by Tawny Weber
"Get in," she told him, motioning to the side of the bed he'd been on before.
He did, obedient as could be, leaving his pants on, she noted. She took another look at him and all that tanned, bare skin. He looked so good.
"Can you sleep on your other side? Facing the wall?" she asked.
"I can sleep anywhere, any time, sitting up, even standing up."
She motioned for him to roll over, facing away from her, and then she got in on the other side and scooted over to the middle of the bed, fit her body to his, her front to his back and one of her arms around his waist.
Mmm. That worked. She could feel all those muscles in his back and hips, his thighs. She could run her hands over them if she wanted, snuggle against his warmth, her breasts nestled against his back. It seemed like it would be really hard for her hair to get caught this way.
There. She could sleep beside him, she thought, not ready to give up this time with him, not sure when or if she'd ever have it again.
They stayed until Monday, taking long walks around the city and generally... playing was the best word she could come up with. He tried hard to get her to smile, make her laugh. They played Frisbee at the waterfront park and enjoyed the fountains. He dared her to walk across one of the huge bridges that crossed the Ohio River, and she did it, holding tightly to his hand. They went to the zoo, laughed at the antics of the monkeys, fed the giraffes, rode the train, where they snuggled and kissed and, yes, laughed.
She felt like she was slowly coming back to life. They slept late and ate room service. He lifted her onto the bathroom vanity and they started to make out, but the mirror behind her made her feel exposed, so he carried her to bed.
She didn't have any more flashbacks and had only vaguely unsettling dreams. When she woke up, Will was there. He could go from a dead sleep to wide awake in the blink of an eye, she found out. If she so much as whimpered in her sleep, he heard it, and he was so careful with her, so patient.
She couldn't imagine any other man being so good to her as she tried to work through all the crap in her head, but she couldn't see how she could ask him to keep dealing with it. It wasn't fair to him.
They went straight from the hotel to the airport, and having to say goodbye to him this time was even harder than the first. She knew what she had to say to him and dreaded it.
"Will," she said, as they got closer to the airport. Time was up. "I'm letting you off the hook."
"What?"
"With this. Helping me get over everything. You don't have to do it."
"I know I don't," he said.
"Okay. So, thank you for this. I mean it. I wish it hadn't been so crazy, but—"
"Wait a minute. We had a deal. I'm holding you to it. We're not done yet," he said, no heat, his tone even, as if it was entirely up to him, and he'd decided. That was it.
"I didn't realize how much I was asking, that it would be like this. It's not going to be easy—"
"So? You think I'm a guy who needs things to be easy?"
"And I think it's going to take a while."
"Right."
"It's not what you signed up for."
He shrugged. Didn't matter.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I'm not. I mean, I hate that it scared you, especially that I made it worse by grabbing you and hanging onto you the way I did. But not about anything else. Not that I was here, that we were together. Not about any of that."
"I forced your hand, to get you here. It wasn't fair—"
"Yeah, twisted my arm, didn't you?" He laughed. "Honey, I don't go anywhere I don't want to go. I'm with you because I am exactly where I want to be right now. So, when you're ready to try this again, give me a call."
She was so shocked she said the first thing that came to mind. "I don't have your phone number, Will."
He laughed again. "You know, I was thinking about actually giving it to you before I leave this time."
"Really? Big step for you, isn't it?"
He nodded, grinning, and told her the number so she could put it into her phone as they pulled into the airport.
God, he wasn't walking away from her.
They weren't done.
The relief was so intense it was almost impossible to stop everything from showing on her face. But she had to hold it together while she said goodbye again. Even knowing he'd be back, it wasn't easy. If they were going to do this, she had to get used to this part. She couldn't cry over him every time he left. He'd hate that.
"You call me, I'll be here. We'll get this right," he said as he pulled the car to the curb and squeezed her hand. "Now get ready to kiss me like you mean it. I want that taste of you fresh in my mind, so that when I get on the plane, I can sit back, close my eyes and spend the whole flight back thinking about everything we're going to do the next time we're together."
That was all he wanted?
A kiss goodbye?
One to remember?
And she got to keep him for a little longer? Even had his phone number to call him whenever she wanted him back?
"I can do that," she said.
They got out of the car. He pulled out his bag, put her car keys in her hand, then got all serious and worried-looking, taking her chin in his hand.
"You gonna be okay until I get back here?"
"Yes," she claimed.
"Good." He wound his arms around her, pulled her close. "Now kiss me goodbye."
The kiss was all heat and delicious promise.
She wanted to leave him with something special, so when he finally broke the kiss, she put her lips to his ear and said, "I guess I need to go home and practice some more. It'll be even better now that, instead of just imagining being with you, I know exactly what that feels like. It's going to be even easier to imagine that my hands are yours."
He laughed, shaking his head, looking like she was seriously messing with his head. She hoped so.
He kissed her one more time, quick and hard, and then he was gone.
Chapter 22
Will kept his promise.
They saw each other when they could. He always seemed happy to see her and sorry to leave her. He was a patient, attentive, incredibly understanding yet eager lover. She couldn't have asked for a better man in her bed.
The sex got better. It got easier, not as scary. Not always, but more and more as the months went by.
She tried to accept what he offered and not think of the future, not think there was a time limit on what they had, though she knew there was. He had risked his life to save hers, had been kind and perceptive as he helped her through those first awful months after Buhkai, was happy to help her try to have a normal sex life again, but certain he would not be in her life long-term. Not just her life. Any woman's.
She didn't understand, but didn't question him about that, either, because that was what he wanted.
Live in the present, Emma kept telling her. So Amanda was.
She had weekends here and there with Will and regular appointments with Emma. She did yoga and took long walks, and she volunteered at the shelter, because it was a way of teaching without having to walk into a classroom. She felt useful there and safe. After all, Will had designed the security system, and everyone inside was conscious of security concerns.
The kids were interesting. Some of them were heartbreakingly sweet and timid and hungry for approval and affection. They were gentle and wide-eyed and a little bit afraid most of the time, so Amanda understood them, fit in well with them.
Some were wary, always holding themselves a little apart from everyone and everything, always watching, waiting, sure the peace and security wouldn't last. She felt like she understood them, too, because they made her think of Will.
She'd look at them and wonder whether he'd been like this at six or ten or thirteen. She wanted to know everything about his life, had to fight all the time not to ask him any questions.
And these wary little boys who reminded her of him—she wanted to make them smile, make them forget wh
y they were afraid. She worked hard to make them happy.
At times, she was okay; in brief moments, normal even. Other times she still fought panic, anger, tears, depression, loneliness, nightmares and flashbacks. She missed Will terribly when she wasn't with him.
In December, on the last day of school before Christmas Break, she got to the shelter early. She and some of the mothers were going to decorate and then start baking for an early Christmas party. One of the women and her three children were moving out over the weekend, and everyone wanted to have a holiday party while they were still at the shelter.
Amanda was putting away some school supplies she'd just bought when one of the mothers walked into the room looking stunned and scared.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Amanda asked.
"There's been a shooting at a school!"
"Here?" Because the woman looked so freaked out, Amanda thought it might have happened at one of the schools the kids at the shelter attended.
"No, a school in Connecticut."
"Oh." Amanda calmed down a little, not much. She couldn't help but be thankful it wasn't the kids here who'd seen this, this mother's children, the ones they all knew in the shelter. Still, it was still horrible to think of any child going through that.
Guns, in a school.
It was still too raw for Amanda not to have a racing heart and rubbery knees.
She started using her relaxation techniques. When she could speak, she asked, "Is anyone hurt?"
"Yes. It's really bad." The woman's face crumbled, and her tears started to fall. "They're so little. Kindergartners, the news is saying."
God! Kindergartners?
Amanda had to sit down.
She tried not to think about the kids in her own class in Buhkai, their sweet faces, their arms curling around her neck, how scared they had been that day. She could remember that morning now, getting into her classroom, putting away her things, greeting the kids as they walked in, getting ready for the day.
She could get all the way up to the point where she heard yelling and sounds she soon realized were gunshots. She could remember the first looks of fear on the kids' faces.
It was a struggle to come back to the shelter in Ohio, especially when another mother ran into the room. "Oh, my God. Did you hear? About the school in Connecticut?"
One of the moms turned on the TV. The images were chilling, horrifying, and yet, she couldn't look away. Amanda sat there, frozen, seeing the police, their weapons, the terrified parents, scared little children being led from the school.
She knew she shouldn't watch, shouldn't listen. She just couldn't stand up and leave the room. She didn't think she could walk. She wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to breathe.
There were dead children inside that school, dead children and teachers who had tried to protect them when the gunman had shown up.
It all jumbled in her mind. The school there, and hers in Buhkai. She felt like someone had strapped her into a seat in front of the TV screen and would not let her look away.
Her school.
Her kids.
Her classroom.
The angry man with the gun who wanted Naaji, but he wasn't there.
That man had been so angry.
Amanda tried to curl up in a ball, to protect herself.
But he'd been so very strong. His hands had crushed her arms. He'd grabbed her by her hair, and he wouldn't let her go.
It had hurt. So much. She hadn't been able to get away. She hadn't been able to stop him.
Incirlik Air Base, Turkey
Will had just left a country he really wasn't supposed to be in, running a surveillance mission on what was believed to be a facility capable of manufacturing chemical weapons. He and his team had been out for eighteen hours straight, and got back to their staging area at the NATO base in Turkey early in the afternoon.
All any of them wanted to do was eat, then sleep.
Before they could, they started hearing about the horror of little children shot at a school in Connecticut.
All the things he and people like him did overseas to keep Americans secure, and it turned out that six-year-olds weren't safe in their classrooms in the U.S. It didn't make any damned sense, and it made him furious.
Of course, it made him think of Amanda.
"God, I hope she isn't watching this."
"The thing is, it's damned hard to look away," one of his men, who'd been manning communications that day, said as they stared at the images coming into the computer.
He was right, Will found. It was like a terrible traffic accident on the highway, except this was so much worse.
"How long ago did this happen?"
"It started yesterday morning, beginning of the school day, so about twenty-four hours ago, Master Chief. It's been all over the news all day."
Will's days away from Amanda were normally filled with him fighting the urge to call her—every friggin' day. It was a stubborn, stupid point of pride to feel like he was winning when he didn't call. He knew that, and yet he kept not calling, idiot that he was when it came to her.
Because it didn't feel like winning.
Winning was being with her.
And that feeling—wanting to be with her all the time—was getting stronger every damned day.
Today, he felt every one of the six thousand miles or so between them, hated every fucking one of them. He didn't just want to be with her.
She had to be scared, and Amanda scared without him? No. He couldn't handle that.
He picked up the phone and called.
No answer.
What time was it there? Morning, he calculated, not that early.
He dialed her cell again.
Still no answer.
That freaked him out more than a little bit.
Okay, fine.
Sam or Emma?
She'd know more than Sam. The question was, how much would she tell him? She answered his call sounding rushed and uncharacteristically stressed.
"Hi, it's Will."
"Oh, Will. You saw the news about the school shooting?"
"Yeah. Tough day for you, I guess?"
"Horrible. So many of my patients are parents. And I'm a parent myself. I can't tell you how relieved I am that yesterday was the last day of school before Christmas Break. If I had to send my kids today, I don't know if I could do it."
"I'm sorry, Em. It isn't right. And I didn't think about how hard this would hit you and your own kids."
"It's okay. I know who you're thinking about."
"Yeah. I tried to call her twice. No answer. It scared me. I'm sorry, I know you've probably had a crappy twenty-four hours, but I'm begging you, don't give me any of that confidentiality bullshit right now. Please tell me, is she okay?"
"Will, she's a woman who teaches little kids, and a gunman showed up in her own school not quite a year ago. No, she is not okay today."
"She sat and watched that?"
"Yes, she watched."
"Why would she do that? She had to know better than that."
"I don't believe she was thinking too clearly while she watched. I don't think any of us were. It was nothing but emotions, awful ones. She was at the shelter, Will. One of the mothers came in to tell her what happened, and then someone turned on the big TV in the living room—"
"God."
"Pretty soon, a crowd of people were watching. Amanda ended up in the back of the room, and I guess no one noticed what it was doing to her until she started screaming and couldn't stop—"
"Oh, my God."
"Yeah, it was bad. By the time I got there, she was curled up in the corner, crying and trying to hide. And, uhh... the thing is? She remembers everything now. Everything that happened to her in Buhkai."
"Fuck! Where is she now?"
"Home. I stayed with her until she calmed down enough to talk to me a little bit. I would've stayed longer, but like I said, a lot of my patients are parents. A lot of people needed me yesterday. My own k
ids needed me."
Jesus, how did Emma do that? How did anybody know what to say on a day like yesterday? Especially to their own scared children?
"I'm sorry, Em," he said again.
Clearly, it had been horrible for everyone. He was being incredibly selfish, but he was so scared for Amanda. He was a guy who could think through fear. He was trained to do that. But right now, his own fears seemed to blind him to everything else.
"Just... tell me she's okay now." He had to hear that, had to know that despite everything, somehow she was fine.
Emma sighed. "If she was worse, her father would have called me. I'm hoping she took something to help her relax and is still asleep. It was that kind of day. At the end of it, you go to sleep and pray everything isn't quite as horrible in the morning. Although, I'm not optimistic about that."
Yeah, but that didn't work for Will.
Thinking? Hoping? Praying?
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
"It's really bad, isn't it?" he asked finally, knowing it was.
"I'm too mad about what happened in that school yesterday and too tired to tell you anything else but the whole truth right now. It hit her really hard, and I'm afraid for her."
"What do you mean you're afraid for her? Afraid of what?"
"She cares a lot about you, Will. If you talk to her today or in the next couple of days, ask her to promise you that she's not going to do anything to hurt herself—"
"What?" He exploded, rocketed to his feet and knocked over a table in the process. Everybody in the communications area went silent and stared at him and his unprecedented display of emotion. He didn't care. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Ask her. Make her promise."
"You actually think she's suicidal?"
He could barely get the word out. It was too awful to even contemplate. Suicide was at an all-time high in the military. Too many deployments back to back, too many combat deaths and injuries, too much stress, too much of everything. He'd seen soldiers barely holding themselves together. He knew what that looked like. To think about Amanda like that—
"I don't know—"
"Emma, it's your job. If you don't know, nobody knows—"