After the War

by Jessica Scott

  Sean flinched. Her statement was the unvarnished truth but that didn't make it hurt any less. And as much as it sucked, she wasn't wrong. He’d been immature. Threatened by the idea of his wife wearing the same boots he did.

  Looking back, he hardly recognized the idiot he’d been. How stupid he'd been for letting his fledgling pride get in the way of the goodness he’d had with Sarah.

  “The question now, though,” Claire arched one brow, “is whether you’re man enough now?”

  Sean shoved his hands into his pockets. Found the quarters there, resting. “Not sure how that is any of your business, Montoya.”

  She sobered and there was no threat in her expression any longer. Instead, there was only concern. “Sarah is my best friend, Sean. If you hurt her…”

  The first quarter was comforting and warm as it slid over his fingers. “Hurting Sarah is the last thing I intend.” He did not look away from her intense inspection.

  Finally, she nodded. With a quick squeeze of Evan’s shoulder, Claire stepped out of the office, leaving Sean and Evan alone.

  “So I need to check on the range for next week,” Sean said after she was gone.

  Evan tipped his chin. “Anything there I need to worry about?” The simple question was laced with protection and care. Sean couldn’t stop the tiny spark of jealousy that twinged against his heart.

  “No. Claire’s a good friend. Loyal to a fault.” Sean looked up at Evan. “She’s the reason I still have a career.”

  Nine

  There were only a few places on Fort Hood to take a PT test. At least, few places that were officially sanctioned. You could take a PT test anywhere you damn well pleased, but let one soldier fail and every inch of your location would be inspected.

  So naturally when there was an approved, flat area, everyone on the installation used it.

  Sarah stretched alongside the formation of mostly junior soldiers. She was one of the few officers taking the PT test today. Thank God Claire had come through for her and had dropped Anna off at the daycare so Sarah could sit in her car for an hour and wait to take a PT test that technically, she shouldn't have to take for an executive officer who hadn't even bothered to show up.

  But the XO had said be at the railhead at five, so that’s what Sarah would do. The fact that the PT test wasn’t going to start until six thirty was completely irrelevant. Captains did what majors told them to do. She wasn't going to let Wilson piss her off. At least not until she had her coffee.

  She stretched her leg carefully and tried not to worry about the run. She had to run two miles in under twenty-one minutes. She could do that in her sleep.

  Except that she hadn’t done it, not for a record PT test, since she’d gotten hurt. And while yes, she was in her rights to demand a diagnostic PT test before she took one for the record, she was already on thin ice with Major Wilson. She would be perfectly within her rights to refuse to take the PT test—that’s what the profile was designed to do, but in the current environment, giving Wilson any more reasons to target her was only going to cause more trouble. Trouble that Sarah didn’t need.

  So she’d take the damn PT test.

  Sarah stretched and told herself she was fine. She’d been running and stretching and doing everything her doc told her to do. The burns hadn’t gone into the muscle.

  But the minute the PT test started, she knew she was in trouble. Her shoulders were tight and didn’t loosen up until she’d done more than twenty push-ups. And once she started the sit-up event, the skin on her thigh felt stretched too thin. Like it was separating with a thousand tiny tears with each repetition.

  Both events went by fairly quickly, though. She’d lost a few push-ups—thirty-eight instead of her normal fifty. She needed to work on that. But she’d passed those two events and that’s all that mattered right now. She could work on a better score. Right now, she just needed not to fail.

  And failing was starting to feel like it might be a reality. Her left thigh was tight and stiff as she walked to the starting line for the run. She’d be fine. She’d loosen up once she started running.

  The whistle blew, and Sarah took off with the rest of the pack. She wasn’t sprinting. She needed to pace herself. Her leg remained tight the first quarter mile. It loosened up a little bit on that second quarter mile but not enough.

  Her stomach knotted as she rounded her third quarter. Her leg was no longer merely stiff; it felt like it was actively tearing open, like the fire was eating at her flesh once more. She bit back the pain, just focusing on running. As long as she didn’t stop, she could finish the run. She wouldn’t fail.

  She wouldn’t fail.

  She’d never failed a PT test in her life.

  But the second mile was half a world away. Her leg burned. Was weak.

  She kept going. Just keep going. One foot in front of the other.

  She saw the finish line ahead. Twenty minutes. She could make it. Left. Left. Left Right. She repeated the cadence in her head.

  The finish line was farther away now. At the end of a tunnel, getting darker.

  “Sarah!”

  She heard her name from a far off distance as the fire licked up her leg and consumed her.

  * * *

  Sean was used to fear but when he saw Sarah go down on the track, he was hit with a level of panic he hadn’t known since the last deployment, when his TOC had gotten blown up.

  He raced to her as she stumbled off the asphalt and crashed into the grass surrounding the track. She was already pushing up to her knees by the time he got to her. It didn’t escape his notice that the NCO from her unit was not rushing over to make sure she was okay. What kind of bullshit unit was she in?

  “Don’t!” She pushed up to her hands and knees. Both were scraped and bloody. “You can’t touch me, or I’ll fail the PT test.”

  “Shit, are you serious? You’re fucking bleeding.”

  “I just tripped and skinned my knees. I’ll be fine.” She tried to stand and wobbled. “I have to finish.”

  “Fuck this,” he said. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and guided her off the track.

  “No, no, no. I have to finish.” But her voice was shaking now. She hadn’t tripped. No fucking way.

  “There’s a fine line between hoah and stupid, and you just crossed it,” Sean snapped. “Sarn’t Madeira! I need the combat lifesaver over here.”

  Sarah finally stopped fighting to get back onto the track and sank into the grass. She started to cover her face with her palms but stopped, finally noticing the blood.

  “What happened?” he asked as the company medic started rinsing the scrapes on her knees. Sean took gauze and wiped the gravel from her palms as gently as he could.

  “My first PT test since I got hurt.” Her voice was limp. Defeated. “Guess I wasn’t ready for it.”

  “It’s just a diagnostic,” Sean said. “Try again next week.”

  She looked up at him and shook her head slowly. “It was a record.”

  “Huh?”

  “Major Wilson directed me to take a record. So I did.” Her throat moved as she swallowed, trying to blink back tears.

  “Jenks, leave this with me?” Sean said to the medic.

  “Roger, sir.”

  Sean took her hand in his. She was small and her hand shook where he held her. “This may sting a little,” he said, holding up the bottle of saline solution.

  “You guys had a PT test this morning?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Good thing, too. Here.” He pressed gauze into her palm.

  She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her wrist. “Shit.”

  “She can’t make you take a record PT test if you’re on profile, Sarah,” he said as he cleaned her other palm.

  “She already did. And I failed.” She bit her lips together, hard enough that he felt sorry for them.

  She sucked in a hissing breath as he squeezed the saline out over her knees a second time. She shifted and her shorts rode up a little on her l
eft thigh.

  He paused, taking in the mottled raised skin where she’d been burned. It started halfway up her thigh and disappeared beneath the black shorts. His chest tightened and a thousand emotions ripped through him. She’d been hurt. Badly. The skin was still bright red and hot pink – new wounds, not old. He fought the urge to gather her to him, at once wanting to protect her from something she’d already survived and wanting to offer comfort that she had not asked for.

  He looked up to find her watching his quiet inspection of her wound.

  “Guess I should expect that I told you so, huh?” She offered a half-assed wry grin and failed.

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” he said quietly.

  “What then?” She adjusted the gauze in her hand, checking the ripped skin beneath.

  “I was going to say I’m glad you came home.” He rested his hand on her calf. Felt the smooth, solid muscle beneath his palm. He had the strongest desire to run his hand down her calf and up her thigh, just to see if she still reacted to his touch.

  She swallowed but didn’t look away.

  “What if you get hurt?” The echo of that fight rose between them, an unwanted memory.

  “I’m a supply clerk. We’re not exactly front line soldiers,” she’d snapped.

  God but they’d both been so naïve before the war. Now, long after the war had been going on for years, everyone knew supply soldiers had one of the highest casualty rates from running logistics convoys.

  It was a long moment before she responded.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  She didn’t protest as he cleaned the gravel out of both knees.

  The NCO who’d been in charge of the PT test came trotting over now that the last soldier had finished. “Ma’am, you okay?”

  Sean bit his tongue to avoid ripping the sergeant a new one. Why the hell had they not sent someone to check on her when she’d first fallen? “Roger, sarn’t.”

  “I’ll have to mark you as failed, ma’am,” he said, looking down at his clipboard.

  “I know.”

  Sean watched the exchange silently, fighting to keep his temper in check.

  She wasn’t in his unit. She wasn’t his. But the fury he felt at the unfairness of the entire situation burned in his chest. “You have a legitimate complaint, Sarah.”

  Her smile was flat. “I’m not filing a complaint against my XO. You know how fast that would end any chance I’ve got of getting out of this unit with a decent evaluation. Officers turn on our own when we call the IG. Wilson would crucify me.”

  “So instead of fighting for fair treatment, you’re going to let her mark you as a PT failure?” He taped a bandage to her knee.

  “You don’t know what I’m dealing with when it comes to her. She’s going to run me out of the Army if she gets her way.”

  “Try me,” he said. He stood and offered her a hand. She winced as he pulled her to her feet.

  She studied him quietly. “Since when did you care about what it’s like for me in the Army?”

  He took a step closer. The field was empty now. It was as if everyone had scattered the minute PT was over.

  There was a faint white scar beneath her right eye, extending down toward her cheek. He wanted to ask her where she’d gotten that, but he didn’t. She didn’t look like she was up for a stroll down memory lane. The concern for her, the old feelings snuck up on him, breaking out of the locked box at the bottom of the well where he kept it buried and restrained and tried to ignore. But now, they broke free and mixed with a powerful storm of new emotions that he had no clue how to process. How to manage. It was too much, too fast.

  “Since I lost you for not paying close enough attention the last time.”

  Ten

  This was stupid. So stupid. She’d just failed a PT test—a major violation for an officer—and she was standing here, bleeding and sore. And her body was on fire.

  But not from the run or from the weakness in her leg.

  From the warmth and concern looking back at her from Sean Nichols’s eyes.

  “You couldn’t handle the idea that I wanted to be a soldier when we were younger,” she said.

  “You’re right. I was selfish and immature. Things didn’t have to end up the way they did.” A pained admission.

  “You made your choice. You chose your buddies over me.”

  “And you chose your career over me.” For once, there was no blame in those words. Only a simple statement of fact.

  “You’re right.” She pressed her lips into a flat line. “And look where that got me. Blown up, widowed, and now a single parent too stupid to get out of the Army and find a new job.”

  “Don’t.” He cupped her cheek. “Don’t take away from everything you’ve accomplished, Sarah.”

  She smiled hesitantly. “Who are you and what have you done with Sean Nichols?”

  “War has a way of changing people. Making you see what’s really important.”

  He stood too close. Close enough that she could clearly see the lines around his eyes, emphasized by the dark slashes beneath them.

  She almost ran her fingers over the dark crease near the corner of his mouth. Almost. But she didn’t. Because it was taking too much of a step, too much of a chance. To cross the barriers between them that had become part of the myth her life was built on…it was singularly the most difficult and simplest task in the entire world.

  Instead, she chose a dodge. A feint. A hesitant retreat to safer territory. “You don’t sleep.”

  “Not much, no.” He cleared his throat, but his eyes never left hers.

  “You should see a doc for that.” She squeezed her fingers tight around the gauze in her hand. “Not sleeping is bad for your health.”

  His lips quirked. He said nothing.

  “What?” she asked.

  “That’s the first time anyone has worried about me in a long time.” His pulse beat slow and steady against the sunburnt skin of his neck.

  It was tempting—far too tempting—to trace her finger over the line of his throat. To see if his skin felt like she remembered, or if it would be new. Different.

  For the first time since Jack died, she let herself feel. A thousand emotions churned inside her heart, but one beat in constant rhythm with her pulse.

  One that terrified her.

  She took a single step backward, a full retreat now, thankfully more steady on her feet than she had been. Silence stretched between them.

  He’d been the first man she’d ever loved. The first man who’d broken her heart for not loving her enough to let her be her own person.

  And yet, he’d been there today when she’d fallen flat on her face. She’d expected an I told you so.

  She hadn’t gotten it. Instead, she’d gotten a glimpse of the man Sean had become in the intervening decade or so since she’d last seen him.

  Reminding her that she’d had a life once, before Jack. A life she’d lived just as fully with Sean.

  Standing there with him as the sun rose over Fort Hood, she felt something resurrecting deep inside her. Something transforming as it returned to life. Old emotions mixing with new.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. “For helping me today.”

  He swallowed, and she tried not to be enthralled by the movement of his throat. Tried to ignore the faint curl of hair at the edge of his t-shirt and the smell of warm male skin.

  “I’m glad I was here for you.” His gaze traveled down her body where the bandages had soaked through. “You might need to get those looked at.”

  She grimaced. “You did a good job cleaning them out. I’ll put some Neosporin on them, and I’ll be fine.”

  He smiled then. This time when he reached up to brush her cheek with his finger, she didn’t pull away. Didn’t flinch from the tenderness in that simple gesture. “You were always so damn stubborn, Sar,” he murmured.

  * * *

  He gave in to the urge to touch her. He lifted his hand and slowly brushed his
fingers across her cheek. She closed her eyes at his touch and she was there, just there. Far too tempting for him to avoid any longer.

  He couldn’t lie to himself, not about her. He’d never been very smart where Sarah was concerned.

  He skimmed his finger over her skin, until her chin was cradled in his palm. Gently he brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. She was so still, she might have shattered if he moved too quickly. Her lips parted, and he heard the quick, quiet intake of breath.

  It stirred a longing inside him that he’d thought he’d buried ages ago. He leaned in, barely brushing his lips against hers. She was still. Infinitely still. She didn’t move as he nudged her top lip with his. Hesitant. Questioning. Giving her time and space to back away.

  Her breath hitched before she opened for him. Just the barest hint of movement, but it was enough.

  It had been almost a decade since he’d tasted her but it was like that time had been only an instance. She tasted the same. Like Sarah. The one woman he’d loved. The one woman who’d devastated him when she’d told him no. He stroked his lips across hers, tasting her, learning how she felt all over again.

  Then it happened.

  She leaned into him, a gentle sway and the tip of her tongue brushed against his, hesitant. Uncertain.

  Long-buried desire burned to life inside him, and he fought the urge to take. To pull her against him and feel his body joined with hers. Her fingers curled against his chest, as though holding herself upright and holding on to him at the same time.

  A low groan escaped him before he could rein it in. He felt her still and the distance creep back between them even though neither of them moved.

  It was Sarah who stepped back first. She looked at his chest where her hand rested against the bold black letters that spelled ARMY.