Marlena’s hand slipped into his. Her warm, centered presence flowed all around him as she came to stand side by side with him. “Not a party, but maybe the three of us can go dancing at a club sometime soon. Maybe after the science competition.”
He whipped his face to the side and glared at her, not quite believing that someone who knew him as well as she did would suggest such a thing. She squeezed his hand, but kept her smile focused on Olivia.
“A club?” Olivia croaked.
“A dance club, maybe one in Buffalo,” Marlena said. “You’ll love it.”
Liam sincerely doubted that, but he had no idea what to contribute to the conversation that didn’t either make him seem like a jackass or hurt Marlena’s feelings or both. That’s when it hit him how far he’d go not to hurt Marlena. If it meant taking Olivia clubbing, then that was what he had to do.
Olivia shifted her attention to Liam, asking without words if that was okay with him. He hadn’t looked her square in the face for a long time, and he was shocked to discover that they could still communicate without words. He’d thought that part of him had died in the army along with so many other things. At a lack of any other ideas for a response, he nodded.
Marlena squeezed his hand again, which he supposed meant his response had pleased her. He had no clue about interpreting social cues and conversational give-and-take anymore—that part of him had died in the army, for sure—so her reassurance was grounding, as it always was.
Now that he was thinking it through, if he was going to be forced to spend time with Olivia, then dancing was a great idea, because the music was so loud in clubs that you couldn’t talk. Plus, Marlena would be there and he loved dancing with her almost as much as he loved sleeping with her.
“Dancing, this Saturday after the science competition,” he echoed.
Marlena let go of his hand and strode toward Olivia. “Liam said he’d help you fix the trebuchet,” she said, her hands on the rolling cart.
It was Olivia’s turn to nod. She looked Liam in the eye again, the desperate look in her eyes dimmed, replaced by tears. “Oh my God, that’s a lifesaver. Thank you. That would mean a lot to me.”
Her overdramatic gratitude got Liam’s back up all over again. Why did she have to make such a huge deal about everything? She didn’t just beat a dead horse; she beat it until it turned into a zombie and went on a brains-eating spree.
Marlena parked the rolling cart against the workshop wall, then ushered his still babbling sister out the door, talking to Olivia in quiet words that Liam couldn’t quite make out as they walked away together.
Not more than a minute later, Marlena was back, alone. She pulled the door closed behind her and locked it.
“We’re taking my sister clubbing?” he said.
Wordlessly, she clicked the music back on. He wasn’t much in the mood for dancing anymore, but if that’s what she wanted, then he’d try to rally.
Then she wrapped her arms around his waist. “It was either that or we all do yoga together.”
The idea of Olivia’s nervous energy mucking up his daily yoga practice was too much to consider. “Clubbing it is.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A beat-heavy song about bitches and blow jobs and macho posturing came up next on his playlist. There was a time he’d loved this song, its sentiment, too. In the army, in the height of all the shit he was mucking around in in Afghanistan. Given the horrors he saw, the pain and the fear, nothing had seemed a better fantasy than he found in angry, dickhead songs like that. It was a testament to how far he’d come that those kinds of songs didn’t resonate with him anymore.
Part of that was thanks to Marlena, but most of the credit went to him, to the hard work he did every day to play nice with his demons. If he hadn’t given his everything to therapy and healing, he would never have been okay enough to even find out that Marlena was what his life needed. A year ago, he would never have taken a chance on her, on them. A year ago, there were no exceptions.
Now, the obnoxious song was nothing but a beat for him to dance to with his woman. He started to move half-speed with the music, a rhythmic sway that rubbed their hips together as he dropped their center of gravity back and low, right into the pocket for a slow grind. He wrapped an arm around her waist and brought her thighs up to straddle his leg. Her arm slung around his neck, she let him take the lead.
He kept up a slow, low grind and let his free hand rove over her body—her gorgeous tits, her strong shoulders and arms, her so-soft skin. There wasn’t a part of her he didn’t worship.
She nipped at his lower lip, dancing with him, her breath ragged and shallow. “This song is giving me ideas about our unfinished business.”
She probably meant about the blow jobs and sex in the song. He was all for getting back to their unfinished business soon, but he didn’t like the idea of comparing what they were going to do together with what the song was glorifying. “It shouldn’t. This song is shit. I need to make a new playlist.”
She smiled indulgently at him, seeing right into the heart of what he meant. There was nothing left to do but kiss her. It wasn’t long before he forgot all about dancing.
He shuffled her to the desk he was building for her and lifted her ass onto it, then pulled her shirt over her head, then sports bra, and laid her back. The locust wood had been sanded, but not finished. They should be so lucky to get a come or sweat stain on it tonight, a mark of their time together tattooed into the piece.
After pulling her shoes off, he peeled her black leggings away from her body and buried his face between her thighs. At the first touch of his tongue on her clit, she cried out, a gloriously loud sound that echoed off the workshop’s ceiling. That was a point of pride for him, how, over the past couple months, he’d coaxed her to let go and get noisy during sex. He loved every cry and groan she made, every whimper or whispered word, and he loved that he’d had something to do with that change.
Inspired to see if he’d wrought any other changes in her, he stood and walked around the desk, reveling in the way she looked lying there, gloriously nude on his creation like an offering on an altar. He smoothed his hand up over her stomach and breasts, then higher.
He set his hand lightly on her neck, his fingers loose. She’d pushed his boundaries tonight with the clubbing proposition, so he didn’t see anything wrong with pushing hers just a little, to test how much she’d grown to trust him. He stroked the skin below her chin with his thumb and slightly tightened his grip. Her breath stuttered and her eyes opened, but she didn’t flinch.
He nodded. “Good. That’s good. One more thing, okay?”
She looked concerned, but he suddenly, desperately, needed to know how far she’d let him go—how much she trusted him. “Tell me it’s okay if I try one more thing. Tell me you trust me that much.”
“I trust you,” she whispered.
With his other hand, he encircled her wrist and brought it over her head, pinning it to the desk. He could see her breathing now, the stress of it in her features, but she didn’t tell him to stop.
“I will never hurt you, and I will never let you be hurt,” he said. “On my life, Marlena.”
She inhaled a shaky breath. “I know.”
He nodded again, then slid the hand on her throat around to tangle in her hair. He released her wrist and took her hand, twining their fingers. Then he kissed her, deeply and reverently, trying to let her know the best he could that he meant what he said, that he honored her above all and knew what a gift her trust was.
He propped his arm on the desk, caging her below him, keeping his lips near hers as he stroked her hair. “When I was in the army, I realized how little in life actually matters. Almost nothing. And sometimes, some days, I actually believed that nothing mattered, including my life. Climbing out of that darkness, finding myself again, finding you . . .”
Closing his eyes, he shook his head. There were no words. No words at all for the intense peace and grounding she gave
him. The joy.
Her hand lighted over his face, her fingers smoothing his brow. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?” she said.
He opened his eyes again to see her smiling up at him, her gaze warm with affection.
“Nothing you don’t already know.”
Chapter Nineteen
With Bomb Squad’s losing streak going into its fourth month, anyone who didn’t know the guys would’ve thought they’d be dejected and demoralized, but Marlena knew firsthand that couldn’t have been further from the truth. With every week, they got stronger as a team, especially since “Win One For Gabe” became their new rallying cry.
They’d come close to winning several times, and on the night of the big rematch against Ultimate Nachos, four weeks after Gabe’s accident, there was an excited buzz in the locker room when Marlena got there. Gabe was in the stands. Tonight was their night to win.
Marlena gave pregame rubdowns. Then, at Liam’s request, she led the team in a group breathing and visualization session before they took the ice.
Liam kissed her before he left the locker room, right there in front of all his teammates. “I’ve got a feeling about tonight. Wish me luck.”
She brushed a hand over his cheek. “You don’t need any luck. You’ve got mad skills.”
He rolled his eyes and kissed her again.
She’d come to love the hushed silence that fell over the empty locker room moments after the guys took the ice. Humming quietly to herself, she fell into her now-usual routine, packing her gear in her rolling cart and folding her massage table.
She heard footsteps and poked her head around the corner toward the door of the locker room. “Okay, who forgot something? ’Fess up.”
But it wasn’t a player standing in the center of the room. It was Michael, rubbing his arms and looking upset.
“Michael? What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for the bathroom, but there isn’t one.”
“How did you get here?”
His arm rubbing grew faster. “I told you. They hid it. There are a lot of hallways and I don’t like this. I don’t know why I have to be here.”
“Did you take a bus to the Iceplex?”
“No. Mom and Dad made me come with them to watch the game. I didn’t want to, but the fresh air is good. There’s a bridge across the street.”
“Have the bridges been working for you? Are they helping you feel safe?”
“The Foreign Legion, you don’t know them. I have to tell you something, Marlena.”
He took her shoulders. Her heart started to pound. No one was around except the two of them, and Michael was getting increasingly agitated. Panic coursed through her. She pried his hands off her and took a step back.
“Take a deep breath, Michael. You’re safe here.”
“No. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He took a lurching step toward her.
She scuffled back and hit the backs of her knees on the bench that ran between the rows of lockers. Swallowing a grunt of pain, she high-stepped over the bench, but the barrier it provided from Michael was only an illusion. There was no other exit from the alcove of lockers other than the one he was blocking.
She flattened her palms against the locker doors behind her, focusing her mind on the cold metal to distract herself from her fear. She didn’t have enough experience with his paranoid panic attacks to know if keeping him talking would calm him down or stoke his emotional upheaval. He seemed to need to get something off his chest, so she decided to try that route.
“What are you trying to tell me, Michael?”
His face dropped forward and his gaze shifted, unfocused, on a spot to the right of Marlena’s legs. “The Foreign Legion has been hunting me,” he said with great gravity, as though he were revealing an important secret for the first time.
“How do you know they’re hunting you?”
His fist flew out and banged against the lockers. “You’re missing the point,” he said, spit spraying onto her.
Marlena nearly jumped out of her skin. Fear churned like a black hole inside her, sucking in her spirit and courage. What she needed right now was Liam or one of the Bomb Squad players. Anyone to shift the energy in the locker room and intervene, if necessary.
“We should get you back to Mom and Dad. They’re probably worried.”
“I can’t go back. The tunnels and passages don’t make any sense. There’s no way to get back to them.” He sounded hopeless and frustrated, scared instead of dangerous.
For the first time since he’d entered the locker room, she considered the possibility that her trigger reflex was blinding her to the truth of the situation, as it had the first time she was alone with Liam in her yoga studio.
“I’ll take you to Mom and Dad. I know the way. I’ll even get you some nachos at the snack bar, if you’d like.”
He rubbed the hem of his shirt between his fingertips, seemingly placated. “I don’t have any money. I never have any money.”
“I have money. It’ll be my treat.”
“I don’t like the way they made this building. It’s bullshit, is what it is. They did it on purpose to confuse people and trap them in tunnels. It’s not safe.”
Though her heart continued to race, Marlena’s fear abated. She could handle this side of Michael, and perhaps even help him. A cheer erupted from the ice, filtering through the door. The game must be close to starting.
“Would you mind helping me take this table to my car before we go get nachos? I could really use the help.”
Usually, she packed up her gear, then left it in the corner of the room for the guys to help her with after the game. However, giving Michael a task might be the ticket to distract him from his worries and get him out of the building for some fresh air before she walked him to the snack bar, then to find their parents. The massage table, when folded, rolled along the floor on built-in wheels. She pushed it in front of her, approaching Michael.
He eyed the table suspiciously. “You’ll buy me nachos? And a pop?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.” With each passing minute, she felt stronger, more capable of mitigating her trigger response. Liam had been right; acknowledging the trauma, talking about it, had been the first step to heal and overcome her fears. That, along with the excellent example he’d set of how to cope with fears and how to wage war against them.
Michael reached out and took hold of the table. Marlena smiled her praise. “Good. Thank you.” She slung her purse and bag onto her shoulder and brushed past Michael and the table toward the exit. “Let’s get out of here.”
***
As he skated a final warm-up lap before the game, Liam scanned the crowd for the umpteenth time. Gabe was sitting behind the bench with his parents and a zillion siblings and cousins, it seemed. Marlena wasn’t in her seat and, although he wasn’t sure why because there was no good reason, his intuition was telling him that something wasn’t right.
Could be, it was a PTSD-related overreaction. That happened to him on occasion, though less frequently in the past year or so. He might have subconsciously processed a trigger somewhere in his environment that evoked a deep-seated memory of a high-stress, dangerous situation. God knows there were plenty of those on his deployments—as in, every single day and night.
Most likely, she’d run to her car or the restroom. Maybe she’d bumped into an old friend in the lobby. He wasn’t yet ready to ask Olivia and her friends if they knew where she was, but if he didn’t spot her in the next few minutes, he’d bite the bullet and approach them. Marlena was a free person and he didn’t need to know where she was every moment of every day, but he’d been conditioned as a medic not to ignore his instincts.
It wouldn’t hurt to pop his head into the locker room to see if she’d gotten held up there. At the bench, he waved to get Duke’s attention. “Forgot something in the locker room, Coach. I’ll be right back.”
Duke frowned at him and banged his clipboard on the rail. “
Hey, we have a game to play. Gabe’s in the stands. We’re doing it for him tonight, so screw your head on straight.”
“Yes, sir.”
The locker room was empty. Marlena and her table and massage equipment were gone. He checked his phone. No messages. He gave her a call, but she didn’t answer. With a curse under his breath, he returned to the ice. Ultimate Nachos and Bomb Squad players were milling around the face-off circle. The Ultimate Nachos fans were already getting obnoxious, waving sombreros and maracas and chanting “More Cheese! More Cheese!” ad nauseum.
“Liam, you ready to get out there?” Duke said. “I put you in first string. Can you handle that tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
He skated into position, his eyes on the crowd, looking, looking. She still wasn’t in her seat, and it’d been more than ten minutes since he’d started searching for her.
At the face-off circle, Brandon nudged him. “What’s up with you?”
Unwilling to sound like a paranoid, overbearing boyfriend, he shook his head. “Nothing. Let’s get in there and win this damn game before the Ultimate Nachos fans start throwing sombreros at us again.”
Craning his neck, he scanned the arena one last time before play got underway. This time, he found her. She was standing at the snack bar in line next to a man. He was short with a beer gut and shaggy hair, someone Liam didn’t recognize. Maybe if he turned so Liam could get a better view of his face, he’d look familiar, but the guy kept his eyes on the television mounted behind the bar while Marlena had her eyes on the floor, looking gravely serious. A tingle started in Liam’s throat. His instinct had been right; something was off.
The ref gave two chirps of his whistle. Liam wrenched his gaze away from the snack bar and crouched into position, his stick forward, ready to receive the puck should Brandon win the face-off.
The official whistle sounded. The puck dropped. Liam led with his shoulder, scrounging to clear a path through the skates and sticks for Brandon and the puck.
Brandon got the puck and tapped it over to Liam. Liam reacted without needing to think, racing along the boards into their scoring zone as the first part of a combo move they’d practiced a lot over the past few weeks. Brandon skated across the blue line at center ice, then cut back behind two Ultimate Nachos defensemen. Liam threaded the puck between them to Brandon, who wound back with a slapshot before the two Ultimate Nachos defensemen knew what hit them.
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