by Soraya Lane
Because dealing with what had happened this year was enough pain and guilt to last him a lifetime.
CHAPTER FIVE
NATE was surprised that the dog had relaxed in his house, but he had no intention of letting his guard down, or making another mistake when it came to Sarah. The way he’d behaved earlier... He involuntarily shuddered. It made him sick that he was even capable of doing that.
“I think we need to move on to something stronger,” he told her, holding up a bottle of whiskey he’d found in the pantry.
Sarah’s eyebrows met as she gave him an uncertain look. “You want to drink?”
“The way I’m feeling right now isn’t exactly lending itself to cups of tea or coffee.” Nate had never been a drinker, but after everything that had happened it was exactly what he needed tonight. But the way Sarah was looking at him, like he was some sort of a wild man, was making him think he should skip the JD and just pour himself the cola.
“Just one,” she said, still not looking convinced. “I have to drive so don’t go making it too strong.”
“On the rocks?”
She rolled her eyes and he added cola to the second glass, before putting a handful of ice in both. Clearly she wasn’t any more used to drinking than she had been as a teenager.
“Nate, you’re not, um, well...” Sarah took the glass he offered her and shuffled back into the sofa. It was the only place to sit aside from the small table in the corner, so he sat at the other end.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re not drinking regularly, are you?” Her words came out in a jumble and her cheeks flushed red.
“I have plenty of problems right now, Sarah, but hand on my heart I’ve only had the odd glass of wine with dinner since I...” Now it was him faltering, his sentence trailing off instead of hers. “This is just soda.” He held up his glass.
“Since when, Nate?” she asked. “You were about to say something.”
He watched her hand as it cupped the glass tight, kept his gaze trained on her delicate fingers. “Since I left the recuperation facility.”
If she was shocked she didn’t show it. “So you weren’t serving up until you arrived home.”
Nate revisited his choice of drink, poured just a small nip of whiskey over some ice and slowly swallowed, grimacing as it burned a slow, steady trail down his throat. “If I tell you this, you need to promise to keep it to yourself.” He wasn’t even sure he wanted to tell Sarah, but it was killing him not having anyone to talk to, not being honest with anyone around him. “I haven’t told my family any of this.” Not that he had any intention of telling her everything, but even getting just part of his story off his chest would be a relief. “Except for my shrink, but given what happened earlier I think I need some more regular sessions.”
Sarah’s eyes were wide but he knew he could still trust her. “We spent years confiding in each other, Nate. I didn’t share anything you told me then, and I have no intention of doing it now.”
He refused to think about the past he’d had with Sarah. Because right now he needed a friend, and if he thought about the way things had ended, what had happened... He forcibly pushed it from his mind.
Nate crossed the room again to collect the bottle of liquor. He tipped a little more into her glass, deciding not to top up his own. But he couldn’t sit down, not now, not with what he was about to tell her. Instead, he paced slowly back and forth.
“When I found out about Dad passing away I was still serving, but when the news came to me about the twin siblings we’d never known existed? I was already back in the U.S.” Nate took another sip of his drink, trying to ignore the shake in his hand. He thrust the other in his pocket in case Sarah noticed it. “I’d asked my superior not to alert anyone to the fact I was back on home soil.”
“Why did you want to keep that a secret? Your family would have loved having you home earlier than expected.”
Nate laughed, but he could hear the cruel edge to it, was powerless to react in any other way. “Because I wasn’t capable of dealing with anything then. What I’ve been through, Sarah...” He raked a hand through his hair, tugging at it in his frustration. “I needed time out and I didn’t want anyone else to know that I was struggling or what I was struggling with. You’ve got to understand that I went from loving what I did to resenting it, and now I’m stuck somewhere in between.”
They sat in silence, but he could tell that Sarah was thinking. She reached down to stroke her dog’s head, like she was biding her time. Nate went back to sipping his soda for something to do.
“When you injured your leg, did something else happen?”
Nate tried not to react, to keep his face expressionless. He wasn’t going to tell her the truth about his injury, about what had happened that day, because talking about it would only mean reliving the experience all over again.
“The past couple of years I’ve been part of Black Ops,” he admitted. “I was recruited as a part of an elite squad and we had an operation go bad. After my injury, I spent a few months in a recuperation facility without my family being alerted, because I was considered at risk.”
He knew that Sarah would be desperate to know more, to understand more of what had happened and what he’d been through, but she nursed her drink without asking him another question.
“When you’re ready to talk about it, Nate, you only have to say the word and I’ll be here.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that.” Not that he had any desire to open up about anything else.
“So how about we make a toast to your dad?” she suggested.
“Good idea.” Nate leaned forward and poured a small portion of whiskey into his glass. “To Clay Calhoun.”
“To Clay,” she agreed. “But, Nate?”
He raised an eyebrow in question.
“If we’re going to keep drinking I might need some more cola. It’s getting a little strong.”
* * *
Sarah was in over her head. Way out of her depths. But she didn’t know what to do.
Nate was in need of a friendly ear, some company while he was down, so she could hardly leave him. But a few more sips of alcohol and she wouldn’t be able to drive home.
“What happened between us, Sarah?”
His words sounded blurry. She took another sip of her potent drink.
Did they have to be having this conversation now?
“Nate, I think we just need to let the past stay in the past. What happened to us...” She had no idea what to say to him. “It just happened, okay?” Stay down, she ordered in her mind. Now was not the time to get angry with him.
His face lost all expression as he sunk back farther into the sofa. “It didn’t just happen, Sarah. I made a bad decision. Bad decision after bad decision.”
Sarah’s pulse started to race, her heart beating faster than she was comfortable with. Since when did Nate admit to being wrong about something? But going back in time wasn’t something she was convinced they needed to do, not with alcohol to fuel the situation.
“You left me when I thought we had something special, something worth fighting for,” she told him, knowing she had to at least be honest.
“And you ran straight into the arms of Todd when we’d barely been broken up for a day,” he fired back, anger screaming from his rigid body. A vein had risen on his forehead, one fist was clenched, and the other hand looked in danger of crushing the glass he held.
“You know what? I’m sorry, Nate. I’m sorry for marrying your best friend and I’m sorry for whatever the hell happened to you these past few years.” Sarah reached for the bottle and poured herself another nip of whiskey. “But don’t forget that you—” she pointed at him “—were the one who ended it. I was waiting here and you told me it was over.”
He sighed and rea
ched forward, skimming her cheek with his fingers before taking the bottle from her. “He wasn’t my best friend, Sarah.”
She stared at him. “But—”
“You were,” he interrupted. “Todd was a good friend but you were my best friend. There was never any doubt in my mind about that.”
Tears stung Sarah’s eyes; her throat was so tight she found it hard to breathe.
“It’s not your fault, Sarah, you’re right. If anything, when I left Black Ops it made me realize I’d prioritized all the wrong things in my life. It’s been one major screw-up after another.”
Sarah turned her head slightly so Nate couldn’t see her face, and brushed away the tears hugging her lashes. “You’re a highly decorated soldier, and you’ve just told me you were in a special forces team. You’ve hardly been a screw-up, Nate.”
He shook his head. “On paper, I’ve had it all. In reality?” He looked down into his glass. “I lost you, I lost my best friend from the army and now I’ve lost both my parents. Nothing has turned out like it should have.”
“You lost a friend?” She’d known something had happened to him, that there was more than just an injury playing on his mind, something that ran deeper that he’d been unable to open up about before. She put down her drink, wishing she hadn’t kept sipping away when it wasn’t something she was used to doing.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “We met the first year I served and we were recruited into Black Ops together. And now he’s gone, too.”
Sarah opened her mouth to ask more, but Nate’s tearful shake of his head stopped her from pushing further.
“To your friend,” she said, raising her glass instead.
“To fallen comrades,” he agreed, holding up the bottle and taking a long sip.
Sarah did the same and then laid her head back on the sofa. The last time she’d drunk like this she’d probably been with Nate. And back then it had probably been Nate who’d convinced her it was a good idea. Just like now.
* * *
Nate opened his eyes slowly, one at a time. It seemed to help the thumping in his head.
What the hell had...oh.
There was a reason he’d woken up so comfortable, before the sunlight had hit his vision and forced him to shut his eyes again.
Sarah lay half-curled up over him, her hair splayed out over his lower chest and part of his stomach, one arm slung across him. He tried not to smile at her faint snore.
Snore or not, though, Sarah was beautiful.
In the years he’d been away, even when he’d hated her so much for marrying Todd, when he’d known he’d never be able to forgive her, he’d always remembered her like this. And she’d hardly changed a bit in all these years. Not to look at and not to be around.
Her hair wasn’t quite as long as it had been when she’d left for university, but it still had a slight curl and fell below her shoulders. Nate tried to resist touching it but he couldn’t. He ran his fingers through the silky strand touching his chest, stopping himself from stroking her face. She wasn’t his anymore, and she never would be.
Nate removed his hand and shut his eyes again, not wanting to ruin the moment but needing to keep at least an emotional distance from the woman still asleep on him.
And then he realized.
Last night had been the first night since Jimmy’s death that he’d slept without waking. Without writhing, covered in sweat, reliving every moment of what had happened to him. Of what had happened to his friend, of firing over and over at the machine gun nests that had come so close to ending his life.
* * *
Jimmy looked at him. Made contact with his eyes—eyes that were so filled with pain Nate had found it hard to return the stare—before holding his gun up and starting to fire.
The silence that had engulfed them all, that had kept their presence hidden from the enemy, turned into a constant ricochet of gunfire. A noise that had filled Nate’s head and made it hard for him to focus.
Until he’d realized that it was Jimmy. That it wasn’t the enemy but his best friend firing like a crazy man, before turning the gun on himself.
Nate had run, had moved faster than he’d ever known he was capable of, but it was too late. Jimmy gave him one last look, before Nate could push the gun away, before he’d squeezed the trigger and taken his own life.
Nate had been hit, the bullet slamming into his leg like a blasting ball of fire, but he’d dragged his friend away. Managed to get him back to safety and fire at the enemy simultaneously, doing his best to ignore the spasms of pain.
Only it had been too late.
* * *
Was it Sarah or the booze that had given him a night’s peace? Because it was always the same every time he shut his eyes, and he’d never imagined it would ever stop. Not that he’d even drunk much, except for a few good swigs from the bottle when Sarah had started to fall asleep on him.
“Nate?”
Sarah’s sleepy voice pulled him from his thoughts and forced him to open his eyes again.
“Morning,” he replied, watching as she fought to extract herself from him before one hand shot to her head.
“What did you do to me?” she moaned. “How did I end up...?” Sarah opened her eyes again, looking horrified. He watched as she glanced down, then at him. “Did we drink all of that?”
Nate followed her gaze. An empty bottle lay on the floor close to where her dog was still stationed. Asleep.
“I think it would be fair to say that you consumed more than me,” he told her.
“This is all your fault.” Sarah stretched, then slowly moved off him. “And my head is pounding.”
“Ditto.”
Nate laughed, then stopped himself. He’d gone one night without waking up in a sweat and now it was suddenly okay to joke around? Not a chance.
“Todd’s coming back into town today,” Sarah told him as she straightened her top and pushed at the creases in her jeans like she was nervous and didn’t know what else to do, or maybe she was making sure she hadn’t removed any of her clothing. “He wants to discuss some things and get me to sign the divorce papers. So he can marry his fiancée.”
Nate swallowed an imaginary lump. What? “Did you just say fiancée?”
Sarah gave him a tight grin. “Yup, he’s moved on pretty fast. I just wish I could shock the pants off him and make him realize that him leaving did me a favor.”
His hands fisted at his sides, anger rising fast within him. “Tell him you’re marrying me, then,” Nate said, wishing Todd was in front of him right now so he could show him just how pissed off he was with the way he’d treated Sarah.
Sarah let out a big hiccuping laugh. “I thought I was hungover, but I must still be drunk.” She stared at him. “Oh, my God, you’re serious, aren’t you?”
Nate knew it was stupid, but right now in the mood he was in he’d do anything to protect Sarah. “You want to show Todd you’re doing fine without him, and I want to get my family off my back. It’s a win-win situation for both of us. We could just pretend for a while, watch out for each other.”
Sarah had gone from confused to angry. Fast. “No, it’s a stupid idea, Nate. I’ve already had one failed marriage, and I don’t want to lie to anyone.”
“Okay, stupid idea,” he agreed. What the hell had he been thinking, anyway? The last thing he needed was to complicate things. “I’m not thinking straight, but what I do know is that I need a break from my family and I want to help you.”
“Why?” Sarah asked, standing beside her dog now, even though her head must have been throbbing as hard as his was.
“Because I owe you one, Sarah. I owe you a favor for the way I hurt you, and because I need your help.”
“Why can’t you just be honest with your family? At least tell them what you told me?” she asked.
Nate folded his arms across his chest, as if he could squeeze the pain away by just hugging himself. “Because there’s a whole lot more to my story than I’ll ever be able to share with anyone, and I need some time on my own. Away from questions and too many people thinking they can save me.”
“You’re wrong about one thing, Nate.” Sarah’s voice was low.
He waited for her to tell him what she was talking about.
“You can be saved, and if I’m going to help you out with your family? Then I’ll be making sure that saving you is my number one priority.”
* * *
Sarah wished she knew the truth about Nate. About what had really happened that had messed him up so bad. She glanced back up at the main house again, her cheeks burning at the thought that someone might see her sneaking away from Nate’s place.
“Mornin’.”
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment. Just a nanosecond to gather her thoughts. How had Johnny snuck up on her like that? And on a horse? She must have been way too deep in thought for her own good.
“It’s not what it looks like,” she blurted, wishing she didn’t sound and feel so guilty.
“None of my business.” Johnny tipped his hat, a big grin on his face. “I just thought I’d check in and see if we’re still riding later?”
If it was possible to die of embarrassment, Sarah would have dropped on the spot. “Yep, sure. I’ll see you later on,” she mumbled, scurrying to her car.
She’d thought the whole town knowing about Todd leaving her for another woman was embarrassing, but being spotted leaving Nate’s place this early in the morning, in the same clothes she’d been wearing the night before? Hands-down worse than anything about her marriage breaking down.
Sarah opened the back door of her car, realizing how Johnny had known she was here. “Come on, Moose, up you get, bud.”
The dog leaped in and she flopped down behind the steering wheel. Her head was still pounding, and her mind was a scrambled mess. On the one hand, it was nice not thinking about Todd anymore, but having her mind stuck like a broken record on Nate Calhoun wasn’t exactly doing her any good, either.