Catch My Fall: A Falling Novel Page 9

  I remember him, wearing his full kit. The body armor protecting his chest, the helmet secure around his head. A man in his full primal warrior state of existence. There is just something so goddamn raw about a man in his body armor and helmet and weapon.

  Not every man. But a man like Deacon? He owned it. And it's no damn wonder that my panties got wet every time I was around him.

  He clears his throat and I realize that I'm staring. Well, not entirely at him. At the memory of him.

  "Sorry." But I'm not. My brain isn't working too well right now. I'm really having a hard time thinking about anything other than his hands dropping that crate and instead drawing me closer.

  It would be fast. And hard.

  But for a few minutes, I would feel again. Maybe the sensation of being alive would linger for more than a moment. Maybe the fog of not sleeping would clear and I could make a rational decision about how to get back to centered.

  I know that's a lie. It never lasts. It would be a fast hit, a tease of something fleeting, like a drug flashing through my system then leaving me in need of another hit.

  Something broke inside me a long time ago. And a quick fuck won't bring it back or make me whole again.

  Nothing will, no matter how hard I try to keep pretending that I’ve got my shit together with yoga and meditation and ujjayi breathing.

  "You're here early," I remark when I'm confident I can speak without begging him to do terrible things to my body.

  He lifts one shoulder, then drops it. I'm struck by a sudden sense of him…waiting. Like a predator, stalking his unaware prey.

  Except that I am very much aware of him. Of everything about him.

  "Couldn't sleep; figured I'd put my insomnia to good use." He frowns then, finally noticing my yoga mat over my shoulder. "What's that for?"

  "I was going to an early morning class, only to discover they'd changed the schedule." My voice breaks. The frustration at not having a class ripped at the tattered edge of my sleep-deprived brain. I may have cried about it, but I'm not going to admit that to Deacon. I've been blown all to hell and back and I didn't cry. I'm damn sure not going to cry about missing a fucking yoga class. “Nalini is doing some remodeling or something, I think.”

  A girl has to have some pride. But it's a close thing.

  "So you decided to come here? Doesn't seem very yoga-y."

  "You'd be surprised." I turn and look around the basement, glance over my shoulder at him. "I never feel alone here."

  He frowns, watching me intently. "You're not. Not here."

  I offer a half-smile. "Sure." I have a feeling he's talking about something else. I don't know how to tell him that I just didn't want to be alone.

  And that I was hoping, praying that someone – him – would be at work this early.

  But I say nothing instead. I can't admit this to him. Can’t form the words that admit I’m not doing okay.

  That I might need some help.

  I can’t do it.

  "Well, since you're here, do you want to grab a few boxes and help? Or are you going to do yoga over there where I can pretend not to watch you?"

  That does make me smile. "That's pretty forward of you."

  He drags one hand through his hair. "Yeah, well, I'm not really known for beating around the bush."

  "I remember."

  He frowns, his hand braced on the back of his neck. He opens his mouth, then closes it and turns away. The suddenness of his movement snaps me out of my haze and I move toward an adjacent storage room, stacked with crates filled with empty bottles.

  I step into the room and roll out my mat. It's a purple Manduka. People either love them or hate them. One of the girls at my yoga studio recommended it and while it was a pain in the ass to break in, I've been a loyal devotee ever since.

  I kneel, scrolling through my phone to find the audio of the sequencing I want to attempt.

  "How long has it been since you slept?"

  He fills the narrow doorway, his broad shoulders cast in silhouette from the light behind him, his shadow falling against the concrete floor and cinderblock walls that remind me of some of the old buildings in Iraq. The ones that used to be office buildings or prisons before we moved in.

  "I'm running on about four hours of sleep over the last two days," I admit. But I can't deal right now. Not with the raw concern in his voice. I don't want to need it. Or him.

  I can't. Needing him is what got me to where I am today.

  It's not his fault. I wish there was some solution but there’s no finding my way back to Deacon. Not for anything more than a quick screw up against a wall.

  And he deserves better than that.

  Maybe I should get really hammered one night and come on to him. At least then I'd have an excuse to have his hands on me just once more and I could play it off in the morning when cold reality hit me once again.

  When the memories came.

  Because they would. They always do. They're always lurking. The pleasure so intimately tied to the fear because we were literally caught with our pants down the day our base got attacked. I’ve tried to forget it. To move on once we got back from Iraq. To fuck him and pretend that everything was fine. That the erotic power of his touch didn’t spark the nightmares I couldn’t admit to him.

  I love it when you fuck me but then I freak out after you fall asleep. The fear crashes into me, seizing the air from my lungs. Ripping the calm from my veins, replacing it with frigid cold.

  Deacon is still watching me. "I'm fine," I say finally. I set my phone down at the edge of my mat. I settle into place, crossing one leg over the top of the other.

  The deep voice of my favorite online instructor echoes against the concrete. We will open our practice today with the sound of three oms.

  One of Deacon's lips cocks to one side. "Are you going to do that?"

  I open one eye to look at him, then close it again. "Depends. Are you going to laugh at me?"

  He looks at me and I can feel heat burning through my skin. Darker than the memories of Iraq. More intense than anything I've felt since. I swallow, hesitating, wanting to cross the space between us. Needing to feel his hands on me once more.

  Unable to move from the terror that might surge if I do.

  "There are a million things I'd like to do with you, Kels. Laughing at you isn't one of them."

  He turns away before I can come up with a smartass response, leaving me hanging, suspended in that moment, unable to break free.

  Deacon

  If I thought for a second she was playing games, I'd have walked out and never looked back. But Kelsey doesn't play games. She never has.

  I have to put space between us.

  It would be easier if I didn't know what the problem was. If I hadn't been there when she got blown up, if I hadn't been six months behind her when we'd come home.

  It would be so much easier if I could rail at the world and be pissed off at her for playing stupid games.

  I hesitate near the wooden rack of expensive whiskey, waiting, hoping that she'll find the courage to make the next move. That maybe she'll step off that mat and span the gap between us. But there is only the echo of her recorded yoga class greeting my fervent hope.

  I know she's not playing games.

  Kelsey is too straightforward for that but I can't stand here and pretend that it doesn't hurt. That there are no ties of blood and sex and violence that bind us together anymore.

  I steal a glance back at her. Through the doorway I can see she's moving, her hands and feet spread, her ass in those glorious leggings pressed into the air.

  I swallow. Hard.

  There are a million things I can imagine doing to her in that position. And yes, I know what downward facing dog is. I've been to a yoga class.

  One, and it was on a dare. I've never gone back, either. The om chant at the end crawled up my spine and vibrated in my chest. I had the worst fucking nightmare that night, too. It could have been a coincidence but I never went
back.

  But watching her now? Yeah, I really kind of wish I had spent more time learning the language, learning the words that send her body moving as a single fluid unit.

  I have the sudden urge to move with her, to feel her body arch and bend against mine, to feel the slick slide of her skin against mine.

  I'm a starving man, dying for a taste, a single bite.

  But I can't. Because I won't take from her. Not unless she lets me. Unless she says the words. Explicitly. Clearly.

  And one hundred percent sober, which I am reasonably certain she may rarely be.

  She's not the same Kelsey I went to war with.

  I don't think anyone really ever entirely comes home from war. Some of us were already fucked up before we went. The scars on my chest are hidden now. Sometimes I even forget about them beneath the ink.

  She asked me about them once. On one of the few nights we managed to sneak into my trailer or hers and actually spend a few hours together instead of stealing a quickie in a bunker.

  I told her about the car accident my junior year of high school. Of waking up upside down, suspended by my seatbelt, glass embedded in my skin.

  I told her about being alone in a car that had three of us in it before I fell asleep as we drove away from the party.

  About the crow that had stared back at me from the shattered window and haunted me for years.

  Once I drew him into my skin, I stopped thinking about him. About that night. I told myself I was fine. That there was nothing left to unpack with that accident.

  But Kels…there's something more. She's fighting so hard to hold on to normal, she doesn't even realize how close to the edge she is. I've been watching.

  I know she's lying about how much she's not sleeping. I can't blame her. I don't admit it when I don’t sleep, either.

  I want to help. I fucking need to.

  Because I failed her so badly when we were in Iraq when she needed me most.

  I glance over at the small space, watching her lift her chest into the air, her skin slick despite the cool damp air around us. She flows again, lifting one leg this time and arching it until she looks open. Ripe.

  I turn away from the vision of her body moving in slow, flowing rhythm, closing my eyes and leaning my forehead against the wooden shelf, wishing. Regretting every choice I've made up until this point with her.

  Wishing I could fix it.

  Needing. Needing her touch. Wishing she would walk up behind me and press her body to my back, feeling her soft in places I am not. Her hands would slide around my hips, slipping beneath my shirt. Her hand would slip into my pants, finding me, squeezing me. I know exactly how good she'd feel, her fingers fisted around me.

  I want this fantasy. I want her hands on my body. Her palm stroking me, her breath moving with mine.

  I want this to be fucking reality. I swear beneath my breath and stalk off, needing to get away from her before she catches me acting like a twelve-year-old boy.

  My thoughts for her are decidedly not childish.

  The sun is sliding over the old tobacco factory east of The Pint as I step into the daylight. I drag my phone out, needing a distraction from the painful erection in my pants. I refuse to deal with it. I can't. It feels wrong, fantasizing about her when she clearly wants nothing to do with me.

  I stalk away from The Pint, putting space between me and the woman who haunts my sleep. I can't do this anymore. It's been months since she moved back into my life. I've been patient, waiting, hoping she would reach out before she crashed. And every day I've watched her get closer to the edge.

  I can't do this anymore. I won't.

  I stood by as she self-destructed once before.

  I won't do it again.

  I need a plan. A war game, if you will.

  And I suppose that first involves defining what winning would look like.

  What do I want? I want Kelsey. I want to hold her while she sleeps. I want to be there when the nightmares come. I want her to forgive herself for the sins she couldn't control.

  I want to atone for my own.

  I want to help her put the war behind her. To finally come home from the war.

  And maybe then, I can, too.

  I walk into 1984 for the second time this morning. I love the smell of a coffee shop and books. My old first sergeant always told me I was a fucking nerd. I grin, thinking of First Sarn't Sorren. Of course, he meant it with such love.

  He was such a rough-around-the-edges son of a bitch. But he loved us.

  It dawns on me then that I'm a fucking dumbass.

  And I pick up my phone and fire off a text.

  Hoping like hell that I can figure out how to unfuck things with Kelsey.

  10

  Deacon

  "What's up, shit for brains?"

  I grin as First Sarn't Sorren's greeting burns down my spine. The phone hasn't even rung once on my end before he’s picked up. "Good to hear your voice, First Sarn't."

  "Yeah, well, keep your panties on. How's civilian life treating you?"

  "I'm not sure," I admit.

  "What do you mean, you're not sure? You either like it or you’re regretting your life choices. Which is it?"

  I rock back in my chair, needing a hell of a lot more than coffee for this conversation so early in the morning. And it’s an hour earlier back at Hood. But as a senior NCO, First Sarn't Sorren is already at work. Probably has been for hours. Because that's just how we were wired.

  "It's good, I guess. I'm working at this place in Durham. A bar. The owner does a lot for vets in the area."

  "Yeah? Sounds like the kind of place I need to tell my daughter to avoid when she comes out there for college next year."

  I grin, imagining him dropping his kid off at college. "Yeah, well, we have a couple of guys who need your size twelves up their ass, that's for sure."

  He makes a noise. "I've got plenty of those around here." He clears his throat roughly. "So, what's up with Sarn't Ryder?"

  "She pulled up here a couple of months ago."

  "I figured that out already, dickhead," he grumbles.

  God, I love this man. Anyone else would be terrified of him but I know him. I've bled downrange with him.

  He's got a warrior's soul and… Jesus, I've been around college kids too damn much if I'm thinking about him like that.

  I opt not to tell him that.

  "She's not sleeping. She won’t admit it. She seems stressed the fuck out and I don't know how to reach her."

  He's silent for a long moment. I glance at the screen to make sure he hasn't hung up on me. "Can you get her to the VA?"

  I make a rude sound. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

  "Probably not."

  "What do I do? I don't want her to end up as just another statistic but she won't fucking talk to me. Or anyone, for that matter. At least not that I know of."

  "No family, right?"

  "Not that I know of. We were her family."

  He sighs hard. "Look, I'll be out there next week for a campus visit with my daughter and training down at Fort Bragg. Want me to come up?"

  I try to imagine what Kelsey's reaction would be if First Sarn't Sorren walked into The Pint. I have a hard time picturing it but I imagine it would have to be good. She'd do anything for him. Just like I would. "Yeah, I think that would be good, actually." I frown into the phone. "What are you doing at Bragg?"

  "Some stupid ass school the Army is sending me to in order to be a sergeant major."

  "No shit? Wait, I thought the Sergeants Major Academy was out at Fort Bliss."

  "It is. This is something different. Some resilience bullshit with the Special Ops community there."

  I laugh. "Holy shit, they're putting you in charge of resiliency? That's like putting a porcupine in charge of free hugs at the petting zoo."

  "Fuck you and the civilian horse you rode in on," he says roughly.

  I'm still grinning. God, but it's good to talk to him. "Yeah well, for wh
at it's worth, I think you'd do a damn good job. The battalion is lucky you're getting promoted. It'll keep the officers out of trouble, if nothing else."

  He laughs. "You have no idea how much of my job that already is."

  "We've got a good one here. The guy I was telling you about? The one who owns the bar? Believe it or not, he's a West Pointer, too. Imagine that."

  First Sarn't makes a noise. "Some really great people come out of West Point."

  "Yeah, I know. It's only about ten percent who are raging dickbags." Exhibit A: Caleb the Destroyer.

  "And on that, we agree. Anyway. With Ryder, just be there for her, you know? Sometimes, you have to force your way into these things. Especially when someone doesn't know how to ask for help."

  I know the feeling all too well. My throat closes off. My eyes burn. "How do you do it? How do you tell someone that what we did matters? When nothing we did over there matters?"

  He doesn't answer for a long moment. When he finally speaks he says, "You can't judge things the way they are now. When we left, things were getting better. When I got back, our counterparts were glad to see us." He clears his throat roughly. "You have to believe that what we do matters. In the moment. Not down the road. Not looking back on it. In that moment."

  "Do you believe that?" My voice is rough. It burns, deep inside my chest, an ache that will never heal.

  "I have to," he says simply.

  That's not encouraging. What happens when we stop believing in what we've done? What happens when we see the futility of it all? The pointlessness when the country we lied to ourselves about tears itself apart because of what we did? The senseless loss of life for a war that none of us believed in when we went and most of us question when we come home?

  "I wish I still did," I say quietly.

  "I can't help you with that. But I'll tell you this much. Dwelling on how pointless everything was is a fool’s journey. We can't control the larger mission. All we can do is take care of those around us. The bigger picture stuff? You're right—none of that matters. Did you take care of your brothers and sisters around you? Did you do your best to bring everyone home? That's the only thing that matters."