout’s job, too,” Ben jumped in to remind her. “That’s what he’d been trained to do. That’s why—”
“I know,” Meg cut him off. “And he found that bomb, and he alerted to it like he was trained to. What he didn’t know—what I didn’t see in time—was the detonator that had been fashioned of two bare wires between a folded square of metal. It was buried a few feet away from the bomb. Scout sat on it.”
Ben wanted to drag her back into his arms and cradle her like a baby. He could only begin to imagine how horrifying such an experience must have been to watch. His own mind scuttled away from the image of a dog getting blown to pieces. But she’d come to love that dog. How all this related to John, Ben had no idea, but that Meg had suffered was all that mattered. He reached for her, but she put her hand against his chest and held him away.
“Don’t! Don’t stop me. I have to get it all said, or I might never find the courage again.” She took another deep breath and hurried on.
“Afterward, when I was blaming myself and carrying on like a raw recruit, John tried to comfort me. He tried to tell me all the same things you’ve been saying. All I wanted to do was forget everything I’d just seen. I didn’t care how, but I wanted to just forget about everything. John was there, and you weren’t. He was holding me. And—”
Meg looked up at Ben then, and her gaze locked with his.
“At some point I realized that John was aroused. Like very aroused. I knew when he was going to kiss me. I could see it in his eyes, and I didn’t stop him. I even thought about you, but I didn’t stop him.
“I kept telling myself I should get out of there and run back to my billet. But I didn’t. I just let it happen. Then I was kissing him back. I don’t know why. I never thought about him that way before, and I don’t understand why I felt that way then, but I wanted him to go on kissing me, and I wanted him to do a lot more than just kiss me.”
She stopped speaking as abruptly as she’d begun and looked away finally. Ben waited, and when she didn’t go on he took her now unresisting hands in his.
“Who put a stop to it?” he asked as gently as his ragged breathing would let him.
Meg stared out over the dark sand, then back to Ben. “Me.” Her voice was small and tight.
Ben felt a huge load lift off his chest. They had a lot to talk about maybe and some trust issues to mend. But, she wasn’t leaving him. She hadn’t stopped loving him, and her feelings toward this other man had not ended in betrayal. He wouldn’t let this come between them now—or ever.
It might have been helpful if he could have talked to his brother, or even his father, but that wasn’t going to happen before this conversation was over. Ben had never been in such a situation. He didn’t have a clue if the urge for sex was a normal reaction to a scene of such carnage and death. Maybe it was. Maybe Meg didn’t understand her reactions any better than he did. But her desire and her reaction to this other man’s behavior were clearly eating her up even though she had not given in to it.
Her oft muttered, I can’t do this, John, suddenly made sense. Perhaps this Captain Bissett would have taken advantage of her had she been willing. She’d said he was aroused. And he had initiated the kiss. But maybe not. Either way, the bottom line was Meg had said no. She had kept her promise to Ben in spite of temptation. In spite of needing comfort in a situation Ben would never experience.
He pulled her all the way into his lap this time. She balked briefly, but he was bigger and more determined.
He cleared his throat, which thankfully no longer felt like a knife was slitting it open, and hugged her tight. “Being tempted and giving in to temptation are not the same thing, Meg.”
She huddled against him, her arms wrapped tightly around her own body. He wanted them around him, but he could be patient. He could wait forever if he had to. Now that he knew the whole truth of the matter.
He had to find a way to put her guilt into perspective. To ease the self-reproach that had been sitting like a ticking bomb between them for far too long. Their faith was central in their relationship and their lives. Maybe that was the path toward forgiving herself.
“Think of it like this.” He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “When Jesus went out into the desert and fasted for forty days, the devil came to him urging him to turn the stones into bread to ease his hunger. After all those days of not eating, Jesus had to be starving. He had to feel an enormous desire to give in to the temptation and put an end to the pain in his belly. But he didn’t. He told the devil to be gone.”
“Jesus was God,” Meg argued.
“Jesus was a man. He felt all the same things you and I do.”
“But wanting sex isn’t the same as needing to eat.”
“You’re missing the point, Meg. Hunger and lust are two of the most powerful human urges. Christ would have felt just as tempted to satisfy his hunger as you were to give in to desire. The sin isn’t in being tempted. It’s in giving way to the temptation. It’s in letting your physical needs become stronger than your faith.”
“You make me sound like a saint. But I’m not.”
“You were tempted. But you didn’t sin. You were in pain, and you wanted comfort. But you told the devil no. You’ve done nothing to feel guilty about.”
“I feel like I betrayed you.” Meg unfolded and looked up at him.
“I don’t feel betrayed.”
“Not even now that you know everything?”
“Especially now that I know everything.”
Tears pooled in Meg’s eyes, and her chin quivered. “I don’t deserve you.” Her tears glistened in the candlelight, then slowly overflowed and ran down her cheeks. Ben kissed her cheeks, then her eyes, tasting salt and thankfulness.
“And one other thing.” He tried to make his voice stern. His heart soared like a homing pigeon being given the command to fly home. “Don’t ever, ever be afraid to tell me anything again.” He brought his mouth to hers. “Promise me,” he whispered against her lips. “Promise me,” he repeated.
“I promise,” Meg answered before wrapping her arms about his body so tightly that he almost couldn’t breathe.
Ben let himself fall backwards, taking Meg with him. He nestled her into the crook of his arm and gazed up at the rising moon. He felt like the luckiest man in creation right at the moment.
“Were you ever tempted?”
Meg broke into the quiet murmur of the sea.
“All the time,” Ben answered.
“I mean, were you ever tempted to cheat on me?”
He rolled onto his side and gazed down at her. “Never.”
WHEN THEY RETURNED to the house, Ben went into the living room to light a fire in the fireplace. Meg fed Kip and then detoured into the bedroom to don a pair of ruffled shorty pajamas that were girlish, rather than sexy. She was in the mood for sex, but there was still a lot of stuff she hadn’t confessed yet. And she’d promised herself tonight was the night to tell Ben everything.
“I thought maybe we’d have that wine we didn’t end up drinking at the beach.” Ben sat cross-legged on a quilt in front of the crackling fire. He held up the bottle, then, without waiting for her to respond, half-filled two wine glasses he’d chosen over the plastic ones she’d packed in the cooler.
She joined him and accepted the glass he offered her. Kip hovered in the doorway as if not sure of his welcome. Meg patted the corner of the quilt. Kip came over and sat down. She put a hand out to ruffle his fur, then turned to Ben.
“Is he ever going back to police work?”
“I don’t think so.” Ben reached across her to give the dog’s ear a scratch. “I asked Officer Brady if the family of the fallen handler wanted to adopt him as a pet.”
Meg’s heart froze. For weeks she’d wanted the dog gone. Now she wanted him to stay. For the rest of his life. “And?”
“They didn’t. Brady asked if I could look around for an appropriate family.”
“So—” Meg paused, then, before Ben could reply, she hurried on. “We can adopt him. I want to adopt him. Can we?” She stared down at her wineglass, turning the stem between her fingers.
“You aren’t trying to replace Scout, are you?” Ben tipped his head to the side so he could look into her eyes. “Because that wouldn’t be fair to Kip.”
“I know that.” Meg returned Ben’s intent gaze. “But I had an idea. About what his next job could be. Him and me together, I mean.”
“Kip might be a good candidate for a service dog. I was thinking that if I . . . if we . . .” Ben floundered and didn’t finish his thought.
