by Sharan Daire
I was too “sensitive.” He just needed to be “quiet.” I was crazy for reading anything else into his actions. I shouldn’t take everything so personally. I had unrealistic expectations.
Only after I’d escaped him did I realize that he’d been abusing me each and every time. Denying me conversation. Denying an explanation. Then pretending like I’d made the whole thing up in the first place.
I refused to go back to that. Even for them.
“I’m almost ten years old,” Chris said, breaking the silence.
I allowed myself to take a deep breath, relieved that he was at least going to talk to me, though I had no idea what he meant. I turned toward him so I could see him, though I was careful not to touch him.
He had his left arm braced on the edge of the tub, beer in hand. Now that he had my attention, he draped his right arm alongside the back of the tub and picked up a lock of my damp hair. He curled it around his fingers, not tugging me closer or pulling in any way. Just connecting us by those few strands.
“Ten years ago this month, I almost killed myself. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the last. I count it as my birthday now, instead of the day I was actually born, since my parents never gave a fuck about me beyond continuing the fucking family name.”
He paused a moment and took a long gulp of the beer. His friends said nothing, and when I glanced at Kaleb, his wide eyes told me that he’d never heard this story. Even though they were all such good friends that they’d left their careers behind in order to come to his aid.
“I was sitting in a dingy efficiency apartment with a gun in my lap, loading the bullets one by one, when Derek texted me. I only needed one, but I fully intended to unload them all into my skull to be sure. We’d stayed in touch, sure, but it’d been at least a year since I’d heard from him. I still don’t know why he texted me.”
He paused, waiting to see if Derek had anything to add.
“I couldn’t sleep that night,” he whispered softly. “It was two in the morning. I was supposed to be at work at six. But my mind wouldn’t rest. I could feel that something was wrong. I thought it was Kaleb, but when I called him, he said he was fine. So I texted you and Ev.”
“I didn’t see the text until I got up the next morning,” Everett replied. “That’s the last time I’ve slept in for ten years, because I almost missed everything. When I finally got the text that you needed us, I was on the next plane to Chicago.”
“I don’t honestly even remember where I was, or how I got there,” Chris mused, shaking his head. “I lost time. I don’t know where I was going, or what I’d been doing for at least two or three weeks, other than drinking myself into oblivion.”
I clutched my hands together beneath the water, forcing myself to keep from reaching out to him despite the pain in his voice. I didn’t want to risk hurting him emotionally more than I might have already done tonight, but the sheer rawness of his pain tore me to ribbons.
“He texted, ‘hey, do you need me?’ Not ‘how’re you doing,’ or ‘are you okay?’ We all knew I wasn’t okay. He already knew I needed help. Maybe that is why I was able to text him back. Yeah. No explanation. As soon as he read it, my phone rang. I sat on the floor with the gun in my lap until he got there. I think he talked to me the whole way.”
“I did,” Derek replied, his voice rough. “That’s why I drove. I wouldn’t be able to keep you on the phone if I took a plane, and I knew that if I hung up, we’d lose you. I turned on my sirens and hit the freeway with the gas pedal to the floorboard. I got my ass reamed later for crossing county and state lines with my sirens, but I didn’t care. I had to get to you as fast as I could.”
“I’m sure you all had a vague notion about all this. I’ve told you that I had PTSD, which is true. Years of therapy and meds helped get me back in control of my life. But that isn’t why I was ready to shoot myself in the head that particular night.” He took a long, deep breath. Swallowed some more of his beer. As if he was trying to gather his courage.
I couldn’t stop the silent tears. This man, a former tough-as-nails Marine, facing his fear. Baring his soul. I’d never seen anything braver and more moving in my entire life.
“I got wounded in Helmand.” He lifted the bottle toward his right shoulder. “Just a flesh wound. I’d been dealt worse plenty of times. But they refused to patch me up and send me back. The docs knew I was on the edge even then. They should have sent me for a psych eval, but ten years ago, no one talked about vets with PTSD. It was all brushed under the rug. Still is to a degree, but I think I could have gotten help now from the VA rather than trying to make it on my own.
“So I came back to the States. Raw. On edge. No purpose. No family. In the Corps, you always know your job. You always have a task. You know the chain of command. There’s always someone upstairs giving the orders. I suddenly found myself on the streets with no one telling me what to do. No one keeping me in control.
“Because yeah, I was a fucking danger, to myself and everyone around me. I got kicked out of bars for getting wasted and then bashing in heads. I deliberately went to gang territories and tried to get myself shanked. I was practically begging someone to arrest me. At least then I’d be a danger to other felons, rather than average joes on the street. I didn’t dare drive, because I was always drunk off my ass, and I knew that I’d try to wreck the fucking car. I was afraid it wouldn’t kill me, or worse, I’d hit a family, kill another innocent, and then have to live with more blood on my hands.”
I didn’t miss the reference to another innocent. More blood on his hands. They’d said earlier that Chris was a sniper. Assigned by the United States of America to kill people. Then left to deal with the aftermath alone on the streets.
“There’s only so much alcohol your body can hold, and eventually, you get so used to it that you don’t even feel that buzz any more. I couldn’t find relief from the demons raging in my head all the time. I tried drugs, but that made me crazier and more violent. I woke up in the hospital a few times. Woke up in jail a few times to detox. But they just kept letting me go.
“Through all this, I started hooking up with women at dive bars. I was filthy rich, though I looked rough as hell by then. All I had to do was toss a couple of hundred-dollar bills on the bar, and I had a date for the night. At first, I really thought I was onto something that would help. If I fucked hard enough, I could actually sleep a few hours.
“But it was like alcohol. The effect started to wear off. I got rougher, nastier, and meaner. I didn’t give a fuck about them. I only cared about finding a modicum of peace. A moment of rest.
“But the fucking nightmares just kept coming back no matter what I did. I couldn’t get the blood out of my head. I’d walk down the street and see people’s heads exploding in slow motion. Just like my targets.”
He paused, breathing hard. Without looking up, he wrapped another length of my hair around his hand. A silent plea for me to come nearer.
Crying, I slid closer to him and lay my head on his shoulder. Touching him. After he’d denied himself all these years
“I wasn’t a good man, Shelby. I was the meanest motherfucker to ever cross a street. I killed people in the line of duty, and then to try and blot out my sins, I started hurting everyone around me. It finally dawned on me that I had become my father, the man I hated the most. I couldn’t figure out how to get off the merry-go-round of nightmares and death. I was lost and in so much pain. Not an excuse. Just the brutal truth.
“I woke up in the middle of the night screaming like a banshee, trying to kill whatever had attacked me in my dreams. Only to realize I was strangling the woman I’d picked up for the night. I almost killed her. An innocent woman who’d let me fuck her half to death just an hour before. I told myself there’s no coming back from that. Once you start trying to kill people around you because you’re fucking dreaming, you end it before someone really does die. I sat there with the gun in my hand, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was doing the w
orld a fucking favor. Until Derek reached me.”
Trying not to sob, I squeezed my eyes shut. My throat ached. I couldn’t seem to get air in my chest. Past the pain in my heart.
“I’m better now. I haven’t had an episode like that in years. But that’s why I set the rule for myself that I wasn’t allowed to touch a woman. I could watch from a distance. But I wasn’t safe enough to risk getting close enough to hurt anyone ever again. That’s why I didn’t kiss you during our photoshoot. I didn’t dare. I knew that if I tasted your lips, I’d never let you up for air again.”
30
Chris
She turned her face up to mine. Tears shimmered in her eyes, glistening on her cheeks. I fully expected her to hate me. I deserved her hatred. I deserved so much punishment after all the wrongs I’d committed. There was no forgiveness for men like me.
Men like my father.
She cupped my cheek. “May I kiss you now?”
I closed my eyes, fighting to contain the surge of emotion. I swore my heart ceased beating a moment, unable to comprehend her words. That she could look past all the horror in my life and still want to be with me. That she’d care enough about the trauma I’d endured to fucking ask in the first place. That she’d even be willing to touch me after the story I’d just told her.
Let alone love me.
Nobody loved me, outside of these men with us now. That was why I called them brothers, not friends. They were the only true family I’d ever known.
I might be scarred from those old wounds, but I fucking knew what I saw in her eyes and on her face, and it was love. Real love.
The kind of love that I had never known.
“Do you even have to fucking ask?” I ground out, opening my eyes so I could watch her reaction.
Her lips quirked despite her tears. “Yeah, I do.”
“No.” Her eyes flared at my response, a sharp gasp escaping her lips. “No, you don’t. Not you. Not ever. You never have to ask me for one fucking thing.”
I set the bottle on the edge of the tub so I could cup her face in both hands and sealed my mouth over hers. My tongue in her mouth, tasting the wine she’d drunk. Remembering the feel of my dick sinking into her mouth the same way.
She scrambled up onto my lap, sending a wave of water surging over the edge of the tub. “Is this okay?”
My heart. Fucking hell. “Yeah. Always.”
I caught Derek giving Ev a jerk of his head toward the door, silently telling them all to leave. “No, you fucking don’t. You got me in this beautiful mess. You can fucking stay and watch me fuck for the first time in ten years.”
“If it’s truly the first time in a decade, wouldn’t you rather fuck in bed?” Kaleb quipped.
Derek whacked him in the back of the head for me without my request.
Ignoring them, she slowly lowered herself onto my dick. I didn’t rush her. I didn’t seize her hips and slam into her, even though every cell in my body demanded instant relief. Moaning softly against my lips, she moved side to side, working my dick deeper inch by agonizing inch.
I gritted my teeth, sure that this would kill me when everything else I’d done to speed myself along to oblivion had failed. But what a fucking way to go.
Shuddering as she finally took me to the hilt, I held my breath, mentally counting to ten. Twenty. Fighting to hold myself in check. I could do it. I could control myself. The last ten years had proven that to me.
“Fuuuuck,” she whimpered, giving a little twist at the end that made sweat break out on my forehead. “Never mind.”
It took a few beats of my heart for her words to sink into my blood-deprived brain. “Never mind what?”
She squirmed against me, and my hips lifted her up hard enough that a wave of water knocked the bottle off the edge, clattering on the tile and rolling away from the tub. “I had a vision earlier, but it’s impossible.”
I seized her chin and jerked her face up to mine. “Tell me.”
Her eyes were so wide and dark, bottomless pools to drown me. “Me taking Kaleb. While you took me. But I don’t think I’d ever be able to take that… er… log in my ass without dying.”
“Challenge accepted,” Derek muttered. “She only called me a baseball bat.”
“Lube,” Kaleb suggested, ever helpful and cheerful. “Lots of—"
“Fuck you both.”
“Bring it, dickhead,” Derek retorted.
“She’s going to sit on my face before she ever takes any of you in the ass,” Ev insisted.
“Shut the fuck up,” I retorted. “Or get the fuck out.”
“Oooh, I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Kaleb replied.
I opened my mouth to blister his ass with a tirade, but she sealed her lips over mine, swallowing whatever I’d been about to say. It didn’t matter anyway. Not with her in my arms. My dick inside her. I dug my fingers into her hips, pulling her closer. Harder. Trying to pull her inside me, into my heart.
She shuddered, already climaxing. Her pussy clamped down on me and I exploded. Yelled. Convulsed and shook and bucked beneath her hard enough that we nearly drained the tub.
Panting for breath, I clutched her in my arms. Squeezing too hard. Too desperate. Afraid that if I let her go, she’d dissolve into thin air and fly back to heaven where she belonged.
Kaleb broke the silence, because of fucking course he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut for more than five fucking minutes. “I hate to break it to you, dude, but this tub has a serious design flaw.”
“Not the tub,” D clarified. “The bathroom itself.”
Not sure what they were bitching about, I pried my eyelids open and looked over the edge of the tub. At standing water all over the tiles. “Fuck. Should have put some slope toward the shower drain.”
“Or maybe we don’t fill it up so much next time,” Ev said. “It was fine until you two giants got in with us.”
Shelby didn’t make a peep, not even a grumbled response. She lay heavy against me. Limp. Not moving.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe with horror strangling me. I tried to remember what I’d done. Maybe in all my flailing, I’d hit her in the head accidentally. Or she’d smacked her head on the tub. Or I’d squeezed her too hard, breaking her ribs.
D laid one of his big hands on my shoulder, steadying me. “She’s fine. You didn’t hurt her. She’s zonked out, asleep. She did the same thing with me and Kaleb earlier.”
Ev blew out a disgusted breath. “I really need to step up my game then. She didn’t pass out with us earlier.”
I shifted her up higher in my arms. “Help me stand.”
Ev and Kaleb shared a shocked glance, because I never fucking asked for help. But when I was carrying precious cargo, and I’d worked myself out like a fool earlier until I almost keeled over, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to risk my legs giving out on slippery tiles.
D hauled me up out of the tepid water, keeping a steadying hand on me as I stepped out of the tub. With his help, I made it to the door without killing anybody. “You two clean up and then get your asses back to your own beds. We’re not going to invade her bed all at once until she makes it clear we’re all welcome.”
I honestly expected some mouthy replies. Even a direct challenge to my so-called authority. I might have funded our endeavors, but I’d worked really hard over the years not to order them around. I wasn’t my father, ruling his household and businesses like a despotic king.
But they both nodded and snapped to work, grabbing towels to sop up the water. D helped me dry us off enough that we wouldn’t make the bed uncomfortably damp, and then I took her to that giant bed I’d bought. For them. Not for myself. I’d never really been able to see myself lying there with her.
I really wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Wide awake, I could only stare down at her and watch her sleep. D spooned against her back, but I didn’t know if she’d trust me that close. I’d told her the whole brutal story so she’d know the truth. She’d been so fucking conce
rned about me giving consent—I had to hold myself to that same level of care. If I were her, I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night by a terrorized madman trying to strangle me.
“You can sleep, you know,” D said, his voice already getting heavy. “I’ll wake up if I hear anything.”
I snorted, not so sure about that. “Remember the bus ride home from St. Louis?”
“Fuck you. And fuck Kaleb for doing that to me when I was vulnerable.”
His jokester brother had put shaving cream all over him while he snored, dead to the world. Even all our howls of laughter hadn’t woken him up. “You weren’t vulnerable. You were fucking unconscious, completely dead to the world. You wouldn’t hear a fucking nuclear bomb go off.” She stirred slightly, reminding me that she slept. So I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I should probably go up to the lodge and leave you to sleep.”
Her hand reached out, feeling along my shoulder. My chest. Down my side. Her arm slid around me, her palm settling in the small of my back. Then this small, delicate, fragile woman pulled me to her like she’d hug a body pillow and draped her thigh over mine.
Guess I wasn’t fucking going anywhere after all.
31
Shelby
I woke up alone, vaguely guilty that I’d slept so long that everyone was gone, but also pretty damned pleased with myself at the same time. I felt good. Really good.
Complete. In a way that I’d never felt before.
Stretching luxuriously, I finally crawled across the ridiculously wide expanse of the mattress so I could actually get up. I wasn’t sure where my phone was. I couldn’t remember where I’d left it. I took a quick shower and peeked into the giant closest, both shocked and somehow not surprised to find my things all washed, folded or hung. Even more clothes hung beside them with tags still on.