Chapter 18

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

It hadn’t even been a full week since Slate had left, but to Ashlyn, it felt like a year. She was looking forward to the sleepover tomorrow, as she desperately needed to talk about how she was feeling with her friends.

She wasn’t sure she could handle this. She’d thought she could. Thought Slate’s job wouldn’t be a big deal. He’d go off to save the world and she’d carry on like usual while he was away. But she wasn’t dealing well with knowing he was in danger. She had no idea how the others managed to keep their shit together. Ashlyn was failing at this whole girlfriend thing, and she hated that she was so weak.

Shewasn’t the one in danger, Slate was. So why was she so on edge? And everyone she came into contact with seemed to feed off her negative energy. She got into a shouting match with a man at the grocery store because he had forty-nine items in the express lane, instead of twelve or less, like the sign stated. She flipped off a woman on the interstate who’d cut in front of her, and Ashlyn was always levelheaded behind the wheel.

The last straw was when she’d visited James. He’d seemed upset, but when he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, Ashlyn had simply given up, turned around and left. Hadn’t tried harder to convince him to talk to her, had just left his house without saying much more than, “See you next week.”

It wasn’t like her. Ashlyn felt horrible for how she’d treated him, and she knew she had to get a handle on her emotions.

She’d just gotten home after work and was standing in front of her microwave, waiting for her frozen meal to be done, when her phone rang. Ashlyn practically leaped on her phone, hoping to see Slate’s name on the screen.

She nearly screamed in joy when she saw it was him.

“Slate!” she exclaimed when she answered.

“Hey, babe.” He sounded exhausted.

“Are you back?”

“Almost.”

“Are you okay?” Ashlyn asked. “You sound weird.”

“Just gonna be blunt. I got hurt. But I’m okay.”

“Hurt? How? Where?”

“Nothing major. Got my marbles knocked loose in my head. Didn’t get out of a building before it was blown up around me.”

Ashlyn could tell he was trying to make a joke, but she wasn’t finding any of his words amusing. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, made an error in judgement. I basically rode the stairs falling down beneath me, except my helmet came off and I hit my head on something. The guys dug me out and got me back to base. When I woke up, I had a hell of a headache.”

Ashlyn couldn’t breathe. When he woke up? That meant he’d been knocked unconscious. “But you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Got a concussion. Docs wanted to fly me to Germany, but there was nowhere I wanted to recover more than my own place. So they let me come home.”

Ashlyn didn’t know how the military worked, but she had a feeling it wasn’t quite as easy to refuse treatment when you were a Navy SEAL as it was when you were a civilian. But at the moment, she was more concerned with how Slate was doing than how he’d convinced a doctor to let him fly home with a concussion.

Ashlyn started to move toward her bedroom. When she got home, she’d immediately changed into a T-shirt of Slate’s that she’d been sleeping in, which was all she currently wore.

“I’m gonna change so I can meet you at your house,” she told him.

“No.”

The single word froze Ashlyn in her tracks in the middle of her hallway. “What?”

“I’m exhausted, babe. And Mustang is gonna stay with me. I’ll call you when I get up tomorrow morning.”

If Mustang was going to be at Slate’s house, that meant Elodie would probably be there too. Slate was all right with his friend and his wife being there…but not her? That hurt more than she thought it would.

In fact, the pain she felt at that moment was so sharp, so deep, she actually brought a hand up to her chest to try to contain it.

“I can look after you,” she said, in a voice that was weaker than she wanted it to be. “Wake you up every hour or so, that’s what you do for someone who has a concussion, right?”

“Mustang’s got this,” he told her. “We’re pretty used to looking after each other when we get banged up. I called because I figured you’d hear from the others that we were back. Didn’t want you to worry about me.”

Not worry about him. Right.

“Okay,” she said after a moment or two. What else could she say? She could beg him to let her come over, but that felt…desperate. And if he didn’t want to see her, then she wasn’t going to force herself on him.

“Gotta go. Mustang’s giving me the evil eye. Mr. Doctor has been a pain in my ass with all his ‘don’t do this,’ and ‘you can’t do that.’ I’ll talk to you tomorrow, babe. It’s good to be home.”

“Yeah. Okay. Glad you’re all right.”

“Later.”

“Bye.”

As soon as she clicked off the phone, Ashlyn’s shaky legs gave out and she sank to the floor in her hallway. Then she dropped to her side, where she curled into a little ball.

Slate had been hurt on a mission—and he didn’t want her to take care of him.

Like a bolt of lightning crashing through the roof of her apartment, Ashlyn realized that she loved him.

She hadn’t meant for it to happen. He’d just snuck under her radar. She’d wanted this to be a casual thing…and it was anything but casual for her.

But apparently, he was perfectly happy with the status quo.

If he loved her, even just a little, wouldn’t he be eager to see her? Wouldn’t he want her at his side when he was recuperating? Understand that she needed to be with him, to see for herself that he was okay?

And Ashlyn couldn’t even be mad at Slate. He’d done exactly as she asked…kept things easy and casual. Friends with benefits. Wasn’t that what she’d said she wanted?

Whimpering, she curled into herself tighter. She was an idiot. So stupid. She should’ve known she couldn’t do casual. She never had in the past. Had always jumped into relationships head first. But no rejection had ever hurt this badly before.

How long she lay in the middle of her hallway, Ashlyn didn’t know. Eventually, she got herself up and went into her bedroom. She knew she should go throw away the frozen meal she’d nuked, but she’d deal with it tomorrow. All she wanted to do right now was sleep. She couldn’t even cry any more.

She knew what she had to do now. She needed to slowly pull back from her relationship with Slate. Needed to protect what was left of her broken heart. And she’d do what she could to stay friends with him, even though it would hurt like hell.

For tonight, though, she’d mourn the loss of what they’d never have.

* * *

Slate did his best to hide the hammering in his skull from Mustang. If his friend knew how much pain he was in, he’d drag his ass to the base hospital. But the only place Slate wanted to be was in his own bed.

The RPG that had taken out the house, that was meant to kill his entire team, had somehow miraculously only done half its job. He had no idea what happened to the boy he’d tried to save. Mustang and Midas said they hadn’t seen him when they’d dug Slate out of the rubble. His helmet had been crushed by the collapse, forced off his head at some point, but he’d somehow ridden the debris when the house exploded, instead of being killed.

Jag and Pid had carried his passed-out ass back to the extraction point, and when he woke up, he was lying on a table in the base hospital. The doctors hadn’t been happy in the least when he’d insisted on getting up. And they really hadn’t been thrilled when he’d insisted Mustang get clearance for him to go home to recuperate.

He’d been lucky, and Slate knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. He’d felt like shit but wanted to get the hell out of the country. He was trying to keep his pain from his teammates, though Slate had a feeling they knew exactly how awful he felt. Every muscle in his body hurt. His head throbbed. He was nauseous. His torso was covered in dark purple bruises, but miraculously the scans hadn’t shown any internal bleeding.

It was a fucking miracle he hadn’t been crushed beneath the rubble of that brick building.

Pid said the RPG hadn’t made a direct impact. In fact, whoever was operating it had almost missed the house altogether. It had skimmed the far side of the building, making the bricks kind of collapse in on themselves rather than shooting in all directions.

He was sitting between Jag and Pid on the plane, and Slate could feel their worried gazes on him. It was taking all his concentration to stay conscious.

Vaguely, he realized the plane was descending. They would land within minutes. In the back of his fuzzy brain, it occurred to him that he could probably get cell reception even though they weren’t on the ground yet. He pulled out his phone and dialed a familiar number.

A minute or two later, Slate hung up and closed his eyes just as the plane touched down.

“You good?” Jag asked from next to him.

“Yeah,” Slate said softly, even though the pressure in his head was threatening to make him barf all over his lap at any second.

“Are you sure you made the right decision?”

Slate couldn’t think straight. What decision was Jag talking about? But instead of asking, he just slurred, “Yeah.”

His friend harumphed, obviously not pleased with his answer. Slate didn’t care. All he could think about was lying down. He had to get off the plane, walk to Mustang’s car, and hopefully get to his bed before doing something that would make Mustang drive him straight to the emergency room.

Finally, an hour later, Slate gingerly sat on the side of his bed. The trip home had been hell. And without Mustang there to help him into his house, he never would’ve made it.

“You need to go to the hospital, Slate,” he said quietly now, obviously knowing how badly his friend’s head hurt.

“No. I just need to lay down,” Slate told him. “Can you help me find the pills the doc gave me for pain?” he asked. He’d taken one before he’d gotten on the plane, and it had promptly knocked him out for most of the flight. Slate didn’t like how the medicine made him feel, but at this point, he’d prefer to be unconscious than endure the pain he was going through at the moment.

Mustang was right. He probably should’ve gone to the hospital, but he was home now, and he wasn’t going anywhere. If he still felt this terrible tomorrow, he’d concede and go.

His friend left the room and came back with Slate’s duffle bag. “You care if Elodie comes over?” Mustang asked as he dug into a side pocket of the bag.

“No.”

Slate barely knew what Mustang was talking about. The throbbing in his head seemed to match his heartbeat. He felt as if he was a hundred and twenty years old. His muscles hurt. His joints hurt. Hell, his fucking bones hurt.

“Here,” Mustang said. “Give me your hand.”

Slate held it out and closed his eyes.

“Give me a second to get some water,” Mustang said, but Slate ignored him. He popped the two pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry. Then he slowly shifted his body up and onto his mattress, and sighed in relief as he finally lay flat on his back.

“Shit,” Mustang swore, but Slate didn’t open his eyes.

He felt his friend working on unlacing his boots, but he didn’t have the strength to thank him as he removed them.

“If you don’t look like you’re two seconds from turning into a fucking zombie in the morning, I’m dragging your ass to the hospital whether you like it or not,” Mustang said in a low tone.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Mustang asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’ll be in here waking your ass up on the hour, every hour, so don’t bite my head off when I do it.”

“I won’t,” Slate whispered.

He heard fabric rustling and figured Mustang was headed for the door.

“Mustang?” Slate said before his friend left. “Thank you. Not just for tonight, but for getting me out of there.”

“You would’ve done the same for me,” his team leader said.

“Damn straight. SEALs don’t leave a SEAL behind,” Slate said.

“Exactly. See you in an hour.”

Slate wasn’t looking forward to being woken up repeatedly, but knew it had to be done. For now, he forgot about everything but closing his eyes and letting the medicine he’d taken do its job.

* * *

The next morning, Slate was better. Marginally.

Mustang had done exactly as he promised, had woken Slate up once an hour throughout the night. It meant both men were exhausted the next morning, since neither got any uninterrupted sleep.

Slate slept off and on throughout the day on Saturday, barely aware of the comings and goings of Mustang and Elodie. He ate whenever Elodie stuffed something in his hand, drank when Mustang ordered him to, but generally slept through the day, and again Saturday night.

By the time Sunday came around, Slate was feeling much more like himself. He refused the pill Elodie tried to convince him to take that morning and forced himself to get up, shower, and put on some clean clothes.

The last forty-eight hours were pretty much a blur. Slate barely remembered arriving at his house and had no recollection of any conversations he might’ve had with Elodie or Mustang.

He slowly wandered out of his room, noticing that it was past noon. The sun was bright in the sky, and he wasn’t all that surprised to see Mustang sitting on his couch.

He was surprised to see Midas and Aleck there as well. Elodie was nowhere to be seen. She could be up on his rooftop deck, but Slate doubted it.

“Hey,” he said as he entered his living room.

“Holy hell, you look like shit,” Midas said.

“Thanks a lot,” Slate said. “Thought I’d go for a ten-mile run this morning, you know, to stretch my muscles.”

His friends stared at him in disbelief.

“Shit, I’m kidding. Jeez,” he said with a small shake of his head. Slate wandered into his kitchen and realized he was starving. He didn’t remember when or what he last ate, all he knew was that he would eat just about anything right that second.

“Go sit down,” Aleck ordered, coming up behind him. “I’ll make you some eggs and a protein shake.”

Both sounded awesome, and Mustang turned to go join his other teammates. Then a memory niggled at his brain, and he stopped in his tracks. “Fuck. Ashlyn. Where’s my phone?”

“Sit,” Aleck ordered. “Before you fall on your face.”

Slate ignored him. “Where’s my fucking phone?” he asked again.

“I’ve got it,” Mustang said, coming up next to him. But instead of handing him the phone, he put his hand on Slate’s shoulder. “Sit down. You can call Ashlyn in a minute.”

A feeling of dread descended. “What’s wrong?”

“Come. Sit. Down,” Mustang repeated, making it clear he wasn’t fucking around. “We’ll talk, then you can call Ash.”

“Is she okay?” Slate asked as he let his friend lead him toward the couch.

Looking at Midas for any kind of clue about what the fuck was going on only made Slate more anxious. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was a look of pity on his friend’s face.

Shit shit shit!

“Okay, so…what do you remember from the moments before the RPG hit?” Mustang asked.

Slate took a deep breath. “Yelling at you guys to get the hell out, turning back to grab the kid. I couldn’t in good conscience leave him there.”

“Even though he was the one who gave the signal to blow the house?” Midas asked.

“Yeah. It was fucking stupid, I know,” Slate said. “But he was a kid. What, seven or eight?”

“A kid raised to hate Americans and with the ideology that it’s better to die for the Taliban than to live as a coward,” Mustang added.

Slate pressed his lips together. His team leader was right, but Slate knew if he had to do it all over again, he probably would’ve done things exactly the same.

“Right, moving on. Then what?” Mustang asked.

“Waking up in the clinic. Arguing with the doctor about going to Germany. Bits and pieces here and there about the flight. Concentrating on getting here. On lying down. Then you and Elodie prodding me awake, feeding me. That’s about it.”

Midas and Mustang shared a look that Slate did not like.

“What am I missing?” Slate asked.

“I talked to Pid. He was sitting next to you on the plane, making sure you kept breathing, shit like that,” Mustang said.

Slate winced. He should’ve stayed in the base clinic longer. Should’ve gone to Germany. He hated the position he’d put his friends in. But Mustang was still talking, so he didn’t have time to dwell.

“He said that as soon as the plane started to descend, you pulled out your phone and called Ashlyn.”

Slate stiffened. He’d called Ash? Fuck. He didn’t remember that at all. She must’ve been freaking out. “What’d I say to her?” He hated that he had to ask, but his friends already understood he didn’t remember much of the last two days.

“Pid said that you told her you were back, or almost back, and that you’d been hurt, but were okay. Said you were going home, that I’d be looking after you, and you’d talk to her later.”

Slate waited, but when Mustang didn’t continue, he mentally sighed in relief. That didn’t sound so bad. The way his friends were acting, he thought maybe he’d told Ashlyn he never wanted to see her again or something.

Aleck walked into the room and braced his hands on the back of the couch. “He doesn’t get it,” he said to nobody in particular.

“If you’d all quit beating around the fucking bush and just spit out what the hell you think I said that was so bad, maybe we can get this over with so I can call my girlfriend,” Slate seethed. The throbbing in his head was back, but he ignored it.

“You told your girlfriend you’d been hurt on a mission. That you had a concussion. And that Mustang would be looking out for you,” Midas repeated. “From what Pid understood from your side of the conversation, she volunteered to come over and nurse you back to health, and you said no. That you’d call her tomorrow…which, by the way, was yesterday. And in case it’s escaped your notice, you didn’t call her. You were knocked the fuck out because your brains had been scrambled in your skull, and you were too stubborn to get the proper care for yourself.”

Slate stared at his friend. Over the years, he and his teammates had gotten into plenty of arguments, but he couldn’t remember ever hearing any of them sounding as pissed at him as Midas was at the moment.

“I tried to call her, hoping to explain, but she didn’t answer. You and Ashlyn might only be fuck buddies, but that was a shitty way to treat her,” Midas finished.

Slate clenched his hands into fists. He didn’t like Ashlyn being referred to that way.

“If I had been hurt, and I’d called Elodie and told her Jag would be looking after me, how do you think that would make her feel?” Mustang asked in a far more mild tone. “And don’t give me any bullshit about us being married either,” he continued.

“She hasn’t called,” Midas informed Slate. “She hasn’t texted Lexie. As far as we know, she hasn’t gotten in touch with anyone. Probably because her boyfriend, who she’d been friends with for months before the change in relationship status, was deployed, and he called to tell her he was hurt but that no, he didn’t want her to come see him. That his friend would be there for him instead.”

“And she had to know that Elodie wasn’t going to sit at home and wait for me,” Mustang added quietly. “That she would rush over here to see me…and thus would help take care of you.”

Slate swallowed hard and closed his eyes. Fuck.

“He’s finally getting it,” Midas sighed.

Slate opened his eyes and met Midas’s gaze. “Give me my phone.”

“Slate, most of us have tried to call her. To explain that you made light of your injuries and what happened, but she’s been…evasive.” Midas spoke far more gently now.

“If I have to ask one more time for someone to give me my fucking phone, I’m not gonna be happy,” Slate said between clenched teeth. He wasn’t happy now, but that was beside the point.

Mustang held out Slate’s cell phone.

He leaned forward and grabbed it. Slate immediately saw a whole string of text notifications from the last day and a half. Lexie, Kenna, Monica, Carly, his other teammates…hell, even Baker wanted to know if he was all right.

There was one from Ashlyn. Just one. And it was short and impersonal, saying that she hoped he was feeling better.

Swallowing hard, he clicked on Ashlyn’s name. He stood up and walked back toward his bedroom. He loved his friends, but the last thing he wanted was them eavesdropping on this conversation.

Slate wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or pissed when Ashlyn didn’t answer. The sound of her voice on her voice mail made him long to see her even more. After the beep sounded, Slate left a message. “It’s me, Ash. I need to talk to you. Please call me back as soon as you get this.”

He hung up and paced restlessly back and forth across his room. He needed to fix this. He’d fucked up. Yes, he’d been out of his mind with pain and didn’t even remember much that happened after he’d hit his head, but if Ashlyn had been injured, he’d be going crazy with worry for her. The fact that she hadn’t stormed his castle, so to speak, let Slate know just how upset she was.

He clicked on her name once more and quickly typed out a text.

Slate: Hey, I need to talk to you. See you. Will you come by?

He waited a full minute, but the gray check mark didn’t turn green, meaning she hadn’t opened his message.

Worried now, Slate sent another text.

Slate: I fucked up. It’s not an excuse, but I had a concussion. I don’t remember calling you. Please let me know you’re all right, if nothing else.

Nothing. No three dots telling him she was responding to his text and no indication that she’d even read it.

Panicking, thinking the worst, Slate finally remembered the tracking app. He could see where she was. She might be at home, injured or sick with a migraine again, and not able to get to the phone. He clicked on the app…and couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing at first.

Ashlyn wasn’t home. If the app was correct, she was currently down in Waikiki at a place called Arnold’s Beach Bar. It wasn’t far from Duke’s.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Ashlyn was at a bar? What the absolute fuck was going on?

Slate: If you don’t answer me and let me know that you’re okay, I’m gonna head down to Arnold’s to check for myself that it’s actually you down there, and not someone who’s kidnapped you and stolen your phone and is using your credit cards to get shitfaced.

He held his breath, praying that she answered, but at the same time knowing if she did, it meant she was avoiding him…which would suck.

The gray check marks flicked to green on his screen and the three dots he’d prayed to see finally appeared.

Shit.

Ashlyn: I’m fine. I hope you’re feeling better.

The words were polite but distant. And Slate wanted to fucking throw his phone across the room. Goose bumps broke out on his arms.

He wasn’t ready to lose her.

Slate: What are you doing at a bar?

Ashlyn: Having lunch with a friend.

Every muscle in Slate’s body froze as he stared down at the words on his screen. She was out to lunch while he was recuperating from almost dying? Yes, he’d apparently told her not to come over, but still. He wasn’t being dramatic by thinking he could’ve been killed. In fact, he knew how close he’d come to being blown into a thousand pieces in that house. It was a miracle that he was still alive and kicking.

And his girlfriend was in a bar? With a “friend”? Her friends were his friends, and he was pretty damn sure she wasn’t out with Elodie, Lexie, or any of the others.

Was she out with a guy?

The thought made him nauseous.

And furious.

And disappointed.

And insanely fucking jealous.

In a moment of blazing clarity…Slate realized he’d been kidding himself for the last three months.

He’d agreed to Ashlyn’s ridiculous friends-with-benefits suggestion because he wanted her any way he could get her. Maybe at first he’d done his best to not let her get under his skin, keeping their relationship mostly about sex, not staying the night, calling only periodically…but as the weeks passed, things had changed. She was his.

His, dammit! And he wasn’t going to let this misunderstanding—okay, his colossal fuck-up—break them apart.

Casual be damned. There wasn’t a single casual thing about their relationship. And he was going to make sure Ashlyn knew it. He was changing things up, big time, and she was just going to have to accept it.

He was being irrational, but Slate didn’t give a shit.

He loved Ashlyn Taylor. She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. Smart and sexy and kind and loyal. She was his. Just as he was hers.

Thinking back over the last month or so, Slate had no doubt that Ashlyn loved him just as much. They were both desperately ignoring what was right under their noses.

She was hurt right now, and he couldn’t blame her, but if she thought she could go out with another guy and just forget about him that easily, she was kidding herself.

Slate didn’t bother responding to her message. He was too mad. Too jealous. Too upset. Hurting too badly. Besides, he wasn’t going to say what he needed to say in a text. He wanted to be face-to-face in order to apologize properly. He needed to be able to read her expression, to see if his unintentionally callous actions had destroyed everything they’d been building for the last year.

Determination rising within him, Slate headed back out to his living room.

Mustang, Midas, and Aleck all turned their heads to look at him when he appeared.

“I need someone to drive me to Ashlyn’s house.”

Mustang grinned slowly.

Midas nodded in approval.

Aleck said, “Not until you eat something.”

The last thing Slate wanted to do was eat, but he also didn’t want to fall flat on his face when he was convincing Ashlyn to forgive him for being an inconsiderate asshole…and when he told her that he wanted to renegotiate the terms of their relationship.

Clicking on the app in his phone, Slate saw that Ashlyn was still in Waikiki at that fucking bar. He had time to eat. He nodded at Aleck.