Chapter 46

Forty-Six

SARA

Around two a.m.,I awoke to a cold and empty bed.

This was starting to get annoying.

I tried not to get too upset, though. The man had done incredible things to my body all night and I was still reeling from the erotic bliss. He was insatiable when it came to sex and had managed to turn me into a bit of a minx, making me crave things I’d never imagined I could enjoy so much. Stars, I’d begged him to fuck me in the ass, something I’d never even dreamed of doing with Josh. I felt a bit embarrassed afterward when Tom explained that it was something he’d need to ease me into if it was something I truly wanted, especially given his size.

He promised to make it as pleasurable as possible and said it was something we could explore for a bit before going all the way. The idea both thrilled and scared me. But it also made my lady parts clench with the need for him to fill all of my holes with his cock. I squirmed, pressing my legs together, wishing he were next to me right now so I could straddle him.

Slightly miffed about his absence, I climbed out of bed naked and freezing, my lips trembling. I found a fleece throw on a nearby chair and draped it over my shoulders before venturing out to look for him. Spotting him lying down on his couch in the living room, his arms crossed over his shirtless chest and only wearing his gray sweatpants, I tiptoed out thinking he was asleep, but as I approached, I was startled to find he was wide awake.

“Why are you out here instead of in bed with me?” I asked.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

I sat at the end of the couch by his feet. The apartment was an ice box, cold as hell from the central air. I wrapped myself tighter in the blanket. “What’s going on?”

He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. “I told you I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, there is something we need to talk about.”

“Go on,” I said, not knowing where this conversation could possibly lead.

He pressed his lips into a thin line and took a deep breath. “This is not going to be easy, so be patient, okay?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. “Shit. I’ve been laying here for hours, thinking about what I was going to say. Now, I don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning is always a good place.”

He scratched the scruff on his jaw, breathing heavily as he gathered his thoughts. “Okay. Here goes. I was an expert marksman for the Marines when I was asked to join MARSOC as a sniper in the MSOR 3rd Battalion.”

I put a hand up. “You lost me. What is Ma…zork?”

“MARSOC is the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.”

My eyes widened and I leaned in closer, intrigued. “You mean like the Seals?”

“Seals are Navy, we are Marines.”

“That’s still special forces. Incredible.”

“It’s not like the movies. There’s nothing glamorous about what we do, and I’m not telling you because I wanna impress you with a war story.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come off that way. Look, I know it’s not easy to talk about this stuff. Like you said earlier, there’s no need for you to tell me all of your secrets.”

“You need to know this.” He walked over to the windows. “During my last tour, my scout platoon was dispatched on a special recon mission in Afghanistan. There was critical intelligence present and we needed to recover everything we could. Things were going according to plan and then…Jake spotted him.”

“Jake?”

“Right,” he said, turning to look at me over his shoulder. “I never told you. We were stationed together in Afghanistan. That’s where I met him.”

“I never realized.”

“It’s okay. We don’t talk much about it. As I was saying, our guys were moving in on our target, and that’s when Jake saw him. In an attempt to destroy what we had gone in to recover, the enemy sent in a suicide bomber.” Tom lowered his head and rubbed his face with his hands. “Those sons of bitches are constantly using innocent people.” He paused again. Anger mixing with the anguish in his eyes.

“He came out of nowhere. It should have taken me less than a second to take him out, except, as soon as I had him in my scope, my finger froze over the trigger. After years of training and executing countless missions, I’d never flinched. Never once did I ever hesitate to take out a target, but this time…” He looked away with dismay, shaking his head in disgust.

“Suicide bombers,” he went on. “You know how many of those guys we took out while stationed there? I had my orders. Shoot to kill.”

“You missed?”

“He detonated his vest before I had a chance to pull the trigger.”

“Christ.”

“He was a kid, Sara. A God damn kid. Probably thirteen. The fucking explosion killed all six of our men.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I was a sniper. My job was simple.”

“Killing an innocent life—a child for Christ’s sake. They can’t possibly train you to do that. Order you to kill children?”

“It’s a war zone out there, Sara. He was the enemy. And that bomb was gonna go off anyway. He was already dead. My job was to protect our guys from that fate. All my years in the fucking military carrying out missions like this and my conscience decided to make an appearance at the precise moment. That split-second cost six men their lives. Sons, husbands, fathers, friends. The rules of engagement are different when you are in the middle of war—behind enemy lines. I should have taken him out without the slightest hesitation. Those men would still be alive if it weren’t for my mistake.”

“Is that why you left the Marines?”

“It’s why I never went back. Shit happens. Mistakes are made and men die. But we keep forging on, fighting the war. It’s the ugly truth most people choose to ignore. I couldn’t. Those guys were my brothers. Facing their families wasn’t easy. Not when I knew I was responsible for their loss.”

“Did anyone know what really happened?”

“The aftermath of that mission debrief was a complete debacle. It wasn’t pretty. Not only did we lose six good men, we lost all that intel. It was a complete set back to everything we had gone there to do.”

“Is that why you can’t sleep?”

“I’ve never stopped reliving it. Since I’ve come home, I’ve been haunted with images from that day. Nightmares.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“In my dreams, all I hear is the bone shattering explosion and the screams of men dying, burning. Limbs scattered everywhere. Sometimes, I’m right in the thick of it, dying with them.”

Tom sat next to me on the couch, grasping my hands. “Sara, the reason I told you all of this is because after I came back from the war, I wasn’t the same. I had seen too many men die, soldiers, civilians, but the death of those six guys…it was too much. I had to take medication to help me with the trauma. And for a while, the dreams went away. I decided to stop taking the pills and focused on my new career and my new life. Things seemed to be going good for me, but just a few months ago, the dreams came back. With a vengeance. Happening almost every night. They are more real, more vivid. Visceral. Even after waking up, I can still hear the screams. I can still feel my own flesh burning.”

“You told me you had a hard time sleeping. I never guessed it was this bad.”

“When I wake up from one of these things, I’m not myself. It takes me a bit to gather my bearings, to realize I’m not still back in Afghanistan fighting a war. I can be dangerous. I can potentially hurt someone.”

“You haven’t once woken up from a nightmare like the ones you are describing while you’ve been with me.”

“Not with you, no,” he said with caution.

“Oh? Then with who?”

“Sara, please understand. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

I stood up from the couch, wrapping the blanket tighter around me. “For what to happen?”

He closed his eyes and clasped his hands together, preparing to answer. “After you left on Sunday—”

I gasped. “Oh, my God, that recent?” I paced as I ran trembling hands through my hair.

“Sara, calm down. Just listen, okay?”

I snapped my head toward him. “You’ve been sleeping with someone else?”

Tom pushed up from the couch. “What? No.”

I sat back down, my mind swirling, my body seething, anger bubbling in my gut.

He sat across from me on the ottoman. “The night you left,” he began, “I had a nightmare. It was the first one I’d had since I met you. I panicked. If I continued to have these dreams, it could potentially affect our relationship. I still had some pills left, but I couldn’t take them. Part of the reason I stopped taking them also had been because I thought I deserved to have those nightmares. I needed them to keep their memory alive. I didn’t want to ever forget. After a while of not taking them, the dreams just stopped. Until a few months ago.”

My knee bounced as I waited for him to tell me what happened after I left.

The muscles in his jaw twitched. “Look, I refused to take the pills because the side effects are not pleasant and I didn’t want to become a slave to them.”

I didn’t know what to say. I understood everything he was saying. I wanted to be sympathetic. I wanted to be a support, but I also knew there was more to his story—the part that he was working up to tell me. And knowing there was something he was going to tell me that I wasn’t going to like, had my heart ready to jump out of my chest.

“Sara, Tuesday night when we were on the phone I told you someone was at the door. I thought it was Jake.”

“I remember that.”

“It was actually Tiffany.”

My eyes bulged and I gasped as if an elephant had sat on my chest.

He put his hands on my shoulders. “Sara, nothing happened. I didn’t sleep with her.”

“What happened then?” I asked, my lips firm.

“Tiffany confessed she still had romantic feelings toward me.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I could have told you that. Oh wait, I did.”

“Look, that afternoon, Jake told Tiffany about us—”

He touched a finger to my lips to silence what he knew I was going to say. “I know, she already knew,” he continued. “But what she didn’t know was that you had been staying with me at my house. When I told you I had never brought another woman home, I meant it. She took me by surprise when I found her standing at my door.”

“What did the viper want?”

“She wanted to know why I never invited her in and why things didn’t work out between us. Why I had chosen you.”

I should have figured she’d try to get between us.

“I told her I loved you. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth,” he said, apologetically.

I dug my spiny gaze into him. “Why do you sound like it hurt you to tell her that?”

He blinked in surprise. “What? No. It’s not like that. You need to understand, Sara. I hadn’t been ready to give anyone my heart until I met you. I didn’t think I ever would fall in love with another woman. When I broke things off with her, she didn’t care who I fucked, as long as I didn’t care for them. To her, seeing me with you and realizing how deeply I fell for you…it made her feel like she was the problem.”

“But that is all ancient history. Why the hell is she stirring up trouble now? You fell in love with someone else. End of story. You don’t owe her any explanations.”

“I know. I tried to get her to understand that.”

“How did she take it?”

“I thought she had taken it well, but…”

“But what?” I asked, nearly snarling at him. “What do you mean you thought she was going to take it well? What happened?”

He sucked in a deep breath and looked away. “She drank a little too much wine.”

My breath froze. Nothing good ever follows the words…too much wine.

“That’s when I told her she could stay the night,” Tom continued slowly, expecting another explosion from me.

“She stayed the night?”

“Sara, she was too drunk to drive. But I never imagined she’d do what she pulled later that evening, after I had fallen asleep. She snuck into my room. Naked. Then rolled into bed with me.”