by Chloe Lane
Two of my buddies are dragging someone out by the arms. A third member of the squad signals to me. There’s no one left in the house. I stand over the woman and the girl for a few more long moments. They probably didn’t have anything to do with this. I feel fucking terrible that we threw a flashbang in here. It probably scared the shit out of them. But what else could we do?
I go outside then and stand at the edge of the group surrounding the man we’ve dragged seemingly from his bed in the middle of the night. His hair is tousled and he’s talking so fast it’s hard to understand, doubly hard because he’s speaking in Pashto, but somewhere along the line it starts to sound like English. I can understand him perfectly, and he’s telling me not to get back in the car. Don’t get back in the car, he says, but why? There’s no way he can possibly know anything.
He’s not the terrorist we were hunting. He’s nobody. We disregard him, shove him back into the house, and leave. Mission failed. Heads hanging low. And we get back into the Humvee. The moment my ass hits a seat my stomach turns. I shouldn’t be in here. I should listen to him. But I’m not going to. I can never go back and make another decision. I can never go back.
I wake up in a cold sweat, the hotel sheets rough against my skin. Hot bile rises in my throat, and I push myself straight up in bed, sitting up to face whatever’s coming.
Nothing is coming.
I’m in a hotel.
I’m not in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is over, and everything is fine. I repeat the phrase to myself a few more times. Afghanistan is over, and everything is fine.
My scar is evidence of healing. It’s evidence that everything is fine.
I left town the morning after the discussion with Skye. I had a trip planned anyway, from prior to when she was hired on, but it was only supposed to last two days. Only the moment I got back into town, I checked into a hotel. It’s for safety, really. The fewer chances I have of running into her, the better. It’ll be best if I don’t get sucked in again, sucked into her lies.
I’m wide fucking awake, and it’s one in the morning. I feel like I’ve been sleeping for hours, trapped in this fucking dream like I’m trapped in it every night, but I only fell asleep at midnight.
Screw this.
I whip on a pair of pants and a shirt, run a hand through my hair, and go down to the hotel bar.
“Something on your mind?” The bartender is an older guy, seasoned, with wrinkled skin around his eyes. He pulls out a glass without asking what I want, and pours a beer.
“I wouldn’t be here if I could sleep.”
“Woman or money?”
I want to laugh out loud. He’s pretty damn forward for a bartender at a chain hotel, but what do I have to lose? “Woman.”
He nods sagely, and then pushes the beer across the bar to me. “How’d you screw up?”
My mouth twists into an ugly smile. “What makes you think I’m the one who screwed up?”
“You’re wound tighter than a drum, young man.” I guess his salt and pepper hair does give him the right to think I’m just some idiot fresh out of college. “And I can tell by the way you walked in here that you’re ex-military.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I know a thing or two about that. Sometimes…” He cocks his head to the side. “Sometimes we do pretty stupid shit, when the war is over.”
“It’s not over.”
“It’s never really over, is it? No.” He answers his own question. “Do you love her?”
I look down into my beer. I don’t know what kind of beer it is, and I don’t care. I just wish Skye was here. I wish I could trust her. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” The bartender laughs. “All you have to do is figure out where you went wrong.”
“I’m not the one—”
“You’re always the one,” he says, looking me squarely in the eye. “Get used to it. If you love a woman, it’s never her who screws up. And most of the time, it’s actually true.”
I take a swig of beer, trying to swallow away a certain tightness in my throat. I’m not going to fucking tear up in front of a bartender. “It’s over. It’s…complicated, but it’s over.”
“I believe you, son,” the bartender says. “I really do.”
He’s lying.
I drink more of my beer and stare at the TV screen behind the bar.
I stay there for a long time.
Chapter 23
Skye
“You have to get out and do something.”
Robin’s words sound like they’re crunching through the world’s thickest wall. I turn over from where I’m lying on the couch, tearing my attention away from the Iron Chef marathon I’ve been watching since I got home from work. “What?”
“You have to get out of here.” Robin stands in the doorway of her new bedroom, leaning against the doorframe. I can tell that today is a good day because her shoulders are relatively relaxed, not pinned up next to her ears. “You’re making me depressed.”
“I’m not depressed.”
“I didn’t say anything about you,” she says, moving farther into the living room. “The sight of you is doing a number on me, though.”
I look down the length of my body. Pajama pants. A ratty tank top from when I was in college. Also, I can’t remember when I last washed my hair. But it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad, is it? I bury my face into one of our two throw pillows. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You spend so much time sulking on that damn couch that I’m afraid you’ll sink right through to the floor and we’ll have to buy a new one.”
“So what? Maybe I’m just pregnant.”
Robin rolls her eyes. “This is not how I pictured you as a pregnant woman.”
I lift my head off the pillow. “What did you imagine?”
“That you’d be happy, for one.” I look across the room at Robin and notice for the first time that whatever this is between me and Matthew is causing her more than a little strain. “I get being tired and wanting to rest, but this—” She gestures toward the couch. “Where is he, anyway? Did you break up?”
“We didn’t break up. We weren’t exclusive in the first place. I told you—”
“I know. But if you didn’t break up, why the hell are you acting like he ripped your heart out and stomped on it?”
I sit up, leaning my head back against the backrest with a sigh. “Because…he did.”
She slowly takes in a deep breath. “Do you know why?”
Of course I know why. I know exactly why. I may have…left out that part of the story when I first told Robin about this two weeks ago, but my resolve has crumbled since then. I motion for her to sit down next to me on the couch, curling up my legs to make room. It feels weird to do that already. My body is changing, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Despite everything, there’s a little zing of excitement when I realize the difference. I’ve always wanted to be a mother. It’s probably the reason I’ve never resented Robin for needing what she needs from me—and right now, it’s still pretty much everything.
“I know why,” I say, finally. “Peter...got to him.”
Her face twists into a frown. “What the hell?”
I lean back against the couch, closing my eyes. “He went to some meeting that last Sunday I was staying at his place, and when he came back...well, you remember.”
She nods, biting her lip. “But I don't get it. Why would he believe Peter? Peter's a piece of shit.”
“He must have had something to...I don't know. Something to prove that it really happened, at least. That might have been all that Matthew needed to know.”
“It's not a crime to get pregnant. And what Peter did to you was unforgivable.”
“I didn't tell him that part.”
Robin's eyes go wide. “You have to tell him. Oh, my God. You have to! What are you thinking, Skye?”
“I haven't had a chance to talk to him since then. He's been completely MIA.” My stomach hurts. “A
nd I didn't want him to think I was making up another story just to cover up what Peter said. You know how it is with men, Robin. Don't act like you don't.”
She looks down at her hands in her lap. “I know.” Then she looks back up at me, flickers of hope and fear in her eyes. “But isn't Matthew different from other men? He has to be, otherwise you wouldn't be so...so...”
“Devastated?” I say the word and then the tears threaten to overtake me again. All the Iron Chef marathons in the world aren't healing the wound ravaging my heart. It just seems so fucking risky to say anything to Matthew. I don't want to lose what we have, and I can't bear to fight with him about the baby. The baby who will be a living, breathing child. What am I supposed to do? Hand my baby over to Matthew, never to see it again? Back in the beginning of all this, maybe I thought I could do that. But now that I'm pregnant, I know there's no way.
No way at all.
“Yeah.”
“He doesn't have a reason to believe me.”
Robin grabs my hand then and looks at me, a ferocity in her eyes that I haven't seen in a long time. “You're carrying his baby. He has every reason to believe you. And if he doesn't believe you—” She lifts her chin, pressing her lips together. “I'll make him believe you.”
I laugh a little, tears sliding down my cheeks. “Oh, Rob, you're the best sister I could have asked for. But how are you going to force him to do anything? You can barely leave the apartment.”
Robin grins, the corners of her mouth rising a little. “You've really been out of it, haven't you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look around.”
I glance around the apartment, but nothing is out of place. Everything looks perfectly clean, tidy, and....
Bright. It looks bright. I gasp out loud.
“It's not bothering you?”
“Not today,” Robin says. “That doctor knows what he's talking about. I think things will get even better after this week's appointment.”
I give her a long, long hug, clinging to her like she's all I have left.
And she very well might be.
Chapter 24
Matthew
Three more days. Three more dreams.
Every night, I spend longer and longer caught up in the dream. Every night, the man we drag from the house gets more insistent that I don't get in the Humvee. Every night, I still do.
Only on the third night, I get back out.
I get back out on the side of the road. The man had screamed a warning about what was waiting for us—that's all I understood in the dream, what's waiting for you—but the dream is a fun-house mirror of reality. In reality, he wasn't a man we dragged from the house. It was a contact I had in the village with a reputation for disloyalty to the United States’ forces...periodic disloyalty, anyway. He had his moments of real helpfulness. I disregarded him when he tried to tell us about a new set of plans developed by the village terrorists involving more than just IEDs. IEDs turned out to be the least of it, but I never had to deal with their plan because I got injured that night. I didn't believe him, and I should have. We paid for it.
In my dream, I see the thing on the side of the road the moment I step out of the Humvee, but it's already too late. It's remote-controlled by some guy standing on a hillock nearby with a cell phone, and when it explodes, it seems brighter than the sun.
A piece of shrapnel slices through my gut, down below my belly button, and the blood is hot as it runs through my fingers. Hot and unstoppable, and the fear that overwhelms me tastes like sand and death.
I throw myself bodily out of the bed, hands grasping at the scar on my skin, tearing my shirt out of the way so I can force my eyes open and see that the damage has healed.
“Shit,” I gasp, sucking in breath after breath. I can't get enough air. There's not enough air in the room. Not for several minutes, anyway.
By the time I catch my breath, I'm just disgusted with myself. The fact that this still haunts me after all this time is the worst weakness of my life. Worse than having a human body that could be torn apart by shrapnel.
It's almost worse than the fact that I left Skye.
I breathe, and breathe, and then go into the bathroom and throw cold water on my face.
That damn bartender was probably right. It's not over with her. It's not over, and I know it's not, because when I'm not dreaming of Afghanistan, I'm doing anything I can do to stop thinking of her. It never works. It never works.
She's carrying my baby.
The stakes have never been higher.
Which is why, I see now, she looks like an IED on the side of the road to me. And why that scumbag Peter Cunningham seemed like the Afghani man I didn't believe but should have. That man had the same insistent look in his eyes, the same urgency that he wanted to protect me, the same look as Peter Cunningham.
I'm leaving, and I'm leaving right now.
I get into the shower, turning the water up as hot as I can stand it. There was never hot water in Afghanistan. For whatever reason, that was the one thing I missed most about home. There wasn't a woman waiting for me back then, just my pissed-off father. And he wanted nothing to do with me.
When I get out of the shower, I can hardly contain the energy tearing at my raw nerves. I throw all of my things into the duffel bag I brought, cramming it in like every second lost is a precious jewel.
That's because it is.
There's also one more thing I need to do before I leave. It might be the early morning, but I hope he's still on his shift.
I find the bartender still standing behind the bar. He looks refreshed and awake, not like he closed the bar at two and is already back here at seven. I don't know why he's here at seven, but I really don't care. I hurry over to him.
“Are you still thinking about her?” He says the words with a smile, like we're just continuing the same conversation without a three-day gap in between.
“I'm going back. But I wanted to tell you that you were right.”
“Oh?” He raises one eyebrow.
“It was me.”
He gives me a look like he doesn't understand, but I think he may just be egging me on, forcing me to say the words out loud. Normally I'd hate that kind of shit, but there's a hope blooming in my chest that I just can't bear to rip out by the roots. I can't fucking bear it. Not when Skye is going to have my baby. Not when this baby could bond us together so that nothing could ever tear us apart.
Not when I love her, baby or no baby.
I should never have let Peter Cunningham get in the way. I never should have believed him.
But all of this would take too long to explain to the bartender. Maybe someday I'll come back and tell him the whole story, but right now I need to get back to my office.
No—home first, then the office. There's something I need to pick up before I do anything else.
I take a big breath. “I was the one who fucked up, not her. Thanks for telling me that.”
He shrugs, another twinkle in his eye. “It's just the way of life, son.”
I give him one last nod and turn away, his words ringing in my ears. The way of life. Life. I wouldn't have the chance to get torn apart by Skye if I hadn't survived the IED.
I burst out of the hotel, heading for my car in the parking lot, and breathe in the brisk morning air. It suddenly seems fresh and clean. For once, I'm not weighted down by the past, by the Army, by Afghanistan.
I fly toward the city, toward her, toward my last chance at this new life.
Chapter 25
Skye
I sit through training for my new assignment in PR at the office for three days before anything sinks in. Every morning I go through the motions, jotting down notes about what I'm supposed to be doing, and every day at lunch I look over the notes. I don't understand a single thing I've written down. It's like I'm failing at treading water. All I can do is get to the end of the day, when I can go home and curl up on the couch and try to forget everything.
&
nbsp; I know the strategy isn't going to work forever because the baby will be born eventually.
Eventually I'll spontaneously combust from trying not to think about Matthew.
Not just Matthew's personality, either. It doesn't seem to matter that I'm heartbroken. My body still wants him, in spite of everything. Maybe it's because of the pregnancy, too, but I've never wanted a man more. I've never needed to have an orgasm more. I've tried to get myself off at least six times—in the bath, in bed—but I just can't get there without dwelling on him. And I can’t dwell on him without tearing my heart into a thousand pieces all over again.
It's a losing battle, I know.
That's what I'm thinking about at lunch on the third day. Everyone else in the office went out for their meals, and I'm sitting at my desk with a salad in a Tupperware container and a protein drink. Between my legs, my core pulses. I'm at the point where I need an outlet. I need something.
I don't really care if I get caught. I'm past caring about that kind of thing. What's the worst that happens? I get fired and have to find another job? I can find another job. At least at another job, I won't be surrounded by Matthew and his company all day, every day.
I'd like to be surrounded by him in a different way. I'd like him to be fucking me right now, bent over my desk, my skirt shoved up around my waist, breathing hard, being loud, like we're the only two people in the world.
Fork in one hand, I slip my other one down between my legs. I'm not wearing pantyhose—it's too warm these days, and now that I'm pregnant, I seem to overheat at the slightest touch of a warm breeze—so there's nothing between me and my skin but my panties.