Damaged Goods

by Nicole Williams

  “Not about that,” Will clarified. “Talked about anything. Whatever you want. You pick the topic, and I’ll talk. You can talk—if you want to—and we can get to know each other like normal people do.”

  “Will, if I thought I had a flying chance for normal, I might actually buy into this whole get-to-know-you conversation thing you’re suggesting.”

  “Okay, so we’ll scratch the normal part of it and just go where the conversation takes us. I’ll let you lead the way, okay?”

  I gave him a skeptical look even though he couldn’t see it. “You’ll let me lead?”

  “Yep. You lead. I’ll follow.”

  “You’ll let me call the shots? Even if that includes aborting a certain topic and taking a sudden conversation turn?” Despite his promise to keep it out of the heavy zone, I knew actually staying out of there would be a challenge.

  “You have my word. I will not say or do anything without you okaying it first.” His hand curved into the bend of my waist, and he drew me closer. My body obeyed—it didn’t even put up a fight. “Promise.”

  I tried to ignore the heat pulsing between our bodies. I tried to ignore the way being near him made me feel like he’d found my one loose thread hanging and was unraveling me, piece by piece, bit by bit.

  “Is that a promise you intend to keep?” I asked, going through a quick pro versus con analysis.

  Before I could list the first con, Will interrupted my thoughts. “I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep.”

  “In that case, let’s . . . talk.” It was an odd concept, talking with Will. Talking seemed like it should be a simple thing. Yet with Will Goods, nothing had been simple.

  “Where are you going?” he asked as I slipped out of his hold.

  “Unless you want to sit in a plastic chair that makes your butt go numb in five seconds, or sit on the ledge of a deteriorating kitchen counter, the living room might be a bit more comfy.” I paused on my way to the living room. “Is that okay with you?”

  “Hey, I already told you the theme of tonight. You lead, I follow.”

  When I heard Will’s steps creaking behind me, I cautiously made my way forward, arms outstretched. Once I was at about the same spot where Paige’s Herman Munster boots had been, I patted the carpet with my foot until I felt them. I kicked each boot to the side until I heard them hit the wall. There. Out of harm’s way.

  At least, where boots and face-plants were concerned. As far as other forms of harm, I was nowhere near in the clear. I wasn’t sure what tonight would bring with Will—whether it would add clarity or more confusion—but there was no turning back. Behind me was Will—hardly an ideal escape plan—and in front of me was the living room where I was scared of the things that might be said and more scared of the things that might be implied—mainly by myself.

  There was no denying I had strong feelings for Will. I couldn’t even deny that to myself, but I didn’t want him to know that, and I wasn’t sure how to hide it. I shook my head, trying to shake free of the thoughts bogging it down.

  As I reached the heap of disheveled blankets and pillows covering the floor, I heard a familiar sound. Not familiar because it was a sound I heard every day, but familiar because I’d been the one making an almost identical sound not even a half hour ago.

  After tripping over Paige’s boots.

  Apparently when I’d kicked them against the wall, one had bounced back into the middle of the floor.

  “Will?” I rushed back to where it sounded like he’d gone down. Pretty much in the exact same place as I had. When he said he’d follow whatever lead I set for the night, I hadn’t expected him to take it quite so literally. Especially as he hadn’t even been present for the wipeout of the week. “Shit. Are you okay?”

  In my rush, I misjudged where Will had fallen. I was still moving at double-time when my foot caught on something, or some part of Will, and before I could shriek, I was halfway to the floor. That face-plant would have been way worse than my first one—mainly because I was away from the blanket-and-pillow cushion, but also because I couldn’t get my arms around quick enough to break my fall. That face-plant would have been an actual face-plant, but in the middle of bracing myself for the impact, a strong arm swooped out and caught me. Will’s arm caught me just above my chest, and when I lowered my hand to feel how close the floor was, I was being generous when I estimated three inches.

  “Whoa. Thanks.” I exhaled my relief.

  Will’s arm flexed around me, and in one instantaneous move, I was on my back with my head resting on the hollow of his stomach.

  “My pleasure.” He was smiling. Probably beaming.

  “You wouldn’t have happened to plan that little trip, would you have?”

  “I most certainly didn’t plan your not-so-little trip.”

  I tilted my head toward his face and gave him a small glare. He must not have picked up on it though, because one of his hands moved to my head, his fingers weaving into my hair.

  “I most certainly might have planned my own trip though.”

  “You? Plan for a trip? I thought that was something that just sort of came naturally,” I teased. When Will’s fingers combed down the length of my hair, repeating the same motion again and again, all wittiness and sarcasm was put to rest. “Why then?”

  “Why what then?”

  “Why plan to trip? Why plan your own fall?” Was I still talking about Will physically taking a spill in the living room . . . or something else? Who knows? God, who cares? With the magic his fingers were working, I didn’t care about much other than keeping them right where they were.

  “To get you down to my level,” was Will’s reply. “To get you to loosen up for five minutes, forget about the person you are and should be and want to be and just . . . be. To get you to stop thinking so much.”

  He really did have me pegged. “Is that all?”

  “I might have had another ulterior motive I can admit only because I made you a solemn vow to be honest.”

  “And what ulterior motive would that be?”

  Will’s other hand came to rest on my stomach, his fingers splayed. The width of his hands made it seem like he could cover and keep safe the very core of me. “So I could touch you.”

  If he hadn’t been touching me the way he was, those words would have made me bolt. The sincerity behind them would have made me keep running too.

  Instead of replying with something along the lines of, “The way you touch me is like perfection in bottled form,” I went for my favorite avoidance trick—changing the subject. “So the Army. You said you were on leave when we first met, but how long are you going to be on leave?” Reese had said she’d seen Will in the fall, and he was still here months later. I didn’t know exactly how the military worked, but I assumed leaves weren’t generally that long.

  Will took a deep breath. My head seemed to rise a solid foot before falling just as far. “Forever.”

  My eyebrows came together. “Why? Did you get tired of it?”

  “No way. I loved it. Getting to see new places, meet new people, knowing the person beside you had your back, just like you had theirs, the camaraderie, the adventure . . . I loved it all. Everything except for basic training, because a person would have to be certifiable to actually admit—honestly—to enjoying basic training.” Will’s voice was impassioned about most things he discussed, and the Army was no exception.

  “So why aren’t you going back, if you love it so much?” I remembered the life I’d loved and been forced by circumstance to leave behind. If there were even a sliver of an opportunity to go back, I would have taken it.

  “Well, partly because my mom needs someone here. Since my three brothers weren’t exactly eager to fill in as caretaker, I took one for the team and filled those shoes.”

  I waited for him to add something. When I kept waiting, I asked, “And what’s the other part?”

  Will took another slow breath. My head rose with him and fell with him. “There was
an accident.”

  From the pain that had seeped into his voice, I knew I shouldn’t press, but another topic change seemed impossible right then. Especially when I felt like I was finally pulling back the layers hiding the real Will from me. “What kind of accident?”

  Will’s fingers froze midway through my hair. After a moment, they continued their slow pace. “If I give you the answer to that—the whole answer—I’ll have to mention part of what I’ve been trying to talk with you about.” He paused, likely to let this set in with me. “With that said, do you still want to know?”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek and gave that careful consideration. I wanted to know what accident Will had been part of. It must have been severe enough that the Army would put him on “permanent leave,” as he’d called it. I wanted to know, but even more than wanting to know, I didn’t want Will to bring up anything pertaining to the topic he’d been dying to discuss. I had to keep this world and the other one separate until I’d figured out how to navigate both simultaneously. Or at least until I knew if traversing both at once was even possible. I had to keep however Will’s accident and how it pertained to what had taken place between us at The Body Shop off the books until I’d figured out some things. Until I’d figured out a mountain of things.

  “How many girlfriends have you had?” If that wasn’t a succinct answer to his question, I don’t know what was. The accident, and whatever surrounded it, was off limits.

  Will took a few seconds to answer. I wasn’t sure if that was because there were so many he had to actually count them, or if my sudden shifts in conversation were becoming harder to keep up with. “It depends on how you define ‘girlfriend.’”

  I rolled my eyes. “That is such a man answer.”

  “You did ask a man,” he replied.

  Yeah, I’m quite familiar with you being a man. Sequestering my inner troublemaker into a corner, I started humming the Jeopardy jingle.

  “Fine. By my definition, I’ve had four girlfriends.”

  “And what’s your definition of a girlfriend?”

  “Someone I was serious enough about to be able to see living my life with them.” His answer was immediate and just as confident.

  “Let me get this straight . . . You’ve been with four women you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.” For drama’s sake, I paused for a few seconds. “Yet you’re still single.”

  “Ouch. Going for the cheap shots tonight, Bennett.”

  “Hey, I’m going to take them if you keep opening them up to me,” I threw back.

  Will chuckled, which made my head bounce up and down like it was on a trampoline. “I didn’t say it stayed that way, did I? Something must have changed somewhere along the relationship’s way. Obviously.” His hand on my stomach nudged my side. “But at least in the beginning, I saw something stretching all the way out into the future with each of them.”

  That bitter taste on the tip of my tongue? Yeah, it was jealousy. I was jealous of four girls whose names I didn’t know. I’d never seen their faces, and I felt like I could claw those faces off in my sleep. “What changed then?”

  “They did. I did.” When my head slid up a few inches, I guessed he was shrugging. “Change is a part of life and all, but we just didn’t change together. You know?”

  I knew that all too well. “When did you meet these girls you saw a forever future with until, one day, you didn’t?”

  “You know, I grew up with three smart-ass brothers. I’m really good at picking up on sarcasm.”

  I couldn’t see him, but I smiled at Will. “Good for you.”

  He gave an exaggerated groan. “Okay, let’s see, the first girl I was convinced I would marry one day I met the first day of fourth grade. She was new to town, wore a pair of sneakers every day, and could hit a baseball farther than most of the guys I knew.”

  “Now that’s a woman,” I added.

  “It was love at first sight. At least . . . by a fourth grader’s terms. We went out on a couple of ‘dates’ to the old diner and shared a strawberry milkshake each time. Then she met my older brother Ryker, and she experienced that whole love-at-first-sight thing, too.”

  “Woman can be wicked, cruel creatures. Especially fourth grade ones.”

  Will laughed lightly. “Don’t I know it.”

  “So that’s girl number one. What about the other three? Did they all know how to swing a bat and wind up falling for one of your other brothers?”

  Will gave my hair a gentle tug. I’d never had my hair pulled by a guy, other than at recess in elementary school—Blake had certainly been too prudish to try something as outlandish as hair-pulling—but now that I’d experienced it with Will, I could confidently say I was a big fan of the hair pull.

  “The next girl was in junior high. We went steady for a whole six months. I would have kept going if I hadn’t walked in on her making out with someone else in a dark biology classroom,” he said.

  “Yikes.”

  “Making out with another girl.”

  “Double yikes.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming . . . until I literally saw it.”

  “And girl number three?” I asked, continuing to stare at him. I hoped that any moment now, my eyes would adjust and I’d be able to make out bits and pieces of him.

  “That was my high school girlfriend. We were together long enough to go to junior and senior prom together. We even made it through graduation and my first deployment in the Army. She was off at college, and after spending six months in the desert with a fifty-to-one ratio of men to women, I was convinced I was ready to marry this girl. So I stopped at the jewelry store by her campus, picked out a ring I could afford, and was ready to get down on bended knee and propose to her.”

  I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. Commitment wasn’t something any of the Goods brothers had been known for, but buying an engagement ring when a guy was barely into his wild twenties gave every indication otherwise.

  “I was two weeks too late,” he continued. “When I showed up at her door with that ring in my pocket, I saw another ring in its place. A much bigger, nicer one. I didn’t say anything. I kept the ring in my pocket, and I turned around, walked away, and never heard from her again. I can only assume she’s married, has a few kids, and has the house and big backyard she always wanted.”

  Will was too gracious. Me on the other hand . . . not even. “Driving a run-down minivan, wearing mom jeans, and fantasizing about you when she makes mediocre love to her husband every other week.”

  “You are vicious.” I heard the smile in Will’s voice. “Remind me never to get on your bad list.”

  “And what if you already are?” I teased. A moment after I said the words, I realized I wasn’t teasing completely.

  “Remind me to forget that I am or to find a way off of that list,” Will answered.

  “Girl number four.” Surely the last one couldn’t have ended as disastrously as the prior three.

  “We got together when I was already six years into the Army. We met at this late-night diner a few miles off of the base that I used to go to when I was back from deployments. I’d seen her there a bunch of times. She was always studying over a pile of books and papers. This one night, I was scheduled to leave the next afternoon for another six month deployment, so I was feeling a little . . .”

  “Horny?” I suggested.

  I imagined Will rolling his eyes. “Spontaneous. That was the word I was going for.”

  “Also known as horny,” I grumbled under my breath.

  “Anyway, I walked up to her and asked if she was in need of a study break. She said yes, so I told her I knew this great spot—”

  “The motel down the street.”

  He sighed and gave my hair another pull.

  Okay, sarcastic remarks are rewarded with a hair pull. Keep ‘em coming, Liv.

  “This bluff way above the city where you could watch the sun rise,” he clarified. “This place, Liv, God . . . yo
u could dangle your legs from this ledge and feel like the sun was going to rise right into your arms. It was like nowhere else I’ve ever been to.”

  “Sounds pretty spectacular.” No sarcasm, no hair pull. Damn.

  “It was. I’d give just about anything to go back to that place and get to see that sunrise once more.” For the first time in tonight’s conversation, Will’s voice took on an air of sadness. “Anyway, my sunrise-viewing plan would have wooed the clothes right off of her right there . . .”

  I lifted an eyebrow. I knew the story was heading to this end.

  “If I was that kind of guy. Which I’m not. Or . . . not usually.”

  Yeah, because I seem to remember a guy who didn’t have any issues giving into the instincts of his body. “So what happened after that? Was that all? Just that one sunrise?”

  “Nope, she was still waiting for me six months later. I knew if a girl I’d only met hours before leaving for half a year could wait that long for me, she had to be the one. I mean, who would wait that long for a guy she didn’t know anything about other than he liked to watch the sun rise and was one hell of a kisser?”

  I smiled triumphantly. “I knew there would be some degree of horny to that ‘approach the single girl in a late night diner and ask her to leave with you’ story.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re a real psychic to assume a twenty-five-year-old guy would want to kiss a girl the morning he was getting ready to leave for a place where he wouldn’t be kissing, touching, or anything else-ing another girl for a long, long, long time.”

  “So what happened? Why did it end?” Somewhere along the way, my jealousy for these women Will had seen a future with had morphed into sympathy for him. He’d been about as lucky in love as I’d been. I knew what it felt like to be certain you might be the last person on earth to uncover a genuine soul mate.

  “We were together for almost three years. She’d graduated law school and was carving her way in the professional world while I was moving up in rank in the Army. We were growing together, changing together.” Will let out a heavy breath. “And then that accident happened, and I wasn’t the only one affected—it affected her too. See, I had no other choice but to live with it and deal, but her? She had a choice. And she chose to say good-bye and move on with her life without me.” As Will finished, his voice wasn’t necessarily sad, but it wasn’t light and hopeful like it was the majority of the time. It wasn’t teeming with confidence.