by Jolie Day
“An assignment?” Carter asked, confused as Dr. Maxwell handed him a small green notebook. “What’s this?”
“What? You’ve never been to school?” the Admiral teased lightly. “It’s a notebook, Lieutenant.”
“I know that,” Carter growled. “I mean, what’s it for?”
“For writing things down.”
“If you weren’t already crippled…”
“I prefer handicapped.”
“And I’d prefer a straight answer,” Carter retorted.
“Every time you have a flashback or intrusive thought or a bad dream, I want you to write down what you’re feeling or thinking in this notebook. You can write about other things, too, but that’s what’s more important to me right now; your trauma.”
“I don’t have—”
“Yes, you certainly do,” Admiral Maxwell said, his voice firm for once. “You know how I know you have trauma?” Carter just stared at him, his gaze cold as ice. “You’re here on a day that you don’t have an appointment, you came in before even I did, and I can barely get you to show up on time for your regularly scheduled appointments. You know you need help as well as I do and I’m here to give it to you and help you get better so you can get back to serving your country. That’s all I want to do, Carter. Just let me help, for goodness sake. And stop being so stubborn.” His tone was chastising and Carter didn’t appreciate it, but he said nothing in response.
There was a long, tense moment of silence between them, broken only by a series of three short beeps. Dr. Maxwell limped to his desk and pressed a button on the intercom.
“Yes, Miss Marlowe?” he asked.
“Admiral, your nine o’clock is here. Should I send her in?”
“Yes, thank you,” Dr. Maxwell said, then took his hand off the button. “I’ll see you on your regularly-scheduled day and we’ll talk about this then.” He stood as straight as he could with the cane and his injury and gave Carter a proud salute.
Carter returned it, respectfully, and headed out of the office just as a small, pretty woman walked past. She was dressed in Army fatigues and there were burn marks over half of her face, but she was undeniably attractive. She smiled at him and he offered a small, curt nod in return, before rushing out of the office with the small green notebook tucked under his arm.
Chapter Seven
Liz tossed and turned in her bed, sweat covering her entire body in a thin sheen as the clock ticked next to her ear. She stared at the ceiling and sighed. She could feel every empty inch of the bed next to her.
She had spoken to Carter earlier and he’d told her that he needed a day to himself for something. She wondered if it had anything to do with the night before. Things seemed to be getting better between the two of them. Not that they were exactly horrible to begin with, but Carter had never really been open with his emotions. Part of what she liked about him in the first place was the mystery of who he was, but she had to admit that she was beginning to want more.
A lot more.
But she’d given him his space and had spent the day downtown, taking more photographs and fighting off flashes of the night before and that morning, when he had left suddenly. She wondered now if that was a mistake. What if he had decided that he didn’t want to see her again after the night they shared and was trying to distance himself?
She told herself that that was ridiculous—least of all because they had a binding work contract—and that Carter had his own life away from her. It wasn’t like her to get clingy with guys like this, but Carter had already made her feel things that she wasn’t even sure were possible. He had treated her better than most of the guys that she’d ever had a relationship with and they weren’t even strictly in a relationship.
Even if it was just sex, she decided that she didn’t want to lose what they had.
Turning on her side, Liz reached for her phone and pulled up his number, tapping out a quick text to see if he was still awake. It was already past midnight, but something told her that he was.
*****
Carter had just started to drift off after hours of tossing and turning in his bed when his phone lit up on the bedside table. He sighed and grabbed it, reading the text on his lock screen. He was unable to fight the small grin on his lips at the sight of Liz’s name and picture on the side of the screen and he swiped his thumb across to open the message.
U up? -Liz
He took a deep breath and considered ignoring the text in favor of getting some much-needed sleep, but found himself unable to even close his eyes as he lay back down, staring at the phone. He sighed and reached for it again.
Yeah -Carter
Can u sleep? -Liz
How did she know? he wondered. Again, he thought about ignoring the text or lying and telling her that he was just about to when she interrupted. But he did neither of those things, wanting to see where she was going with this.
*****
No. -Carter
Liz breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat off of her forehead as she sat up in bed and tore the sheets from her body, already reaching for her robe and slippers.
Can I come up?
She stood by her bedroom door, waiting for him to text back. Her heart pounded and she crossed her fingers, hoping for the response she wanted. Her legs tensed, ready to take off at a sprint for his apartment, but she held herself still.
She could wait.
*****
Can I come up?
Carter furrowed his brow at her message and debated on what to say. He had an idea of what she would want to do the second she came up and, while he would never deny her, he wasn’t so sure if that’s what they should have been doing. He was supposed to get more sleep, supposed to write down any dreams he might have. As ridiculous as it has sounded when Dr. Maxwell had given him the assignment, this might have been the only way for Carter to get back to Afghanistan, once and for all.
But something made him reach for the phone and tap out a response.
Yes. Bring your camera.
He didn’t know why he added that last bit, but suddenly his heart was pounding and the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. There was no way he was going back to sleep now. He stood and made his way to the door, leaving his phone on the bed.
*****
Liz felt her entire body flush at his words and bit her lip as she reached for her camera, slinging it around her neck and heading out of the apartment. It took her only a few minutes to reach Carter’s door and, by that time, he’d already unlocked it and was now standing in his doorway, leaning against the doorjamb.
She approached him, almost cautiously, and stood less than a foot away, looking up into his dark, tired eyes. There was a small flame in them; heat that warmed her from her head to her toes and Liz felt herself shiver and bite her lip.
“Hey,” she whispered, her voice rough with barely-attained sleep. It was like she set something off inside of Carter with the one word because, the next thing she knew, he was reaching her for, dragging her lips up to meet his as he pulled her straight into his apartment and shut the door with her body, careful of the camera swinging between them.
He led her by the lips down the hall to his bedroom and shoved her down on the bed, removing the camera from around her neck and setting it down, oh so gently, on his bedside table. They wouldn’t need it for a while anyway, he decided. Liz chuckled and moaned as his beard tickled her neck. She loved the fact that he hadn’t bothered to shave today, if only because the roughness sent tingles down her spine.
Especially as he untied her robe and wasted no time in diving between her legs. Liz anticipated beard burns to appear in the morning, but right then she couldn’t really care less. She just reached for the sheets on either side of her body and held on for the ride of her life.
*****
Liz giggled and hid her face as Carter kneeled above her, pointing the camera directly at her uncovered body as she protested (weakly).
“Smile,” he encouraged
. “We’re gonna make you a star!”
“A porn star, more like!” she giggled, still covering her face and attempting to cover her bare body with a pillow.
“Hey, a star is a star,” Carter chuckled, still pointing the camera at her blushing face. “I bet your investors would pay top-dollar for these.” He snapped another picture and threw himself down to lay next to her as she swatted his chest.
“You wouldn’t dare!” she huffed.
“Nah, I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But I had you scared for a second there, didn’t I?”
“Not really,” Liz retorted. “I trust you.”
There was a long moment of silence after that, before Carter turned to her with a furrowed brow. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what?” Liz responded, turning on her side to face him, situating the pillow between them.
“Why do you trust me? I’ve never given you any reason to.”
“You never gave me any reason not to, either,” Liz pointed out.
“And I suppose that’s just as good?” Carter scoffed.
“It is, in my book,” Liz said, genuinely.
“But why? Has nobody ever screwed you over before?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say never,” Liz said, “but when you grow up with as much money and privilege as I had, you learn who you can really trust with the things that are most important.”
“Like your nudes?”
Liz giggled. “Like my nudes,” she confirmed. “Also, my camera. That thing cost a fortune and the fact that I’m letting you even touch it is astounding.”
“I’ll try not to bust it open with a rock,” Carter said.
“I’d appreciate that.” She giggled again. “You can keep the nudes,” she said. “So long as you allow me to edit out my face.”
“Well, then how will I be able to distinguish them from all my other headless nudes?” Carter teased, poking her in the side.
Liz rolled her eyes and snatched the camera from him, getting to her knees to crawl down the bed until she had the perfect angle. She turned back to him and raised the camera to her face, looking at him through the lens. Carter sat up and stared straight back at her, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands supporting him at his sides. There was a darkness behind his eyes that she had seen all too much, but it was more intense now, somehow. She clicked a few quick pictures and then marveled at the way his physique showed up on her screen.
He looked like some kind of Greek statue; Adonis, maybe. Even Perseus. A God.
“Beautiful,” she breathed, then immediately blushed when she saw his lifted eyebrow. “I mean…handsome. Very handsome. Debonair, even.”
“Whatever,” Carter said, but she saw the glint of mischief in his eyes. “I know I look good.”
“Cocky,” she pointed out, laying down next to him and tossing the pillow off the bed. She turned her head to kiss his stubbly cheek and he turned back to kiss her full on the lips. He didn’t even notice her raising the camera until the flash went off and he pulled away.
Liz brought the camera down so that she could get a look at the self-portrait and smiled, softly, before showing him.
“Fantastic,” he deadpanned, but she could see the way he was unable to take his eyes off of the screen. She kissed his cheek.
“We look adorable,” she corrected.
“Navy SEALs do not look ‘adorable’,” Carter retorted. “We’re manly and rugged and tough and—”
“Adorable,” Liz reiterated.
“I’ll show you adorable,” Carter growled as he took the camera from her hands, placed it on the end table, and then rolled over her body, his fingers moving up and down her sides until Liz was shrieking.
There were no more photographs after that.
*****
Smoke filled his lungs as he raced around the camping ground, fire burning all of their tents. He could see his fellow soldiers—his friends and comrades—running around, their arms waving as they burned alive. A few of them had the mindset to roll on the ground, but otherwise it was frantic. Their mouths were open in agony but all he could hear was a long ringing sound in his ears as he stumbled around in the sand, looking for a way out of the billowing gray and black smoke. He could feel something wet on his chest, but when he touched there, his hand came away red.
Was he bleeding? He wasn’t in any pain, so how could he be? What was that ringing sound?
Carter coughed several times and his eyes burned as he forced them to stay open. He shouted something that he couldn’t even hear himself, but he knew exactly which name had fallen from his lips. He shouted it again and coughed.
Stumbling around a bit more, Carter reached for the walkie talkie on his shoulder and tapped out the Morse code for “S.O.S”, praying that it was still working. He couldn’t even hear if there was any static, despite it being right next to his ear. He shouted his best friend’s name again.
Just then the fire seemed to get worse and he saw a ball of fire burst out of a tent and come flying straight for him. Carter attempted to dodge it, just before he realized that it wasn’t just a ball of fire, but also somebody he knew.
Kane!
He shouted the man’s name again, but he didn’t stop. Carter ran after him, stumbling on legs that seemed to be losing all feeling in them. He reached out with his hands, shouted words at him, instructions to roll in the sand until the fire was out, but the gray smoke began to fill his lungs again, throwing him into another coughing fit. Carter fell to the ground, holding himself up on his hands and knees as the coughing became more painful. His world started to go to black, but as he passed out, he could swear he heard his name.
“Carter? Carter?”
“Carter!
Carter sat bolt upright in bed, his chest heaving and his face drenched in sweat. He blinked several times as he stared around the room. He could hear the distant whir of the air conditioning and feel it starting to cool down his shaking body. There was no smoke in the air; only cool, fresh oxygen that he took into his lungs with great gusto. Next to him, he could feel the presence of another body, but he didn’t turn to her.
Instead, Carter turned away and jumped out of bed, reached for the small notebook and pen on his end table (narrowly avoiding knocking Liz’s camera down), and made a beeline for the bathroom, where he locked himself in and turned to look at his reflection in the mirror.
“You are not in Afghanistan,” he whispered as low as he could manage. “You are in Los Angeles. You are not in Afghanistan. You are in Los Angeles. You are safe. There is no fire.” He attempted to close his eyes to compose himself, but all he could see were the burning tents and the burning bodies and the smoke as gray as an elephant’s hide. He opened his eyes again and shook his head, looking at himself in the mirror. His hair was damp and he was still naked except for the dog tags around his neck. He grabbed hold of them and took another deep breath. His eyes stayed open this time as he attempted to ground himself in reality.
It worked.
When he could finally breath regularly again and his heart had stopped pounding, he reached for the notebook and pen, sitting down on the edge of the tub as he wrote down everything that he remembered. It wasn’t without its difficulties and he had to stop several times to catch his breath as he felt his heartrate begin to speed up again, but eventually he finished and was able to close the book, setting it aside.
He sat there for a long time, looking all over the room and avoiding doing so much as blinking if he didn’t have to.
After a long while, there was a knock at the door and he jumped, remembering that he had left Liz alone, without any explanation. “Carter?” she called, and he imagined her with her ear to the door, concern etched on her face as she tapped on it again with her slim knuckles. “Carter, are you alright in there?”
“I’m fine,” he called back, his voice deep and authoritative as usual. “Just…hot.”
“Um…alright,” Liz replied and he could tell that she didn’t believe him, but he k
new that Liz wasn’t one to pry. “Just know that I’m out here,” she said. “You know, if you need to talk.”
He almost took her up on that offer. He stood and walked toward the door, reaching for the doorknob. Before he could tug on it, however, his mind changed and he pulled away, looking back at himself in the mirror. He stared directly into his own eyes and gave himself a long, slow nod, before reaching back for the door and tugging it open.
Before Liz could get even a single word out, Carter had her wrapped up in his arms, his mouth over hers as he pulled her up to wrap her legs around his body and carried her back to the bed. For her part, Liz made no attempt to protest his actions, but he could feel how much gentler she was being as they made love again. Her hands stroked his cheeks lovingly as they kissed, and her nails were light on the skin of his back, sending shivers up his spine all the same, but there was something different about this time.
He attempted to go fast and hard, trying to forget everything that he had seen and tire himself—and Liz—out so that they could just fall back asleep and never speak of this again, but Liz seemed to be doing everything in her power to make sure that that didn’t happen.
That didn’t deter Carter, however, as he rained bites and nips and sucks all down her body until she was moaning and groaning and screaming his name. By the time they were finished, she was already spent, falling asleep against his side, snoring softly.
Carter still couldn’t close his eyes.
*****
“So much for professionalism,” Liz murmured to herself as she stepped out of her post-jog shower and stared at herself in the mirror. She had left Carter’s early to carry on her usual early-morning routine, which included her Chess game with Tim (whom had been thrilled after not seeing her for the last week or so), but she had failed to notice the hickeys on her neck left behind by her lover. Even Tim had not mentioned them to her.
