by Ella James
He lies down on his side, his head on a pillow. I lie in front of him and pull my knees up toward my chest. My shins touch Barrett’s thighs. I reach out and stroke his hair.
“She liked my eyes. I guess…they weren’t sad yet.”
I see something twinkle: another little tear that falls under the lights. His leaking eyes lock onto mine again.
“You know…they told me that. In training. You can go…bad…one of two ways, a sniper can go bad,” he murmurs. “Either you can’t shoot or you go nuts and shoot up the block. I just…couldn’t shoot her.” His voice cracks as his eyes shut. “She detonated the bomb. I found out later IS made her do it. They had her sister-in-law.” He stops to swallow, takes his time before he goes on, in a lower voice.
“She had blocked the roof off. Stacked a bunch of shit in the stairwell. But they knew I was up there. They’d given her the tincture for me, hoping they could fuck my aim up. I had to get away, I ended up jumping…off the roof. And when I landed— When I landed,” he sighs deeply, “there was this IED. I don’t know…my head hit something. Or…” he shakes his head, “maybe just the blast. I was fucking out of it. That’s how I got the brain bleed, the shrapnel. Breck came. We could track each other. He had to get me out. We made it to the Bradley before he got…hit with this bomb,” his voice cracks, “…it had acid in it.”
My stomach clenches, and I wrap my hand around his. His hand squeezes tightly.
“They had pushed me in…so I was safe.” His fingers squeeze more tightly, so tight I almost cry out. I feel his body start to shake again, and I scoot over closer to him. When I wrap my arm around his shoulders and his head, he curls into me. “It got him…kind of in the back,” he rasps. “They got him in and…his skin was…hissing.”
When he speaks again, his voice has dropped down to a whisper. “The phosphorous was eating…through his skin…and he was trying…to smile. He was a tough son of a bitch, my buddy Breck.”
I feel him swallow, and I wait a long time without moving, but he doesn’t speak again. He just lies there breathing on his side, his body stiff, his shoulders shaking, and there’s nothing I can do.
I stroke his hair. “Oh, Barrett. I’m so sorry.”
“I just…can’t ever stop thinking about it.” His body shakes against mine.
“No. Of course not.” I cradle his head against my chest. “Of course you can’t.” I hold him closer to me, speaking quietly near his ear. “It makes so much sense—and no one could. You know that, right?” I cup his jaw. “No one could forget that. It gets deep inside you…because you’re human. Even though you were a warrior, you’re a human being. And you’re strong, but you have a heart. It’s not supposed to be strong, you know? It has to be vulnerable to work.”
“I know.” The words are soft and tiny. His hand grips my side.
“But you’re tired.” I smooth his hair back, press my lips against his temple. “It’s so tiring. I know.” My mind spins with dead ends; nothing I can say will help him, and the hopeless feeling makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Finally I think of something. Something small. “You know what? Nightmares don’t happen in the first hour of sleep. You’ve never woken up then, right?”
After a second, he shakes his head.
“Do you want to take a nap? One hour on the nose?”
I can feel him hesitate, his body pausing.
“I’ll stay with you. I’ll hold you,” I whisper.
Barrett turns over on his stomach, wraps an arm behind his head. He takes a few deep breaths. Then he rolls onto his side. His eyes are on my face. I can feel them burn into me, even though he doesn’t touch me.
Finally he reaches out with his left hand, closing it over both of mine. His thumb strokes me. With every stroke, I watch his eyes grow heavier.
TWENTY ONE
GWENNA
December 31, 2011
“That is seriously what you did while I was showering.”
Jamie blushes. “It was totally impromptu. I was getting back from the general store, and he had just dropped off this giant tin of roasted nuts for Mom and Dad. We started talking and I threw a snowball at him. Then we somehow ended up building this adorable little snowman. He’s so cute and so funny. Niccolo, not the snowman.” Jamie brushes at her snow-damp shirt sleeve, and then looks back up at me. “I don’t know John since we don’t live here full-time, but I’ve never even heard of Niccolo. Apparently he’s thirty.”
I arch my brows. “So what does he like…do or whatnot? Does he have a job?”
She scoffs. “Of course he has a job. I asked Mom after he left, and she said he works in Hollywood.” Jamie beams.
I can’t help rolling my eyes. “He probably works in a bar.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. He does something with movie production. Something on the business side, with money. That’s what Mom said. She said Mayor Ferrara was really bummed he wasn’t interested in politics, but Niccolo and Casper have a different mom than John, the younger one, so they haven’t lived in Colorado with the mayor since they were children.” She lowers her voice. “Word is Mayor Ferrara cheated on Niccolo’s mom with John’s mom.”
“Well that’s original.” I pull the towel off my head and frown into the mirror at my eyebrows. They really need a wax, but all I’ve got time to do right now is pluck them.
“Anyway…” Jamie pulls her fleece sweater over her head, then wiggles out of her insulated snow pants and, in just underwear and her hoodie, starts to rummage through her suitcase. “The point I’m making here is you know how we were going to maybe meet up with the guys from last night if we got bored? Now we’re meeting up with them for sure… at 9:30.” She smiles her pretty, lipsticked smile and holds her head up high.
I flop back against the bathroom door. “Boooooo.”
Jamie has been single since our sophomore year of college, since her honey was caught making out with Duke’s all-star history professor in a campus bathroom. I can’t even remember the last time she took a shine to someone, so two hours later, we’re bumping along the isolated mountain road toward downtown Breck in her mother’s white Range Rover.
Jamie looks hot in black leggings and a red designer parka, with silver-gray fur-lined boots. She’s wearing fun earrings and her signature red lipstick, which always seems to make her teeth look radiantly white. I’ve got on a thigh-length, gold-brown sweater hoodie over dark brown leggings, and my own pair of fur-lined boots, which are caramel suede.
I intentionally skipped the lipstick and allowed myself to wear my ridiculous peacock feather earrings, hoping the two choices will lead to decreased male attention.
After almost twenty minutes struggling to find a parking spot on Breckenridge’s snowy-as-hell Main Street, I tug on my beanie, Jamie hides beneath her jacket hood, and we trudge toward Gemütlichkeit, a German “beer bar.”
The place is small and probably what a more people-friendly person would consider “cozy,” with lots of dark wood and mounted animal heads, plus a giant fireplace that makes me sweat within the first five seconds.
I see a hand shoot up in a dark corner of the place, followed by the friendly, bearded face of a man with dark eyes and a receding hairline.
“Come on! That’s Nic!”
Jamie grins as we move toward their table.
The guys seem drunk already, like they’ve been here for at least an hour or two, which in Niccolo’s case isn’t even possible. The table is littered with beer bottles, and almost as soon as we sit down, the arrogant guy we met last night—Michael—starts trying to convince me to share a beer bowl with him.
“It’s like a fish bowl, but with beer, and it’s craft beer. Really good shit.”
I decline his offer twice in the first ten minutes. After that, I walk toward the bathroom, getting distracted as I pass a wooden door on the side of the building that’s painted with the word SMOKE and bears a pitifully rendered, hand-painted cigarette.
I haven’t smoked for years�
��it’s terrible for the voice—but I’m just bored and desperate enough to slip outside despite that.
It’s snowing hard, and the building only has a small awning on this side. I stand with my back against the wall and wonder why I’m so unhappy. Two girls burst out, laughing.
“He looked grumpy!”
“But that hair…”
They’re paying so little attention to where they’re going, one of them crashes into me.
“Oh my God!”
The other girl looks me up and down. “Do I know you? Is she— Sheri, she looks like—”
They both shriek, “Jessica!”
Half an hour—and two cigarettes, and six swigs from a rhinestone flask later—I teeter back inside, feeling pleasantly buzzed.
Before returning to our table, I call Elvie from the women’s bathroom. He’s in New York. Times Square, where his parents are part of the celebrity countdown. The first time I call, someone hits the “fuck you” button. I call right back and someone answers wordlessly. I can hear the roar of guitar amps and laughing. I hear some girl’s voice coo “Elvie.”
I hang up the phone and run my hands under the cold sink water till my heart stops racing.
TWENTY TWO
BARRETT
November 7, 2015
A bright, twinkling rainbow. Something tickling along my jaw. I smell a hint of fruit and feel…a face. Her hair tickles my neck. Warmth floods through me. I crack my eyes and see the Christmas lights. And I realize she is Gwenna.
“Wake up, you…” I feel her soft brow against my beard, her warm lips pressed against my chin. “I brought you dinner in bed,” she whispers in a husky voice.
Even in my groggy state, her voice makes me hard. I reach out, wrapping an arm around her neck and pulling her down beside me on the mattress.
I let out a soft sigh and turn from my back onto my side, where I can wrap myself around her.
Gwenna laughs. I like her laugh. It’s rough and unrepentant: nothing veiled, nothing held back.
“You woke up snuggly,” she murmurs as I wrap an arm around her.
I woke up wanting to be inside her.
“You cooked?” I ask her in a sleep-graveled voice.
Before she can answer, I hook my leg over one of hers and move closer to her, close enough to wrap my arm around her.
“This feels good,” she whispers.
Gwenna pulls my head against her chest and starts to stroke my nape and shoulders. I fix my attention on the sweet sensation. Gentle fingers… Her other hand is wrapped around my shoulder, holding me against her.
My eyes feel hot. I don’t know why…she keeps on doing this. Why does she keep doing this?
The way she touches me… I inhale slowly, carefully, around the lump in my throat. I clench my jaw before I try to swallow. Gwenna’s fingers cut a slow path through my hair.
I mean to whisper “thank you,” but I groan instead.
“I love it that you like this so much,” she whispers.
All I hear is “so much.” Do I like her soft touch more than someone else would?
I feel her lips against my forehead. She keeps on stroking me. She kisses my right eyelid, then the left.
“Doesn’t work,” I whisper.
“What?” I feel her pull away from me, see her frown down on me. “What doesn’t work?”
I inhale slowly, my eyes on her waist. “Left eye. There was a clot there. A stroke. Just the eye.” My voice sounds rough, and I wonder in a distant way why right now is the time I chose to tell her this.
My gaze returns to her face, finding it troubled. I look into her eyes and feel my insides go cold.
“You can’t see at all from it?”
I blink down at the bedding, shake my head.
The moment spreads out around us, rippling like a stone’s punch through the surface of the water, slowly fading back to clear and calm. It doesn’t even last that long, although it feels as if it does.
Gwen’s palm brushes my cheek. She strokes my hair off my forehead, letting her nails tickle along my hairline.
“I didn’t know,” she murmurs.
I shut my eyes and focus on the way my ribs expand as I inhale. I’ve laid alone so many times and tried to pay attention to my body. To tell myself I’m still alive. I’m here, not there. The one thing that I always wanted most was to feel someone else’s arms around me. Thinking of it now, with her beside me, brings a feeling of contentment, followed quickly by a bite of shame.
“I think this is probably the wrong response,” she whispers in the dark, “but after ‘I’m so sorry you lost some of your sight,’ I’m kind of tempted to say how amazing it is. I mean…I couldn’t even tell. When we were sparring… How’d you do it?”
“It would be harder with someone else,” I say after a minute. “I couldn’t fight another Operator. Not most of them.”
She laughs lightly. “So I’m an easy target, is that what I’m hearing?”
I reach a finger out to trace her cheekbone, smiling softly at her. “Still harder than most,” I tell her, aiming to appease.
Gwen leans over, smooths my left eyelid shut, then feathers a kiss over it.
“I’m not sure when I’ll stop being impressed with you. I hope you don’t think I’m being patronizing. It’s just like…you always hear about these badass vets, like Michael Stokes guys, and I’ve never actually known one.” Her eyes shine with kind sincerity.
I smirk. “Michael Stokes.”
“You should pose for him. People would go crazy.”
I chuckle, shaking my head. I want to tell her that I’m at my fucking worst. That I’m embarrassed by myself. By how I’ve changed. I can’t even get a bullet through a target. I can’t shoot a gun or bow, although I’m trying to relearn. But I look at Gwenna in the darkness, and I know that shit holds no weight with her.
I take her hand and bring it to my cheek, and then I press a kiss into her palm. I search her eyes for…something.
She’s not afraid to hold my gaze. Her mouth is soft and thoughtful. After a long moment, her free hand tucks a curl behind my ear.
“Who are you?” I rasp.
She smiles, and there is something bared in it. It’s like the absence of pretense. It’s like she’s smiling all for me.
I cradle her hand, bringing it back to my cheek. “You make me feel almost good,” I whisper.
“Only almost?” She strokes under my chin, and like a fucking tiger, I have to struggle not to purr.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t even try.
“That’s a sad smile you’ve got there, B.”
I’m smiling? I move her hand off my face, but don’t let go of it. Her fingers curl around my wrist, around my hand, until she’s squeezing gently.
Fuck me.
“I’m ‘B’ now?”
She nods, smiling. “I need to shorten Barrett. I’m too lazy to use it all the time.”
“No Bear?” I give her a teasing smile.
Her own smile falters. “I didn’t know if…you’d want that.” She looks worried. I think back to why. Maybe I said something about it? That it reminded me of my time in ACE? Of Breck?
I shrug. “It works.”
She swings my hand, still wrapped in hers. “So I can call you Bear? I have my very own Bear?” I swear, she fucking giggles.
Fuck. I think I get all red like she does sometimes. I can’t help giving her a lopsided smile.
“And on that note…” She reaches behind her and holds a plate out to me, grinning like she knows she’s crazy but she doesn’t care. The plate is stacked with tacos, made in a variety of ways.
“Which ones are yours?” I can’t help laughing at the big, unruly pile.
“The ones that aren’t yours. I like literally any kind of taco. So good choice, by the way.”
We eat right there in her bed, under the twinkle of the lights. Gwen avoids the tacos with the jalapenos. I have a couple different ones, after I ask which she prefers a
nd she answers with a poker face.
The room is filled with crunching, with the sounds of chewing. By the time we’re finished, Gwen’s area is littered with lettuce, tomato, and little bits of taco shell. Mine is spotless.
She gapes at me.
I smirk.
“Aloof and reserved! I just looked up your Myers-Briggs while I was finishing the food. Want me to read it to you?”
I watch her navigate to a web site, and when the letters INTJ appear at the top, I grab the iPad from the bottom, sliding it right out of her hands before she even knows what happened.
She shoves me. “Sneaky ass.”
I turn away from her and skim the description, shooting incredulous looks over my shoulder at her as I start reading them aloud: “‘Values intelligence, knowledge, and competence. Lives in a world of ideas.’” I widen my eyes, shaking my head. “Aloof and reserved. That’s what you think of me?” I ask with mock fury.
She giggles.
“‘INTJs spend a lot of time in their own minds, and may have little interest in other people’s thoughts or feelings.’” I turn toward her. “Little interest? Self-centered? Difficulty expressing themselves?” I arch an eyebrow. “Gwenna, this is very telling. What you think of me…”
She swats my arm. “It doesn’t say self-centered. I don’t think it says that other stuff either.”
I’m only teasing, but her cheeks are red.
I give her a pointed look. “What’s yours, mmm?”