by Claire Adams
It didn’t take long before I was cumming, my whole body tightening and then falling lax against the sheets, while Ace continued to thrust into me. Finally, he spent himself as well, collapsing down, his body hot and sticky against mine.
Finally, he rolled away. “Fuck,” he said, staring up at the ceiling.
I giggled. “Yes,” I agreed.
He turned back toward me, propping his head up on his arm, his other hand swirling patterns of goosebumps across my skin. “I have to leave,” he sighed. “I’m not supposed to fraternize.”
“I know,” I said. I swallowed hard; there were so many things I wanted to say. Was this a one-time thing? Was he going to avoid me around the camp now? Should I avoid him?
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, leaning in and kissing me tenderly. He smiled as we broke apart, and for that one brief moment, it was as though his persistent dark, serious nature was gone.
I did that, I thought. I made him smile.
I don’t know why it was such a surprise, but as he got dressed and slipped back out into the cool night air, I had to smile in response. I curled around my pillow feeling utterly content.
4
Ace
When I got back to the barracks, the place was a flurry of movement, guys throwing their gear together.
“Dude, where’ve you been?” Kit—John Kitteredge, our medic—asked me.
“Just around,” I said, shrugging. “You know me.” I didn’t give them time to think about it. I didn’t know exactly what they’d do to me if they had caught me in bed with Harper, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Not that I regretted it, but I did feel kind of stupid for potentially threatening my whole career for a woman.
She wasn’t just any woman, though. I liked Harper. She was surprising in so many ways. And sexy as anything, with those dark eyes and seductive curves.
“What’s going on anyway?” I asked, looking around, even though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“Get your shit together,” Habs said. “We got the call. We’re heading out.”
I nodded and methodically started putting my things back in my bag. Fortunately, it was automatic by now. My things never seemed to spread out like everyone else’s either. I smiled wryly to myself. That was after a lifetime of being taught not to make messes and to be ready for shit to hit the fan at any moment.
For a minute, I thought about Harper. I wanted to go back to her barracks and knock on the door. To tell her that we were leaving, maybe to kiss her goodbye. But I couldn’t do that. There wasn’t time, first of all. And anyway, I had already risked enough that night. Better to ship off silently and take my chances seeing her when we got back.
She’d been there for a while now anyway. She knew how things were. She wouldn’t expect me to show up and say goodbye. I’d be back; our unit was never out on the front line for long, not if the powers that be could help it. We were too specialized a unit, too important to lose over some stupid fighting. I’d see her when I got back.
“Where are we off to?” I asked Kit as we got on our truck. I had to fight not to look over toward Harper’s building. She was probably asleep by now anyway. She wouldn’t be there to see us off. I hid a smile as I thought back to how she’d looked when I’d left. Her wild hair had been fanned out across her pillow, and she’d looked totally fucked out. She’d looked sweet, and there was so little sweetness to life in Kuwait.
I shook my head and forced my thoughts back to the present. “It’s a hostage situation,” Kit explained. “They need us to go in, clear the area. Shouldn’t take too long; I think they want it done quickly.”
“Do we know anything about the hostage?” I asked. That was always useful, just from a planning standpoint. A political hostage reacted a lot differently from a military hostage.
But Kit just shrugged. “No one’s really talking about this one,” he said, letting me draw my own conclusions. That meant that whoever it was, they were important.
I nodded and leaned my head back. Things would be busy once we arrived, so we might as well try to get a little shut-eye before we arrived. It was a little tricky on these bouncy, Kuwaiti roads, but I was surprisingly worn out after everything with Harper, and I fell asleep quickly, my mind blank and my body calm.
We arrived at the makeshift base just as the sun was coming up. None of us were really too sure where we were, but it didn’t really matter. All we needed to worry about was our mission. We spent the morning getting briefed. They still didn’t want to give us too many details, which only confirmed my suspicions that this mission was sensitive.
That’s why they needed the best of us, I supposed.
We waited until the evening to move. We had a long slug across the desert to even get to our target. We’d secure the zone and rescue the hostage, and then hopefully they’d be able to get trucks out to pick us up. Otherwise, if they didn’t think it was safe enough to send the trucks for us, we’d have the long walk back as well.
Movies always make military exercises seem so much more interesting than they really are. In reality, missions like these were just long. It was evening, so at least we weren’t trapped in the oppressive Kuwaiti heat. But it still wasn’t cool, not exactly, and especially not when we had on our full uniforms and our heavy gear.
Everything went as planned, surprisingly. It didn’t take much to secure the city and get our guy out. In fact, it almost seemed too easy, which only made us all jumpy and nervous. We kept expecting that we’d walked into a trap. But they must have just spread their forces too thin.
The roads were blocked off, we were told, so we started the long walk back.
Boom.
We were all on high alert immediately. Even more so when one of the guys—which guy? I couldn’t even see—started yelling in pain. Kit was there in a flash, tearing the leg off Sherbs’s pants and flipping open his medical kit. “Shrapnel,” he muttered, glancing back over his shoulder.
“IED,” one of the other guys confirmed. Improvised explosive device. We knew they were out there. This was a dangerous area. And no matter how many precautions we took, there were just some things that we couldn’t prepare against.
“You’re gonna be fine, Sherbs,” Kit said soothingly as he bandaged up the other man’s leg. “Just a surface wound, nothing more. You’re going to be fine.”
Meanwhile, Tripp was on the radio about a transport. “I don’t give a shit if it’s unsafe,” he snapped. “I have a man who’s not going to be able to walk out of here, and the rest of us have too much shit to carry him, too. Plus, the last thing we need is for your fucking hostage to get blown to smithereens as we walk him across the length of this godforsaken country.”
I looked over at the hostage, still nameless. Whoever he was, he was young. Clearly not military. But he seemed remarkably calm.
My mind flashed back to Harper, remembering how she managed to stay so calm even when she heard some of the more gruesome stories about life on the front line. No one had really expected her to integrate into our lives as easily as she had. Maybe this guy was a journalist. Maybe he’d seen all the worst things already.
Seemed a little too important to be a journalist, though. But I definitely didn’t recognize him.
I shrugged, and we all waited for the transport that Tripp had finally managed to secure.
The rest of the night was hectic. All our nerves were raw as we drove back across no-man’s-land back to the makeshift base. The guys there wanted to congratulate us and shake our hands, but I just wanted to fall into my cot and sleep. Or maybe have a beer to soothe my nerves. But neither of those things were going to happen until we got back to “home,” our own base.
I thought they might keep us there for a little while longer, but they explained that our pickup meant this location was no longer secure. We didn’t know who might have followed us back, and this was a dangerous area, full of insurgency. Safer for us to head straight back.
So we got back onto another rattling
transport van. This time, I had a harder time sleeping, even though my body was exhausted. My mind just kept going, spinning out more and more demons.
“You okay, man?” Kit asked under his breath as I jerked upright for the tenth time, panicky as I scanned my surroundings.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered back. “Just a bit of disorientation panic, you know. Can’t figure out where I am.”
“Who the fuck ever knows,” Kit said, shaking his head. “We might not be in Kuwait anymore, and we’d never know the difference. Not until we hit the ocean.”
I snorted at the thought of that. It had been years since I’d seen the ocean.
I thought of Harper again. She was from Boston. I’d never been to Cape Cod, but one of my friends growing up had sent me a postcard from there. It looked nice. And after the dry and dust of Kuwait, it seemed like some elusive paradise. Maybe when I got out of here, Harper would let me come visit her. Just so I could see the ocean.
We were rerouted on the way back to our base, and we ended up stopping over at another base for a couple of days. By the time we got back to our base, Harper was nowhere to be found. I’d expected her to stick around for longer. I’d expected her to say goodbye, maybe.
I wondered if something had happened, if there had been a reason for her abrupt departure. All I could hope was that I wasn’t the cause of it.
But no one seemed to have found out about us. Or at least, no one ever mentioned anything to me. I’d accepted her departure with a mental shrug and continued going about my life.
Sometimes, though, I thought about the ocean. It was my only reprieve from this dry, dusty land.
5
Harper
The meeting with my editor ended up just being routine. She was trying to convince me to come back to working full-time for them, but I had to explain why I couldn’t. She was sorry to hear that, and she even offered me a raise to help pay for childcare services, but I explained that I liked being such a big part of Ava’s life. Maybe when she was a little older and started preschool, I could come back to work in the office. But for now, I wanted to spend as much time with my little girl as I could.
I went back to Maisie’s to pick up Ava. “You’ll never guess who I ran into today,” I said almost the second the door opened.
“The president?” Maisie asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
I snorted. “No, not the president,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to ‘just run into’ the president.”
“Maybe not, but you do a lot of important work for that paper,” Maisie pointed out. “I thought maybe your editor had set up a meeting and that’s why she called you in.”
“Nah, she just wanted to talk about me coming back full-time,” I said impatiently. “I ran into Ace.”
“Oh wow,” Maisie said, putting a hand over her mouth and glancing back at Ava, who was playing on the living room carpet, blissfully unaware of her mother’s drama. “Ace Ace?” Maisie asked. “Like, Ava’s…” She trailed off, and I was glad she didn’t say the word. Ava was old enough to know words like “daddy.” Maybe not old enough to think there was anything weird about not having a daddy, but she’d be curious.
“Yeah, that Ace,” I said.
“Shit.” Maisie shook her head. “Girl, your life is a soap opera.”
“I know,” I moaned, putting a hand on my face.
“Mama, Mama, I drew you a picture,” Ava said, running over suddenly, beaming as she held out her masterpiece of two orange and red blobs next to a big blue blob. “It’s you and me at the beach,” she said proudly.
I grinned. “Thank you, sweetie,” I told her, carefully taking the drawing and giving her a kiss on the cheek. I looked over at Maisie, and she nodded in answer to my unspoken question. “Why don’t you go draw another picture for Miss Maisie while she and I have some coffee.”
“Okay!” she said, skipping back into the living room.
I followed Maisie into the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time I’d stayed to chat after she’d watched Ava all day—the perks of having a best friend who was also a childcare expert.
“So he just, like, showed up?” Maisie asked as we waited for the coffee to be ready.
“Yeah,” I said, dropping into a chair at the kitchen table. “I literally ran into him as I was crossing the street.”
“Did he say what he’s doing here?” Maisie asked.
“I didn’t really stop to chat,” I admitted. I paused. “But I gave him my number.”
“Oh wow,” she repeated. “What are you going to do? Are you going to see him again? Are you going to tell him about Ava?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed.
“You like him, don’t you?” Maisie asked.
“Yeah, I did anyway.”
“Seems like he must have liked you too. It can’t be a coincidence that he’s here in Boston. He’s not from this area, is he?”
“No, he’s from Kentucky or somewhere,” I said, shaking my head.
“Maybe he wants to start a relationship with you,” Maisie said.
I shook my head. “That just doesn’t seem like his style,” I said. “And anyway, there are complications to that, and you know it.”
“Come on, it would be impossible for him not to like Ava,” Maisie said, putting a steaming mug of coffee in front of me. She sat down across from me, taking a sip of her own coffee. “Even if he had no biological ties to her, she’s adorable, and everyone knows it. She’s a ray of sunshine. And she hardly ever has tantrums. What kind of three-year-old do you know who isn’t a little brat, other than Ava? You’ve raised a great kid.”
“Still have a long way to go on that one,” I muttered, but I couldn’t help smiling. Ava really was great. She was my whole world and had been for the last three years. I’d been a little worried about being a single parent, and especially a working parent, but Ava made it all so easy.
But there was a reason I had never contacted Ace to tell him about her.
“Ace doesn’t want kids,” I told Maisie, shrugging helplessly.
“He told you that?” Maisie said in surprise. “I didn’t realize you guys were so serious that you were talking about kids and all of that. A future together.”
“We weren’t,” I said, shaking my head. “It came up in one of the interviews I did. We were talking about what he planned to do after he got out of the service, if he had any family to come home to and that kind of thing. And he said that he wasn’t the family type of guy. When I asked what that meant, he just got really broody and said that he didn’t see eye to eye on things with his dad and that he didn’t plan on settling down with a wife and kids or any of that. He said he was probably going to be in the service for life.”
“Huh. And you learned all of that before or after you slept with him?”
“Before,” I admitted. “I knew sleeping with him was a mistake. I mean, he was sexy and whatever. I don’t know; I guess maybe I thought that things might change if he met the right person. But then we had sex, and he just disappeared, and I realized I had known that that was coming. He wasn’t looking for a relationship. I was just a quick fuck for him, nothing else.”
“What an ass,” Maisie said succinctly, shaking her head. “But seriously, what’s he doing back here, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Must just be coincidence.”
“What are you going to do if he calls you?”
“Well, I’m not just going to walk up to him and be like, ‘hey, meet your kid.’ I don’t think it’ll go over so well.”
“So you’re going to keep Ava a secret from him? Don’t you think he has the right to know about her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, beginning to feel agitated.
“All right, all right,” Maisie said, putting her hands in the air. “Sorry, I’m just curious. That’s all. It’s not every day that a drama like this happens!”
“Thank God,” I muttered under my breath, and she laughed. I ha
d to crack a smile at that. I shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just going to try to avoid him, and if I do see him again and he finds out about Ava, I’ll probably just lie and tell him she’s someone else’s.”
Maisie sighed. “You know what’s best for your daughter,” she said. “But I still don’t know if that’s what’s best for you.”
“What’s best for Ava is what’s best for me,” I said.
“If you need any help, you know I’m here for you,” Maisie said, giving me a hug.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get Ava out of your hair. We have a graffiti artist to interview this afternoon.”
“Sorry, I can’t watch her this afternoon. I have to get to my own job,” Maisie said regretfully.
“No problem. I’m used to having Ava with me for interviews by now,” I said, grinning at her. “Anyway, you do more than enough for me as it is.”
The interview was great. The guy was talkative, and he walked us around to show us a bunch of his pieces around the city. He did these huge, political murals. When I found out he had a background in law, I was surprised. “That’s a pretty big switch, from law to graffiti,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah, doesn’t really pay the bills in the same way, but I feel a lot more fulfilled this way. And I figure I can always go back to the law stuff if I want to. When I’m old and stuffy.”
I laughed as well.
I stopped off on the way home to get Ava a small ice cream for after lunch, her reward for having been so good during the walk. When we got home, I threw together some sandwiches, and we went out onto the balcony to eat them in the warm sunshine.
My phone started buzzing with an incoming call. I frowned down at it, debating not picking up. It was an unknown number, but a local one. Could be something to do with work. I sighed and dusted crumbs off my hands before answering it.
“Harper? It’s Ace.”
I glanced over at Ava and stood abruptly, walking back into my apartment. I guess I’d hoped that he just wouldn’t call me. Or at least not so soon. I felt like I’d hardly even processed the fact that he was there yet.