Trent shrugged Patrick off, irritation vibrating from him in waves. “Got it.”
Laura turned, her fingers twining with his, squeezing gently. She smiled up at him, painfully aware of the strength and power of this man. It had twisted up her insides to see evidence of what he was capable of right in front of her. Her hand trembled when he squeezed it back.
“Are you okay?” His voice grated.
“Yes.” He couldn’t spend the rest of the day this angry. It was bound to go badly for him.
She took a single step closer. Her lips curled into a soft smile. “That was, um,” she glanced around, “really sexy.”
His expression faltered. “What was?”
She slipped her arms around his waist, not caring that they were in the middle of the hallway. “You threatening him to protect me. I don’t usually go for the whole Cro-Magnon man thing. But I liked it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She flicked her tongue over her bottom lip, followed by a quick scrape of her teeth. “It’s lunchtime.”
“It’s not even close to lunchtime.” Trent raised both eyebrows, his jaw tight. She loved that she could still get to him, still see that desire light up his eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking we could sneak out to Belton Dam.”
“That might be risky in the middle of the day. There are Blackhawks flying around.” His voice sounded harsh. Tight. Erotic.
“When did that ever matter before?”
* * *
Trent walked into the ops office. Things were good with Laura. Too good.
He couldn’t let himself relax. Couldn’t allow the fantasy that they might actually have a chance at beating this thing take hold. There were a few more days until the hearing that would decide his fate, but now, knowing that Randall had lost a key piece of his defense by alienating his wife?
Trent felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.
He was a few minutes early and the office was still empty from lunch. Iaconelli, though, sat at his desk. His shoulders were slumped, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Hey,” Trent said, walking over. “You okay?”
Iaconelli looked up, his eyes bleak. There was a Gatorade bottle in one hand that probably didn’t have Gatorade in it. He swayed a little in his chair. “Story.” He swallowed a long pull from the bottle. “We lost Story.”
Trent’s skin went cold. He sank into a chair next to Iaconelli. Took the proffered bottle and took a long pull off it himself. The straight vodka burned all the way down and made his eyes water.
At least that’s what he told himself.
* * *
The bedroom was pitch black but for the light from the television. Trent laid in bed, the bottle held loosely in one hand, staring unseeing at the screen. The blankets were tangled around his legs. He hadn’t slept.
“Sir, what is it going to take for me to get new body armor? It screws with the guys’ heads to wear bloody gear.”
Trent looked up from cleaning his weapon. His own body armor had blood near the groin protector. “Well, I could give the logistics guy a hand job, see if that helps?”
“It might,” Story said, his face twisted into a concerned frown. “Sir, you okay?”
“Laura is leaving me.”
Story closed the door then and sat across from him.”That sucks.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
“How do I fix this? How do I get her to understand that I have to be here?”
Story shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. The old saying that if the army wanted you to have a family, it would have issued you one… it’s a cliché but it’s true. And you’ve chosen the army a hell of a lot more than you’ve chosen her lately.”
Trent tossed his glasses on the desk, staring at the stark words on the divorce papers in front of him. Reality squeezed around his heart, cutting off his air.
He’d done this. He’d ruined everything with his wife. He’d left her alone to raise the kids, to run their home.
“The wives never understand why we have to go,” Story said quietly. “Rebecca won’t leave me but we don’t have a real marriage. You had that with Laura.”
Trent heard what his friend hadn’t said. You fucked that up.
“I need to go home,” he said, looking at his first sergeant.
Story nodded. “Well, that’s about to get a lot easier. We have an appointment with the colonel and sergeant major in an hour.” He paused. “We’re getting fired.”
He shook his head, trying to shake off the memory. Trying to shut down the pain. But it ripped through him, tearing and slashing and slicing. The alcohol did nothing to numb it. Trent took a long pull off the bottle, his throat numb, the rest of his soul not following fast enough. He wanted his heart to stop. Anything to stop the searing pain that threatened to consume him. He stared into the darkness.
He remembered bits and pieces, flashes. Horrible, dark thoughts. An explosion of glass and violence.
Grief filled him. Smothered him.
He started to rise, but her arms tightened around his waist.
He looked down.
He hadn’t realized she was sitting with him, his body tucked against her. Warm wetness soaked his thin t-shirt. They were not her tears. He closed his eyes, unable to look at her, unable to pull away, to keep her from seeing this side of him. This terrible grief that made him want to do violence, to rush back to the war and exact vengeance for his friend’s death.
Laura’s fingers tightened on his waist. He buried his face in her neck and let the grief tear from him.
No words could encompass the emotions surging through his soul. She wrapped him in her arms and simply held him. In the silence, he wept. For every lost soldier. For Story. For Doc. For Ripley and Bull. For Naseem, his terp who’d lost his whole family to Saddam. For Garanji.
He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. But finally, he wept for the friend he’d lost. And this time, Laura held him when he shattered.
It was a long time before he spoke, his speech slurred. “Did you know that Story saved my life?” he whispered into the darkness.
“No,” she said softly.
“It was that day back in ’04.” He breathed deeply, the sound echoing in his ears. He felt empty, hollowed out. “When I got blown up, he dragged me out of the fight. He thought I was dead, too.” He grunted. “We were so inexperienced back in ’04. The round got between my body armor and my chest and my heart stopped on impact.”
“I’ll never forget what it felt like to hear that you’d been killed,” she whispered. “It was like the world dropped from underneath me.” Her fingers drew gently down his chest. “I didn’t know how I was going to go on with my life without you out there in the world somewhere.”
Slowly the force of his grief ebbed, no more a tempest but a trickle. He didn’t move, he couldn’t. And his wife, his wife was still there.
“You stayed with me,” Trent murmured, his voice sore. He cradled her face in his hands.
She sniffed, her hands fluttering over his chest, like she didn’t know what to do with them. He lowered his forehead to hers, tears leaking out from behind his closed eyes once more. She simply wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his.
He paused before speaking again, and when he did it was a whisper more powerful than the loudest shout.
“I was wrong… so goddamned fucking wrong.”
Her arms tightened around his neck. “About what?”
“About the war, the army, fucking everything. Every choice I’ve made has been wrong. Terribly fucking wrong.” He cupped her cheek. “Except the one to come back to you.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “I was coming home before I got fired. I was going to figure out how to fix this and then I was going to go back to my boys. But I was wrong about that, too. You’re the only thing in the entire world that I’ve ever gotten right.” He ran his fingers over her cheeks. “Regardless of how the hearing turns out, I’m quitting.”
/>
“Quitting what?” There was a wariness in her voice. A fear.
“Everything. The army. The war. I want to stay home and be a dad.” His brows drew into another frown. “I want to be here for you.”
“I’m not asking you to do that.” Her voice was thick with emotion. He hated that he was hurting her all over again.
“You should. You should demand the world from me. You deserve so much better than what I’ve ever given you.” He scraped his fingers over her cheek. “I can’t give you your husband back and I can’t give you back the time I’ve spent away from you.”
He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks until she opened her eyes and looked at him. He needed her to see him, the truth of the man he was. He couldn’t hide that from her. Not any more. And the truth wasn’t something shiny and new. It was badly damaged. It was flawed and broken.
Trent cradled his wife’s face in his palms, savoring the soft feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.
“You would really give it all up?” she asked.
Doubt crept in, whispering around his heart. Could he walk away from his troops and the uniform that he’d worn for so long in exchange for runny noses and muddy shoes and PTA meetings? He closed his eyes and felt the little heads resting on his shoulders when he’d read to them at bedtime.
His arms tightened around her. “How did we get to this point?” he asked, brushing his lips over her forehead.
* * *
“A lot of reasons.” She closed her eyes, wishing the war hadn’t chipped away at the foundation of their marriage. Wishing they hadn’t spent so much time apart.
Wishing that things weren’t so goddamned fragile between them.
Even at that moment, lying in bed, she felt the cloying, clinging fear that the honeymoon was going to end soon. That the strain and the stress were going to slink back into their bed and start chipping the frail thing building between them.
She pressed her lips to his chest, pushing away the worry and the fear and the doubt and deciding for now that she would lie in her husband’s arms and simply be.
He shifted so that he was lying between her thighs, and framed her face in his palms. In the pale light, she looked up at him. His eyes were dark and for once uncovered by his glasses. She lifted her knees, resting them against his sides.
“I know… I know the court-martial is a large part of how we ended up here.” His voice was a serrated blade. Rusty and dangerous. “But maybe…” He closed his eyes. “Maybe if it forced us together… to be in the same space… maybe it’s a good thing?”
Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “So we needed a court-martial to push us back together? Seems a little extreme.”
He nibbled on the corner of her mouth before lifting his gaze to hers once more. “I don’t want to waste this. This isn’t about the court-martial for me anymore, Laura. This isn’t just about making things easier for the kids.” His thumb stroked her temple. “This is about us now. Maybe it always has been.”
She blinked rapidly. He opened his mouth but she pressed her index finger to his lips. “You’ve been a good soldier. You’ve gone to war. You should have had a loving wife holding down the home front. And I tried to do that for so long.” She stroked his face gently between her fingers. “But you crushed me. You left me alone and empty and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I never understood when other wives said they couldn’t handle the loneliness anymore.” She bit her lips together, needing the pain to ground her. To help her get the words exactly right. “I needed to know you still loved me enough to come back to me. I needed something to hold onto. I had nothing but a memory.” Her voice broke. “I’m so sorry it wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t strong enough to keep waiting.”
She swiped at her cheeks, refusing to look at him. She swallowed. “I wasn’t strong enough to wait for you.” She tried to move away. He panicked. She was leaving him. He was going to have to face this world alone, without her.
He reached for her then, pulling her back, dragging her close and holding her with a quiet urgency that spoke all the things he could not say.
“I left you,” she whispered.
“I deserved it.” He rested his cheek against her head, holding her. “I never deserved your faith in me.”
“I lost it, Trent. I wasn’t strong enough to hold on.”
He captured her left hand in his. Stroked his thumb over her rings. “This isn’t about being strong enough, Laura.”
“Then what is it? Failure? Dishonesty? What is it that destroyed us?”
He kissed her gently. “We did. I did. Because I forgot that you were my wife. You needed a husband… You needed me. And I haven’t been here for a long time.”
The hush fell over them again. A pitch black, deep, abiding calm.
“Are you really getting out of the army?” she whispered.
“Yes.” There was no ambiguity in his voice. “There’s nothing left for me. I can’t lie to the boys. I can’t tell them they’re fighting the good fight. I just can’t do it anymore.” He cleared his throat. “I have to step aside. Let someone who still cares do this.”
“It’s not that simple.” She shook her head. “The army is part of who you are.”
“And it always will be. But you’re part of who I am, too.”
This was not an argument she wanted to have. She wanted him home with her. She wanted all of this over and done with. But he needed to come to that decision for his own reasons. Not in a moment of grief.
“I’m half a man without you in my life,” Trent said after a long moment. “I need you. I need to know you’re out there in the world for me to come back to.” And at that moment—her mouth beneath his, her fingers brushing the edge of his scar—one more crack was healed, one more wound bandaged.
* * *
“I’m afraid, Laura. I’m afraid of what I’ve become. Of what I’ve brought into our home.” He traced the curve of her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “But I still want another chance.”
She closed her eyes and Trent felt his fate hanging by the barest thread. He had no hint of how she felt. He didn’t know but he had to try. He’d crossed one too many lines in his life that hadn’t been worth it. This one was.
She looked up at him, her eyes shining brightly. “I love you. And it took me all of this to remember that ‘I love you’ doesn’t come with a ‘but.’ Forgiving someone else is easy. Forgiving yourself?” She brushed her lips against his. “That’s much harder.” She rubbed her cheek against his. “I can’t do that for you. But I can walk with you while you work on it.”
He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “I haven’t been a good husband. I’m not a good man.”
She cupped his cheek. “You’re wrong.” She offered a watery smile. “Well, you’re right about the not-being-a-good-husband thing. But you are a good man. You always have been.”
He licked his lips and stroked his thumb over her cheek. He kissed her because he was terrified of losing her again. Terrified because he’d come so close to destroying the one person in his life worth living for. He’d nearly broken her. He could see that clearly now. And while his faith in the system he’d sacrificed everything for was far from restored, his faith in his wife, in their family, was a little more patched up. And lost himself in the taste and touch and love of his wife.
* * *
“Daddy.”
Something poked Trent in the soft spot between his shoulder and his chest. He frowned but tried to ignore it, desperate for a few more minutes of sleep.
“Daddy.”
The whisper was more urgent now. A little hand on his shoulder, shoving him from the warm nest of blankets and his wife’s soft body.
“Hnnngh.” He blinked and opened his eyes. Ethan’s face blurred then came back into focus. Trent sat up, the concern etched on Ethan’s tiny face cutting through the fog of sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“Fluffy’s missing.” His little voice broke.
“Tell him to go back to b
ed and we’ll find Fluffy in the morning,” Laura said, her voice thick with sleep. Then she rolled over and instantly went back to sleep. Trent was envious, but he couldn’t shake the idea that he might accidentally squish Fluffy as he stumbled to the bathroom in a couple of hours.
He rubbed his eyes before he reached for his glasses, then slid out of bed and crouched down in front of Ethan. “Okay, buddy. Where does Fluffy usually escape to?”
Ethan shrugged and looked lost and helpless and sad, as though he might never see Fluffy again. Trent brushed his hair out of his face. “Okay, well, let’s let Mommy sleep and we’ll go find him.”
“Her, Daddy. Fluffy’s a girl.”
Trent frowned, wondering why it mattered. At three in the morning, very little seemed to matter. All that was important at the moment was getting Ethan back to bed.
And, apparently, that involved finding Fluffy. Ethan wrapped his little hand in Trent’s and pulled him toward his bedroom. For a moment, the feeling of his son’s fingers wrapped around his overwhelmed him. A lump rose in his throat and he brushed his thumb over Ethan’s fingers.
He bent and cupped Ethan’s face. “Let’s go find that rodent.”
Forty-five minutes later, Trent was reasonably certain he did not care if Fluffy spent the night in Alcatraz being stalked by a hungry cat. He’d torn apart the back bedroom where the hamsters lived, moved every piece of furniture, lifted every last box, and still there was no Fluffy.
He’d set a trap of peanut butter in the middle of the floor.
No Fluffy.
He’d briefly contemplated a mousetrap, but then remembered his aim wasn’t to scar his son for life.
Leaning against the couch in the back bedroom, his arm slung around Ethan’s shoulders, Trent looked down at the sleepy boy. “Hey, buddy, why don’t we call it a night and we’ll find Fluffy in the morning?”
“No, Daddy.” Ethan yawned. “If we don’t find her tonight, she’ll fall asleep during the day and we’ll never find her.”
“I don’t know where else to look.”
“The printer! Daddy, I think I just saw her in the printer.”
Trent frowned and glanced at the ancient inkjet printer. It looked like something that had come out of the late 1990s. It was actually being used as a stand for the smaller laser printer Laura had bought.
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