by Cora Carmack
And if she was magnetic then, she was downright hypnotic when she pulled up her feet, and balanced her hands against her date to stand up on the bar.
A group had formed around her, people that she’d spent the night flitting between like the ultimate social butterfly. They laughed and cheered, drawn to her like moths to the flame. And maybe I was too, because before I realized it, I was less than a dozen feet away, leaning against the bar.
She swayed her hips, and the electronic music that had seemed chaotic before made sense when seen through the movement of her body. The music was . . . restless, a description that worked when applied to Kelsey, too.
Despite being the center of this entire bar’s attention, her eyes were flicking around, constantly on the lookout for what was next, waiting for something more. I couldn’t tell if it was boredom that had her always looking ahead or something else.
She bent, giving me (and everyone else) a long look at her legs. When she stood, she’d pulled another girl up on top of the bar with her. Within minutes, the bartender had cranked up the music and the vibe of the entire bar changed.
Where before all the chairs had been filled, now it was the aisles and the open space that were overflowing. People were dancing on their own, in pairs, and in groups. But still . . . every few seconds they seemed to cast their eyes up to the girl dancing on the bar, the girl who had single-handedly turned the night upside down.
I sat down on a stool, watching her, too. It was impossible not to. A few other girls had joined her on the bar, and Kelsey seemed completely oblivious to all the guys who were practically salivating below.
I was far from oblivious.
A song came on, some remixed version of an American hit that I couldn’t stand, and she threw her arms up and declared to no one, “I love this song.”
She sang the words at the top of her lungs, bouncing around in a way that made her look younger, less concerned with being pretty or sexy. I found myself smiling in spite of myself.
The bartender came over, completely nonplussed by the change in atmosphere. He leaned across the bar, and lifted his chin in acknowledgment.
“Я моґу вам помочь?”
I paused, not just because I didn’t speak the language. It was obvious what he was asking, and I hesitated.
I hadn’t meant to come near the bar. That was the promise I made myself as soon as I followed Kelsey into the dimly lit building.
I swallowed, and my throat felt as dry as sandpaper. I was suddenly so thirsty.
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “No thank you.”
I pushed my stool back and made for my original perch on the far wall. It was safer over there.
But the easiness I’d felt watching her was gone. By the time she quit the bar that night, her arm tucked into the elbow of the good-looking guy who’d lifted her up onto the bar, I’d worn my palms raw from clenching my fists.
I breathed a heady sigh of relief when I stepped out into the night air.
Mission Temptation was off to a rocky start.
IT WAS EASY that first night to think that Kelsey was just having a good time, enjoying her freedom. On the second night, I chalked it up to celebrating being in a new country.
But on the third day, when she ventured out to a club once again, I felt myself growing weary. She didn’t do much during the day, slept late after her busy night. I couldn’t seem to get myself to follow her lead. So I woke up at a reasonable time, texted her father to let him know where we were and that everything was fine, and tried my best to establish a routine.
She’d venture out for dinner (which was really lunch for her), then she’d repeat the whole adventure at a new venue.
Tonight, my control was wearing thin. We were at some dance club, and I kept losing sight of her on the dance floor. The first few times, I let it slide, searching until I found her again. Then I lost sight of her for nearly fifteen minutes, and knew that my current tactic wasn’t working. I couldn’t do shit to protect her if something happened while I was out on the edges of the dance floor.
I gritted my teeth, my annoyance simmering beneath my skin, and pushed through the crowds on the dance floor, heading in the direction where I’d last seen Kelsey.
I didn’t make it very far before a drunk girl stumbled into me, spilling her nearly full drink down the front of my body.
I winced at the cold splash of liquid, and sucked in a breath. She started, apologizing, but that mostly consisted of her touching me and then trying to goad me into dancing with her. I held her at arm’s length, my jaw clenched so tight that I was probably grinding my teeth to dust.
I managed to extricate myself from her, only to turn and come face-to-face with a scantily clad girl making the rounds with a tray of colorful concoctions in plastic test tubes. I’d seen Kelsey down a few of them earlier, and the waitress held one up to me in offering.
My hand was reaching for it before my mind could do anything about it. Seconds before the tube was in my hand, I came to my senses. I pulled away from her so fast that I bumped into the drunk girl again, who spilled even more alcohol on my clothes.
Struggling to keep my breathing steady, I pushed my way a little too forcefully out of the crowd and back toward the edge of the room. I commandeered the first empty chair I found, slamming myself down into it and burying my head in my hands.
One year.
Well, almost.
I was almost one-year sober.
Less than two weeks until I would hit that milestone. If I were back home, I’d be getting my one-year chip, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be any easier if I had it now to squeeze in my fist.
But I didn’t have that chip. And I hadn’t yet made it to one year. Sweat was beading on my fucking forehead just from the determination it took to keep myself in the chair instead of searching out a drink. The smell of whiskey wafting up from my drenched shirt sure as hell wasn’t helping.
I pressed my knuckles into my forehead hard, and then sat back, staring up at the ceiling. I watched the moving lights that flashed neon colors around the room and tried to clear my head.
Alcohol had been my crutch for a long time. It had practically raised me when my parents weren’t around to do the job. Stepping away from my dysfunctional liquid family hadn’t been easy. It had taken a war, a new family, and daily reminders of the thin line between life and death for me to beat it.
Here, I was alone, and exposed in a way that I hadn’t allowed myself to be in a long time.
“Damn it,” I groaned under my breath.
I could do this. I just needed to redirect all this energy into something else. Something active was usually best.
My eyes found Kelsey again on the dance floor. Unbidden, the thought rose that she would make an ideal distraction.
Immediately, I shut that down.
I was not trading one bad decision for another. Besides, she was the one who’d gotten me in this mess to start with. If alcohol sent me off the rails, then Kelsey was likely to send me off a cliff.
I just . . . I needed to get out of here.
Yes, I was supposed to protect her and that didn’t include leaving her in this massive crowd. But I wouldn’t be any help to her if I caved and had a drink.
The best thing for both of us right now was for me to get some distance.
4
HALFWAY BACK TO the inn, I realized I was practically stomping my way home. My teeth had been clenched so tight that my entire head ached. I was pissed. Pissed that I was even in this situation, that Kelsey wasn’t who I’d expected her to be.
Sure, I hadn’t relished the idea of following her to museums or plays or whatever, but that would have been better than this. Better than risking my precariously balanced life so she could party it up like a high school kid.
God, I was a fucking kill
joy without alcohol. What I wouldn’t give to be as carefree as Kelsey. Angry seemed to by my primary emotion these days. How had Rodriguez and the other guys put up with me?
A misplaced smile cracked across my lips. They hadn’t, that’s how. They’d never had any problem telling me when I was being a pain in the ass.
My skin flashed hot and then cold with the memory of my old unit. Still much more bitter than sweet.
There was a military ban on alcohol for much of the time I’d spent in Afghanistan, but it happened anyway. I kept clear of it for the most part, but one night, I’m not even sure how, I ended up with a bottle in my hand. Rodriguez found me, took it away, and then used it for firing practice.
He told me that I had the unfortunate problem of fighting two wars at once, and I’d find myself losing them both if I wasn’t careful.
I wished he were here to talk me down now.
But he wasn’t.
And that was another war within me, too.
I settled for stepping into the shower in my room, still fully clothed. I let the water weigh down the fabric, hopefully removing all traces of the alcohol that had been spilled on me. When I was satisfied, I shucked the heavy material and hung my clothes up on a hand rail on the tiled wall. Then I stood under the steaming water and tried to wash away the thoughts too. I closed my eyes and let the water pour over my face.
I was going to have to find some way to cope with this. If not, I was better off calling Mr. Summers and suggesting he find someone else to take over his daughter-watch.
I felt a pang of something at that thought. It was a general kind of discomfort, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the thought of returning home or something else that made that thought so unappealing.
After the cooling walk earlier, and now standing under the calming rush of water, it was easier to think that I could control myself, but I knew better. It always seemed easier in my head than it really was.
I wiped the water from my eyes, and tried to think of some other way to deal. There was always the hope that Kelsey would get bored. That she would mellow out. If she only partied a couple nights a week, I should be able to resist. But that seemed unlikely.
All that restless energy; the way she’d soaked up the attention from the people around her. I couldn’t see her giving that up. And it was working for her. She was still in the phase where partying made her feel good. That was the one thing that helped me stay clean. The few times I’d slipped up since I started the program had left me miserable and angry, and even more frustrated than when I started. I’d found new ways to chase the high. And maybe that wasn’t any healthier, not when one way involved being in the midst of flying bullets.
It wasn’t the same kind of rush, but it did the trick. I pictured Kelsey again, laughing with her head thrown back, her shirt falling off her shoulder and displaying the gentle curve of her neck. It reminded me of the way she’d tossed her head back that first day out in the woods.
The memory of that caused a different kind of rush in me, and I groaned, pressing my forehead into the tile. Before I could help myself, I pictured her long legs straddling that guy in the gardens. The bright green material of her bra, and the way it conformed to her perfect chest. She leaned back, her fingertips trailing from the bark of the tree to his shoulders.
In an instant, the memory shifted into fantasy, and those were my shoulders she clung to, not his.
That was my undoing. There was only so much resisting I could do in one night. Letting go of any thoughts about what was right or appropriate, I imagined what it would be like to have her legs clamped down around my hips, and her fingernails digging into my skin. I imagined her long hair tickling my arms as I smoothed my hands down her back to those maddeningly short shorts.
I closed my eyes to shut out the world, and let my hand drift down to one problem that was all too easy to solve.
I thought about her lips, red and full and taunting. I dreamed about the taste of her and the warmth of her skin. Remembering the way everyone flocked to her in that bar, the way she seemed to light a fire under the world, just the thought of having her all to myself—all this was enough to make my breath come in pants.
I didn’t even have to invent anything more to get off. The memories alone did the trick, and my release was powerful enough to make my legs go weak and black spots merge in my vision. I didn’t realize until afterward that the water sliding down my back had turned cold. Almost as if the universe were trying to keep me from crossing that line.
Too late.
MY EYES FOUND Kelsey, her hips once again swinging to the music. Bodies swarmed around her in the club and lights flashed overhead. There was a crash like thunder, and the club floor shook. Kelsey kept on dancing, oblivious, but I looked down to the rifle in my hands.
The rest of the world came into focus—the helmet strapped tight beneath my chin, the vest heavy against my chest, and the smoke singeing my nostrils.
Sand began to roll across my boots, riding on the wind and stinging the few places where my bare skin showed. In seconds, the club became a desert and the colored lights morphed into the flare of explosions. I was knocked off my feet, my ears ringing, but my eyes went to Kelsey once more, still standing. I heard the tap-tap-tap of gunfire, almost benign in it’s simplicity. If we were somewhere else, it could have blended in with the sound of street traffic or construction. But in the desert, the sand seemed to suck away all the other sounds.
Tap-tap-tap.
I stood, whirling, trying to find the source, and I wasn’t alone. Rodriguez was there at my heels. Ingram, Johnny One, and Teague, too.
“Come on!” Ingram roared, gesturing for us to retreat back behind a barricade. He slid over the top, knocking down glasses and beer bottles perched along the bar.
I looked back to Kelsey. She was alone on the dance floor now, the others running for cover, but still she danced. A blast struck off to my left, closer this time, and the ground rumbled so long it could have been an earthquake. I glanced back again, and everyone was behind the barricade, except for Rodriguez. I couldn’t hear him over the near constant tap-tap-tap filling up the desert, but he was waving wildly.
I had to get Kelsey first. She was my responsibility.
I sprinted toward her, my boots sinking into the sand. A cloud of the stuff swirled up around us when I slid to a stop in front of her. My hands scrabbled at her hips, trying to take hold. Her long eyelashes rested against her cheeks, and it took a few seconds before her lids lifted. Her green eyes glowed, magnified by her spreading smile. I was stunned into stillness for a moment.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
I heard the whine of a bullet ripping past on the wind, and I pulled Kelsey under my arm, ready to drag her with me.
I turned to see Rodriguez halfway toward me, his rifle hanging at his side.
Tap-tap.
The bullets reached him before we heard the sound, so that his body seemed to jerk in anticipation. I didn’t see where the first bullet hit, but the second struck in the neck. Blood painted the sand, and Rodriguez reached one hand out to me and the other toward his neck. The strap of his gun fell down to his elbow, and the weight must have been too much for him to reach his neck. He plunged toward me, his mouth hanging open as he tried and failed to draw in a breath. He sputtered around drifts of blood, and his eyes screamed at me in a way he couldn’t.
I too felt like I was choking on the blood as his knees hit the earth, sand clumping into dark red clots beneath him. Kelsey’s jaw dropped beside me in a scream, but I couldn’t hear her. Silence rang in my ears like the first few seconds after a blast, but it stretched on. And despite being unable to hear, I knew the gasping, gurgling sound that Rodriguez’s trembling mouth made like it was a physical thing I could see and touch.
It was Kelsey that began dragging me away, past the lifeless body of my friend. When
I ripped my eyes off of him, I saw everything clearer. Including my friends behind the barricade, behind the bar.
My mind tripped for a moment, trying to reconcile the past and the present. The film of the dream weakened and I thought—I’m about to wake up. Relief pumped through my veins seconds before the mortar shell dropped and the bar exploded, flames propelled upward into the sky.
The blast blew me backward, and I was skidding through the sand. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Rodriguez’s empty eyes and blood-stained lips.
I woke, covered in sweat as if I’d just spent the night in the desert heat. My ears rang as I stumbled out of bed and pushed open the window. Head swimming, I thought I might be sick. I concentrated on the purple pre-dawn sky.
The window shutters banged against the building in an eerily familiar tap-tap-tap, and I slid down to my knees. Turning, I sat with my back below the windowsill and tried to catch my breath.
I couldn’t decide what was worse. Dreams like the one I’d just had, amalgamations of truth and fiction, or the ones that were actual memories. Rodriguez’s death in my dream wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. It bore a resemblance to the death of a soldier from the first week of my deployment. I couldn’t remember that soldier’s name now. —There had been too many others that I’d met and lost since then—but the look on his face . . . . that was still burned into my memory.
I reached for my backpack, fumbling with the zipper. Cursing my shaky fingers, I practically ripped the thing open. Just touching my sketchbook calmed me. I skimmed my finger up the metal spiral on the side and took a deep breath.
I flipped it open and came face-to-face with a blank page, a fresh start.
I closed my eyes, searching for something that could distract me. I decided on the ultimate distraction.
Kelsey.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. My thoughts were a mess of frustration and want and annoyance. If I wasn’t following her into bars, I wouldn’t be so wound up. The dreams only happened when I was stressed. But I couldn’t seem to pluck up much anger at her, not after last night when I’d allowed myself to think of her in an entirely different manner.