by L. A. Witt
I just stared, holding my breath and hoping he really did have a solution.
“Play it cool today,” Casey said. “As far as Diego knows, you’re done. After Diego’s gone for the day, we’ll get to work and wrap these up.”
“‘We’?”
He smiled. “You know I’m not going to leave you high and dry, baby. Between the two of us, we can absolutely get these done if we work late tonight and bust our asses tomorrow. If Diego finds out, he’ll freak, and he’s stressing enough over the whole thing, so let’s keep this on the DL and get it done ourselves.”
I held his gaze, struggling to process his plan and wondering how the fuck he could think this clearly under this much pressure. Finally, I released a breath. “Okay. Okay, we can . . . we can do that.”
“Good.” He squeezed my arm. “We’ve got this, okay?”
I nodded, but then froze. “What about when the other departments come to get their shit? Do I just tell them to come back later?”
Casey gnawed his lip, and again, he was quick with a solution: “Go ahead and make the calls to pick everything up today. Those”—he pointed at the untouched boxes—“we’ll hand deliver on Monday morning. They’re all from the flight line and security, and both those departments have night shifts, so we’ll be able to drop everything off as soon as they’re done.”
The panic started subsiding. We had a plan. A good one. It was going to be a rough night and a rough weekend, but as long as Diego didn’t catch wind of what was going on, we’d be fine.
I glanced at Casey as we headed back to the office. After my appointment this morning, I desperately needed to talk to him about things, but I could put a pin in all that for now. Get through the weekend, get through the inspection, and then talk about everything else.
I could do this.
I had this.
“Okay, Diego’s gone.” Logan shut the office door behind him. “You sure you want to help me with this?”
“Of course.” I got up from my desk. “I’m the reason you didn’t finish.”
He winced, avoiding my gaze.
I touched his waist. “Relax. We’ve got tonight and the whole weekend. Between the two of us, we’ll get it done. I promise.”
“I know. I just feel guilty for even being in this situation. If we hadn’t blown off so many evenings and—”
“Logan.” I cupped his face and made him look at me. “You didn’t see two stacks of boxes. I didn’t see them either. If we’d known they were there, we’d have paced ourselves differently.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m just . . .” He swallowed hard. “I am so scared of screwing up this job and—”
I kissed him, and kept at it until his whole body started to relax. When I was sure he’d calmed down a notch or two, I drew back and whispered, “As long as everything is done by Monday at 0700, you haven’t screwed anything up. And it will be done. So let’s get to work.”
He held my gaze like he might argue, but then he nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
If this had been some ridiculous eighties movie, “Eye of the Tiger” would have started playing, and there would have been a two-minute montage of us hoisting boxes, scowling at papers, sipping coffee, stretching, dramatically putting finished boxes aside, and then—as the music faded—both of us staring triumphantly at our handiwork with my arms folded across my chest and his arm resting on my shoulder while we gave slow, smug, eighties bro nods.
This wasn’t a ridiculous eighties movie, though, and dear sweet mother of God, I would have sold my soul to wrap this up in a two-minute montage. After three hours, we’d barely made a dent. This was going to be a long night.
While we worked, the construction crew made their usual noise down the hall. Doors opened. Boots clomped in the hallways. Saws whined. Guys cursed. I mostly tuned it out . . . which was exactly why I didn’t notice another set of footsteps until they were almost to our open door.
And I looked up just in time for Diego to walk in, his fiancé on his heels.
Diego froze.
So did we.
Mark didn’t seem fazed, but he probably didn’t realize what Diego had just walked into.
Diego took another step in, and I held my breath as his gaze slid over the boxes, the folders, and the two of us. “Somebody want to fill me in?” His tone warned against any smart-ass response.
“Um.” I cleared my throat. “We—”
“I fucked up.” Logan’s chair creaked as he sat up, and he put down the record he’d been working on. “There were a couple of stacks I completely overlooked, so we’re—”
“You guys told me this was done,” Diego said flatly. Mark’s eyes widened, and he took a subtle backward step.
“I know,” Logan said. “I . . . I didn’t want to freak you out when I realized the problem, so we came in tonight to fix—”
“You lied to me about something that could blow the entire inspection?”
Logan opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it: “That was my fault.”
They both turned to me.
Mark coughed quietly and touched Diego’s arm. “I’ll be in the car.”
Diego nodded, but didn’t look at him. He was too busy drilling into me with his eyes.
I steeled myself. “I knew you were stressing like hell over the inspection, and I also knew we could get this done over the weekend. Didn’t seem like you needed the extra stress when we had the problem taken care of.”
“So . . . you lied to me?” That low growl made my neck prickle.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said. “We’ve got it handled, though. It’ll be done before the inspectors get here.”
“I would fucking hope so. You haven’t worked here long enough to qualify for much in the way of unemployment.”
Logan blanched.
“For the record, I won’t fire anyone over it,” Diego went on. “But if we fail this inspection? I’ll be in the unemployment line with you. Which will cost me my green card.” His eyes narrowed. “Got it?”
We both nodded.
“We’ll finish it,” I said quickly. “Do you . . . do you want me to text you when it’s done?”
Diego’s lips pulled tight. With a curt nod, he said, “Yeah. Soon as you’re done, I want to know.” Then he muttered something in Spanish—never a good sign—and strode over to his cubicle. Something rattled, and a drawer banged shut. As he came out, he glared at both of us. “Get this shit done. When the inspection’s over, assuming any of us still have jobs, we’ll talk.”
Logan and I both nodded.
Without another word, Diego stormed out of the office, and we sagged against our chairs.
“Well.” Logan laughed dryly. “So much for the stealth approach.”
“I know, right?” I turned to him, and the worry was as palpable as Diego’s anger had been. “Hey.” I slid my chair closer to his cube and put my hand on top of the wall between us. “Don’t worry about it. We still have two days to finish this, and then we just have to get through the inspection. Diego will yell and scream, but it’ll be fine. Okay?”
Logan stared at the doorway where Diego had been a moment ago.
“Hey.” I tapped the wall with my nail. “Look at me.” When he did, I said, “I know you’re worried, but we’ll be okay.”
He nodded, Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he shook himself and picked up the record he’d been working on. “How about another hour, and then we go find some food?”
I didn’t like the uneasiness in his voice and posture, but really, there wasn’t much to be done right now. Our number-one priority was getting through this pile of records before Monday.
Everything else could wait.
I dropped off the last boxes to the squadrons at 0645 on Monday morning, and came back to the office just in time to see Diego and Commander Fraser shaking hands with the auditors—a Japanese man and a white lady in civilian clothes.
And we’re off.
The inspection was, as everyone had predicted,
hell. It was actually worse when the auditors weren’t in our office, because without them looming with their clipboards and scowls, we were more likely to snap at each other. Tempers ran hot. Hours ran late. I didn’t even make it to the gym all week, Logan had to bail on his therapist, and sex was a distant memory. Each night, I’d collapse into bed and pass out, and admittedly, I didn’t even care if I was dropping onto the mattress beside Logan or by myself. By the time I left the office each night, all I could think about was sleep.
Thanks to some scheduling fuckups, the inspection spilled over into the next week, but by 1700 on Tuesday night, the auditors were out the door. The entire building breathed a collective sigh of relief, and I seriously considered curling up under my desk and going to sleep right there.
As promised, Diego read us the riot act, but it turned out to be a lot more subdued than either of us had anticipated. Between Diego being even more exhausted than we were, and the fact that we’d aced the training record audit, he wasn’t nearly as pissed off as he could have been. After some promises from us to be on the up-and-up with him in the future, and some promises from him to personally choke us if we ever pulled a stunt like that again, it was over.
“Oh my God,” Logan breathed as we stepped out into the parking lot, liberated at last. “I can’t believe we made it through that.”
“I can.”
He turned to me, brow creased with skepticism.
I elbowed him. “Come on. Our department’s awesome. What did you expect?”
“Chaos. Disaster.” He shrugged. “Fire. Brimstone.”
I chuckled. “Hope you weren’t disappointed it turned out to be so boring.”
“No, not at all. I almost don’t know what to do with myself now that it’s over, though.”
“Right? I mean, I’d suggest we go home and fuck like bunnies to celebrate, but honestly?” I touched his face, not caring who saw. “I’ve got about enough steam left to eat something, maybe watch some dumb TV, and go to sleep.”
“Same here.”
“So, you want to eat something, watch some dumb TV, and go to sleep with me?”
That got a smile out of him. “Fuck yes.”
“Your place or mine?”
“Mine.” He gestured at his car. “See you there?”
“See you there.”
Driving away from the office with Casey behind me, I was a weird combination of dangerously tired and so spun up I was almost shaking. For the last week and a half, every waking hour of my life had revolved around the records and the inspection. Now that everything was over—and now that I was sure my boss wasn’t going to rip my head off—I should have been relaxed to the point of passing out at the wheel.
But I wasn’t.
If anything, it was worse.
Because now I had nothing left to distract me from the conversation I still needed to have with Casey. The topic had gnawed relentlessly at me ever since my last appointment with Lynda, but there hadn’t been time. What precious little downtime we’d had, we’d rationed for things like sleep, food, and (temporarily) giving a shit about the inspection. A conversation like this would have been way too much.
But now all that was over. No time like the present, right?
Except we were both too exhausted. The inspection had taken a lot out of me, and I had a feeling it had fucked him up too. This was so not the time to be dealing with heavy things like emotions and relationships and futures we might or might not have.
So . . . not tonight.
Soon, but not tonight.
Cold sweat clung to my skin as I dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. My hands were shaking. My heart was pounding. I thought I was going to be sick even as I flipped to the first blank page in the black sketchbook.
I couldn’t get the lines down fast enough. My hand blurred across the page, and I had to stop three times to switch out pencils because I’d snapped off the lead. Fuck. I was too jittery for this, but too rattled not to do it, so I gritted my teeth and breathed slowly and let the page pull the poison from the dream onto the paper, where it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Where it would hurt less.
Except it wasn’t working. My subconscious had stepped things up tonight. It wasn’t just flashbacks anymore. Now it was getting hypothetical. Things that could have happened, and not just to me. As if I didn’t know that feeling all too well from powerlessly standing by while a buddy died. I’d had my hand on a man’s pulse when it had stopped. Did my mind really have to torture me with scenarios that hadn’t actually gone down?
People want to do this? I traced the edge of a bullet, darkening the line until the pencil lead just slid uselessly back and forth. People want to be there?
My stomach lurched.
Casey wants to be there.
Casey was grieving because he couldn’t be there. And he was actually feeling better now that he was headed back to active duty, especially since it meant he might—probably would—still see combat. We’d talked about that before, and it had bothered me, but now it was under my skin. Driving me crazy. Casey in the line of fire. Casey under a sky that mortars sometimes fell out of. He wouldn’t be doing spec ops or anything, but combat wasn’t out of the question. He wanted it. He wanted to be in the thick of things, with bullets flying and bombs dropping and enemies in shadows and—
“Logan?” A sleepy voice cracked against my senses like gunfire.
I jumped out of the chair, slamming the sketchbook shut as I did, and jumped again when the chair crashed into the stove behind me.
“Whoa. Hey.” Casey put up his hands and watched me uneasily. “It’s just me.”
“Shit.” I raked a hand through my damp hair. “I . . . didn’t hear you.”
You’re here. You’re okay.
He was, right? The blanched light from overhead made his skin deathly pale and added creepy shadows under his features, and my skin crawled as the dream flashed through my mind. But it was just a trick of the light. He was okay.
Of course he was. Because everything I’d seen had been a dream. Not even a flashback—just a dream. Something that had never happened.
Something that could happen if . . . when—
I forced the thought out of my head. Dropping my gaze, I let my shoulders sag. I rubbed my eyes before wiping my hand over my face. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”
“No. I woke up and you were gone. And the light was on.” He took a cautious step into the kitchen. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I . . .” I looked around for the chair, then hooked my bare foot under one of the legs and dragged it back to the table. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Which is it?” he asked softly. “You are, or you will be?”
I met his gaze again, and now that he was closer, the light wasn’t so harsh on his features. His eyes were wide with concern, his lips pressed into a thin line, and the crevices between his eyebrows deepened as he watched me. He had no idea what I’d seen. What I’d been drawing. Because it hadn’t happened. It wasn’t real.
Without a word, I gathered him into a tight hug and buried my face against his neck. Eyes closed, I pulled in a deep breath of his scent.
“Hey.” He wrapped his arms around me. “You sure you’re okay?”
I’m sure you are. That’s all I care about.
“I’m good.” But I didn’t let him go quite yet, and he didn’t try to free himself.
For the longest time, we just stood there, and my thumping heart gradually slowed.
“I’m sorry,” I said again as I finally let him go.
“It’s okay.” He kept a hand on my side. “Come on. We should get some sleep.”
I nodded, but hesitated. “I’m going to grab a shower first.” I gestured at myself. “Sweating.”
Casey watched me silently. “Maybe that shower can wait a few minutes.” Before I could respond, he cupped my face in both hands and kissed me.
I was so, so not in the mood, but . . . but then . . . but . . .
; Sighing, I pulled him closer and let the warmth of his body heat my cool skin.
“Let’s go back to bed,” he said softly. “I know you’re probably not in the mood, and I know I can’t fix anything, but I can at least make you feel good right now.”
It almost moved me to tears that he wanted to try. That although we were both exhausted after the grueling inspection, he not only found the energy to be awake in the middle of the night, but wasn’t annoyed that we were. He just wanted to do what he could to make things even a little bit better.
So I kissed him.
His body heat sent waves of relief through me. Every harsh breath he released across my skin calmed me a little more. It was irrational to be so relieved that he’d survived a dream, but I knew better than to question my subconscious when it ran off on me like this. If holding Casey and feeling his heart pound made me feel better, then so be it.
“Come back to bed,” he panted against my lips. “You can take that shower after I make you forget things for a little while.”
God, how did I get so lucky? We both knew it wasn’t that simple—that sex wouldn’t fix a damn thing in my head—but right now I could think of nothing I wanted more than to tangle up with him and make his pulse race. How he knew that, I had no idea, but he did. I didn’t protest. Sliding a hand up into his short hair, I kissed him harder.
Holding him now was like coming back to life. My heart was pounding, so it was beating again. I was out of breath, so I was breathing again. My body was tingling and aching and itching for more contact with his, so I was feeling something other than miserable again.
I held him tighter and pressed our groins together. If I’d been with any other man, I probably wouldn’t have even been able to get it up tonight, but I was so driven by the need to feel Casey and to make him feel me, to feel how alive we both were, that I was rock-hard.
He hummed into my kiss like he always did, and murmured, “Tell me what you want, baby.”
“You.” I raked my fingers through his hair. “That’s all.”