It bothered me that I hated him and he still made me feel itchy and out of control.
It bothered me that he put his boot on my wrist and I liked it.
Curtained stalls lined the shower room and I heard more men come in, joking and complaining about the mud and chill, and I couldn’t bear to think about Colchester while surrounded by other people. I finished up and went back to my room to be alone.
But there was no solitude to be had. When I opened the door, there was a woman sitting on my bed.
I dumped my dirty clothes on the floor and walked over to the cheap wooden dresser where my clean clothes were stored, tugging the towel off my waist so I was completely naked.
“Really?” Morgan asked with distaste.
“This is my room,” I reminded my stepsister. “If you don’t like it, don’t look.”
She rolled her eyes, but ended up turning around. “I don’t even get a hello? A ‘how was your trip?’”
“Hello, how was your trip, why are you here? We agreed to meet tomorrow at the train station.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Wanted to see the other soldiers more like,” I said, pulling on a pair of pants and a sand-colored T-shirt.
“Can’t blame a girl for being interested.”
“We’re going to the party capitol of Europe. I can blame a girl for being impatient.”
“And what about you, Embry?” She turned back to look at me now that I was fully dressed. “How patient have you been?”
“If you’re asking if I’ve fucked anyone on base, the answer is no,” I said. “I know this may seem like an alien concept to you, but I have to follow the rules of my job or else I’ll get in trouble.”
Morgan smiled. She was twenty-three and had been working for my stepfather’s lobbying firm since she graduated from Stanford. There were no rules for her since she worked for her own father, at least none that mattered. “Whatever you say, bubby,” she cooed, using the name she used to call me as a toddler.
I walked over to the bed and took her elbow in a firm hand. Morgan and I had a certain kind of brother-sister relationship…as in: it wasn’t really a relationship at all. We respected each other because we understood each other, but any affection between us was logical, cold, and born of a clan-like pride. I never knew familial love to be any different.
But right now? I just wanted to be alone.
“I think it’s time for you to go back to the village. I’ll meet you at the train station tomorrow. Sissy.”
She gave me a fake pout but allowed me to escort her out of my room and down the hall, where of course we encountered Colchester coming out of his own room, a towel slung over his arm.
Keep walking, I willed him. Just keep walking.
He didn’t. He saw me and paused and then he saw Morgan and stopped altogether. And suddenly I saw my stepsister through his eyes—the silk-black hair hanging to her waist, the emerald eyes, the long throat and slender frame. Something inside my chest tied itself into a knot, loose and hard, like a cherry stem.
“Lieutenant Moore,” he said cheerfully. “Who is your friend?”
“This is my sister—”
“Stepsister,” Morgan corrected.
“—and she and I are going to Prague tomorrow. But as for right now, she’s going back to the village.”
“You’re going to Prague tomorrow?”
“Yes, Colchester, and it’s all been squared away with the captain, so don’t even try—”
I broke off as he pushed the door to his room open and took something off a small desk inside. He emerged holding a paper rectangle printed with dates and times and train stations, and the edges of his mouth curled in an amused smile.
“Oh good,” Morgan said, batting her eyelashes.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
I stepped closer to make sure. And yes, it was definitely a train ticket to Prague. For tomorrow, from the same station. And even at the very same time.
“We should all ride together,” he said, his gaze flitting to Morgan and then back to me. “When I scheduled my R&R, I really had no idea where I wanted to go. It was too expensive to go back home and I’d heard good things about Prague…” He lifted one shoulder and smiled an innocent kind of smile. I stared at it, at his mouth. How could he smile innocently like that when just an hour ago, he’d had his boot on my wrist and told me he wanted to hear me beg?
Morgan caught his drift immediately. “I’ve been twice, and Embry’s been once. We’d be happy to show you around.”
Colchester looked pleased. Morgan looked pleased.
I was the only one who was not pleased.
Somehow, I made it through the rest of the evening. I managed to pry Morgan away from Colchester and see her off the base. I swallowed a dinner I didn’t taste. I went to my room and laid on my bed fully clothed, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing that so many sleepless hours lay between now and being stuck in a train car with Colchester and my sister…
And then I woke up. I had slept, dreamlessly and deep, and now it was time. I told myself I dreaded it, spending the trip with that smug asshole, I knew I dreaded it, except the way my heart pounded and my stomach flipped didn’t feel like dread. I got dressed quickly, used the bathroom quickly, as if I could outrun my own agitation.
I couldn’t.
And when I stepped outside the barracks, he was already waiting, the early morning light brushing a glow against the high lines of his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose. He was squinting a little in the bright light, those thick eyebrows pulled together and those green eyes narrowed, and I saw him before he saw me. And for a moment—just a moment—I knew the awful, stupid truth. That if this gorgeous bastard really tried, he could snap my cherry-stem heart in an instant. He could chew it up and spit it out and I’d be as helpless as any cherry swirling in the bottom of a whiskey glass.
But why? I demanded of myself. Why? Why? Why?
No. This had to stop. It was only because he was so pretty, so stern, his body so firm, and in Prague there would be hundreds of boys like him, not to mention all the warm, sweet girls. I didn’t need to be knotted up over someone who only noticed I existed so he could shoot me in the arm. I was putting down this feeling once and for all, and I knew exactly how to do it.
I walked toward him, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “We better get a move on,” I said, walking past him as he grabbed his own bag. “The train won’t wait.”
And after we’d left the base in silence, I took a deep breath and forced myself to do it. “Which hotel are you staying at?”
“I haven’t booked one yet,” he admitted.
“You should stay with us,” I said, hating myself for the twisting in my chest. “Morgan is really excited to get to know you better.”
5
Embry
before
Two things happened that trip. Well, more than two in retrospect, but at the time, these were the only two I marked. The first happened early on, as the train rocked and swayed across the hilly uplands of southern Poland. Colchester sat across the table from Morgan and me, talking in a low, charming voice to her as they played cards. He was nothing but honest and courteous and gently funny, and after growing up among the most sophisticated men in the country, his direct openness and unselfconsciousness seemed to utterly disarm her. It was the first time I’d ever seen Morgan blush, playing cards with Colchester. I’d seen her perched on countless men and women’s laps, drinking, snorting, smoking, I’d seen her caught in lies that would drive a nun to madness, and always her ivory cheeks remained untouched.
But now, fully clothed and sober and behaved, she blushed under his attention.
This is what you wanted, I reminded myself and my brittle heart. Seeing them together, watching them together. Making sure you realize this little infatuation with Colchester must stop.
But it was still too much, even with that reminder, and I leaned my head back to f
eign sleep so I didn’t have to watch them any longer. And as is usually the case with me, feigned sleep turned into real sleep, the motion of the train pulling me into unconsciousness though Morgan’s arm jostled mine at regular intervals as she dealt and re-dealt the cards. I wasn’t sure how long I slept, but I woke up in the stilted, regressive way that only happens in cars and on planes and trains, my consciousness stirring and then resting, and then stirring again. Finally, I became aware of a sharp pain on my arm, the cold, hard window against my forehead, the noise of the drinks cart rattling down the aisle, Morgan’s quiet snores next to my ear. I opened my eyes to find that Colchester had moved chairs, so he no longer sat across from Morgan, but was now across from me, and I could feel the place where our boots touched under the table.
And he was touching me.
He’d reached across the table and pressed his fingertips against the exposed bruise on my bicep, and there they lingered, rough and warm. The bruise had darkened from a florid crimson to a deep purple overnight, and the change in color seemed to fascinate him.
“Examining your handiwork?” I asked dryly. Sleep made my voice lower and more breathless than normal, and when he lifted his gaze from my arm to my face, I saw how wide and blown his pupils were, how ruddy his lower lip was from being pulled between his teeth.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Only when assholes poke at it.”
He pressed against it again and I sucked in a breath, but I didn’t knock his hand away. I didn’t know why I didn’t, because it did hurt and I hated him and I hated the sensations that clawed their way up from the base of my spine as he did it.
“Do you like hurting people?” I asked, trying to cover up the feelings skittering their way across my skin.
He ran his fingers along the edges of the bruise, making small circles and larger ones, sometimes with one finger and sometimes with all of them. Soft, brushing touches. Caresses. I sighed, despite myself. It was gratifying to have such tender flesh touched so tenderly. “Does that feel good?” Colchester asked, with a kind of reverence in his voice.
I should have lied. But I didn’t.
“Yes.”
“I’ve never thought about hurting people the way I think about hurting you,” he said slowly.
“Because you hate me?”
He looked startled by that. “Hate? Why would I hate you?”
I blinked at him.
He tilted his head, his touch still on my arm. “Do you hate me?”
And maybe I should have lied here too, but I didn’t. “Yes.”
He nodded, as if he already expected that answer, and then he pulled back, his fingers leaving my arm. I felt a stab of remorse, felt the lack of his touch like a burn. And I glanced away from him, needing to look at something else, anything else, and then I saw the flutter of Morgan’s eyelashes and I knew she’d been watching us as she pretended to sleep. She’d seen the whole thing.
Well, good, I thought. It was just as well she knew I hated him—maybe that would encourage her to keep flirting with him and my stupid, masochistic plan could carry on. After all, it was impossible to feel things for someone when they were fucking your sister, right?
The second thing happened three days later. I’d woken up in my room early that morning—military habits died hard, even on vacation—and my body had been tangled up with that of a Czech girl’s. After Katka had climbed on top of me and rode me a final time, she’d left and I treated myself to a long shower. While I was toweling off, I heard a thump from the wall I shared with Morgan’s room, and then a second thump followed by a woman’s cry and a very male groan.
“Again?” I said indignantly. Out loud. Even though I was alone.
Since the moment we checked into the hotel, she and Colchester had been going at it like they were shooting the next Logan O’Toole porn flick over there. I mean, I certainly hadn’t slept alone since I got to Prague, but at least I left my room now and then. Ate some kolaches. Stared at the castle and smoked cigarettes. Prague things. I’d barely seen them once since we got here, though I’d heard them plenty.
Cursing them and also cursing myself for caring, I got dressed and decided to go to Wenceslas Square for breakfast and more kolaches. Anything to pass the time until the bars opened and I could drink and fuck my way out of thinking about Colchester again. But as I was sipping my coffee and watching people mill around with their shopping bags and cameras, I got a text from Morgan: Let’s do dinner somewhere nice tonight. Not one of those trashy clubs you like so much.
I frowned. I don’t go to trashy clubs. I waited a moment before asking, Is your fuck-buddy coming too?
Yes, MAXEN is coming, she texted. I think it would be a little rude not to invite him, don’t you?
I think you two are past the point of rudeness, judging from the sounds coming through the wall.
A pause on her end. Then: A of all, fuck you. B of all, we’ll see you at seven at the Holy Ghost Church on Široká, it’s by the Kafka monument. Try not to dress like a frat boy.
Oh, fuck her.
Same to you, I typed back.
And then I tossed my phone onto the cafe table with a heavy sigh. As awful as it was to listen to Colchester and Morgan through the wall, I knew it would be a thousand times more awful to see them crawling all over each other in public.
This is what you wanted, I reminded myself. This is what’s necessary. And then I threw some money on the table, pulled on my light wool coat and strolled out into the fog, smoking and walking until I found my way to the Charles bridge, where I could lean out over the river and watch the water run under the stained stone arches.
This is what you wanted, the river whispered. This is what had to happen.
The river was right.
That night, I stood under a statue of Franz Kafka sitting on the shoulders of an empty suit and watched Colchester and Morgan walk towards me, fog swirling around their legs, the street lamps casting haloes of gold around their sable-haired heads. They were walking arm in arm, Colchester guiding Morgan around the buckles in the cobblestones, and they didn’t see me at first, their heads bent together as they talked. They looked like a matched set, tall and beautiful, black-haired with green eyes.
I should have noticed it then, I suppose. I should have known. But who would have guessed that? Of all the things?
Finally, they reached me, and up close, I could see how closely Colchester’s pea coat fit his frame, how much stubble had grown on his jaw over the last three days, how the fog clung to him like he was a highwayman in an English poem, and I hated every stupid beat of my stupid knotted heart. I hated how I wondered what that rough jaw would feel like against my own, against my stomach. I hated how I would never know how warm his skin would be if I slipped my hands under his coat and ran my palms up his chest.
But I still wasn’t prepared for what happened next. When Colchester saw me, a grin stretched across his face, a grin that nearly knocked the breath out of me. For a minute, I thought I’d never seen him smile like that—big and pleased and dimpled—and then I remembered that I had, once. When I lay in the forest on my back and he stood over me with his foot on my wrist.
Before I could think about that any more, however, he was talking. “Well, look at you,” he said, laughter curling the edges of his words. “Damn.”
Colchester’s words panicked me. I glanced down at my flat-fronted slacks and dress shoes, at the shawl-neck sweater I wore over a button-down and tie, at the Burberry watch on my wrist.
“What?” I asked, trying to smooth out any wrinkles that might have cropped up since I’d had the hotel press my clothes. “Did I get something on me?” I spun in a circle like a dog, anxious that I’d ruined my favorite pair of Hugo Boss dress pants.
“No, no,” Colchester said, his voice still warmly amused. “Just…you look like such a preppy rich boy right now.”
“Didn’t you know?” Morgan said, leaning against his arm as she gestured to me. “Embry is a preppy rich
boy. His mother is the fearsome Vivienne Moore. He went to an all-boys boarding school and then to Yale.” She leaned in even closer to Colchester, as if about to divulge a terrible secret. “He even rowed crew there,” she said in a stage whisper. “Embry is basically a Ralph Lauren ad come to life.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “No more than you are, darling sister.”
“I prefer to think of myself more as a Chanel ad. Dior, maybe.”
Colchester’s eyebrows pulled together just the tiniest bit as he watched our exchange. “Moore, I had no idea about your mother. Or your…background.”
Honestly, this made me a little impatient. Indignant even. “You know no one gives a shit about that here,” I told him, meaning the Army. Carpathia. “Not even a little bit.”
“Of course not,” he agreed, but there was a distance to his agreement and he remained distant as we walked down to the restaurant and sat for our dinner. He remained distant as we ate. And as Morgan reached for the bill and paid for all three of us, his distance crystallized into something else. Self-consciousness maybe. A feeling of embarrassment he couldn’t quite rationalize away, perhaps. And for the first time, I began to wonder about Colchester’s background. The clothes he wore were nice—but off-the-rack nice, clearly purchased on a soldier’s salary. I knew he’d gone to college, but had he gone on a scholarship? Taken out loans? Had he grown up in the suburbs? The city? The country? Suddenly, I burned to know. I burned to know it all. What kind of childhood made a man like Colchester, so serious and self-assured at twenty-three? What had he dreamed of at night, where had he wanted to go? Was he there now? Was he still dreaming of it?
After dinner, Morgan insisted we go for cocktails in some plush bar with private rooms, and so a couple hours later, it was just the three of us in a small blue room with two soft couches, the front of the room lined with a balcony that overlooked a dance floor. An eight-piece was playing pop standards converted into Viennese waltzes, and dancing couples filled the floor below us. I ordered myself a glass of straight gin in anticipation of having to watch Colchester and Morgan dance.
American Prince (American Queen #2) Page 4
