Complicated Creatures: Part Two

by Alexi Lawless

  “I’m sorry I did that to you, Sammy,” Wes whispered. “I’m sorry for forcing you to cope like that.”

  “Life did it to me, Wes,” she answered. “Or I did it to me.” Sam rubbed a hand over her face sighing. “I guess that’s why I came looking for you,” she admitted. “I want to know if you think I was made this way, to do these things, or if you think fate and circumstance just enabled me to do it when I had to—when my country needed me to do it, and I was in the right place, at the right time, to perform the service. Sometimes I suspect I like cruelty more than I should, that there’s something wrong with me—”

  “You said when you were in a dark place, you’d think of us,” Wes interrupted.

  “I did,” she admitted. “I guess I used it to remind myself of what I’d been like before the war. When everything seemed straightforward. When I still felt innocent.”

  “I’ve been to some awful places over the years, seen some terrible things,” Wes confided. “And I’d do the same as you to stay centered. That’s why I still wear these,” he told her, lifting the chain to the dangling tags.

  “You also wanted me to know if something happened to you,” she surmised. “You knew I’d find out. That’s the practical reason you mentioned for wearing my tags.”

  Wes shrugged. “Yeah, well… I wanted you to know I died with you still in my heart. That I never really let go of us, even though I pretended like it for all this time.”

  “Then why did you leave me, Wes?” she asked, allowing the hurt to be exposed for the first time in years. “Why did you leave me when I needed you most?”

  Wes caressed her face, his fingers light and gentle, the look in his eyes genuinely mournful. “Because we were headed in opposite directions, baby,” he answered. “Whether we tore ourselves apart back then or circumstances did it for us, it was going to happen. I think you know that.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she argued. “I didn’t even if you did.”

  “Yeah, I think you did,” he countered quietly, fingers whispering over her hair. “It’s not an indictment of either one of us—it’s just a fact,” he told her, leaning in to kiss her forehead.

  Sam held very still, closing her eyes, recalling their memories; things she hadn’t let herself remember or examine in a long while.

  “You and I: We’re alike in many ways, Wes,” she murmured.

  He drew back a little. “How so?”

  “We’re only happy at the edge, aren’t we?” she said, looking into his eyes. “The dark places no one really wants to go—that’s where we live. That’s where we feel most alive. The rest of the time feels like we’re just waiting for something to happen, doesn’t it?”

  Wes smiled grimly, reaching out to trace her side. She watched his brow furrow as he felt her scars, his fingertips finding them under the thin material of her tank top. Wes drew the edge of the cotton up slowly, glancing down.

  “What happened here?”

  “Which one?” she replied as he touched her scars.

  “Jesus, Sammy,” he murmured, pulling her shirt up. Wes scooted down under the covers so he could get a better look, his long fingers rubbing against the marled flesh.

  “You should see the other guy,” she joked feebly, not bother to hide her scars from him. He’d already heard the worst. What else was left?

  “You were knifed,” he guessed, tracing the vestiges of the scar on her hip as he tugged her waistband down. “And was this shrapnel?” Wes rubbed the brutalized skin of the other scar in her side. “Looks like it got you good.”

  “You’d be right,” she murmured. “Hurt worse than getting shot.”

  “You were shot?” his asked, his fingers tightening on her skin.

  Sam rolled onto her stomach, lifting up the strap of her tank top, showing him her shoulder. “Shooter in Kandahar,” she told him, watching his fingers trace the nickel-sized cicatrix, his brows furrowed as he examined the old wound.

  “And the knives?”

  “Hip was a graze from an IED in Mosul during my first tour in Iraq. I was stabbed in Kabul on my last tour.” Sam shifted back to her side, pulling her shirt down. “And you’re right. That bastard twisted it in,” she grimaced, her voice a little husky as she recalled it.

  Wes glanced up at her. “Your voice,” his brow furrowed. “It’s different now. Raspier.”

  Sam chuckled. “Would you believe some sonofabitch tried to bite out my larynx?”

  Wes raised his brows in surprise. “Anything else I need to know about?” he asked wryly as he settled back down beside her.

  She pointed at her newest scar on her arm. “Nicked in Somalia a few months ago.”

  “Jesus, Sammy. You ain’t kidding about living life on the edge, are you?”

  Sam shot him a disbelieving look. “You can’t tell me you photographed some of the deepest, darkest hells on this earth and came out unscathed? How is that fair?”

  Wes popped open the top button of his jeans, sliding the zipper down.

  “Whoa there, cowboy.”

  “We’re doing show and tell, right?” he winked cheekily, yanking his jeans down. Wes showed her a handful of jagged scars on his hip. She got a tantalizing view of this lower obliques, the darker blonde of his happy trail leading to a part of his body she’d worshipped once. Sam blinked, focusing in on the fine smattering of pale scars lining his hip.

  “Shrapnel in Gaza,” Wes told her before pulling his jeans up slowly. He showed her a burn on his palm and wrist. “Burned trying to pull people out of the rubble during the fire-bombing in Gujarat.” He pushed back the tangle of his dark golden curls, showing her a scar hidden on his scalp. “Butt of a Federales’ rifle in Mexico.” Then he lifted his forearm to show her a bizarre scar shaped almost like a star. “Broken bottle from a bar fight in Galveston.”

  “Oh, for the love—” Sam rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Hey, I was trying to pull Chris’s dumb-ass out,” he defended, talking about his best friend, and a guy Sam had briefly dated in college.

  “How is Chris?” she asked.

  “He’s good,” Wes grinned. “Fat and married now, two kids. He’s mainly manning the office these days, keeping the agency going while I gallivant around.”

  “Tell him I said, ‘hi,’” she smiled.

  “I will,” Wes nodded with a quick grin. “Chris always said losing you to me was the worst day of his life.”

  “Bullshit,” she laughed softly. “We were always better friends than anything.”

  Wes rested his head on his hand as he leaned over her, his golden eyes turning serious as he thought through his response to her what-if.

  “So let me see if I get this,” he began. “You want to know if I think you would have done the things you did if we’d taken the other fork in the road.”

  “Yeah,” she nodded, tucking her face against her hand.

  “Can’t say that I know the answer to that,” Wes admitted. “But I do know this: You’ve never been afraid to step up to the plate, Sammy. Not for any reason. You’re the person everyone admires because you do what needs to be done, and you don’t give a damn what anybody else thinks.” Wes considered her seriously. “That’s rare, Sammy. Your daddy may have raised you in a way that strengthened that resolve, but I think you and I both know you were born that way.”

  “And all the terrible things I’ve done? You don’t think that’s some kind of horrific character flaw?”

  “What isn’t terrible and horrifying about war, Sammy?” he countered. “I’ve seen some of the nastiest shit people can do to one another, and it’s almost always a consequence of warfare. Whether for religious, geopolitical, or territorial reasons—war brings out our darkest, ugliest sides because that’s what’s required. And you did what was required. Now as for you liking it…” he shrugged a little. “Life’s taken a lot from you. I reckon it just makes you human to want a little retaliation. Maybe you felt like you were owed something for all the losses, even if y
ou didn’t think of it that way at the time.” Wes paused. “Doesn’t surprise me that you developed a taste for pain, Sammy. After all, you received a substantial amount of it, didn’t you?”

  She pushed a hand through her hair, feeling a little shaky. “How can you be so understanding?”

  “I may be a civilian, but I live in that world too, Sammy,” he replied quietly, eyes somber. “I’ve seen enough to know none of us are defined solely by the extreme actions we take in dire situations. We’re far more complicated than that, darlin’.” He ran a long finger down her face. “You’re far more complicated than that. So maybe you should stop beating yourself up. You can’t rescind or alter who you are, but you’re owning up to it at the very least.” His eyes wandered over her face. “That says something about your supposedly-flawed character, don’t you think?”

  Sam closed her eyes at his words, feeling the heavy burden of her guilt and self-doubt shift, the weight becoming a little less heavy, the anxiety of the last few days receding long enough for her to find a moment of reprieve. An unexpected and entirely welcome quietude came over Sam in the shelter of this quiet cocoon he’d provided.

  “Tell me what it’s like,” she murmured after a long moment. “Our parallel universe.”

  Wes drew a quilt over them as he cinched his arm around her, bringing them closer.

  “Well, in that version of reality, I come back after your daddy and Ry pass,” he admitted readily. “You have a bad year, but I help you through it,” he continued, resting his chin against her head as she closed her eyes and listened to his fairytale. “I never leave your side. You get so annoyed with me; you kick me out of the house,” he chuckled quietly.

  “We have a house?”

  “A Spanish-styled cottage in Houston,” he added. “With an office for you and a dark room for me, near Rice Village so we can walk to dinner. You don’t mind the drive to work because you say it helps you decompress, and it’s a fifteen-minute drive to my studio, ten if I take the bike.”

  “What kind of studio is it?” she asked quietly, amazed at his level of detail. He’d either really thought about this, or he was bullshitting effortlessly. Either way, his rendering of their alternate reality impressed the hell out of her.

  “I take portrait shots, do weddings, stuff like that to pay the bills,” he continued, his cheek pressed to her head. “But I keep the artsy stuff on the side when I can do it. You help me set up a couple of shows at local galleries; we even do a couple weekend art festivals together in Austin and San Antonio.”

  “Next thing you’re going to tell me is we have a cat,” she teased, running a fingertip across his collarbone as she listened.

  “Nah, we have a dog. A Labrador,” Wes replied. “Keeps me company when you’re deployed.”

  “Where do I go?”

  “You’re stationed on a carrier somewhere in the Indian Ocean,” he explained. “Sometimes you’d get as close as the Arabian Sea, but you never see much action during the war. You come home after your first tour is finished, and I’m so damn happy, Sammy,” he sighed, kissing her hair. “I’d missed you something terrible.”

  Sam smiled against him. “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Squirrel.”

  “What the hell kind of name is that?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “An ironic one,” he smirked, laughter in his eyes. “Always chasing after the damn things. Drives us nuts.”

  She shook her head, snuggling down against him again. “Alright, what then?”

  “You take over as head of Wyatt Petroleum. We go back to the ranch once a month, but you want to stay in Houston. I think it’s because it’s hard for you to be home without your daddy and Ryland there.”

  “Still is,” Sam confessed.

  Wes kissed her cheek gently. “I know it is, darlin’.”

  “Do we get married?” she asked on a lark, her young girl’s heart catching a little, remembering when that used to be her fantasy before she knew better.

  “Yeah,” Wes nodded. “I proposed before you deployed, but you make me wait until you get back to make an honest woman out of you.”

  Sam let out a soft little laugh. “Sounds like something I’d do. How did you propose?”

  Wes smiled against her hair again. “I take you back to the arches where I first saw you at school and get on one knee.” He ran a hand over her head. “I tell you I’ll never love anyone or anything more than you, and that I’ll make you happy again, even if it takes the rest of my life,” he whispered.

  “And I believe you?” she mocked gently, imagining the moment in her mind’s eye.

  Sam felt his chuckle vibrate through him, the warmth of his skin blanketing her. “You said ‘yes,’ didn’t you?”

  “Guess so,” she smiled against him. “In this fantasy, are we happy, Wes?” she asked after a long moment.

  Wes brushed her hair back. “Yeah, Sammy, we are. Because even when we argue, we always end up back here, in bed, with me holding you like this. No matter what, nothing else matters. It’s just you and me, baby. Everything else we work through together.”

  Samantha sighed, listening to his heart beat for a while as he caressed her hair. “It’s a nice daydream, Wes,” she said after a while. “Our alternate reality.”

  “It’s our parallel universe, darlin’,” he smiled against her. “You and me in the foxhole. What’s not to like?”

  Chapter 18

  July 2006—Late Night

  Kabul, Afghanistan

  S A M A N T H A

  Three men entered the room, each large and swarthy, wearing the traditional perahan tunbans outfit and kufi caps. Though it was difficult to see their faces clearly underneath their heavy beards, they looked to be somewhere in their thirties. All too young to be Nazar. As they fanned out across the room, Sam pretended to cower underneath Arman’s sleeping form.

  The men said nothing as they observed her, though one did step forward, roughly jerking Arman’s head up, twisting it quickly from side to side as he examined Arman’s face. He slapped Arman hard once, then again. Sam flinched as she turned her head away, the hard slaps a loud staccato in the quiet din of the room. Arman groaned feebly, shifting as he awoke from his opiate-induced sleep.

  “It’s him,” the man said loudly in Persian as he peered down at Arman.

  A fourth man stepped into the room. He was medium height, older, and had a cultivated look about him. There was a certain elegance in the way he carried himself, as if he were royalty of some kind. Sam watched him from her peripheral, careful not to make eye contact under the veil. He assessed the scene while Arman rustled and groaned, still coming to as he blinked blearily at the sudden crowd in the small room.

  Sam could hear a man in the brothel’s hallway speaking loudly, explaining in a pleading voice that he had not realized who had checked in three days ago, that Arman had used another name, and had paid in cash for the whore and opium, asking not to be disturbed. As the pimp became louder, his voice more supplicating, Sam worried he’d make it into the room and see her, recognizing that she wasn’t one of his whores. From the corner of her eye, Sam saw the shadowy forms of two men blocking the door, preventing the pimp from coming in, and her racing heart skipped as the older man stepped closer to the bed. She held her breath as Arman shifted lethargically in her arms, groaning pitifully.

  “Pedar,”26 Arman breathed as he caught sight of the older man. “You found me.”

  Nazar. This had to be Ibrahim Nazar.

  “Imagine my disappointment,” the older man replied in Persian. “To hear after these many weeks, worrying over your disappearance, that you’d turned up here in this den of filth,” he said, his refined voice laced with anger.

  Sam’s entire body felt locked with tension as she prayed Wright and his team would burst in at any moment.

  “No, Father,” Arman slurred beseechingly, trying—and failing—to sit up. “I was captured by the Americans. They kept me. Beat and tortured me—”

/>   “And dropped you off at a brothel?” Nazar sliced his son’s fumbling explanation off, his patience wearing thin.

  “Father—” Arman struggled.

  “Get him off that whore,” Nazar commanded his men.

  Sam froze, a moment of panic seizing her as she guessed at what they’d do to her once Arman had been wrested free. She thought through the possible scenarios, trying to remain focused and calm, even as two of the men stepped toward her and Arman.

  First possibility: They pull Arman off of her and drag him out, leaving her behind, untouched. Wright and his men would take them out either inside or just outside the brothel.

  Second possibility: They pull Arman off her and attack her. An unplanned but frenzied beating, possibly an attempt to rape her, depending on how quickly Wright and his team could get up here.

  Nazar’s guards radiated animosity as they wrenched her arms and legs from around Arman, grabbing his arms and shoulders, lifting him up as he groaned at the jostling.

  Third possibility: They kill her quickly, a sacrifice as the unintentional witness to Nazar’s presence and his shame in his son.

  Unable to stand on his own, Arman teetered as they stood him upright.

  “Dress him,” Nazar muttered angrily. “We’re leaving this shithole.”

  Fourth possibility: They’d simply leave her. She’d be able to take out a couple of his guards from behind if she were lucky, making it easier for Wright and his team to kill or capture the rest.

  As the men shoved Arman’s limp arms through the armholes of his discarded jacket, Nazar turned to her. Sam pretended to cower, peering at him through her lashes, noting the same striking eyes Arman had inherited—greenish hazel with striking cognac-colored striations. Except Ibrahim Nazar’s eyes were coldly assessing, intelligent in a way that Arman’s were not. In that half-second, Sam realized the odds of possibility number four happening were slim to none.