by B. N. Toler
He ignored my smartass comment. “You do realize women like attention and laying low is probably freaking her the hell out?”
Releasing a deep breath, I reeled in my line. “She doesn’t need to be around me when I’m all pissy about personal problems.”
“Do you like the woman, Wren?” he asked bluntly. “I mean, is she just a hook-up, or do you think you guys might have something?”
His question took me off guard. “I like her. She’s…scary,” I chuckled. “Definitely a mess, but yeah,” I nodded with certainty, “I like her.”
“Then let her in, man.”
Kegs was one of the few people that knew about my life and the losses I’d endured. He knew about my mother and my sister, and we’d lost mutual friends while serving. He understood it was hard for me to let people in. Staying unattached to people protected me from the hurt experienced in losing them. I cared for Hannah and I knew he was right. Either I needed to let her in, let her be close to me, or I needed to cut her loose.
“Dude, I get you’re in a bad frame of mind, but maybe there’s a little silver lining here.”
Twisting my neck, I looked at him. “What’s that?”
“You were just bitching not that long ago that you didn’t have any time to really spend with her.” He shrugged as if it was all so clear. “Well, now you have a lot of time. Why not go spend some of it with your woman, instead of avoiding her and hiding out in misery?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, annoyed that he had a good point. “Where the hell did all this smart thinking come from?” I jested.
“Shit, man,” he chuckled as he scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I guess I’m getting wise in my old age or something.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out to look at it. It was a text from Hannah. Her text, though seemingly friendly, sounded worried, and I knew she was probably freaking out.
“Aw, hell,” I mumbled to myself. Kegs was right. With all this time off, it was the perfect opportunity for me to really spend some time with her. I needed to see her. I wanted to see her.
“You’re right, man,” I told him. “I’m going to go see her.”
“Just show up,” he told me. “Chicks love surprises and shit.”
He helped me carry my gear in and put it away. After he left, I took a quick shower, threw on some decent clothes, and climbed in my truck. I was going to see her. I wanted to surprise her. I realized there was a chance she might not be home, but I’d wait. I just wanted to do something to make her see I cared…I was just dense sometimes. I didn’t do well with sharing feelings.
By the time I got to her house, it was ten at night. The house was dark, seemingly shut down for the night, except for the window to the right on the upper floor where a light appeared to be on. I assumed this was her bedroom. I pulled my truck in her driveway and parked beside her car. Worried knocking on her door would startle her, I decided to call. It had rung twice when a car slowly pulled up in the driveway behind where I was parked, the sound of gravel crackling under its tires.
“Who in the hell is showing up here this late?” I grumbled to myself as I ended the call. Of course, I had just shown up this late, but that was different. I was her boyfriend.
Whoa. Slow down, Wren. Where in the hell had that thought come from? Hannah and I had not even broached the subject of being exclusive. My hands tightened around my steering wheel as I realized she might be seeing someone else. Was this another guy showing up to see her? It surprised me how much the thought of that really pissed me off. Maybe we hadn’t had a talk about seeing other people, but I wasn’t seeing anyone. If it was a dude, he was blocking me in and hadn’t bothered to get out of his car yet, keeping his headlights on and shining though my back glass. Dick.
It’s not like I could just back out.
“Shit,” I huffed as I turned my truck off and climbed out. Might as well take the bull by the horns. I came here to see Hannah. I wanted to see Hannah. But if she was seeing other people, that was something I wanted to know. It was something I needed to know. This wasn’t exactly how I would’ve liked to find out, but I did show up unannounced and uninvited. As soon as I stepped out of my truck someone rounded the bed coming toward me.
“Hi,” Hannah slurred causing me to freeze. Her long hair was tied up in some kind of messy bun that looked like she’d done it that way on purpose, and it actually looked pretty. She was wearing a pink summer dress that hit her thighs in just the right place to where it was not too short or too high. In the car, I made out a man in the lighting from his cellphone. It looked like he was trying to access his GPS. She was on a date. The guy was dropping her off. What the fuck? My temper flared, that pesky little thing about myself that I owned and was working on reached up and seized my backbone.
“You were on a date,” I snapped. Not a question. A statement. The words had left my mouth before I’d had a chance to think about it.
Hannah stopped in her tracks and stared at me. Even in the limited lighting, I could tell she was somewhat intoxicated, but even in her state she’d heard the anger in my tone. The look of shock faded from her features, and her eyes narrowed.
“You barely speak to me for days, then show up unannounced, and now you want to talk?”
Okay.
She had a point.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I was wrong, no matter how I sliced this shit pie, but…she was on a freaking date. That was…technically none of my business, but I didn’t care. The thought of her with another guy made me want to break something. Or someone. Or both.
“I guess if you won’t answer me, I’ll ask him.” Charging toward his car, Hannah reached to stop me, but I moved past her before she had a chance. At the driver’s side door, I rapped my knuckles loudly on the window causing the guy with square black glasses to jerk his head up. He had a nerdy look to him, thin and pale. He didn’t look like her type, or anywhere near her league.
“Wren, stop,” Hannah groaned.
Wide-eyed, the guy rolled his window down a little, enough to hear me but not enough to allow me access to him. “You go on a date with her tonight?” I threw out an arm pointing at Hannah.
“Uh…”
“Wren, you’re being ridiculous,” Hannah exclaimed.
“Did you?” I asked him. “You’ve been seeing her?”
“I—”
“Spit it out, slick,” I demanded. “These aren’t complicated questions.”
“Uh…I…drive for Uber. I was her Uber home,” he stuttered.
I’d done several tours in Afghanistan and traveled to several countries in the Middle East between my time in the Marines and my time in security. I’d had the misfortune of witnessing many horrific things. I’d also witnessed, or rather felt things that are hard to describe outside of scientific wording.
Blast waves were one of those things. The scientific description of this would be like when a bomb explodes, the area around the explosion becomes over pressurized, resulting in highly compressed air particles that travel faster than the speed of sound. The wave will dissipate over time and distance and exists only for a matter of milliseconds. But the way it feels to exist within those milliseconds, to be so close to it is hard to explain. There’s an eerie quiet, almost like the world has just been vapor-sealed and time has slowed, allowing you to move and think faster.
The minute the geek in the car informed me he’d simply been Hannah’s Uber driver, I felt like I was in a blast wave, and as time slowed, my mind was able to process the situation at the speed of light just how stupid I looked.
You know that moment?
You know the one.
The one we’ve all experienced.
That moment when you make a complete ass out of yourself.
Yep.
That was one of those moments for me. Stepping back from the car, processing what a gigantic tool I must look like, I belatedly noticed the Uber sticker on the back glass of the guy’s car. From my periph
eral vision, I could see Hannah standing, watching me with her arms crossed.
“Uh…can I go now?” the Uber driver asked.
“Yes,” Hannah told him, giving him a wave. “Sorry about all…” she looked to me, then shook her head “…this.”
Backing away, I kept my stare fixed on the car as it reversed out and drove away until his taillights disappeared into the darkness. Even when he was completely out of sight, I still stared. Where else was I supposed to look? At her? Yeah…I wasn’t quite ready for that. I needed a minute. A man does not like many things, but being wrong and being a fool tops the list. I’d just acted like a total asshole to a guy who was simply a cab driver because I was jealous and thought he’d been on a date with Hannah.
With that thought, I spun around and faced her. “Were you on a date tonight?” Yeah…I wasn’t done digging my hole just yet. Had to push a little further to completely humiliate myself.
Walking up to me, she took my hand. “You’re cute when you’re jealous.”
As she pulled me behind her toward her front porch, I said, “I wasn’t jealous. I was just asking the guy some questions. For safety purposes.”
After she’d taken the first step she turned to me, a smirk that indicated she thought I was ridiculous spread across her face. “You were jealous.” She poked my chest.
“I notice you still haven’t answered the question.”
Letting out something between a snort and a laugh she asked, “You gonna get tough with me if I don’t answer? Well, are you?” Then she chuckled. “Spit it out, slick,” she imitated me with a deepened voice. “These aren’t complicated questions.”
Letting my head fall back, I let out a groan of frustration. She would never let me live this down. I momentarily wondered if being wrong was worse than if I had been right. Okay, being right would have sucked worse.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked quietly. I kept my head back, my face to the sky, not wanting her to see how dumb I felt.
“I’m sorry I’ve been…quiet. I’ve had some personal stuff going on.”
There was a pause, a long and silent moment where I wondered if she was contemplating telling me to leave, since technically I was hiding shit from her, before I felt her fingers thread my beard tugging down on it, forcing my eyes to meet hers. Her gaze moved to my mouth then flicked back to my eyes, a subtle smile taking over her lips. Leaning toward me, she stopped when her mouth was but a breath from mine. “No,” she whispered, the heat of her breath heavy against my lips. “I wasn’t on a date.”
Moving my hands to her hips, I squeezed them, relief flooding me. “I had no right to show up and behave like that.” I swallowed, the smell of her lip gloss making me impatient to kiss her. “I don’t like thinking about you with another man,” I admitted, our mouths still close.
Pulling back for a moment, she kept her stare fixed on mine and parted her mouth as if she were on the verge of saying something to me, but then stopped short. Taking my hand again, she lifted it and kissed it, letting her lips drag slowly over my knuckles. “Would you like to spend the night?”
“There’s no place I’d rather be than in bed with you tonight.”
“When all else fails, write what your heart tells you.
You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
-Mark Twain
Passion.
A strong and barely controllable emotion.
Lust.
A very strong sexual desire.
Love.
An intense feeling of deep affection.
Emotion. Desire. Affection.
Ask me, if I could have only one, which of these three I’d prefer. Most would say love, yes?
Not me.
I’d pick passion.
Passion’s reckless in its existence. It defies rules. It dances on the edge of all reason. Passion rises even in the midst of chaos when everything feels lost and hopeless. It doesn’t care what is right or wrong…it just is. Sounds pretty scary, I know. And it is. But ah how it burns in the best and worst ways. How it scorches our bellies with want, offering us the sweetest of highs once it’s sated.
But the three together, passion, lust, and love, or emotion, desire, and affection? EDA, I called it. The triple threat. It’s the wheel of dharma—the path to nirvana. And Wren had just started laying the brickwork for the journey to nirvana that he would lead me to. I knew I had passion for Wren—he was my muse. We had lust covered, no doubt. And then, one day, in the blink of an eye, love snaked its way in. At least it did for me, anyway.
In my novels, I’d created gorgeous scenes between my hero and heroine, moments tinted with poetic backdrops where one fell for the other. I’d never made it simple. There was always something else that added to the feelings—imagery. Ocean waves crashing against a cliff as they stared into each other’s eyes. Cold rain pouring from a dark sky, droplets beading down their faces. This type of thing. But it wasn’t like that with Wren.
We were in my bedroom.
On a mattress.
On the floor.
Letting him in my home, in my room, had been harder than I thought it would be. Had it not been for all the wine I’d consumed, I’m not sure I would’ve invited him in. Everything was going well until we were ascending my stairs—that’s when the panic had set in. I had nothing. Not really. And I was okay with having nothing. But I knew the outside world wouldn’t understand. Would he judge me? Think of me as pathetic because I lived in such an empty way? Once we were in my bedroom, I moved through the dark and plugged in the strand of white lights that hung over the mirror my grandmother had left me after she’d passed. I hoped providing a softer light might aid in making my living situation seem less…well, less.
Turning back to face him, I pressed on a smile in an attempt to disguise the anxiety I was feeling about him being in my home. I had already kicked him out before. Our comfort had grown since then. It was now or never, right? His hands were on his hips, his mouth flat as he gazed about my room. When he finally moved his stare to meet mine, I wasn’t sure what I’d find in his eyes. Pity? Uncertainty? Aversion? I held my breath with unreasonable worry. But I found none of those. Instead, he gazed to me in a way that spoke to me even though he hadn’t breathed a word. And I exhaled.
What am I going to do with you, woman?
I shrugged in response. I wished I had a better answer to give him.
Keeping his stare locked with mine, he undressed before me while I watched, my body temperature rising with each garment he removed. When he was finished, he stood before me in his naked god-like glory, and flexed his brows. It was my turn now. He was comfortable here. He was comfortable with me.
I slipped my dress over my shoulders and let it pool at my feet. Unhooking my strapless bra, I dropped it before stepping out of my wedged heels and leaned toward him. He bent down as if to kiss me, but stopped short, teasing me. He accepted me. Even the imperfect parts. But he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t tease me. Made me work for it. Hooking his fingers around the sides of my lace thong, he caressed my body with soft kisses as he kneeled before me, leisurely pulling my panties down my legs. I threaded my fingers in his hair earning a lust-filled groan from him that made my core tighten. Languidly, he stood and scooped me up in his arms, carrying me to my bed. In the next hours, our bodies joined, touched, caressed, sweated, and pulled every ounce of energy from the other. Beyond what we did or were doing, the humble surroundings felt oddly romantic to me. I’d spent so many nights in the emptiness of this room alone, believing my choice to have nothing matched me. I was empty, and the lack of material things was a visual representation of how I felt inside. Simple. Empty. But tonight, with Wren in my bed, suddenly that simplicity felt beautiful. There was no dresser, or beautiful armoire, or photographs, but there was passion, and moans, and pleasure, and want. In a large and practically barren room, we lay together a couple feet off the floor on a queen-sized mattress, hardly taking any space, yet every
thing, for the first time in a long time, felt so full.
And that was when it happened.
That was when I fell in love with Wren Marner.
The Nitty-Gritty
The next morning, I woke up and found Hannah’s side of the bed empty. As I came to, I noticed writing on my hand.
I am amazing.
I smiled. The woman was something else. Climbing out of her bed, I tugged my boxers on and headed downstairs in search of her. In the corner of her living room, she sat with one leg folded under her and the other bent beside her, her glasses perched halfway down her nose, as she tapped away at her laptop. A large mug sat on the stack of books next to her.
The wood floor creaked as I took the final step and her head popped up, a dazzling grin taking over her mouth. Damn, she looked beautiful. She was also wearing my shirt, and she looked sexy as hell in it.
“Morning, handsome.”
“Morning,” I croaked, my voice still weak from sleeping. “Thanks for the note.” I held up my hand. “I must’ve been sleeping hard because I didn’t even feel you write this.
She chuckled. “Yeah, you were sleeping like a rock.”
“How long have you been down here?”
Standing, she scurried over to me and wrapped her arms around my midsection. “A couple of hours. My mind wouldn’t stop. I had to get these words down.”
I squeezed her before kissing the top of her head. “And how are Katrina and Alex fairing in this novel?”
Pulling away, she gazed up at me, smiling. “Fairing pretty well.” I nodded, pleased with that answer as I knew these characters were modeled after us somewhat. If they were doing well, that meant Hannah thought we were doing well, too. I was equally proud of myself for remembering the characters’ names. Dudes didn’t pay much attention to things like that. Then again, I wasn’t the average guy. “Let me just save this document, and we can go get some breakfast, if you want. Afraid I don’t have much here. But there is coffee.”