Combative Trilogy

by McLean, Jay

  I didn’t.

  Later on, she admitted that she had a hard time leaving the apartment alone. She said she had anxiety in crowds and felt safe with me but didn’t elaborate further and changed the subject.

  She did that a lot, I noticed.

  We don’t do much as far as activity—she just loves being outside, regardless of what we’re doing. And she likes to breathe—as weird as it sounds. I have no other way of explaining it. When we’re out, I often catch her stopping just to take a breath. Sometimes it’s to smell the air, but other times, it seems like she’s just appreciating the ability to breathe.

  To anyone else, she might seem a little crazy. To me—she’s kind of breathtaking. Literally. She also asks a lot of questions but doesn’t offer much in return. And I think I’m okay with that… for now.

  “So do you actually enjoy training?” she asks, pulling me out of my daze.

  I shrug, moving the ice pack to my other side. “It keeps me in check. Keeps me disciplined.”

  “How long were you deployed for?”

  “I did four deployments, so four years.”

  “Do you ever feel like it’s too much? The freedom?”

  I look at her, but her eyes are cast downward. “What do you mean?”

  She shakes her head before lifting her gaze. “Nothing. I’ll be in my apartment. Just come get me when you’re done.”

  * * *

  Madison: I’m having a really bad day.

  Sara: What’s wrong? Did something happen?

  Madison: No. Nothing happened. I just feel so lost.

  Sara: Are you taking your meds?

  Madison: Yes.

  I open the door, wiping tears from my cheeks.

  “Hey,” Ky says, bringing me into him. “What’s wrong?”

  The sympathy in his voice makes me cry harder. “Nothing,” I tell him, because I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. “I’m fine,” I lie. He pushes me back a little so he can look in my eyes. I fake a smile, not wanting him to be affected by my mood. “Seriously, I’m fine.”

  His brow pinches. “Is it me?”

  “No!” I say quickly. “Not at all.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I walk to the fridge and pull out a bottle of water. “You ever have one of those days when it’s just… the colors are dull and even the fresh air seems suffocating?” It sounds stupid, even to me. I lean against the counter, my eyes on the floor. “I’m just having one of those days.”

  He stops in front of me and grips the counter on either side of me. “So let’s brighten your day.”

  I want to laugh. “I wish it were that easy.”

  “Who says it can’t be?” he asks.

  He sounds so hopeful I can’t help but look up at him. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Are you ready to go now?”

  Sighing, I let my shoulders slump. “We don’t have to do anything, Ky. We can just stay in.”

  He smiles. “I’m not a fan of wasting time, Madison. There’s too much in the world. Too much to see. Too much to do. Too much to breathe. We miss it all if we just stay in our apartments all day.”

  I smile as he repeats my words from a few days ago. “So what are we doing?”

  “Element of surprise, remember?”

  Debbie walks toward us with a huge smile on her face.

  “Kyler,” she sings. “It’s good to see you again.

  “So she’s allowed to call you Kyler but I’m not?”

  He squeezes my hand in response.

  “What are we doing here, anyway?”

  Ignoring me, he holds my hand tighter and leads us to follow behind Debbie, and as soon as I step foot in the back of the store, I gasp and dig my heels in the floor. My eyes dart everywhere, all at once. It’s a flower warehouse and the smell… oh my God, the smell. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, taking it all in. It’s been years since my senses have had so much to take in.

  “Is the air still suffocating?” Ky whispers, his breath warm against my cheek.

  I shake my head in disbelief and open my eyes to see him watching me. “Not at all, Ky.”

  “Kyler,” Debbie shouts, poking her head out from behind a row of pots. “You coming?”

  “Yeah!” He drags me toward her.

  “Here it is.” Debbie points to a large potted plant. “It’s not exactly how it was pictured online,” she mumbles, sounding disappointed.

  “It’s perfect,” Ky assures her.

  I move in front of him so I can see what they’re talking about. “It’s beautiful.”

  Debbie lifts the plant to my nose. “You should smell it.”

  Ky settles his hand on my shoulder while I dip my head, my chest rising with my intake of breath. It smells just as beautiful as it looks, and I tell Ky that when I look up at him, hoping he understands everything my eyes are trying to convey; that I appreciate him and that what he’s doing means more to me than he’ll ever know. Because he’s giving me a part of my life back, a life I thought I’d lost.

  “Want to know what it is?” Debbie asks me.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re rainbow roses. They fuse together all the different colors, and it comes out like this. Kyler gave you a yellow one, yes?”

  I nod.

  Debbie smiles. “It’s the flower of friendship.”

  I place my hand over his settled on my shoulder. “So I’ve been told.”

  “Well,” Debbie says, inspecting the flower. “Kyler wanted to give you one that represented all the things. This one has a little of everything.” Debbie looks up at Ky. “Dark pink for thankfulness, orange for fascination, peach for modesty.” She moves her gaze back to me. “Red and orange for love and desire.”

  Ky chokes on a gasp.

  I giggle like a schoolgirl.

  Debbie adds, “I was thinking of giving it a nickname for the store. I don’t much like Rainbow Rose. Any suggestion?”

  “Madison,” Ky says from above me.

  “Yeah?”

  He laughs. “No. Madison. The name. You should call it Madison.”

  “Perfect,” Debbie says. “It suits. Beautiful name for a beautiful flower to match the beautiful girl.”

  Ky chuckles. “Wow, Debbie. You’re doing all the hard work for me.”

  There’s an ache in my chest that’s anchored its way to my stomach, holding my response captive, and I can’t seem to do a thing.

  Why? Why was it so easy for him to see through me? To feel every part of me? To know how to take my pain and my fears and make them disappear. Why was it so easy to make me fall for him?

  “Madison?” he asks, turning me to him. “Are you crying?”

  I didn’t realize I was. “Why would you do that, Ky?”

  “Because you don’t deserve to live in a world without color.”

  Chapter 16

  “So I kind of gave her flowers,” I tell Dr. Aroma.

  “Oh yeah?” she says through a smile. “And how did she react?”

  “She smiled.”

  “That’s a good outcome.”

  “We haven’t picked it up yet. It’s still at the shop getting monitored.”

  Her eyebrows lift. “So I take it they’re not just standard flowers. What are they?”

  “Madisons.”

  “Like her name?” she asks.

  “Yep.”

  “And you—you’re smiling, too.”

  I shrug. “I guess I like making her happy.”

  “Just her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She leans forward a little. “You just seem like the kind of guy who likes to please people. Are you a people pleaser, Ky?”

  I shrug again, then I laugh. “She makes me want to please myself.”

  She laughs with me, understanding my hidden meaning. “She not pleasing you in that way?”

  “Time’s up.”

  We’ve just finished checking on the Madison and are a block a
way from our building when she stops in front of a dollar store. “What is this place?” she asks.

  “Seriously?”

  She nods.

  “It’s just a shop full of cheap junk.”

  “That sounds fun.” Before I know it, she has my arm in a death grip and is dragging me into the store, where we spend a good ten minutes messing around with all the crap they have inside. She tries on about fifty different pairs of sunglasses before choosing a bright yellow pair. “For friendship,” she says, and I laugh at how goofy they look on her. At some point, we get separated and I find her staring at a bunch of picture frames, her finger tracing each one, inspecting them.

  I stand next to her. “You want to get one?”

  “I don’t know which one.”

  She lifts one off the rack and looks intently at it. It’s chrome with the word ‘Love’ printed on the bottom, but she doesn’t seem to be looking at the frame; she’s looking at the picture inside it.

  “You know you’re meant to change it, right? Or are you into the dude in the picture?” I ask, only half joking.

  She doesn’t respond. It’s as if she hasn’t even heard me. “Look at them,” she says quietly.

  I look down at the couple in the picture, who are standing in front of a fountain facing each other. The girl has her arms around the guy’s neck; his hands are around her waist and they’re just staring at each other, smiling. “Can you imagine what that would feel like?” she asks.

  My heart tightens at the sincere sadness in her tone. “What do you mean?” I ask, my eyes on hers. I press on when she seems not to have heard me. “Can I imagine what it feels like to be in love?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Not just love… but to be so open about it. To love so freely… like it doesn’t matter if anyone’s watching,” she whispers, tears beginning to fill her eyes.

  “Madison,” I whisper, and she looks up at me. I hold the side of her face, my eyes on hers, and I plead with her to give me something… anything… so that maybe I can understand what the hell is happening right now.

  But I don’t understand.

  I can’t.

  So I do the only thing I can do. I lean down, press my lips to hers, and I kiss her. She gasps, taking my breath with her, and after a second, her lips move, her free hand gripping my shirt as I bring her in closer. Her breath catches when our tongues meet, sliding agonizingly slowly against each other and I hesitate, my heart pounding painfully against my chest, because dammit I’m nervous.

  And I’m so fucking afraid of everything the kiss makes me feel.

  Because it’s more than just a kiss.

  It’s a sense of hope, and reason, and promise.

  She quickly steps back, as if suddenly realizing where we are and what we’re doing, while I finally allow myself to breathe. I open my eyes to see her watching me, her chest heaving with each breath.

  “Shit.” It’s all I can get out—the only word that forms in my head.

  “I think I’m going to buy this one,” she says, reaching up and grabbing another frame. “And this one.”

  I step into her apartment when she opens the door, not bothering to wait for an invitation. Not that she seems to mind. She goes straight to the couch and pulls out the frames from the bag and sets them on the coffee table in front of her. I sit next to her, not knowing what else to do. She didn’t speak much on the walk home, and I didn’t want to push her. Truth is, I’m still thinking about that kiss. Watching her now, though, it’s clear she’s still thinking about that damn picture because she’s staring at it intently, her brow creased. “How do you think they met?”

  I look at the frame. “The couple?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Probably the day of the photo shoot…”

  She nudges my side and pulls on my elbow until my arm settles on her leg. “Come on, Ky. Just play along. Please?”

  “Fine.” I look back at the picture. “He probably walked into his apartment building and saw her kicking the shit out of the mailboxes.”

  She cackles with laughter. “And it turned out that they live opposite each other,” she muses.

  “And he thought she was smokin’ hot, so he brought over pizza.”

  “After he unintentionally made her feel like an idiot for not knowing about the maintenance guy when she locked herself out.”

  “Yeah,” I say, all amusement leaving me. “But he was hoping the pizza made up for all that.”

  “Not the pizza,” she says, all playfulness gone, “but the message behind it.”

  “So the girl knew he was interested in getting to know her?”

  “No. Not at the pizza stage, but then he gave her a yellow rose—a symbol of friendship—and after that she kind of knew.”

  I face her. “Well, I’m glad they were on the same page.”

  She smiles, but her eyes remain on the frame. “And then what happened?”

  “Then I guess the guy was just happy because he figured the girl missed him when he wasn’t around and, for some reason, she always wanted to be around him. I’m pretty sure that made him feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”

  She holds my arm tighter. “Yeah? I think it might be the other way around. I think that maybe the girl’s lucky. After all, he did name a flower after her.”

  “So what happened after?”

  Her smile falls, along with her gaze. “They kissed.”

  “And it was bad?”

  She finally turns to me, shaking her head. “Not for her.”

  “Not for him, either, Maddy.”

  She rests her head on my shoulder, her exhales warming my neck. Then I feel it—her lips on my skin. I tense beneath her touch, and she kisses me once, soft and wet. She whispers, “It’s just a story, Ky. It could be fake.”

  I pull back slightly and rest my forehead on hers, my heart pounding way too hard, way too fast. “Is it, though? Fake?”

  She doesn’t respond with words. She doesn’t have to. Her lips find mine, gentle at first, then all at once, we lose the control we’ve been holding on to for days.

  We stop resisting and we give in—to each other and to the inevitable.

  My mouth covers hers as she presses on my chest, pushing me until I’m on my back. Our breaths mingle, our hands everywhere at once. Our lips lock, only parting long enough to gasp for breath before we’re back, kissing, touching, groping. She’s on top of me now, a leg on either side of my hips.

  She’s grinding.

  I’m thrusting.

  She’s moaning.

  I’m groaning.

  But we’re synced.

  In.

  Every.

  Single.

  Possible.

  Way.

  I find the bottom of her dress, my fingers curling around the soft material, and once my hands make their way to her ass, she emits the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard in my entire goddamn life. I curse into her mouth, feeling my cock throb in the confines of my jeans while her fingers lace in my hair, gripping lightly as she grinds harder into me. Her movements—her sounds—all of it pushes me to the edge of explosion.

  I pull back just in time. “Maddy.”

  Her eyes snap open. They’re huge. “Huh?” She looks so damn confused.

  “I want more. Of you. Of us. Of all of this.” I swallow nervously, trying to catch my breath. She stays silent while I anticipate her response.

  Each second I wait, my confidence fades.

  “So…” She looks nervously everywhere but at me. “You’re asking for sex?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t just want you physically, Maddy. I don’t just want your body. I want all of you.”

  “Okay,” she whimpers.

  I reach up and pull her mouth back to mine. I kiss her gently until she lets out a sob, completely confusing me. Her hot and cold, her sweet innocence and then her complete and utter lust—it fucks with my head.

  And then it hits me…“Madison? Are you a virgin?”

  She
shakes her head.

  My heart thumps faster, not from excitement, but from fear. I ask, even though I may not want the answer. “Did someone force—”

  “No,” she cuts in quickly. “I just…” she trails off and sits up, biting her lip as she runs a hand down my stomach, past my waist and skims the bulge in my pants. Her eyes lift to mine before she stands up and grabs my hand, helping me up. She leads me to her bedroom and closes the door behind her before switching on the light on her nightstand. I sit on the edge of her bed, my heart racing as she removes her sweater. Then she stands in front of me, her legs between mine, and I reach out, cupping the back of her knees to bring her closer to me. Her hands cover my jaw, tilting my head up to look at her. “I want you, too, Ky,” she says. “I’m just not ready to give you all of me. Not yet.”

  I nod. I’ll take anything as long as she’s mine.

  She swallows loudly, pushing the straps of her dress down her shoulders and lets the material slide down her arms, then her chest. I bite my fist, trying to contain my moan. “Fuck.” I groan when the fabric passes her tits, revealing her black lace bra. I lick my lips, adjusting myself at the same time. I think she’s about to stop—to put the moment on pause—and I don’t know how much more I can handle. But then her hands rise, thumbing the material around her waist… and then she pushes down, lower and lower.

  Matching. Goddamn. Panties.

  I can’t speak.

  I can’t swallow.

  I can’t fucking breathe.

  “Is this… am I okay?” she asks, her hands at her sides.

  I lean forward, wrapping my arm around her waist, and I pull her to me. I kiss her stomach, just above her navel. She sways into me, her hands on my shoulders helping her balance, while my mouth moves higher until it covers her breast, biting gently on her bra-covered nipple. “You’re fucking perfect, Maddy.” I reach behind her, fingering the clasp of her bra and praying to everything holy she understands me. She removes her hands from my shoulders and undoes the clasp but holds her arms to her chest, not letting her bra fall.