by Max Henry
“Did it work? I would have thought the regiment of daily life would have made your anger worse, considering you’d need to keep it in check most of the time.”
“It worked at first. I threw myself into working out and staying not only physically but mentally fit.”
“And then?”
“Decked a fellow soldier for harassing one of the local women on our first tour in Iraq.”
I bring the car to a stop in the driveway, the lights inside the house beckoning me to bed. But this progress is more important. Infinitely so. “What happened then?”
Duke continues to relax in the seat, staring straight out the windscreen as he talks. “Luckily for me, it happened when we were off-duty, so I got away with a warning. The meathead I punched in the face didn’t get so much as a fucking talking to. There was evidence of what I did—his face—but nothing of what he had done to instigate it.”
“Well, I bet the woman appreciated what you did.”
He chuckles. “Not sure. She ran away screaming something in her language. Poor bitch probably thought we were arguing over who was going to have her first.”
Possibly, but still. He defended the honour of a woman he didn’t know.
“Come.” I open my door to get out.
“Can I turn my torch on now?” His whispered question stills me.
This whole time he’s held off, even when he’s been freaking out? “Of course. We’ll probably need it anyway.”
I round the car to his side and wait for him to get his phone sorted out. White light spills over the gravel driveway as I lead us away from the house.
“Where are we going, Cam?”
“I want to show you something.” I offer him my hand for support, glad when he takes it.
He follows dutifully beside as I lead him back down the drive to the gateway at the road. I come to a stop a few feet back from the road’s edge and take a deep breath. Listening to Duke share his history, the things that make him tick, it’s inspired me. If he can face his nightmares head on, dissect and work out what it is about those memories that tear him apart, then why can’t I?
“You know how you told me you fear the dark because of its connection to when you were hurt?”
“Yeah.”
“It took me almost a year before I could leave the house at dusk. That hour between sundown and night is the most beautiful of the day, I reckon, but for so long what the shades of orange and hints of purple represented scared the ever-loving shit out of me. I couldn’t come down here, on foot or in the car, for so long.”
“Because that’s when she died.” Duke takes a step closer, looping an arm around my shoulders and tucking me to his side.
I nod, and then point to a rough patch of grass where the bitumen has chipped, the layers from repeated resealing of the road visible. “That’s where the woman hit her.” I turn in his hold, taking him with me, and point out a rose bush planted slightly offset from the letterbox. “That’s where she landed.”
“Cam, you don’t have to do this.”
“I do.” My nose tingles, my eyes sore as the pressure builds within my ears. I fight the tears because after all, what have they ever brought me? Certainly not relief. “I want you to understand, Duke, that nightmares happen in the brilliance of the day as well as the dark of night. A tragic incident is something we can’t foresee. Even though we beat ourselves up over the details that are so freaking obvious afterward, there’s nothing anyone can do to prevent a true tragedy. Living life afraid of the what-ifs is letting death win before you’ve even reached the final act.”
His chest rises with his deep breath. “You ever feel like you’re on this hamster wheel where no matter how fast you run, how much you tire yourself out trying to get ahead, you’re still stuck in that same rut?”
“Every goddamn day,” I say. “Jared used to tell me that if I bothered to stop and take a breath, I might find that I was actually able to breathe. He thought I would work myself into a frenzy as a charade, a way to prove to people I actually felt guilty for what I did. In his head, I didn’t really care. Because he blames me, he can’t see how it was possible for me to be affected by Taylah’s death. He thought I did it all for show: constant volunteering, working overtime, offering to help people shift house, redecorate—anything that would keep me busy.” I rest my head back against Duke’s arm and stare over the tree line at the stars beyond. “Truth is, I tried to stop and breathe a few times, but I never felt like there was any air left for me. Instead, my chest would ache as though I was taking on water, drowning in my grief. As long as I found a way to keep busy, I found a way to tread water and stay afloat. I found a way to live.”
“And now?” Duke asks gently.
“Now, staying busy is my hamster wheel. Only my wheel is suspended over a black ocean of every mistake I’ve ever made, and if I falter, I’ll drown.”
His arm cinches tighter, pulling me close enough that he lays a gentle kiss to my head. “Seems we’re both as tethered to our past as each other.”
I huff a short, bitter laugh. “Want to cut the cord with me?”
Duke pulls me flush against him, wrapping me inside his strong, warm arms as he rests his chin atop my head. “Woman, I’d dive into the black and drown with you, because for once, I don’t think I’d be afraid if you were with me.”
TWENTY-THREE
Duke
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cam asks as I stand at the foot of her bed.
“Seems only logical given what we did last night.”
She presses her lips together, clearly not convinced but willing to let me do what it takes to move on. “How do you want to start?” Her gaze settles on my bare chest, on the scars I carry.
“Lying down.” I lift my eyebrows and chuckle with her. She’s so cute when she laughs.
“Come on then.” Cam pats the mattress with a smile.
I take a deep breath and climb on, crawling up the bed to where she sits. “You know, any time you’re not okay with this, just tell me.”
“If I wasn’t okay with it,” she says, tracing a line between my abs with her finger, “I would have laughed at you when you first brought it up.”
After she took me down the driveway to share that most intimate detail with me, Cam and I returned to the house to go through our usual nightly routine. She showered, I changed, and we looked awkwardly at each other in the mirror as we brushed our teeth.
Knowing we could do this dance forever, and that our time together is short, I bit the bullet and brought the subject up: why not share the same bed?
“How do you like it?” she asks as I settle on my side, my head propped on my hand to watch her.
“I usually start out on my back, but most of the time face down is better.”
“Same.” She nudges me in the side with a loose fist. “See? Look at us being best buddies again.”
I laugh, reaching out and pulling her to me. “Naw. My bestie.”
Cam squeals as I rub her head with my fist, giving her a noogie. “Duke. Stop it.”
I do, but only so I can roll to my back and take her with me. She’s all kitted out in a sensible pyjama set: skulls with bows on their heads adorn her pink-flocked flannelettes. I pinch the soft fabric between my fingers.
“These really are a tease, you know. A woman could get herself in trouble wearing flannelette around a red-blooded man like me.”
She snorts the most un-ladylike laugh at my sarcasm. “Maybe that was my intention?”
A moment passes where neither of us say a thing. Cam lies on top of me, her fingers making lazy circles in my hair.
“This week’s going too fast,” I say quietly, reaching for her butt.
She smirks as I take a decent handful and squeeze. “It doesn’t have to be just a week. You could stay longer, or come back.”
“I’ve got counselling to start, and a job to find. I need to spend some time with Mum, make up for being such a jerk to her.”
She si
ghs out her nose, her eyes hard. “Guess I better put in more hours and get my dungeon finished, then.”
She cracks up laughing as I tickle her sides. “Is that so? You going to lock me up, keep me all for yourself?”
“Is that such a bad idea?” she asks between gasped breaths. “Honestly, Duke, stop tickling me.”
I relent, waiting until she’s caught her breath to kiss her. “Take a day off,” I plead. “Skip work for one day so we can hang out together.”
“You want me to pull a sickie?” Her words protest the thought, but her eyes say she’s all in.
“Yeah. Show me around, babe. Show me what it is you love about this town.”
“It’s totally going to look dodgy when I turn up at the show looking fit as a fiddle.”
“So, say you had a migraine. How they going to know you’re lying?”
“Um,” she says, tapping a finger to her lips. “They might know my excuse is bullshit when I’m spotted around town with you.”
“We’ll make it a mission then.” I put on my best authoritarian voice. “Operation Sight-Seer. Your mission is to show me the best parts of Burbank without anyone of note knowing our whereabouts.”
She does a lame-as-fuck salute, giggling. “Mission accepted.”
“Now put your head on my shoulder and go to sleep, woman, because I want you rested for your big day.”
She smiles, yet does as she’s told and tucks her head onto my shoulder, her nose brushing my throat ever-so-slightly. I thread my fingers in her hair, pulling my arm away to let the lengths runs through my grasp, and then repeat the action.
“Duke?”
“Yeah, Cam?”
“I’m so glad your brother doesn’t know how to pick a good car.”
I silently chuckle, keeping the sound trapped in my chest. “Me too.”
A few more minutes pass with me stroking her hair, and Cammie seemingly drifting off.
“Can I turn the lamp off? Do you think you’ll be okay?” She startles the hell out of me when she speaks again.
Will I be okay? I want to say having her beside me will calm the irrational side of my mind, but I’m not sure. I never had anyone since I got home. I’ve got nothing to compare this to.
“Flick it off. I can always turn it back on after you go to sleep.”
“Okay.” Cammie reaches out, clicking the switch on the cord.
My muscles tense, my body stiff beneath her as I remind myself where I am, who I’m with.
“You okay?”
“I think so.”
She hums, shifting around so that her arms are tucked under my shoulders, her forearms cradling my head. It’s such a simple position, one a person might assume purely to be comfortable, but knowing why she does it tears me apart. Her arms give me a false sense of security, make me feel encased and secure. She does it to make me feel better, but what she doesn’t realise is that she makes me feel better. Not what she does, but who she is.
“Can I ask you a question?” She sounds so unsure of herself, which is rare.
“Of course.”
“What was your wife like?” Cam whispers to the dark.
“Are you sure you want to talk about this?”
She moves around on top of me, and even though I can’t see her, I know she’s propped herself up by the bony elbows digging into my ribs. “I feel as though she’s a part of what made you who you are today, and if I want to know the gorgeous man in my bed a little better, I need to understand that aspect of your history as well.”
I get what she’s saying, but a part of me is reluctant to tell her because that would only open the Pandora’s box of pain and confusion I’ve kept shelved for so long. If she did it, so can you.
“We got together the same year I enlisted in the army,” I explain. “We were young: I’d literally just turned twenty, and she was nineteen.”
“High school sweethearts?”
“No. We met after graduating. Her brother was friends with mine. We didn’t date for long before we were married.”
“Love at first sight, then?”
“Not quite. I thought if I married her it would tame her jealous streak.” I chuckle, recalling the night of my stag do. “Just made her worse. She had a wicked temper when it came to other women and me.”
“She loved you.” Cam says. “I’d be jealous too.”
“That so?” I reach out and run my hands over her head, brushing Cam’s hair off her face.
“Mm-hmm.” She leans across and flicks the lamp on, a shy smile on her lips as I blink at the light. “I figured we’re not trying to sleep anyway.”
Doesn’t bother me any. At least I can see her now, read her expressions and reactions to the things I tell her.
Cam pushes on my chest to lean forward and place a chaste kiss to my lips. “Carry on.”
“There’s not much else to say, other than we decided to start a family while I was home between deployments. She was six and half months pregnant when they died.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” Cammie frowns. “Duke?”
“Never seemed relevant, given what you went through. I didn’t want you to feel as though I was cheapening your loss by comparing it to mine.” I run my thumb across her bottom lip as she stares at me, her frown still in place.
“Why would you think that’s how I’d feel?”
“Because you knew your daughter,” I say. “I didn’t meet my son. He didn’t have a name until he died with her.”
“Doesn’t make him any less important,” she whispers.
I wipe the tear from her cheek and continue, keen to get this conversation finished and shelved again for another day. “We’d talked the week before, and she was happy; baby was good, she was healthy.” I pause when I realise Cam stares at me with a sad smile on her face. “What?”
“Nothing really. It’s just …”
I lift my eyebrows to tell her to explain.
“It’s just the look on your face when you talk about her. I can tell you loved her.”
She picks her words carefully, but I can still see the uncertainty in her eyes, feel the tension in her body. Yeah, I loved my wife. Still do. But our time together came to an end the day she died, and this fucking ace of a girl lying on top of me needs to know that.
“Loved her,” I stress. “She’ll always be in my heart, but Cam, it’s time to move on. I’m ready to find forever in someone else, someone who’s here, now.”
She can’t hide her relief. Cam’s cheeks pink as she tucks her chin against me to hide her face behind her hair.
With my thumbs on her jaw, I coax her head up again, holding her gaze. “Talk to me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something,” I say, brushing my thumbs across her cheekbones. “Why did you ask me about her, really?”
“I would say it’s jealousy, but we both know that’s not it.”
“So, what is it?”
“Insecurity,” she whispers.
I roll to my left, Cam in my arms so that she ends up beneath me. “Why?”
“You loved her,” she says simply, watching her finger as she toys with the ends of my hair. “What if I don’t compare, Duke?”
She’s scared of losing out again, of being burned for not being enough. And damn, don’t I know how that feels. It makes me want to know why a woman who should be loved as much as her feels as though she couldn’t be. It makes me ask the only logical question. “Why did Jared leave you, Cam?”
“Started fucking his hairdresser,” she states, cool and detached. “But that was just the outcome of a long and rocky patch, anyway. We’d been over for at least a year before that.”
“So he should have left,” I grit out, trying to tamp down my anger. Fuck, he could have walked out when he knew the marriage was over. He didn’t have to hurt her unnecessarily like that.
“It’s okay,” she says with a sad smile. “It’s old news.”
“It’s not okay, Cam.” I lean down an
d kiss her forehead. “It’s not okay.”
“Can’t change the past, right?”
“No. But we can sure enjoy the future.” I kiss her slow and careful, threading my fingers through her hair before I pull away.
She watches me with such intensity, such worry. “What does our future hold, Duke?”
My dick twitches as she takes her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes hopeful.
“What do you want it to hold, Cam?” I rock my hardening erection into her, making her aware exactly what the sight of that pinched lip does to me.
She releases the flesh with a pop, pressing her lips together instead, as though doubting herself.
I lean down and kiss the point where her neck curves into her shoulder, running my tongue in a line to her earlobe before whispering, “Tell me.”
Cam swallows, her cheeks flushed as she says, “I want you to fuck me, Duke. I don’t know where this thing between us leads, but I know one thing for sure.” Her hands track a path along my arms, over my shoulders and down my back. “I don’t want to be left wondering what might have happened if I wasn’t afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” I pop the buttons on her pyjama top as we talk, pushing the fabric aside to reveal her full tits. Jesus—they’re everything I thought they’d be.
“Of telling you how I feel.” She gasps as I take one of her pert nipples between my forefinger and thumb, and pinch.
I can’t help myself—I lean down and take the nipple in my mouth, running my tongue around the tight bud and sucking her soft flesh. She whimpers, squirming beneath me and biting down on that fucking lip again as she tries to stifle the sounds she makes.
“There’s no need to be quiet, babe,” I say. “You can be as loud as you want.”
Fuck it all if her nipples don’t harden to rock at that suggestion.
“Talk to me, Cam,” I say, rocking myself against her so my dick rubs her clit. “How do you feel right now?”
