by Claire Adams
I didn’t have PTSD. I was sure of that. No matter what the shrinks kept telling me. It was just hard for me to sleep some nights, that was all.
But that was something I’d had issues with long before the SEALs.
I went at the punching bag, getting in some solid hits before pausing to take a break. I sucked down the rest of the energy drink, still thinking about Harper, about reintegration, about everything.
I wasn’t having any trouble with reintegration. I’d managed to find a place, to make some sort of routine, and I even had a job lined up. I was still adjusting to life in a city, still getting used to the noises around me. But that was only normal. And I was still adjusting to weird things like grocery stores, which seemed to have gotten bigger, with unnecessary amounts of choice. Or forgetting little conveniences like the dishwasher in the corner of our kitchen. But that was only normal.
If I wanted to see Harper, even if it was just for the sex, then there was no reason why I shouldn’t.
I went at the punching bag for another round, each hit quieting my mind somewhat. There was something to be said for the steady rhythm and the physical exertion.
But when I paused again, I was still thinking about Harper.
I could see Harper, I finally decided. But it had seemed like Harper didn’t really want to see me. That was a shame, but there was nothing I could do about it.
That realization settled something into my mind, and with another round with the punching bag, I was able to fully settle into the rhythm, letting go of the past. Letting go of Harper. If she didn’t want to see me, that was her deal.
Breathe in, jab, breathe out. Breathe in, jab, breathe out.
I fully submerged myself in the routine of it, letting myself forget everything.
3
Harper
It was Friday evening, and the military base in Kuwait was positively teeming with life.
I still sometimes felt like I had to pinch myself to convince myself that I was really there and that this wasn’t just a dream. Not that everything had been perfect in my time there. There had been plenty of horror stories, things that I’d never wanted to know about. But I was still amazed I was there, in Kuwait, writing pieces about the SEALs. They had granted me access like I could never have imagined, and I was one of the very few who really got to learn how these guys lived.
At this point, I’d been there for five months. It had been long and grueling. I had lost a bunch of weight living off military rations, not that I’d had a bunch of extra weight to start with, and I was constantly exhausted. Things frequently happened in the middle of the night, whether it was squadrons returning or attacks on other bases. I wasn’t on the front line, I wasn’t really near the action, but everyone still went on high alert as troops were shuffled around to combat various attacks.
There was a core group that stayed there at the base, though, or guys who passed through more frequently than the rest of them. Those were the guys I got to know best, and the guys who featured in the stories I wrote.
Not that I was allowed to use any of their names in the stories. And everything I wrote had to be approved by the commander. But everyone seemed impressed by the stories I was submitting, from the commander back to my editor and our readers. This was the kind of series that most reporters could only dream about, and here I was getting to write it.
I was pretty sure I deserved a Pulitzer for the work I’d done here.
Unfortunately, no matter how good my writing was, I knew that I might not even get a nod. The publishing world was still such a boys’ club, no matter how good the women were. No matter how important our stories were.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about all of that now. I only had a couple more weeks here in Kuwait, and I wanted to stay positive and pull together those last few stories. Whatever the fallout from this was, whatever doors it opened up for me, I’d deal with all of that once I got back home to Boston.
I smiled to myself, thinking of my return. I had a cozy little apartment in Brighton that I’d rented out while I was over here. It would be good to get back, and just in time for summer.
Of course, it was definitely going to be weird, going home. I’d gotten so used to life at the military base that things were going to seem strangely quiet. And cooking my own meals again was probably going to seem like a huge chore. And reporting to the office every day would be… kind of boring after all of this. I hoped they’d send me out on another assignment, if not with the SEALs, then something else overseas. Maybe. We’d have to see.
Maybe I’d get back home and be so relieved to be home that I’d never travel again. I smiled a little to myself, thinking of that. There were definitely some perks to going home. I was already dreaming of a long, hot shower with all my favorite products. That first week home was going to be all about pampering and luxury. Not that I lived a very extravagant lifestyle back home, but it was at least a few steps up from the utilitarian nature of everything here.
As I wandered aimlessly across the base, I waved at a few of the SEALs who were waiting for their next assignment. I wondered where they were off to, but I wouldn’t learn that information until they’d returned, their mission complete. I had had to get pretty high-security clearance just to come over here, but even that clearance didn’t give me the necessary standing to know about top secret missions in advance.
Actually, that was one of the things that surprised me the most about this whole thing: just how much secrecy there was to all of it. These guys didn’t really know what they were signing up for when they agreed to come over here. But they had so much faith in the government and trust in their superiors that they’d never questioned it. They believed in their country.
I admired that.
I was distracted from my thoughts by the sight of Ace, working out in the corner of the barracks. I slowed to a stop and leaned against one of the buildings, pulling out my notebook as though I was jotting down notes. But I wasn’t really hiding the fact that I was watching him.
So sue me, I thought. He was an attractive man. A really attractive man. His body was hard and muscular, built over years of training and dedication. It was like looking at a classical statue come to life, his body chiseled and perfect. Right now, as he worked out, those muscles were covered in a faint sheen of sweat, his skin practically glowing in the fading Kuwaiti sunlight.
He made my heart race, lust shooting toward my core. But it wasn’t just physical attraction. He was one of the guys I regularly saw around the base, and we’d chatted a few times. He was smart and well-read. And he liked to tease me.
I suppose that when I’d first met him, I’d expected him to be some brick-headed soldier, all brawn with no brains. But I’d come to really like the guy. In ways I knew I shouldn’t.
I blushed, thinking about some of the steamier thoughts I’d had about him. I wasn’t the kind of girl to have one-night stands, and I knew that he was going to be over here for a while longer, especially if he signed up for another tour of duty after this one, which he’d mentioned he might do. But I couldn’t help thinking about how strong and dependable he was, how he was basically the perfect type of man.
It was silly. There was no way I would ever be able to convince him to come back to Boston with me and start a family. That just wasn’t his style.
But I still liked to look. And sometimes, I let myself imagine what it would be like to have him push me back against one of the rough, wooden walls of the barracks, his lips hot against mine, his fingers roving over my sides. I shivered a little just thinking about it.
Ace glanced over at me, and I felt myself blush as I hurriedly scribbled something illegible in my notebook. Then, once I was sure that he was back in the rhythm of his workout, I hurried off in another direction, like I had somewhere important to be.
I didn’t know why he got me so flustered. Sure, he was attractive, but I was never this way around guys. I shook my head and tried not to dwell on it.
Later tha
t night, we all hung around the canteen. It was our evening routine; most of the guys who were there at the base would show up and have a few beers and chat. I didn’t always join in; a lot of nights, it was just stupid guy talk about cars and machines and women back home. But it was also where I’d gotten the leads on a few of my stories, and now that I was counting down the days until I left, it seemed important for me to show up more often than not, to try to eke out a few last stories that I hadn’t already thought of to write.
That night, though, everything seemed to be all about impatience. The guys who showed up were the ones who were around most often, and a number of them were complaining about the lack of response to some of the most recent attacks.
“It’s like we’re just letting our guys get picked off,” Sherbs (I had never learned his real name; everyone just called him Sherbs, or Sherbert sometimes) complained. “And meanwhile, we’re all sitting here, plenty of ammo, and we could blow those fuckers to the ground. But we’re just twiddling our thumbs.”
“They’ve got something planned,” Mikey, another of the guys, chipped in. Mikey looked just like you’d expect a Mikey to look like: a little on the heavier side, a good Midwestern kid whose mom had brought him up with good values and morals. He shrugged when everyone looked over at him, picking at the label of his beer and looking as though he hadn’t really expected anyone to listen to him. “We’ve seen this before,” he reminded everyone else. “We go quiet for a little bit until they get bolder and don’t expect a response. And then we give them what-for.”
“Maybe,” Sherbs said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
I sipped my beer as I listened to them discuss different strategies and what they would do if they were in charge. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I was starting to understand their impatience, but most of them had a hard time seeing the bigger picture. There was a reason they weren’t all leaders.
Ace sat quietly through all of it, even though normally he would have been cracking jokes left and right. Every time I glanced over at him, he was considering me. And every time I caught him eyeing me, I took another quick sip of my beer, even though I didn’t know quite what all of it meant.
It wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t unpleasant. None of the other guys seemed to notice that there was anything strange about the night. But I could just feel it, an added layer of tension that mingled but never quite merged with the tense impatience of the rest of the squad.
I finished my beer faster than I normally would and headed back to my bunk, barely pausing to say goodnight to anyone. Still, no one noticed anything strange. They probably all thought I had some story to work on. Or maybe that I was just tired. I'd been there for a long time, after all, and I wasn’t in nearly as good shape as they were.
Whatever it was, they let me go.
Outside the canteen, I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath of the cool night’s air. We lived in a desert there, and as hot as it was during the day, it was surprisingly cool at night.
Ace caught up to me when I was barely ten feet from the canteen, draping his jacket around my shoulders. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said, hating the breathless note that crept into my voice. Keep it together. Keep it normal.
It wasn’t the first time we’d had one of these late-night walk-and-talks, after all.
I’d learned pretty early on during my time there that Ace had terrible insomnia. I’d still been jet-lagged at the time and so had been keeping pretty odd hours, myself. And a few times, I’d noticed him wandering around the base long after the other guys had gone to sleep.
I’d tried to pry. I’d asked him if it was related to the military stuff. But he’d only laughed. “I’ve been an insomniac forever,” he said, leaving it at that.
Tonight, though, things felt different between us. Static, charged. Tense. I couldn’t figure out what to say to him.
“I read your latest article,” Ace finally said. “The one about Benny.” He shook his head, his eyes sad. “God, what a good kid.”
I swallowed hard. It wasn’t the article that I’d intended to write. I’d interviewed Benny before. Way back. Three months ago. I’d interviewed him because he came from a military family, because they were all so proud of him. He was one of those guys who got care packages all the time, whose family really understood what he was doing over there because his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had all served our nation.
But Benny had never wanted to be there. And he’d ended up leaving before his tour of duty was up. We’d emailed since then, all through the secure server. I didn’t know where Benny had ended up or what he planned to do now. It was all I could do to tell the story about the kid from New York who had ended up in Kuwait because he’d never felt like he had any other choice. About how everything he did over there felt like one step further from who he really was. And how eventually it had all been too much.
I didn’t want to talk about stuff like that, not with Ace. I knew that Ace had seen things I could only imagine. But I liked to think of him as different from the rest of them. He wasn’t an angel, I knew. But I didn’t want to think of him as the kind of guy who made the tough decisions about killing men and burning villages. Even if that was who he was.
“You’ve never written an article about me,” Ace said.
I looked over at him in surprise. “Do you want me to?” I asked reflexively. Even as I said it, it seemed like such a stupid thing to say. Even if Ace wanted me to, I couldn’t even start to think about what I’d say. It wasn’t just that his beauty was distracting. But he was still so maddeningly closed off. He was the only guy there who I could never get to open up to me, not even a little. He didn’t want to talk about his missions, didn’t want to talk about the heaps of praise the other guys on the crew gave him.
He just wanted to talk about me and my life back home. As though it was making things easier on both of us to talk about stupid things like Boston and my years as a journalist.
“I don’t want you to,” Ace said. He frowned off into the distance and then smirked, shaking his head. When he looked over at me, his eyes were teasing. “But I do wonder what you think about me.”
I shrugged and looked away, toward the solitary building I lived in. It was smaller than the rest of the barracks, but it was my personal space. There had been a couple other women who came through whom I’d shared it with, but they were generally only there for a couple weeks at a time before leaving. Medics, other journalists, things like that. No one ever stayed for six months like I had.
“I think you’re a dedicated soldier,” I told Ace. “I think you have your secrets, and sometimes I wonder what they are.”
“I know,” Ace said. We had reached my door by this point, and he crowded me back against the wall, his body looming over mine.
I felt curiously safe, even hemmed in like that.
He leaned in close, his breath hot against my ear. “I see you looking at me. Watching me.”
I shrugged, as though that nonchalant move could hide the beating of my heart. “You’re nice to look at,” I said.
I expected Ace to laugh, but instead he just stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, he leaned in toward me, his face impossibly close to mine. I couldn’t help the way my gaze darted down toward his lips, the way my whole body wanted him.
His lips, when they met mine, were rough, slightly chapped, but they slotted perfectly against mine. I leaned up on my toes, tugging on his shirt as I tried to get closer to him, and he pulled away, laughing. But when he looked down at me, there was something dark in his gaze, fiery lust.
I bit my lower lip, reaching behind me for the doorknob. “Do you want to come in?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “It’s just me in here right now.”
Ace nodded wordlessly, following me inside.
He pulled the curtains closed, shrouding us in darkness, and then he laid me down on my bed, covering my body with his. Each movement was careful, measured. He cl
osed the gap between our lips once more, pushing his tongue into my mouth, exploratory. His fingers pushed up under my shirt, sliding along the edges of my bra and making me shiver.
We made out sloppily for a while, the heat between us building. He slotted a leg in between mine, and when he nipped at my lower lip, I whimpered and ground down against his leg, lust sparkling through my core.
Ace pulled back, his eyes still dark and serious, and slowly started to strip off his clothing. I watched as he revealed those hard, smooth planes of tanned and tattooed skin. Then, I gave myself a little shake and started stripping as well. Where Ace folded his clothes into a neat pile at the foot of the bed, every inch of his military training showing, I threw my own clothes haphazardly on the floor, grinning impishly at him when he raised an eyebrow at me.
He laughed and crawled back on top of me.
I shivered as his skin glided across mine. He dipped his fingers down between my legs, which automatically fell farther open. He played with my nub for a moment, grinning when I gave a breathy gasp. Then, he slid his fingers inside of me. I was wet already, needy. I still could barely believe this was actually happening, that tall and sexy Ace Bradley was actually in bed with me.
He pushed inside of me, and I clung to him, my fingers digging into the dark tattoos that swirled up his arms and across his chest. I bit my lip, knowing that even though I was the only person living in this building at the moment, it was far from soundproof and not exactly secluded. Ace’s eyes zeroed in on my mouth, and he kissed me again.
This time, the kiss was rough and demanding. He forced my lips open and thrust his tongue inside, just as he was thrusting his member deep into my core. Our tongues twisted against each other’s, and I shivered, a whine rising in the back of my throat.