Ugh.
I push away the worry and the fear and try to settle into Caleb’s possessive embrace. He’s already asleep as Ben settles next to me—not on his side but on his back so that he faces up to the ceiling, and there’s something kind of intimate about it, looking at him while he isn’t looking at me.
In the faint gold light of the nightlight, aided by the occasional flash of lightning, I can study the sculpted perfection of his profile. The proud, nearly aquiline nose. The careful part of his lips. The stillness of his forehead and chin—the stillness of his everything, actually, which makes me wonder how much practice he’s had at keeping himself motionless. Inert.
But his eyes—those aren’t motionless at all. They gleam as they move from the window to the ceiling to me and Caleb and then back again, betraying a restlessness, a cloud of hidden thoughts.
It both fascinates and depresses me, that cloud. That fog of mystery that clings around him and covers him up. I want to burn away his gloom and see him smile.
“Thank you,” he finally says. The lash of the rain almost swallows up his words, but I hear them anyway.
I don’t know if I like them.
“You don’t have to thank me,” I say. “This wasn’t me doing you a favor. And I hope,” I add, in a mix of courage and insecurity, “that it wasn’t you doing me a favor.”
He turns his head and gives me a sharp look. “It wasn’t.”
“Then why even bring thank you into it?”
He lets out a long breath, and when he turns his head to look at the ceiling again, his expression is unreadable. “Because tonight is the first night in five years I’ve even been able to pretend I could fall asleep during a storm.”
It’s a strange thing to say—even stranger given I haven’t seen him react to the thunder at all—but before I can ask anything more, he says, “Go to sleep, Ireland.”
I want to argue, want to fight off the wave of drowsiness pulling at me and ask him more about it, but it turns out Ben must know me better than I know myself, because I open my mouth to tell him he can’t boss me around, and before I know it, I’m asleep.
It’s still storming and dark when I wake up, and it’s disorienting, like I’ve slid into another world where rain and darkness are the defaults and I’ll never see sunlight again.
Even more disorienting is the hard warmth enveloping me, the breath ruffling my hair, the huge hand cupping my pussy—but it’s disorienting in the best kind of way, like waking up to find a dream is real after all.
Although the dream isn’t perfect—when my eyes adjust to the dark and my mind unfogs, I realize the other side of the bed is empty save for a three-legged dog tucked into a circle.
Ben is gone.
“He always leaves,” Caleb says sleepily from behind me. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh,” I murmur, not knowing what else to say. What else do I have a right to say, really? I don’t know Ben, and I barely know Caleb any better. I’m just a stranger in a strange bed listening to the rain.
So it shouldn’t sting as much as it does that Ben isn’t next to me.
This is all going to be over in the morning anyway. What does it matter?
But it does matter, it does bother me, and even though I want to be all sophisticated and casual about the fact that I just had the best sex of my life with the hottest men I’ve ever seen, I can’t be.
This is just an inaugural adventure, I try to soothe myself. There will be lots more. You’re the new Ireland, remember? There will be so many other hot men in your future.
The problem, I realize as I drift back into sleep, is that I don’t want there to be any other men. I want these ones. I want Caleb and Ben.
After just one night.
God, I’m screwed.
It’s the silence that wakes me for the final time, or maybe it’s Greta’s high-pitched whine as she paces on Caleb’s side of the bed and tries to get his attention.
Maybe it’s the strange light oozing in through the window. It’s lighter than it was when I woke up earlier but darker than daylight should be and pitched in a color that makes me uneasy. I sit up, realizing what the silence is—no distant hum of the air conditioning or the refrigerator, no background hiss of plugged-in appliances. The power is out.
“Caleb?” I nudge Caleb’s massive bulk, which is now prone and sprawled, although he’s still kept an arm wrapped around my waist even in his sleep. “Caleb, wake up.”
He opens his eyes right as the sirens start.
“Shit,” he mutters, sitting up and wiping at his face. “Shit. We gotta get downstairs.”
Greta whines in agreement, but I look again through the window and see nothing of alarm, really. A sky coffered with dark clouds, with a distant clear band on the horizon. “Do we have to?” I stretch. “It doesn’t look so bad, and at home, I usually just ignore the sirens.”
Caleb looks at me as if I’m some kind of lunatic. “We don’t ignore them out here. We’re going downstairs.”
With a sigh, I roll out of bed, making a face at my jeans still damp and crumpled on the floor. I go to my room across the hall and pull on a pair of shorts and a tank top, and when I come back out, both Caleb and Ben are pacing the small landing at the top of the stairs. They’re both still shirtless, with jeans clinging to narrow, fit hips, and I mentally curse the sirens. I want to take them back to bed.
“Downstairs,” Ben says shortly, and when I don’t move fast enough for him, he takes my hand and leads me down the steps. Caleb scoops Greta into his arms and follows, and our little parade climbs down a set of rickety stairs to a stone-walled basement by the light of a small flashlight Ben holds in his other hand.
Caleb sits down on a threadbare rug with Greta in his lap, holding her while she trembles, and Ben hauls out a dusty storage container and produces some candles and a lighter. Soon we’re in a circle of flickering light, and in my sleepy state, I can almost imagine it’s still nighttime. That morning hasn’t come, and with it all the consequences of my adventure last night and all the decisions that now have to be made.
Except morning has come, and the soreness between my legs reminds me very much of the consequences and decisions. I fucked two men, came more times than I would have thought humanly possible, and now I have to figure out how to extricate myself with the most dignity possible.
Well, after the storm is over, I suppose. Then the dignity and such. For now, I’m content to watch the candlelight on Caleb’s big hands as he tenderly pets his terrified dog. To listen to Ben move around the basement gathering up various items—a weather radio and batteries and a bottle of water and bowl for Greta—and to the wind shaking the house above us. Even in the basement, I can hear the distant wail of the sirens.
“I wish I had my phone,” I murmur. I left it upstairs in the rush to get dressed and to the basement. “I could check the weather.”
“Signal’s bad enough around the house,” Caleb says with an apologetic smile. “It’s even worse down here.”
I sigh and lean back. It’s both boring and weirdly energizing to be without my phone at a time when I’d normally be using the hell out of it, and it makes me hyperaware of everything. The way the candlelight moves across Ben’s bare chest and beautiful features as he sits on the floor next to Caleb. The way Caleb’s eyelashes fan across his cheekbones as he closes his eyes and croons to Greta.
The way neither of them are touching me.
Oh God.
What if this is it? What if this is the beginning of the inevitably awkward end? What if it actually began ending the minute Ben left Caleb and me in bed? That’s a very telling thing to do, right? One of those actions that speaks louder than words—so much louder it’s practically a shout?
I don’t want you again. That’s what it shouts.
I adjust my position on the hard floor, again feeling the ache and lingering sting in my pussy from being so well-used last night. At least I don’t feel ashamed. I worried about that last night,
before I fell asleep, that there’d be some kind of good girls don’t have threesomes panic, but I don’t feel anything even approaching shame. If anything, I’m a little proud I had such a good adventure with such handsome men, that I was brave, that I did something impulsive and electrifying without stopping or censoring myself. Every part of it was good, and even knowing it’s time for me to let go of the night and move on, I still only feel good things about it.
I only feel ashamed I want more.
I stare down at my knees as the wind picks up and roars around the house with a renewed fury that raises goosebumps on my arms. Caleb hugs Greta harder, mumbles something about hoping Clementine is okay in the barn. Ben is the picture of stillness, sitting with crossed legs and a straight back, his eyes on the weather radio as it drones on and on about tornado sightings near Holm and which counties need to take cover.
There’s something about Ben’s stillness that betrays something, however, even if I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not the stillness of a person at peace but the stillness of a person who’s trained themselves not to flinch, and it makes me wonder what else Ben has trained himself to do.
And why.
A huge clatter comes from upstairs, followed by a glass-shattering crash, and Caleb jolts, as if to get up, but Ben clamps a hand on his shoulder. “Stay the fuck here,” Ben bites out.
Caleb looks up the stairs, torn, and I remember he told me on our tour around the place that this is his family’s house, that it’s over a hundred years old. No wonder he feels protective.
But Ben is right—whatever is happening above us is too dangerous to investigate, and I watch his hand on Caleb’s shoulder for longer than I should, something about it making me hot and squirmy all over again.
The weather radio keeps droning, but the wind and crashing get louder and louder, drowning out the robotic voice coming through the small, old speakers, and there’s a moment when I think the house is going to come right off the foundations and just blow away. It rattles and creaks and groans mightily, and I realize I’ve grabbed on to Caleb’s thigh only after he takes my hand and rubs a soothing thumb over the back of it.
The house seems besieged for hours, but when the weather radio announces the time, it’s only been a handful of minutes, and from there on out, the wind slowly abates, retreating with erratic and fitful gusts, until all is silent once more. The next time the weather radio lists the counties that need to take cover, our county isn’t on the list.
Ben clicks it off.
“Ready?” he asks us, as if we’re about to go into battle and not upstairs. Neither Caleb nor I answer, although I notice Caleb gives Greta an extra pat before shifting her off his lap, and I think it’s more to comfort him than to reassure her.
After blowing out the candles, we mount the creaking stairs up to the ground floor, with Ben’s bobbing flashlight to guide us, and then he swings the door open to reveal a house that’s still intact.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Caleb breathes as we walk around to see everything is where it should be. The screen door came loose in the wind, apparently, and banged against the side of the house hard enough to shatter the glass in the lower half of it, but the rest of the windows are intact, and when we walk around the outside, the siding and the roof seem to be fine. Even Clementine is okay when we check on her, although she’s agitated. The worst thing we can find is a tree on the edge of the property that’s been blown over and some sunflower petals scattered across the lawn.
Caleb visibly brightens the more we walk, and he’s nearly smiling when we get back to the house. Even Greta is wagging her tail, and for a moment, I think it’s all over—the storm, the fear, the worry—all of it.
Then Ben’s phone rings.
Chapter Ten
Ben
I don’t like storms. Never have, actually, but after I got back from my last deployment, I realized I really don’t like them. Not the unpredictable rolls of thunder that remind me of mortars echoing through lonely, scree-covered valleys. Not the strobes of lightning that remind me of muzzle flashes at a distance. But weirdly, it is the wind that gets me the most. My therapist says it’s because the wind is as unpredictable as the thunder, but I know it’s more than that.
The thing is, wind can sound like anything it wants—a screaming man, the whirr of helicopter blades, trucks rolling over the dirt. Any sound, every sound. One minute I’m in my own bed, and the next I’m back there. Kabul. Marjah and Musa Qala in the Helmand Province. The godforsaken Korengal. All I wanted was to come home. And then I came home and it was like it didn’t matter.
But last night, I came the closest I have in years to falling asleep during a storm, to falling asleep in the same bed as someone else. Maybe it was the very thorough fuck session, but maybe it was also Ireland herself. Watching me with parted lips and openly curious eyes while a contented and happy Caleb snored behind her.
It’s been so long since anyone has looked at me like that, like they genuinely wanted to know what was howling inside me, like they wouldn’t be scared of it if I let it out. Like they wouldn’t be upset if they cracked me open and actually found nothing inside, howling or not.
If they found there is no Ben inside me any longer, that I’ve somehow become a shell, a puppet pretending to be Ben Weber, going through the motions as if he never decided ROTC would be a handy way to pay for college. As if he just decided to stay near Holm and work at a bar and fuck women and his best friend at the same time.
Caleb’s the only person I’ll ever trust with the mess I’ve become, precisely because he doesn’t demand to see those messy truths if I’m not willing to show them. But Ireland… Her gaze last night both demanded and conceded, and it evoked something fiercely needy in me, something that wanted to tie her to Caleb’s bed and have her look at me that way forever. It was so unnerving that I had to leave after she fell asleep, although I would have left anyway. I’m too vulnerable in the nighttime.
I prefer to be vulnerable in private.
What is it about Ireland that makes me think I could change that? Even today, I find myself drawn to her clear blue gaze and her voice, which has the slightly husky sound of a woman who’s just woken up. I want to fuck her right here in the branch-strewn yard right after a fucking tornado, that’s how sexy her voice is.
In fact, I’m listening to her talk when my phone rings, jarring and loud compared to the low, sultry music of Ireland’s words. With a muttered curse, I step away and answer it. It’s Debbie, one of my two employees at the tavern.
“Ben,” she says, and there’s a peculiar and specific tremble in her voice that I’ve heard a hundred times before but never from her.
Never here at home.
Shock.
She’s in shock.
I close my eyes, for a minute both smelling and tasting gunpowder. Feeling grit and dirt under my eyelids and on my lips.
“What is it?” I manage.
“The tavern,” she shakes out. “Ben, the whole town, it’s just—”
I understand immediately, even though I don’t want to. I thought we’d been spared the worst of the storm; I thought we’d been lucky.
Turns out the worst of it didn’t hit the farm because it was too busy tearing apart the town. The place I grew up, the place I earn my living. The place I call home.
“Are you safe?” I ask first because it’s the most important thing. “Is everyone safe?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I only just got here from my place. There’s a police car, but I—I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Shock will do that. Make the simplest sentences break off into fragments, make even the easy thoughts impossible to hold on to. I know exactly how Debbie feels right now because I’ve felt it so many times before. Although never here, never where I thought I was safe, with the wide green fields and leafy trees and sleepy creeks.
I squeeze my hand into a fist so tight I feel the nails dig into my palm.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell
her.
Caleb didn’t need to hear anything from me when I hung up the phone. Somehow he had shirts for us. Somehow he herded me toward his truck, and Ireland and Greta ended up between us on the big bench seat. Somehow we made it the two miles to Holm without saying a single word to each other.
And then we roll to the edge of our small town, and I’m beyond words anyway. I’m too busy remembering the sound of boots scrabbling over dusty ground, the heavy spray of gunfire in the heat. The scene we come upon is a scene I thought I’d never have to see again, a scene I saw far the fuck too often: the mounded rubble of a town gashed right off the map.
Holm is gone.
Well, maybe not gone entirely, but close to it—close enough that it’s unrecognizable as the place I’ve called home for thirty-four years, and close enough that I almost wish it were entirely gone, because now it’s become something tragic and alien and chaotic beyond belief.
The big trees shading Main Street are snapped and whittled to sharp, stark masts of stripped lumber, and the green lampposts that used to light the street—the ones the American Legion and Auxiliary Club decorate for Christmas each year—are knocked over like Lincoln Logs. Trash and debris litter every available surface—shreds of fluffy, pink insulation from the mowed-over homes a block away, glass and lumber snapped into toothpicks, paper and jagged slabs of sheetrock, and drifts of shingles and bricks piled as high as banks of snow.
“Fuck,” Caleb says, stunned. “Fuck.”
I don’t say anything but climb out of the truck and walk toward the bar. I hear Ireland and Greta follow me, but I don’t turn back to look at them. I don’t trust myself; I don’t trust that Ireland won’t give me one of those clear, demanding looks, and I’ll crack into a thousand pieces right here in the middle of all this ruin. I can’t crack, not yet. Not before I make sure everyone is safe and I know what all needs to be done.
Misadventures of a Curvy Girl Page 8