He doesn’t pull away. “But that’s not what you were saying. Was it?”
“It wasn’t. But I can see how it might have sounded like that.” I glance over at him—the shadow of scruff on his jaw, his deep eyes. The lure of him that much stronger. I’ve never felt this before. This connection to someone I’ve known for an hour at best. This strong compulsion for more. “I think the hardest thing for humans to do is to explain suffering and pain. Why does it exist? Why can’t we make it go away? It’s not possible to imagine a world without suffering and pain.”
“Is that how you choose to deal with it? By believing everything has a purpose?” His words are measured. Controlled. Constricted in a way they hadn’t been a few moments earlier.
I lean away from him a bit, resting my elbows on my knees and pushing my hair out of my face, twisting it into a thick bun on the top of my head.
“I don’t know. For me, it’s less about whether or not there’s some God up there controlling the world and more about…just trying to believe that I’m where I need to be.”
“Even when shit sucks in an unforgettable way?”
“Especially then,” I whisper. I can’t tell him about the fire. About the burning, clawing panic that tore away my sense of self that I’d worked so hard to build. Or the struggle to put my life back together after I finally realized I wasn’t going to die if I suddenly had a hard time breathing.
He shifts next to me, straightening one leg out in front of him. “I wish I could look at life like that.”
“It took me a really long time. In a lot of ways, I’m still struggling with it.” I’ve got a handle on things now. I can sit near fire and not freak out. But the work to get here…yeah, it’s been one hell of a journey.
His throat moves as he swallows. “Yeah? How?”
“Well, for instance, there was an incident the other morning. I may have reacted a little strongly when I walked into the barbecue joint that’s opening next door.”
One side of his gorgeous full bottom lip lifts upward. “Oh, do tell.”
“I may have threatened the owner with neutering.” I flush. I’ll blame the wicked sensuality of that upturned lip instead of my own embarrassment over the incident. “We could call what happened a strong disagreement.”
“Honey, neutering isn’t a strong disagreement. Those would be fighting words for most men.”
Funny how him calling me “honey” in that moment doesn’t scrape against my skin. There’s something about his smile, hidden in the shadows, that warms the space around my heart. He has a really great smile. Like it surprises him every time it happens. There’s a shyness to him, an uncertainty buried in the quiet strength of this man.
He’s staring at me and I am unable to look away from the shadows lingering in his eyes, always there. Ever present. Brooding. I’ve never really thought about what a brooding man looks like in real life but I think I’ve finally seen it.
And now I understand why people find brooding compelling. Attractive.
I lick my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. His gaze darts to my lips, then back up again. I didn’t think it was possible but his eyes have darkened now.
“Some things are worth fighting over,” I finally whisper.
“Like not smelling barbecue when you’re doing yoga?”
I return his smile then. Faintly, because it’s dancing too close to my own scars—mental and physical. “Yeah. It’s really unsettling for some people.”
“By ‘some people’ do you mean you?”
I look away then, unable to find the words to tell him about the war and the marks it left on me. “Sure. If that makes me seem less crazy.”
I focus on the candle. The small, controlled flame that gives light in the eerie, cold cellar is the stuff of nightmares. It doesn’t frighten me. It doesn’t spark terrible nightmares. But a sense of something familiar washes over me, like I’ve done this before.
Funny how something so small and fragile can build into something capable of destroying the world with the right fuel.
He shifts before I can respond, his palm sliding over my knee to squeeze gently. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says softly. “Some things aren’t easy to talk about.”
I look away from the candle at the man sitting next to me. He’s close. Closer than he should be. The heat from his body wraps around me, his scent an enthralling mixture of smoke and man. A good kind of mixture.
The kind that makes a girl want to do stupid things. Like crawl into his lap and cup his face. Rock gently against him while he kisses me slow and deep.
He catches me staring. And he doesn’t look away. He’s caught, just like me. Drawn into a shared need for warm human contact encased in the cold brick tomb that surrounds us. The quiet gasps of our bodies mixing with the violence from the storm overhead.
It’s just a fantasy.
One I don’t want to end.
4
Caleb
Being sober isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There’s arousal and awkward tension tightening in my belly, my heart pounding far too loudly in my head. I swallow hard, unwilling and unable to look away from the depths of her dark eyes. Eyes that make me feel like she can see into the recesses of my soul, to the nightmares that I’ve worked so hard to keep from showing the world.
It’s a terrible thing, this sober desire. I wish I had the confidence I used to have when I was drunk, that I could reach for her and cup her face and savor the soft feel of her skin beneath my palm. That maybe she’d lean a little closer and I could nibble on her bottom lip like I was some kind of gracious lover, skilled at seducing women with a few whispered words and the stroke of my skin against theirs.
I’ve never done this before.
Her lips curl ever so slightly at the edges. “Done what, taken shelter with a stranger?”
I’m jolted by the awareness that I’ve said those words out loud. I swallow again, hoping I can somehow salvage the terrible revelation. “That, too.”
“Well, what did you mean if you didn’t mean this?” Her voice is husky, as though she knows the secrets I don’t want to tell.
“Been around a woman…” Holy shit this is hard. “That…ah…I find attractive, while sober.”
I was better at it when I was hard drinking every night at The Pint. Or maybe I wasn’t but I was too drunk to pick up on the social cues of the women around me.
Something flickers in her eyes but it’s not the thing I fear. There’s no judgment there. It’s something else. Something I can’t place.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
It’s my turn to be confused. “For what?”
“Sharing that. It’s never easy to put the things that make us vulnerable out into the world.”
I take in a deep breath, then release it, slowly. Deliberately. “Yeah, well, I’m working on that. Among other things.”
“Yeah? What else?”
I shake my head, smiling slightly. “Nah, it’s your turn. What’s hard for you?” I’m not going to think it. Not going to think it…and I thought it. Damn it, I’m making inappropriate jokes in my head.
“Being with people.”
I narrow my eyes. “You own a yoga studio. By definition that involves being with people.”
She lifts one shoulder, then drops it slightly. “It’s not the same. When I’m teaching a class or working with a client, it’s different. There’s a connection. A link. It’s…it’s hard to explain. But when I’m not teaching… Sometimes it’s hard to find things to talk about. I have some pretty heavy duty nerd tendencies and I can keep talking long after your eyes have glazed over.”
I’m starting to develop a thing for nerdy yogis with erotic brown eyes. This is the single most intriguing conversation I’ve had in a long time. Like, I can’t remember the last time I just sat with someone and just…talked. “Tell me about your studio.”
Granted, the storm overhead is a convenient forcing function.
I never thought I’d be gr
ateful for the violent actions of Mother Nature.
“Well, my yoga studio is called Arjuna Yoga. Arjun is the warrior in the Bhagavad Gita who dialogues with Lord Krishna. I’m fascinated by Arjun’s dialogue about violence. About war and how Krishna argued that it was Arjun’s duty to fight. I started my studio because I…was having a hard time coming home after my deployment. I couldn’t make sense of what we’d done or why we’d done it. So I went back to the stories my aunties told me as a child. And when I read the Gita again, something clicked for me.” She stops herself, as though she’s rushing and suddenly realizes it. “See. Told you. I’m a nerd. And I recognize that not everyone wants to have those kinds of conversations.”
It’s fascinating to listen to her. To watch her eyes flash with light as she talks. “I could listen to you talk about that all day,” I say after a moment because I realize that I haven’t said anything and the silence could get really awkward. “Aunties? How many aunts do you have?”
“I have five aunts and twelve great aunts on my mother’s side and two aunts on my father’s side.”
I cough at the number, trying not to be incredibly rude. “What? How big is your family?”
“I’m half-Indian. My mother has two sisters and three brothers. My father’s family is much smaller. He only has two brothers.”
“Wow. How can you have issues with people with a family that big?”
She smiles warmly. “It’s different in India. Everyone is connected. Here, every connection takes more energy and some people are draining. It’s not like that there. I can’t describe it. It’s like everyone knows you and you know everyone and people have known each other their entire lives. It’s not like that here. At all.”
“So wait. You’re half-Indian but you went to West Point and deployed to Syria and now you’re opening a yoga studio?” I lean back against the wall, slightly intimidated by everything she’s accomplished. “How did you decide to go to West Point?”
She smiles. “I wanted to serve the country that gave my mother a home. I grew up hearing about my great grandfathers fighting in World War II. Britain depended on Indian fighters.” She sighs. “And my great grandfathers came home from World War II and helped India win its independence from Britain.”
I make a noise. “I had no idea about that part of British history.”
“It’s Indian history,” she says and I feel like I’ve been gently corrected.
I make a note. “So that lead you to West Point?”
“Yeah. I mean, I wanted to serve. My great grandfathers all served. My father’s grandmother was a hello girl in France. Serving seemed like the right thing to do.”
I shift and rest my elbow against my knee. “That has got to be the most unique how I got to West Point story I’ve ever heard. You’ve had a seriously interesting life.”
“Well, I didn’t include the year I studied in India at the Ramamanani Institute. Guru Iyengar named it after his wife.” I love the way her gaze softens when she talks about India. The way her face lights up.
“This is fascinating.” I’ve never met anyone who has spent time in India, let alone is from there. I have so many questions but I don’t want to play the ignorant American. Well, at least not any more than I am already.
“That’s me. Interesting life story that nobody is ever really interested in.”
I tip my head. “Now I’m confused.”
“Never mind. Let’s just say that the farther I moved away from my family and my home, the more disconnected I felt. Yoga gives me a way to feel at home without having to hop on a twenty-hour flight to Mumbai.”
“It’s clearly something that matters to you.” I clear my throat. “Not everyone has something like that in their lives. Something that gives them meaning and purpose and…joy.”
She looks away again, back toward the flame that seems to capture so much of her attention. “Yeah, well, we all have to have something like that, right?”
“I wouldn’t know. I drank my way through the first chunk of my life.”
She frowns then, folding one of her legs until her foot is pressed to the inside of her thigh. “How’d you get through West Point without drinking?”
“Who says I did? Drank every night from plebe year on.” It’s an admission I’ve gotten more comfortable with. It’s a choice I made. One I can’t change now.
I can only move forward. Even if I still have no idea where I’m going, at least I’m not staying stuck in the past.
“Wow, and you never got caught? That’s pretty impressive.”
“My TAC caught me once. We’d just gotten out of the field at Buckner.”
“And?”
“And he took my flask, took a long pull off it himself and told me if he caught me again, he was going to crush my nuts. So I made sure he never caught me again.” I release a deep breath. “He never did. But the Highland Falls police were another matter.”
She shifts then, folding her legs in front of her and turning to face me. “What made you stop drinking, if you’ve been drinking for all these years?”
She didn’t ask what made me start. I suppose that’s the harder question to answer. Then again, everything about being sober is harder.
I drag my hand through my hair again, then brace my elbow on my knee once more, looking at her. Trying to really see her, the woman across from me, rather than the fantasy I want her to be. “I woke up in an alley, leaning against a wall. I almost got arrested for arguing with some frat bro about Army football.” Deep breath. “Shit. Talking about this fucking sucks.” I grind the heels of my palms into both of my eyes.
I hear the rustle of her movement in the darkness. Then I feel her again, her shoulder pressed against mine, her knee resting alongside my thigh. She says nothing.
She doesn’t have to.
Her body. Her warmth. Her simply being there.
It’s more connection than I’ve had in my entire life.
And I suddenly have no idea how I have lived without it.
* * *
Nalini
It’s a terrible thing to walk with someone through their life choices, especially the ones that have led them to me.
I can’t say if I believe in some master plan. I’ll never tell someone that things happen for a reason. I believe I am where I am supposed to be. It’s my mantra. My purpose. My way of making sense of life. I don’t know why, of all the buildings he could have ducked into to avoid the storm, he walked into mine. And I’m okay with that.
Because in this moment, sitting in the dark with only a flickering candle for light, a storm tearing at the walls over our heads, I know that I am here, now, because of him.
Because for some reason, our paths needed to cross. And somehow, I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
It’s what I’ve told myself since the fire consumed the vestiges of my confidence that I’ve spent the last three years of my life rebuilding.
It helps me make peace when the pain comes. And it always comes. Less these days than when I first started recovery, but it’s a constant fear.
“So what did you do next?” I ask after a long silence.
“What do you mean?”
“You woke up in an alley. What came next?”
He glances over at me, his eyes a little darker than they were a few moments before. He swallows hard. His throat tenses and moves with the movement. “I went home. And spent a week in fucking hell trying to dry out.”
I lift both eyebrows. “You didn’t end up in the hospital? I had a good friend of mine go through the DTs. They’re really awful.”
“You have no idea. I thought I was going to die. Not figuratively, either.”
“How long have you been sober?”
Another deep breath. “Two months.” The words carry the weight of someone amazed he’s saying them.
“Congratulations.” It’s funny that I can’t come up with anything more profound than that simple word. It feels so inadequate.
“Yeah, well, habi
ts are really hard to break.”
“I have a mantra I use in class sometimes about habits.”
He glances over at me, like the entire conversation is surprising to him. Like he’s discovering something new with each breath. “I find myself deeply curious. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a real mantra.”
I smile because the part of me that wants a deeper connection to this man is wondering if he’s just feigning curiosity to try and get closer to me. I don’t get a sense of that, though. I find his interest genuine and I’ve seen enough fake interest from men who have fetishes about brown girls to have a pretty good idea what that looks like.
“It’s from Gandhi. ‘Keep your thoughts pure because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words pure because your words become your actions. Keep your actions pure because your actions become your habits. Keep your habits pure because your habits become your values. Keep your values pure because your values become your destiny.’”
“That is really…profound,” he says. I shift, brushing my knee against his thigh. The connection snaps between us, heat arcing across the narrow space. A brush of contact in the darkness. “And has it helped people?”
I lift one shoulder. “You’d have to ask people who use it. I find it has an effect on people who need to hear it. But that’s the way with most mantras and yogic teachings.”
He rests his elbow against one knee, cradling his head to watch me. “How on earth did you get through West Point with that attitude?”
I frown slightly. “What do you mean?”
“That’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before in my life. I damn sure never heard anything like that when I was there. I just can’t figure out how you developed a philosophy like that after being in the Army.”
His question makes much more sense now. “Who says it had anything to do with being in the Army?”
“Touché.” He touches his index finger to his brow bone.
“So has not drinking gotten any easier?” I need to shift the focus away from me. I’m curious about him—this man sitting with me in the dark as a storm races across the heavens overhead. This man who is serving as a shield I didn’t know I needed, keeping fear of the storm and the dark and the fire at bay.
Until We Fall Page 4