Fragged: A BWWM Military Romance

by Paige Notaro

  I owed her so much more to atone for my sins. For making her endure them and still granting me this.

  I could not withstand the ache of being apart longer. I shoved down my pants, spread her open and slid into her. I groaned as her tight entrance squeezed me, accepted me whole. Rosa’s voice went out altogether. It was just a high whistle of air escaping and the wet sounds of me plunging it out.

  I wrapped my arms around her and dug my mouth deep into her neck until her mouth sat warm against my ears. Then, I rode my whole body against her. Every inch inside her was exquisite, every second outside her, agony. I thrust into her harder and faster, gripping her tighter and tighter until we fit with perfect ecstasy.

  Rosa found her voice again, and soon it was hammering against my brain, breaking my will, making me lose control. The bed bucked under our coupling and just as it felt like the springs might twist apart, Rosa’s voice broke.

  Her hands scratched down my back, searching uselessly for holds. Finally, she gripped my butt and clutched it to me. She wanted me deeper. She wanted me to occupy her.

  She wanted me to make her my home.

  The very thought shattered me. I kissed her neck and slammed deep into her as warmth flooded me, before bursting out into her.

  After, we lay in the sheets, snuggling and smiling and kissing. But it was just intermission. Soon, I had her pressed her up against the glass window. I took her so that all of Atlanta could see.

  We slept well that night.

  But when I woke the next morning, she was already up and dressing for work. I managed to press her into the shower for one last session, but then we both needed to leave. She had her shift.

  And I had to do something I had already put off for far too long.

  “You got this,” she told me, as we sipped at coffee outside a Starbucks. She had little time, but she knew I needed her strength for this.

  I gathered a deep breath, like a sniper lining up a shot he couldn’t miss. I picked up the phone and rang the number I had found online.

  “Hello,” a man answered.

  The voice was lower and softer than I remembered, but I recognized it easily.

  “Hi, brother,” I said.

  There was a tremendous pause. A chasm that could crack my world in half.

  Then, there was a half exhaled breath. Air that left smiling lips.

  “Well,” Vaughn said on the other end. “It’s about damn time.”

  Epilogue

  I sat on the wooden bench at the precinct, drumming my fingers on the armrest. I had never expected the police station to be something other than an opposing force. My father had called it a thin veneer of civilization to hold in a city cracking at the seams.

  But the cops and detectives moving in the pit around me didn’t show it. They laughed, they joked - even the ones bringing men to the station in handcuffs didn’t look mostly unhappy.

  When I came in for an interview earlier in the week, they’d made clear my chances were low. But seeing this all just made me want it. I had to force myself to keep still as I waited for my follow up.

  Rosa squeezed my hand. She was dressed in a bright blue summer dress that ran just past her knees. I felt calm looking at it, like I was seeing an open sky. She rested her head on my shoulder and that brought my frantic energy most of the way down.

  No matter what happened here today, I would still get to leave with her.

  The police sergeant came clipping up from the side hall. He was a tall, graying black man, in a slim fitting teal shirt and black pants. He might have looked weak at first glance, but I’d seen guys like that fight. Inside, he must be all steel cable.

  He stopped at the conference room door, but glanced at Rosa peculiarly. Then, he ticked his head at me. I patted Rosa’s hand and got up to go in.

  “Good luck,” she whispered.

  The conference room had waist high windows looking out on both sides - into the precinct and onto the sunlit street. I sat down, and my world condensed to the thin metal-top table and the sergeant behind it.

  “Is that your girl back there?” he asked, flipping through a manila folder.

  “It is.”

  “She’s cute.”

  “She’s taken.”

  The sergeant allowed a thin smile. He had seemed to like me even when I came in the previous day. Of course, that wasn’t enough to mitigate my tarnished service record. Or my past affiliations.

  Rosa might just be though. She had insisted on leaving work early to be here for my second meeting.

  “So,” the sergeant said. “I had a chance to talk with this Montego, the military officer responsible for your discharge.”

  “Right.” I forced myself to breathe.

  “He was not what I expected. No camaraderie there. Not for me as a cop, not for me as a veteran. Guess they haven’t really changed since my tour in the Gulf.”

  “I imagine they want to remain impartial.”

  He shrugged, but continued looking through sheets. “In our line of work, community outreach is the best crime-fighting tool we have.”

  “I understand.” My breathing was not coming easier. I knew he had gotten something.

  “Still, he seemed to treat you different. When I asked him about the nature of your dereliction of duty charge, he basically told me it was a technicality.”

  The sergeant’s gaze lifted to mine, gaging me. I nodded slowly, struggling to keep the surprise of my face. I probably failed in a dozen little ways.

  “It was enough to get me discharged,” I said.

  “Yes.” The sergeant flipped the sheet over to some notes. “Now you freely admitted last time that you were punished because you left the base to go somewhere and help out your former outlaw biker club.”

  “It’s not something I’m proud of, but it happened. The only good was that it led to me cutting ties once and for all. ”

  “That’s well and good, but what interests me is that you got shot in the process. That’s hardly a technicality.”

  I shrugged. “That was an accident. It led me to Rosa. That seems like a fair exchange to me.”

  The sergeant met my eyes. “But you’re expecting me to believe that there was no other criminal activity? The MP had nothing else to hold against you?”

  There was the stolen bullet, the stolen keycard. There was my confession about the drugs, even if they were never found. There was a ton that Montego could have shared to crater my chances here, but he didn’t.

  “They don’t,” I said. “Whatever I set out to do, I committed no crime. It would be a dishonorable discharge if I did.”

  The sergeant sat back in his seat, lacing his fingers together and studying me for a bit. “Montego also said one more thing.”

  I mirrored his posture and felt the calm. This could be the knockout punch after Montego’s feint. If it came, it came.

  “What?” I said.

  “He recommended you for this position.”

  That was a knockout punch alright. I moved my mouth, but it took seconds to finally speak. “Really?”

  “He said you have a real commitment to protecting and serving. That you take care of people you feel are worth saving.”

  I thought of Rosa out waiting for me. She had shared what she said to him. She must have made him believe I had changed. It was something I never could have done alone.

  The sergeant smiled down at his notes. “I asked him if that was a danger given your known affiliation with a white power group. He simply said there was more to you than that.”

  He glanced out the window towards were Rosa sat. “I think I can see how he’s right.”

  “She’s my everything,” I said, trying to count how many times she had saved me now. “I mean that quite literally.”

  “I believe it. And so do others apparently. Even the ones like this MP who want you nowhere near him.” The sergeant gave me a piercing glare. “Listen, I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to answer honestly.”

  �
�That’s fair.”

  “Is there any hate still left in your heart?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t hate anyone. I was just too loyal a son. I was too blind to make my own choices.”

  The sergeant’s glare didn’t budge. “On the beat, it’s not about choice,” he said. “ It’s about instinct. Someone raises what looks like a gun, it’s your instinct that makes you decide what to do. The last thing the Atlanta PD needs is a scandal where a former racist shoots an unarmed black male. It’s the last thing I ever want to allow.”

  “I understand.”

  The sergeant just shook his head.

  “Now my nephew, he says that your instincts are good. This Purple Heart and excellent service record is a testament to that. I think you might be a good person, who tries to help without hesitation. But that doesn’t mean you won’t hurt the wrong guy without hesitation, too. How can I know you won’t?”

  His question was well placed, and I searched for an answer. But even as I did, a new fire raged in me.

  I wanted to work for this man. I wanted to serve this city in the way I had only dreamed of. I knew exactly why I could make good calls.

  “I can help Atlanta,” I said. “I already helped rebuild a country. My troops and I spent a lot of our time building things up. But we spent even more keeping people from tearing down what was built. There were plenty of times I had to make a choice to pull a trigger before it was too late.”

  The sergeant sat rapt now. “Those people weren’t black though.”

  “No, but they really weren’t white either. And I was still deeply vested in my family’s legacy in those days. To my father, there was only white and non-white.”

  “I see.”

  “I can tell you this. I only pulled the trigger a few times. I didn’t once make the wrong call, but after the target went down, there was always a few seconds before someone could check. And those seconds just kept feeling longer and longer. I tried to avoid them every time I could.” I forced myself not to drift off. “So you want to know where my instincts come from? Everything I have comes from my time in the Army”

  “Hmm.” The sergeant stroked his bristly jaw.

  The words kept coming up endless. If only I could take him into my head and show him who I was now. But maybe it was better if I showed him who I wanted to be.

  I leaned over, until I could just see the crown of Rosa’s dark head outside. “You see that girl?” I said. “One day, I’m going to ask her to marry me. And I think she’ll say yes. We’ll have kids together, maybe some sons.” I turned back to him. “Now you think I’m going to kill a kid that looks like the son I’ll probably have? You think I wouldn’t rather take the risk of losing my life?”

  The sergeant’s jaw hardened. “No, I don’t think you would.”

  The room glistened with stillness. We studied each other, and I could feel his opinion harden as mine did of him. This was a man to respect, to listen to and learn from. He was used to making tough choices and living with them.

  All that I’d made in the past few days seemed easy by comparison.

  He stood up behind his desk. I shot up with him, just as his hand came out.

  “Aright, Black,” he said. “You’re cleared for the academy.”

  He beamed at me. My heart swelled in a way that made me realize how much it had been diminished earlier. I grasped him firmly. It was all I could do not to pull him into a shoulder bump and yell “Hoo-ah.”

  That was instinct too. I’d find new ones here.

  I went out. Rosa only glanced up from her seat, before bounding over and wrapping me in a hug.

  “That obvious?” I said.

  “You didn’t look pissed.” She looked off thoughtfully. “Actually, you don’t look pissed that often at all anymore.”

  “Huh,” I grinned. “I wonder why.”

  We strode out into the sparkling early fall day. The red and orange trees rustled but didn’t cast leaves on us as we walked through them to my bike. We rode back downtown to the cafe by the hospital. I clasped Rosa’s hand and led her to the patio to find a nice table for four.

  Instead, that table found us.

  “Yo.” A wiry hand shot up from one of the tables.

  I went over, smiling. Vaughn sat eased back in his chair, looking like a bored high schooler, with his dark, metal-band t-shirt and faded jeans. His thin, diamond edged face held a joker of a smile, and his dark blue eyes lay half shut.

  That look had pissed me off so much when we both still wore our cuts. I’d been on his ass about standing taller for the cause, asking if it ever meant that much to him. Turned out, I was the fool, sweating and bleeding for the wrong thing. He’d been able to slink away from the darkness well before I could.

  Next to him, his fiancée, Meagan, smiled warmly at me. Then, she beamed and waved at Rosa. Her round milk-chocolate face burned crimson with joy. Rosa ran over and gave her a deep hug. Meagan’s sunflower print dress shimmered against Rosa’s blue one.

  The two looked nothing alike, other than their choice of clothing on a warm fall evening like this one. But in a span of weeks, they’d become as close as sisters.

  Sometimes you just clicked with a person in a crazy way. All four of us understood that.

  Vaughn pulled himself upright and slid over ice teas as we sat.

  “I see congratulations are in order,” he said, before I could even get in a word.

  “How is it that obvious?” I asked.

  “Well, you don’t look so angry,” Meagan said.

  This was starting to irritate me. “I don’t always look-“

  “Ahp, never mind.”

  The three of them set off in a burst of laughter. I buried a treasonous smile and sipped at my ice tea. It flowed down cool and smooth. But I wanted something that burned. Something that stoked the warmth that was settling in me.

  “Doesn’t this place have anything stronger?” I asked.

  “Man, just shut up and drink your sugar water,” Vaughn said. “We’ll get plenty blasted tonight. You’ll be toasty inside and out.”

  Meagan leaned into his arm. “Are we finally going to build a bonfire? Are we going to take our shirts off and dance around?”

  “Uh, what now?” Rosa asked. “I did not sign up for that.”

  I hugged her in by the shoulder. “What do you think you do out in the wilderness?”

  “I don’t know? Lay back, gaze at the stars?”

  “We do that too,” Meagan said. “They’re gorgeous out there like you’d never believe. But…after a trip or ten, you realize that they really don’t change.”

  “Not in a million years,” Vaughn said. “Whatever new you see up there, it’s just a reflection of where you are on our own planet.

  I stared quietly at Vaughn. His eyes lay wide on the dimming day overhead. He was beyond me now, in ways I could have never foreseen.

  I flicked my straw wrapper at him. “Christ. Thought you were studying history, not philosophy.”

  “History makes you philosophical, bro. There’s a lot of what-ifs nudged in there if you’re really keen on understanding why things worked out the way they did.” He eyed me. “After all, we got just the one history to help us figure out why we became who we are.”

  The thought shivered down my spine in a way ice tea never could. “I’d rather not think about the decades lost. Better to think about the possibilities still open.”

  “Do you know what these two are talking about?” Rosa asked at Meagan.

  “Very rarely.”

  Rosa smacked my forearm. “We’re here to celebrate.”

  “Yeah,” I took a freezing gulp of tea. “I apologize, Meagan.”

  “Aw, it’s fine. I mean your day is way bigger than mine.”

  “Nonsense,” Rosa said, grasping Meagan’s wrists. “So how was the first week teaching?”

  “Good,” she said. “The kids are super well behaved for middle-schoolers. I’m almost afraid of explaining something wrong.” />
  “Well, who sends their kids to a magnet school?” Vaughn said. “Old, rich people right? Boring parents, boring kids. Or maybe they installed chips to electrocute them if they said the wrong thing.”

  Meagan laughed. “It’s not quite that bad. But yeah, it’s a little like the kids don’t even need me.”

  “You already got a big kid of your own to worry about,” I said, flicking my head at Vaughn.

  “Aw, he’s tame. I have ways to get him to behave.”

  They eyed each other with such warmth that I tugged my own girl in tight. She and I didn’t have two years yet, but we would. That much of the future was certain.

  “Anyway,” Meagan said. “I’m only teaching there for a couple years to pay off debt. Once Vaughn graduates, we can go teach somewhere meaningful for a while.”

  “And leave me alone here?” Rosa asked.

  “I should be the one bringing that up,” I said. “You have family already.”

  “Well, I like my family as big as possible and nearby. I can’t go incommunicado for years.”

  “I don’t think I can anymore either.”

  “Yeah, let’s avoid that,” Vaughn said. “We’ve got no philosophical disputes left, anyway.”

  We clasped hands. Vaughn’s hand wasn’t quite as thick as mine, but I felt his strength all the same. He didn’t need me anymore, but we had each other.

  “Hold on,” I said. “Didn’t you say you have a cat at home?”

  “Yeah.” Vaughn’s brow crinkled.

  “What about it?” Meagan asked.

  Rosa chimed in. “You’re cat people? How did I not know this?”

  “I mean we have one cat,” Vaughn said.

  “Oh,” Rosa was shaking her head. “No thanks.”

  “You want something slobbering over you?” Meagan asked. “That’s affection?”

  “You mean someone who’ll stand by you till the day you die?” I asked.

  We set off in a roaring debate that had us burning and glowing in equal measure. It was fierce and hot and cozy like we were already seated by a fire out in the wilderness.

  The sky started to glow less bright, and we had to get going. We set the debate aside and headed for our bikes. Vaughn’s saddles already bulged with packets of food and bottles of whiskey.