by Ivy Jordan
“Okay.” Quinn leaned forward a little and bit the inside of her cheek. “Okay, then I’m listening.”
I nodded and sat back, wondering where to start with this story. “I had a few people in my team that I was close with.” I couldn’t give her the team number, and I wasn’t even sure I could give her names—not giving her the team number and giving only first names would probably be fine. “John and James and Mike and I were the closest in the team. We did scouting stuff, some raids, nothing dangerous. When I went overseas, we weren’t in any immediate conflict, mostly just patrolling and making sure nothing happened.”
Quinn nodded.
“We got assigned to go out to this little village a little while away from our camp. We left in the middle of the night, hoping to get there on foot by daybreak. When we got there, we found that a group of extremists had taken over the area. They had a bunch of the villagers hostage; they had a bunch of their own people at gunpoint. Sometimes people here don’t realize that as much as these groups target Americans, it’s their own country they’re really gutting. Most of the place was rubble by the time we got there.
“We went looking for whoever was in charge. It broke into a firefight too quickly to process much of anything. Since we were outnumbered, we were just trying to get out of there. I radioed in for backup, a helicopter, some way out, because we were a few hours away on foot and there were hostiles all the way back. We were fish in a barrel, all of us. We ran through the city, looking for cover, and when we finally found it, I radioed for help again. The line wasn’t dead, but the connection was bad, and eventually, we just dispatched our signal. We all sat down, hunkered in this little hole in the ground that some bomb blew open before us, waiting for some help or some sign. And then John shouted ‘grenade.’
“I jumped. Mike pulled John up. We got back. James… James didn’t move. I didn’t grab him. When the explosion was over, we… we went back, and we found him.” If I closed my eyes, I could see it. If I closed my eyes, that’s all I could see, and there wasn’t any way to escape it. “He’d been… well. He wasn’t quite dead when we got back. I tried to stop the bleeding but there was no stopping the bleeding; you couldn’t even tell where it was coming from, and all at once he just… quit.”
That moment, the moment James became heavy in my arms, was the moment that haunted me the most. “He just stopped. Help arrived, and we had to leave him there in that hellhole.” I shook my head. “I should have grabbed him. They told me he should have jumped out himself, but Mike pulled John up and I should have pulled James up. I shouldn’t have let them leave him.”
Quinn’s eyes were wide, and she stared at me with something bordering on the pity that I dreaded receiving from her.
“I know now that it wasn’t my fault,” I said to her. “He got the same training as we did. He knew the same basics. He knew to back up when there was a grenade, he knew what to do, and he wasn’t fast enough. Even if I’d pulled him up, we would have both been slow, and then we would have both been dead. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I always feel like there’s something I could have done.”
“You would have died,” Quinn said.
“Maybe,” I confirmed. “Maybe.” I stood up and ran a hand over my hair. I hated the stillness in the air around us. This was why I hadn’t wanted to say anything to anyone about it. It alienated me, placed this experience on me that no one else could understand, let alone try to process.
Quinn stood up when I did, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and stared at my face. “I’m glad you didn’t,” she said. “Even with what happened… I can’t help but be glad you’re here. You’re lucky to be here.”
I kissed her cheek, and she kissed mine. My hands went up to hold her upper arms, smoothing my thumbs over the soft skin.
“I love you,” she said, her voice near to a whisper in the darkness. “I couldn’t bear to be without you.”
I sealed the space between us with a kiss.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
QUINN
I didn’t know how to respond appropriately to what I’d been told. The only thing I knew how to do, and knew how to do well, was to prove to him that I loved Sawyer regardless of what had happened. I kissed him, or he kissed me, and the world went quiet for a moment. I didn’t remember a time we’d kissed so carefully, so conscientiously, with such cautious tongues and lips and teeth and I knew we were going to be alright.
His hands moved down my arms, and he held my waist to pull me closer to him, and in response, I tilted my head to deepen our kiss. He held the back of my head in his hand, and I struggled not to get entirely drunk on this breathlessness. It was probably horribly inappropriate to kiss him like this after what he’d told me. We should be talking, I thought. We should be talking.
But God help me, I didn’t want to talk. When he pulled me still closer, my thigh brushed against his crotch, and he hissed at the contact against his building hardness. I couldn’t help but smile a moment, and that smile vanished when he pulled me back to kiss me again. He broke to pull his shirt off over his head, and he pulled mine off, too.
Instead of trying to have him pick me up and awkwardly carry me across the house, I led him by the hand to his own bedroom. He pressed me against the mattress, the weight of him over me both comforting and suffocating in the best ways possible. My bra came off, his pants came off, all in a flurry of fingers and pulling and breaking kisses.
His breathing was ragged when he pulled from me and placed a kiss on my jaw. My neck. I felt his teeth scrape the delicate skin on my collarbone and he left a mark there, and I couldn’t care enough to get upset that I wouldn’t be able to hide it well. His hands replaced my bra, and earning soft gasps from me as he replaced his hands with his mouth, tugging with his teeth in just the ways I needed him to.
My heart thudded in my chest and the heat growing between my thighs was nearly unbearable. I gasped something into the air, only barely recognizable as his name, as his fingers pulled at the edges of my underwear. I felt, at the same time, an unbearable need and the feeling that we had all the time in the world.
The scruff on his face scratched brilliantly down my stomach. He pressed his mouth to the flat of my stomach before scooting backward on the bed. His hands slid under my ass, and he pulled me towards him, sitting up only slightly to kiss the inside of my knee. Scalding kisses, scorching kisses, as he made his way up my thigh, and when he nipped the upper part of my thigh, I yelped a bit and heard him chuckle, low and throaty, in response.
“Sawyer, I—” I found myself unable to speak as he brought his kisses higher, and then his lips, his tongue, it all burned between my legs and I wrapped my fingers up in the sheets because his hair was too short for me to tangle my fingers in.
One of his arms came down around my waist to hold me relatively still, but still, my back arched up as his tongue circled my clit, refusing to give that shock of pleasure that might send me over the edge. I closed my eyes and cried out, trying to push my hips up, to force him to bring me what I needed. In response, his arm pressed back more insistently, his other hand holding my leg open against the bed.
I drove my ass further into the bed, spine nearly aching for how hard I needed a release. Before I could become upset, before this could become unpleasant, he zeroed in on that button, flicking and sucking and turning me into a complete mess within a few seconds, gasping for breath and attempting to hold on to my senses during my orgasm.
As I started to become more aware of myself, he brought his mouth back up my torso, leaving soft, almost reassuring kisses in his wake. I pulled him up to kiss me—my years of being revolted by what a man could do to me were far past—and he was more than happy to oblige, and for a few moments we only kissed. Until, that was, I shifted myself and brushed against the tight hardness of his erection.
He broke away from me to sort through the drawer next to him until he produced a condom. I watched him roll it down his length, and I shook my head slowly at the sight bef
ore me. He looked like absolute sin, muscled and erect and panting in front of me, like an animal in heat—but then what did that make me, panting every bit as much with my hair a complete mess and sweat gathered on my back.
I expected him to push me back against the mattress and make quick work of his own release, and instead, he pulled me close to him, continuing to kiss me. It felt like we truly did have all the time in the world. For a moment, this was beautiful, and then I began to feel more urgent.
“I need you,” I told him, and he could only grunt in response.
He pressed himself against me, not entering, merely testing the waters, and I groaned in frustration at his patience. Inch by agonizing inch, he eased himself into me, making soft sounds in my ears when he wasn’t pressing kisses to the side of my neck.
I pulled my hips up to match him, to nudge him further up inside me, and we both gasped. His head bowed against my neck as he began to move, slowly, in deep thrusts that had me babbling and aching and pulling at his shoulder blades.
“Please. Please.” I didn’t even know what I was asking for. I didn’t even know what I needed. I needed more, all at once, at yet I needed for this never to end.
He thrust faster, and yet somehow deeper, and he brought his hand between us to grind his thumb against my clit. I shouted out into the night as he drove against me and his thumb sped up, and soon, I was lost. I cried out, I shouted, tears collected in the corners of my eyes and I struggled not to tear skin on Sawyer’s back as my ankles dug into his skin.
He followed soon after with a broken cry against my neck, jutting himself once more, twice more, as I tightened around him nearly unbearably. It grew silent, then, save for the sound of us breathing. I didn’t know that I’d ever have a full set of lungs again. I didn’t know that I ever wanted to be anywhere else.
He pulled away from me slowly and tossed the condom in the trash. I saw stars when I closed my eyes, and he returned to my side, collecting me in his arms, and I leaned my head against his chest. His heart thudded wildly in my ears, and it filled me with pride to know that I’d done that to him in any capacity.
“I love you,” he said to me. His voice was both quiet and the loudest thing in the room, rumbling through his chest to travel to my ear.
I curled up against his tired body and pressed a kiss to the naked skin. I knew, at that moment, that this was exactly where I was meant to be. No matter what it meant to the rest of the world.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
SAWYER
When I woke up the next morning, Quinn was still gathered against my chest. I didn’t want to move and wake her up—until, that was, I saw that she was already awake, probably in the same predicament.
“Hey,” I said, not wanting to disrupt the quiet. I could hear birds outside.
“Hey,” she said back. She smiled up at me, and I wished I could have taken more time, all the time in the world, to appreciate how lucky I was to have her with me. I kissed the top of her head and gathered her closer for a second before sitting up.
“I told my dad I’d go fishing with him today,” I said. “Do you want to come?”
“I’ve never been fishing before,” she admitted. She sat up, a blanket around her shoulders as though she had anything to hide from me.
“Really?” I raised my eyebrows. It was hard to grow up anywhere around here and not eventually go fishing. “It’s a classic pastime!”
“For guys,” she pointed out. “I’ve never really been outdoorsy, remember? I never had a reason to go fishing.”
“Well, you do now,” I decided. “You’ve gotta come with us.”
“I won’t be any good at it.”
“There’s no being good or bad at it. You just sit on a boat for a little while and talk about stuff. Sometimes you don’t catch anything. You’ll do fine.” I smiled. “Come on, please?”
“If you say so,” she conceded.
After we got dressed and had a quick breakfast, we headed out to the nearby lake. We would have gone to Pete’s house to fish in his tank, but Pete wasn’t home, and Dad had made it relatively clear that he wanted to have some family time. I texted him to let him know that Quinn was coming with us, too.
He was waiting for us when we got out there, sat against his car. “Well, hello! Sawyer told me he was bringing a friend.”
“A friend?” Quinn lifted her eyebrow.
I laughed. “I did not!”
“You been fishing before?” Dad asked.
Quinn shook her head. “No, sir. I’m not terribly good with it, I don’t think.”
“You can’t be bad at fishing,” Dad said, echoing my earlier consolation. “And you can call me Eugene.”
When Dad turned around to get a fishing pole for her, Quinn smiled at me and shrugged. I smiled back. It seemed they’d get along; at least that my dad liked her. That was a big deal in and of itself.
We got set up on the river where the trees did a decent job of shading us. The river was cool to the touch, and we set up some lawn chairs in the sturdier soil.
“If you get too close to the riverbank, you’ll get stuck in the mud, and we’ll have to come pull you out,” Dad warned Quinn.
“Really?”
“No, he’s messing with you,” I told her. “Well, don’t get too close to the riverbank. You will get stuck. It just won’t be all that bad.”
She glanced down at her feet. “I wore sandals.”
“That might be a problem,” I agreed. “Sorry. Forgot to mention the mud. I’ll do all the stomping around down there; you stay up here where it’s dry.”
“Sounds good,” Quinn said.
“You could just take your shoes off,” Dad joked.
“No!” Quinn laughed and sat down in a lawn chair.
Dad held the fishing rod out to her and said, “Now, what kind of bait do you want? Do you know what kind of fish you’re hoping to catch?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “What kind of bait works?”
“They all do,” Dad said. He popped open his tackle box. “Here, you wanna get a worm on the hook?” He popped open the tub of worms and held it out to Quinn, who stared at me, mortified.
“Dad, come on.” I picked up the tub and shook my head. “She’s never been fishing before, remember?”
“They’re just worms!”
But Quinn was laughing all the same. “I don’t want to touch them!” she exclaimed. “Use them, by all means, but I’m not ready yet.”
“That’s perfectly fair,” I said to her—and to my father, who already had a protest forming on his mouth. I hooked the worm for her and made sure that her fishing rod was set to work properly. It wasn’t a particularly great fishing rod. My dad had the really expensive, top-of-the-line fishing rod, insisting that it was his best shot at getting the biggest fish in the river.
Quinn cast the fishing rod perfectly well, and we sat back for a moment talking about nothing and everything. Quinn told Dad a little about where she worked, even though Dad already knew, and I served as the occasional barrier when Dad made a joke that was just a little too cruel. All in all, it was a fun gathering, and I was grateful that two of my favorite people were getting along so well.
As the sun started to get higher up in the sky, the heat went from warm to uncomfortable. It reflected off the river and made for an unpleasant experience, and Dad declared the fishing time to be over.
“I think it’s about time we packed up,” Dad said. “Fish are all at the bottom of the river.”
“Wait, I think I got something.” Quinn furrowed her eyebrows and grabbed at the lever on her rod. “I think I got something.”
I looked at her bobber—or, where her bobber had been, but wasn’t anymore. “Oh, shoot. Um, reel it in. Give it a tug.”
Quinn tugged it back and started cranking the reel.
“Slowly, slowly. Let it fight a little.”
She loosened her grip and then began to turn the knob extremely slowly, and I laughed.
“Wel
l, not so slow that it gets away.”
“I’m trying!” Quinn exclaimed. She tugged the rod up again, and a fish flopped up on the surface of the river. “Oh my God, I got something!”
“You did! Reel her in. Easy goes.” Dad said, and he had a grin on his face.
Quinn began to reel it in, and the fish became visible within a few seconds. A small perch, probably just going back for a little nap on the ocean floor, flopped in the air, suspended by the line.
“Is that a good one?” Quinn asked. “What kind is it?”
“You want to pull it in?” Dad asked.
“Um…” Quinn stared at it, and I leaned forward to catch the line for her. I took the fish off the hook and held it in my hand.
“Look at him. He’s a great fish,” I said.
“I told you I’d catch something!” Quinn declared, beaming.
“You told me nothing of the sort!” I protested.
“Told you!” Quinn stuck her tongue out.
I held the fish out to her. “You wanna hold him?”
“No thank you!”
My dad laughed behind us. “If you’re not going to hold him, toss him back. Let me get a picture first.”
It was hilarious to me to take a picture with this tiny perch. But it was Quinn’s first fish, and so I smiled with her until Dad took his phone down and put it back in his pocket. “Toss it back and let’s pack up.”
I helped Dad lug some of the tackle boxes back to the car while Quinn got the chairs folded. For a moment, Dad and I had some alone time to talk.
“I’m proud of you, Sawyer,” Dad said. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”
“She’s something,” I agreed. I smiled and waved at her from afar. She grinned and picked up the lawn chairs.
“You two got any big plans together?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. I… I hope we do.”
He nodded. “Well, I certainly hope it works between the two of you. I like her, and I think she likes you too.”
