Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  Everly nodded thoughtfully before replying, “Thank you for the insights. I hadn’t realized that he and Jonathan were that close. I can’t promise I’ll be able to get through to him, but I can promise I won’t clear him until I’m sure he’s ready to return to duty.”

  “That’s all I ask, then.”

  Evelyn mulled over the conversation on her way home that evening. Maybe, she thought, it would take more than a calm, structured office visit to get through to Connor. The emotional walls he’d built to ward off the rest of the world were thick, and strong, and by all accounts, the only person he’d ever let inside them now lay in an early grave.

  Though it certainly crossed lines she’d never thought to cross before, Everly was considering using Connor’s obvious attraction to her to catch him off guard and try to get inside those defenses. Something told her that it might be the only way she could save him from himself. It was more than a little unsettling, because in order to do what she was considering, she would have to let Connor inside her own defenses, and something told her that once she did that, he’d have the power to hurt her like no one ever had before.

  Chapter Nine

  Connor was sitting on his couch in a dimly lit living room cleaning his 9mm Beretta when the knock came at his door. There was only a single lamp turned on, both because the light still stung his eyes—an after effect of overindulging the night before—and because the darkness suited his mood. It was easier somehow in the dark to ignore the world outside. He could almost pretend nothing had changed, that the last few months had never happened. Almost. A couple shots of whisky might do even more to kill the pain, but it was early in the day yet. He would wait until late afternoon at least.

  He didn’t really need to clean the pistol—he hadn’t used it in months. It was his personal firearm—but the easy, practiced motions of the action, a ritual repeated hundreds of times before, soothed something inside him.

  What did it say of him that he had only cold, hard steel that had been forged for violence to turn to when he was at his lowest? Well, that was a thought best pushed back into the recesses of his mind, in the corner that housed a childhood of abuse and violence, followed by an adulthood of the same, even though the violence by his own hands had always been for the right reasons. Did his being a monster on the government’s leash make his any less a monster?

  When the knock came, he was equal parts relieved and wary—relieved at a distraction to pull him from his dark thoughts, and wary because there was no one left who would visit him for companionship. Jon had been the only one to do that… Connor shook of the thought and went to answer door, and then wished to hell that he hadn’t.

  There stood Marsha, looking worn and fragile with a cardboard box clutched to her chest. Even for all that, though, he could see in her pinched brow and in her haunted but compassionate eyes that she was worried about him. He wished the compassion on her face could stimulate something in him besides regret and rage.

  “What do you need, Marsha?” The words came out hard and clipped. Hell, she didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t her fault that looking at his dead friend’s wife had his insides torn to shreds.

  Her mouth tightened momentarily, but she didn’t return his tone. “I just brought some things over that you might want. Some things that were Jon’s. I think he would want you to have them. Some pictures of the two of you, a few old home movies… I had them boxed up and ready, thought I would give you the box next time you stopped by, but you never came.” He could hear the accusation in her voice, barely restrained though she tried to hide it.

  “I was going to Marsha. I just…” Couldn’t stand the thought of looking you in the eye. “…didn’t get around to it.”

  He saw her anger rise to the surface. Somehow, the righteous fury in his eyes made him feel a bit better. This, he thought, was what he deserved.

  “Couldn’t find the time, Connor? That’s just…fucking rotten.” The curse word fell heavy and flat from her lips. She was a gentle woman, not given to cursing or insults. “I can’t think of a single time my husband didn’t drop everything for you the second you needed it, didn’t come rushing when you called.”

  She shoved the box at his chest and left with a rushed, angry gait. Her anger did nothing to rid him of the guilt that plagued his every waking moment though, for it was but a fraction of what he deserved, a few paltry drops when he deserved an ocean of retribution to cover him, surround him, fill his lungs. With wooden steps, he shuffled to the kitchen and upended the entire box into the garbage can. The sound of it hitting the bottom of the pail was a knife twisting in his gut.

  How long he would have stood there, staring into space, he wasn’t sure, because a knock sounded at the door. Probably Marsha, come back to give him another piece of her mind. God knew he deserved that and more.

  It took a second for him to realize that it was not Marsha, but Everly standing on his front step. When he said nothing to welcome her she breezed past him into the living room like she had every right to be there. Connor was too emotionally exhausted to care one way or another at the intrusion.

  “Cleaning your gun, I see.” Her voice was light, mildly curious.

  “Yes. It…relaxes me.” Admitting to the need for something to relax him at all was a bad idea, part of his mind realized, but his emotions were raw and exposed after Marsha’s visit.

  “Cleaning it does?” Once again her tone was inquiring, but not pressing.

  “Using it, cleaning it. Guns are what I’m good at, how I’ve made my living.”

  “I see.” Somehow he felt like maybe she really did. “Teach me to use one?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve spent weeks now trying to bring you some measure of peace. If guns are what you need to feel that way, so be it. We’ll just consider it a new type of therapy.”

  The words brought a smile to his face. The spark of humor mixed with blunt honesty surprised him, and encouraged him. It was the first light emotion he’d felt in a while. Even his lust for Everly was a heavy, weighty thing, an inexorable force rather than the light, easy sexual encounters he’d had in the past.

  “Guns for the crazies, huh? Something tells me the world won’t exactly embrace your methods, Doc.”

  He took her to the range, though. She rode on the back of his bike. He went slower than was necessary and took a longer route, relishing the feel of her arms around his waist. The innocent contact, the trust it took to get on a motorcycle with someone, was a balm to his wounded spirit.

  Everly didn’t pressure him to talk about anything that he didn’t want to. They simply enjoyed each other’s company. Connor found that when he wasn’t using the attraction between them as both shield and weapon that Everly was a woman that he admired, with a quick wit and a strong spirit. She was most definitely someone who deserved much better than he had to give.

  With an unusual burst of sentiment, he decided that he would accept her easy affection today, cherish it as the gift it was. Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow he would give her a gift of his own—he would walk away. He would save her from being entangled with a monster, save her from giving a piece of herself to a man who would never measure up to deserving it.

  When they came together that night, it was not a rushed and frantic encounter like the ones they’d had before. Connor laid her on his bed, tried to show her with every touch, every kiss, what he would never admit to her in words.

  When he entered her warm, wet heat and plunged into her again and again it filled him with a sense of completion like nothing ever before. It was more than sex, he realized with surprise, though he wouldn’t allow himself to examine exactly what that meant.

  Chapter Ten

  Everly stretched, delighting in muscles that were slightly sore for all the right reasons. Last night had been an amazing experience. Connor had finally let his shields down, and what she found beneath them was spectacular. He had cherished her with his eyes, his words, his body. He had made love to her—no way could l
ast night be described in any other words, though she’d never been one to romanticize sex. Last night had been a satisfaction so complete that a small part of her wondered if she would ever be satisfied with anything less again.

  Even if that was true, it might just have been worth it. She hadn’t forgotten that she had been intent on getting inside Connor’s defenses to help him—well, maybe for just a few hours there, but who could blame her? The man was enough to make any woman forget for a while what she was about. He’d opened up to her yesterday. Not enough to begin to confide in her about the last fateful mission he’d been on, but enough for her to hope that he would in the future. And if she had to warm his bed for a while longer before he did? Well, that was definitely fine with her.

  She ran one hand down Connor’s back. He shivered in response to her touch, but didn’t wake. With a smile, she decided to make herself some coffee. She would wait for a bit, let him wake up and kiss him goodbye before she left him, maybe even try to make plans to see him again.

  She padded softly through the apartment, and found everything she needed to make a pot of coffee. When she went to the trash can to dump out the old grounds, she saw a box upended into the trash can. She figured she would replace the bag with a fresh one, but when she pulled out the box to take the bag from the can, there were several photos in an otherwise almost empty bag. She reached down and began to sift through the items. The photos were of Connor and Jonathan, and there were home-burned DVD’s as well. Some of the pictures showed two boys that she assumed to be them as children. Their arms were around each other in most of them, and they had the too-bright smiles and haunted eyes of children who had already been to hell and back, who were leaning on each other to survive.

  She rose when she heard Connor come into the room, one of the DVD’s still in her hand.

  “Well, good morn—” The words dried on his tongue, and stoic weariness replaced the sleepy warmth that had been in his eyes.

  “What is this, Connor?” She couldn’t understand what had led him to throw these things away. She watched his face as the mask of sarcasm and humor that he’d used to hide his pain from her began to appear. No, that wasn’t happening again. Not this time.

  “Don’t, Connor. Just…don’t. If you think you’re going to convince me that something isn’t seriously wrong after this,” she swept one arm to motion toward the garbage can behind her, “then you must think I’m a damn idiot. I’ve skated around pushing you because I can recognize a man who won’t be forced when I see one, but I’m going to have some answers before I leave here today one way or another.”

  She saw the flash of pure grief in his eyes before he banked his emotions, then saw the anger born of defensiveness well up inside him. She watched as he finally broke, sighed the old, weary sigh of a man much older than he was, a man who shouldered a lifetime of disillusionment and regret.

  “Okay. Okay, Everly. You’ll get your answer, but don’t be surprised when you don’t like what you hear.”

  He crossed the distance and turned her face toward his own with a gentle finger beneath her chin. His kiss was filled with yearning, with regret. Then he took her hand and gently led her back into the living room motioning for her to sit on the couch. Connor let go of her hand and sat a bit farther from her before his gaze focused on an empty corner. His voice, when he spoke, was lifeless and flat.

  “Me and Jon were… He was the closest thing I had to family. We were from a pretty small town, and neither of us was all that well behaved.” He smiled, presumably at some memory of the two of them, and the reflexive expression seemed totally at odds with the anguish in his eyes.

  “No one wanted to keep either of us for long, so we were in a lot of the same temporary homes together, the halfway houses for boys that were a bit too much to handle in a more… traditional atmosphere. At first it was because we were broken, hurt and lashing out. Eventually though, half our antics were just attempts to be placed in the same home again. We both felt less alone in the world when we were together. We joined the service together too, both made it through selection and training to become SEALS. Then he met Marsha and got married.”

  Everly said nothing, afraid that if she spoke he would retreat from her once again. Somehow she knew that if he retreated this time, nothing she could do would be enough to reach him.

  “I was so damn happy for him, so damn proud. I thought one of us had actually managed to make it through our childhood and still have a full, happy life, and it was good, for a while. It was. Then things started to change. It seemed like after every one of our missions, he left a piece of himself behind when we returned home, until…”

  Connor met her eyes then, and his anguish seemed to be its own entity, a heavy presence robbing the room of light and air. “Eventually there wasn’t anything left of Jon, the Jon I knew, at all. He started going missing when we were overseas, even though it’s forbidden to go anywhere alone in a combat zone. When he’d come back, he’d seem…kind of… strung out. I thought maybe he was using. Not surprising, considering how we grew up. I still think he might have been.”

  Connor let his eyes go to the floor then, and Everly could tell that he could barely force himself to speak the next words.

  “When we were ambushed, Jonathan’s face contorted into an eerie smile, like he was having the time of his life, then he… He… He started killing our team, Everly. He was like a man possessed. I… I… aw, fuck, I had to take him out. I knew I had to do it. I knew it. I froze, though. I’ve never frozen before, no matter what I’ve faced. But seeing him killing our own teammates, it was like my mind just couldn’t believe my eyes, you know? If I’d shot him sooner, I could have saved every last one of them. Hell, if I’d just mentioned to someone when I noticed something wasn’t right…”

  Everly could hardly breathe through the lump in her throat, and she couldn’t stop the tears that were trailing down her cheeks any more than she could stop the sun from rising, not any more than Connor could go back and change that which had already come to pass.

  He continued speaking after a moment. “I didn’t help him when he needed me the most. I failed him. But, the least I can do is let him die a hero, keep his wife and children from knowing that he died a traitor, a cold-blooded killer.”

  She laid a shaking hand on his arm.

  “I’m so sorry, Connor. I never guessed…I won’t tell a soul. I want you to know that. I swear it.” She moved her hands for emphasis, and his gaze fastened on the DVD that she’d forgotten she still held in her hand. She flinched as he tore it from her fingers.

  Gone was the teasing lover from the night before, the broken man of just a few moments ago. All she could see in his eyes now was a grief-fed anger that she feared might consume him. He threw the DVD across the room, and the sound of it hitting the wall was as loud as a gunshot in the quiet of the morning.

  “Get the hell out, Doc.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The following days became weeks in which Connor sank into an alcohol and grief laden haze. He no longer waited for evening to use liquor to dull his pain. He’d taken almost all of his saved leave after his confession to Everly.

  His commander had rushed the packet through for him, gotten the time off approved in hours, rather than days or even weeks. Connor wasn’t sure why he’d done so, but he was thankful. He didn’t know how he was going to face anyone again.

  Somehow, speaking of Jon’s death had made it more real, like a slap in the face. Before, he’d been able to push it down, distance himself until he almost felt like it was a bad dream. Words had the power, though, to bring darker emotions to life. He’d given the memory of Jonathan’s death that power, and now it threatened to choke him with every waking breath.

  Day after day, he tumbled deeper into the bottle. He wasn’t even sure anymore if he was doing it to escape reality or if he was trying to punish himself for what he’d done, wreck the body that had caused so much grief and pain. A little of both, or neither maybe. It real
ly didn’t matter in the end, as long as he didn’t have to sober up and face himself in the mirror.

  Things continued on that way for a month and a half. His heavily muscled frame lost mass, and when he did bother to look in the mirror he didn’t recognize the tortured soul who stared back at him. That was good, he thought to himself. He hated the strong, confident, arrogant man who’d murdered the only family he’d known. Anyone he became had to be better than that.

  Eventually, though, there came a day that he woke without any liquor in the house. At some point over the last few days, he’d misplaced the keys to both his truck and his bike in a drunken stupor, so it looked like he would be going to fetch a bit more liquor on foot. He could have called a cab, of course, but after so many days in solitude, the thought of making conversation with another person seemed an almost insurmountable task.

  He would rather walk the two miles to the liquor store than try to speak around the grief in his throat and his heart. Even if he was inclined to, he felt that the words would be large and awkward in his mouth. No, he would walk to the liquor store this time. Then, after he’d had a few drinks to calm the shake in his hands and the pounding in his head, he’d find the fucking keys so that this didn’t happen again.

  The sunlight and heat left him shaking and queasy. His head was swimming and sawdust filled his mouth. Every breath felt too heavy for his lungs. The sunlight offended eyes that hadn’t seen nearly enough daylight in recent weeks. Even so, something about the walk cleansed him, sobered him at least fully enough to take a real look in the mirror when he got home. What he saw left him sick and ashamed. He showered off the sweat and the liquor scent that was oozing out his pores.

  Then he sat on his couch, unsure of what to do next. He stared at the room before him. It was cluttered with takeout containers and empty booze bottles. Some of the bottles had been left on their sides to leak their last few drops on the carpet, adding the scent of old alcohol to the smell of stale grease. He shook his head in disgust.