Chapter Eight

As winter thaws into a chilly wet spring, I take longer and longer bikes rides. It's become my habit to go to the intersection by the beach and explore the bike paths along the residential neighborhoods. Looking for a lawn full of flags.

Sometimes when I pass one of those cliffs I think about aiming the bike and pedaling as fast as I can and not turning. The cheerful little voice in my head screams: Yes! You can do it. The end of suffering is near. There's the finish line. Show Laur you have the determination to die!

And there's another voice in my head, a collected scoff that sounds remarkably like Laur. Why the fuck would you do that? Don't be so dumb. Go home, eat some ice cream, and start over again with someone new. You'll do better next time.

Since the meaner voice seems like better advice I would go home.

Still, in less than a month, I find it.

That's right--939 Cypress.

At first, I'm hesitant. There's no name on the mailbox. No mail in the mailbox. But that border of flags, lining his perfectly manicured lawn like a fence. The roofs of the neighbors on the next street down. The view of the ocean in the distance.

I have found his house.

Now, what would a sane person do?

Not look for his house in the first place. Not be in love with a man who has the emotional range of a clam, fucks you like a prescribed dopamine rush, and refuses to have a real conversation except on special occasions.

Certainly, a sane person wouldn't be parking his bike and walking up to the front door.

Well, like I said, I'm not exactly sane.

He draws the curtains after dark, like there's some secret inside suburbia. I'm certain he'll see me on my way to the door. And probably yell at me.

He has no welcome mat. No fake plant. No place where he might put his spare key. There's a smaller window off the porch. Not curtained like the bay window, and there's Laur.

As soon as I see him, I know I should not be seeing him. He's so unguarded, so cozy and relaxed. Fluffy red bathrobe, hair wet from a recent shower, a sturdy metal cane, and glasses thick as Coke bottles. The book in his hands is a pastel-covered, Achieve Your Best Self Through Kale and Zen guide.

Oh, and he's missing his fucking eye. There's a concave darkness not terribly hidden by a drooping eyelid. He looks like some twisted Halloween version of a 1950's father.

Run away.

My hand is already on the doorknob. But rather than rattling, the knob turns.

Oh, hell! How did a man this paranoid not lock his door?

"Laur, hey, it's me?"

"Chard?" He sounds genuinely surprised, then swears. "Fuck!"

He rises and stumbles, trying to get to another room. But I've already entered the living room. The book is nowhere to be seen, and he's halfway to the hallway, his left hand balled into a fist to hide his absent eye.

"I didn't know you wore a contact." It's weird to catch him off-guard and I cover by acting confident, leaning in the arch between the kitchen and the living room, smirking as he flounders toward his bedroom.

Which he stops doing immediately. He lowers his hand, embarrassed to be caught hiding. "What the fuck are you doing here? Get out of my house!"

"Before you say something mean, I'm sorry I surprised you." I hold up my hands the way you do when greeting a frightened dog. "I just didn't have your phone number or any way to reach you."

"Yeah? Because I never gave you a way to reach me. It was a mistake bringing you here."

When I don't answer—because how do you answer that?—his good eye swivels away from me and toward his bedroom.

"If you're not comfortable, I don't mind if you—"

"I'm plenty comfortable in my own house," Laur says. "What I'm not comfortable with is you just showing up. Out of fucking nowhere."

"Out of nowhere? Really?" I resist. "We've been a thing for over six months, Laur. I wanted to see you."

"You piece of shit."

His aggression startles me because I meant, I wanted to have a conversation, to have you tell me to my face why you determined not to be part of my life.

Then I realize what he heard was, "I wanted to surprise you and see your broken legs, your eyeless head, you ugly freak."

When I'm at my low, I'm apathetic, dead inside, helpless. When he's at his lowest—

He hovers nearer to it than I do. He's triggered by the slightest cringe from a stranger at the bank, a gawking child in the supermarket, the way a beautiful stranger in a bar hits on him. The depths of his self-loathing come when he feels less than human. And right now, without his glass eye, without his gloves, without the accessories that cover his brokenness, he feels his shame. And he feels it as rage.

I say lamely, "I didn't think this through."

"You sure fucking didn't." Laur points at the door. "Now get the fuck out."

If I do, I'll never come back. "Laur, if you're gonna abandon me, I have a right to—"

"You have no rights," he scoffs. "Not here. Not with me."

I stare helplessly, my mouth opening, but no words coming out.

He rages nearer. "You think you can just walk up to me and offer sex like you're God's damned gift to humanity. Well, guess what, buddy? I don't think you are. I've seen plenty of men as built and goddamn pretty as you get blown to fuckin' bits or torn up with barbed wire. Fuck. I've been the one placing the bombs and pulling the wire. You see a body different when you know how to take it apart. Your beauty isn't worth shit to me."

His single eye glowers wide, his fists clenched, like he wants to use them.

When I don't immediately crumble, it makes him furious. "So, what else you got, Chard? Your balanced mental state? Your attentive and loyal personality?"

He doesn't look away but shakes his head as if saying no to the words that have already passed his lips. But he is also somehow relieved, as if something has been decided. He's said the worst things he could, and there's no taking them back.

I swallow hard, having trouble facing this man. He's not the same person who watched a children's film with a depressed man. Was he taking his meds?

At a complete loss, I try, "So, you're really angry, and I think we should talk about it?"

He sneers. "I do talk about it. The whole thing. With my VA group. With my psychiatrist. I see no reason to discuss the things that make me a man with a cum-rag like you."

Okay, maybe he's not done with the worst things he can say. I don't dare answer. What other abuse can he hurl at me, and how long can I stand it?

He's trying to frighten me off, to chase me out.

But if I can just stand here until he exhausts his meanness…

"Will you just go away!" Unprompted by anything— anything from me—Laur attacks.

When his hands connect with my chest to roughly shove me away, some wires get crossed. My body misreads the signals and I'm faintly aware I should not be getting hard.

Laur is my lover, after all, and he's always been rough with me.

It surprises both of us when I grab his wrists on the second shove.

Laur— I'm reminded— is a little guy. He lurches in my grip and cannot get free. The man hurls curses at me. Nothing special. A garden variety of "son of a bitch" and "piece of shit" and variants on the theme. He barely noticed it, but he's at my mercy.

I test this theory by pushing his arms behind his back and pulling him toward me. He moves stiffly, too brittle to resist and surprised to find himself moving against his will.

I hold both his wrists in one hand and look down at his face. What will he do? He jostles and wrenches. It's a strain on my grip, but he's not going anywhere. When his flailing makes his robe flap open, I yank it with my free hand to help it along.

"What the actual fuck, Chard?" He gapes at me…

"You know our safeword." I reach between his legs.

****

Laur stares at me speechless, his one eye wide with astonishment, the other lid half-raising with symmetrical instinct. Then he flings one arm free and jabs at my head. As a soldier, he knows to go for my throat or my eye. But his punch is loose-fisted and uncommitted. After I take the blow, I grab his arm again and bully him onto the couch.

As I pin him under me, forcing his legs wide around my waist, he hides the side of his face in the pillow and glares. "Knock it off, you piece of—"

I grab his face in my free hand and force him to look straight at me. Raw fear passes over his face as I lean in to kiss him. It reminds me of that day in his car, when I meant to kiss him and his cold, blank expression scared me off. He'd been terrified to be kissed. Now the fear melts into anger. He knees me in the stomach and thrashes away. Not enough to hurt me, not enough to shake loose.

We wrestle a moment before I pin him again, my hips and hard cock anchoring him as I tug at the robe and tangle it around his arms to restrain his motions.

Laur vibrates with anger and inarticulate swearing. Is he too mad to free himself from the stupid fluffy robe, or is he just playing along now?

I fight to get his boxers off his legs and force my hips between his thighs, then hold him immobilized and helpless. With the underwear stuck around one ankle and his legs spread wide around me, with his robe wrapped around his arms, he is finally naked.

He shuts his eye and bears the indignity of being looked at.

Beneath the extreme tan lines, his pale skin is dotted with pink and brown divots and gouges in a patchwork of missing pieces and scar tissue. His muscles are taut as wire and rock-hard because of how I've pinned him. His right nipple is pink and raised like a tiny button, but his left is a white slash of scar tissue. Some word has been carved into his side, uneven, slicing cuts. It is not a language I understand.

My gaze wanders the cratered landscape of his naked flesh until it lands on his cock. That rigid pole is instantly familiar, and a territory that makes my mouth water with desire and my hand instinctively reach. I stroke him, and he grunts, out of breath from his struggle, but infinitely tough and masculine, even raw and exposed as he was.

I remember the first time he'd commanded my body. Remember how I'd whimpered his name. I lean over his ear to remind him, "Laur, I want to fuck you."

He smiles, a wry and unsurprised expression, "You're still a presumptuous little shit."

I rub my hand lower, cradling the base of his shaft in my palm and stretching my fingers toward his ass. "Think I can get away with it based on charm and good looks?"

Laur swallows hard and nods slightly. I press my lips to his Adam's apple and he flinches away from the gentleness.

"Do you remember the deal you made with me?" I tug at his right leg spreading him wider.

He clenches and twists, but not enough to stop my finger from finding his hole. "I don't make deals, with pus—fuck!"

I shove the finger inside and keep him firmly anchored as he writhes and struggles.

When was the last time he'd been fucked? A malicious, vengeful pleasure flowed over me, spreading like venom through my blood. Before he'd met me? Never? I twist and poke inside his tight ass, and he hisses and grunts.

The pain makes him smile, though.

There's something disgustingly wonderful about being wanted to the point of violence. And as hideous as he thinks he is, there is no denying that he is wanted.

I whisper, calm and nonthreatening, even as I thrust in and out of his squirming ass with my index finger. "Remember how you said once you were done with my ass, I could fuck you?"

Laur cackles because, of course, he remembers. "Is this revenge, then? You pathetic…"

I add my middle finger to the party in his hole, and he finishes with a loud. "Bitch!"

"Ghosting me?" I nibble at his ear, cooing. "Breaking up with me through your best friend?"

"We weren't dating." He flinches away from my affectionate whisper.

I shove both fingers in deep and hard, and his breath comes in a broken, high-pitched gulp.

"Seems like you're done with my ass, Laur." My voice is as soft and loving as the kiss I press on his cheek. "Now, I'm gonna tear you apart, little guy."

He scoffs. "You're not man enough to fuck me."

I smile, keeping him pinned with one hand, while I open my pants. "If that's what you need to tell yourself, sweetie."

His ass is hard, muscular, and as closed as a damn door even with the working I've given him. My cock—having been tortured for half a year—is more than up to the challenge of breaking in. As inch after inch of my shaft squeezes through his barely yielding hole, Laur's breathing changes. Not gasping for breath or grunting in pain—these sounds are beneath him—it's a focused deep breathing, punctuated occasionally with high-pitched yelping spikes as I force my cock deeper.

Christ, it feels good to be fucking a man again.

When I look at his face again, he's relieved, almost calm, as if some terrible battle has finally been lost, and he doesn't have to worry about it anymore.

I can't resist bowing over him to kiss his lips. I've gotten as far as cupping his cheek before he erupts into violence again. Striking my hand, pushing at my chest to get my mouth away, all while tightening his knees to keep my cock in place.

I don't fight back, but I don't let him move me. Keeping him pinned is like very violent resistance training. "Why won't you let me kiss you?"

"Because I don't want to be kissed. I want to be fucked," he answers, very coldly. "Will you just fuck me, you sissy fuck?"

I'm not going to say no to that. I clench his thigh and impale him on my full cock in one motion. Laur's jaw drops open with an intoxicating mix of surprise, pain, and pleasure, but not a sound passes his lips.

Buried to the hilt, I swivel my hips. That dancer's curl that makes an audience lose its mind. There's nothing sissy about that move to the man whose ass is on the receiving end. Hard and invasive, but Laur only grits his teeth and takes it.

When I pull my cock away, he takes another deep meditative breath. I thrust back in before he can release it naturally, forcing the air out of his lungs. I don't give him a chance to catch his breath. If he wants to be fucked raw and rough—and he fucking does—I won't disappoint him. Not when it feels so good, so brutally masculine, to tear apart his mean, little ass.

His cock stands straight between us, rock-hard and never wavers as he takes my assault. Aside from his cock, Laur gives me nothing to express that he enjoys my deep hard thrusting. He keeps his eyes closed and his head back. I want his gaze, I want his song of desire. And his silence only makes me go harder.

He doesn't ask me to stop.

Quickly, relaxed by the barrage of my cock and slicked by my pre-cum, his hole softens, and my thrusts go smoother. That's when his pain totally melts into pleasure. He moans quietly and strokes his cock unobtrusively, without shame but without making a show of it. Practical.

If I hadn't been watching him like it was the last time I'd see him naked, if I had just brought him up to my apartment and gotten to have him like every other man I'd ever fucked, I would have been too interested in my own overwhelming pleasure to notice when he was coming.

It happens when he opens his eye to look at me. The sight of me towering over him on his couch, his legs thrown around my tapered waist, my shirt half-rolled up my defined abs—like I'd been distracted mid-striptease. The sight of me fucking him. That's what makes his whole body tighten and twitch with tension, that's what makes his cock spill onto his stomach in a thick white puddle.

My beauty didn't matter? Not fucking likely.

His whole body goes limp and he doesn't fight when I pull him into my arms. Easier to fuck him … and to kiss him.

Laur doesn't kiss back, just lets my lips explore his lips and chin while my cock spears deep inside him. I grunt, so close to coming…

When I intrude with my tongue—he tastes like whiskey—he opens his mouth with an aggressive disinterest. And when I make the kiss more insistent, balls-deep in his ass and fucking harder than ever, he finally kisses back. Just a tentative tilt of his head, the slight movement of his tongue, the shyest suck of his lips. He's left his hands pinned above his head, long after we'd fucked the restraints loose, but now his hands slide around my back to stroke over my t-shirt.

I erupt just as the shortened fingers of his right hand caress the back of my neck. The firing of pleasure, the release of all that sexual tension … it's like my body is being pulled in two and it's only his uncertain embrace that keeps me from shattering.

"Fuck…" I hear the newly wet slap of my cock entering his ass. "Forgot about protection."

"I don't care." He holds me closer and rocks slowly, milking my cock inside his ass.

The anger is gone from him now, and his voice, deep and calm, near my ear makes the lust in my belly roil again, even if my cock is thrumming with pleasure and totally spent.

I pull out and his arms slip away from me. He falls on the couch like I'd fucked the life out of him. His cum glistens on his belly and chest, mine drizzles from between his widespread legs. My cock, still wet, twitches. I want him again tonight.

Laur sighs, the happiest sound he's ever made, and turns into the pillow. He's about to fall asleep. Absolutely filthy from sex and more innocent than I'd ever seen.

I want him again, right now.

"Hey! No!" Laur violently thrashes out of his stupor when I grab him under the legs and around his back and pluck him off the couch. "Fucking hell! Put me down!"

I smile mischievously and carry him across the living room, like a dainty child.

"Chard—Jeremy, I mean it, don't…"

"Which one is your bedroom?"

He scowls at me. And I remember being tied up in his guest room. So I open the other door. His bedroom is dark, with blackout curtains and not even an alarm clock to cast a glow, so I leave the door open and bring him to the bed. I drape him on the bed with another kiss, amused by how much this irritates my broken little princess.

Laur kicks off the last of his clothes, the stubborn shorts hanging on his legs. Then Laur crosses his arms and his legs at the ankle as if re-locking the safe of his body. "Don't do that ever again. I don't like it."

His words horrify me into stillness. "Fuck you?"

"What?" The darkness on his face turns to confusion. "No, no, that was great. I've been waiting for you to get the nerve to do that since the night we met."

News to me. That night when I'd thought about grabbing him and tearing off his clothes … he'd wanted that too.

But he doesn't want something else. Never wanted it again. Didn't like it.

When he sees I'm not following he clarifies, as if it was obvious. "Don't carry me."

"Oh," That was obvious. "Okay. Sorry. Why not?"

In the half-light of the hallway, I see exhaustion and post- sex relaxation defeat his caginess. "Because the last time a fella had to carry me I'd just lost a couple body parts and had my legs pulverized."

"I … sorry."

He waves his hand like it was nothing.

Now that he's calm again, it's awkward and unsettled. Maybe I should go. But I want to stay. Was it all right for me to touch him again?

Laur clears his throat, looking very small in his bed. He says with much less bravado than he had a moment ago, "Well, aren't you gonna … you know ki … do it again?"

He can't even say kiss. I smile at his macho repression. I place my knee on the bed and lean over him. "Do what thing?"

He stares me dead in the face. "You fucking know. Don't play games with me."

I love playing games with him. And mine aren't as mean as his … I think. I come no closer, forcing him to either ask or kiss me himself.

Eventually he relents, unable to look me in the face when he commands very softly, "Kiss me."

I start on his neck, licking at the little scars I can see even in the dim room and travel from one to the other across his neck and face. He breathes in his slow meditative way, eyes closed, trembling from the slight touch of my lips on his skin. When I suck at the cut on his lip, he opens his mouth and invites me to kiss him this time.

We both melt into that kiss, his arms folding around my shoulders, my hand lifting to cup his face. I'm surprised when we part that he's looking at me with grief.

"Why did you come back?"

I don't answer but lean in to kiss him again.

He digs his hands into my hair and pulls me away from his body. "Seriously, Jeremy. Why?"

I run my fingers over his face. "Maybe I love you."

"Maybe?" His brow arches sarcastically.

"I have trouble committing to statements." I shrug and nod. "But you're right. I love you. Full stop."

He sighs as if that answer is the worst thing he'd ever heard. Then adds in a truly exhausted tone, "Well, I guess you can keep going then. Since you're insatiable and I'm inexhaustible. I'll fuck you again."

I smirk and reach for his cock, but as soon as I move forward, he flinches away.

"Actually, um … do you mind…" He looks toward the door, then taps the lamp on his nightstand, bathing the room in warm light. "Getting the lights in the other room first? And, um … maybe bringing me the cane by the chair out there?"

"Oh, shit!" I jump up. "Sure. No problem."

I come back with his whiskey and his cane, walking slowly in the darkness toward the soft light of his bedroom. I'm not surprised to see a beige patch over his missing eye. Like those bandages they made us kids wear when we had pink eye.

I slot the cane in the umbrella cage by the nightstand and hand him the whiskey. "For the record, I think you should go full Nick Fury and embrace a black leather eye patch."

He smirks, sips the whiskey, and strokes his cock. The full hot-asshole energy is back and in force. "I think you should either be stripping or sucking my cock."

"You gonna give me the beat or should I sing to myself?" I scoff, but immediately fall into the pelvic thrust of a little striptease.

"Just normal, Chard. I like it when you take them off normally."

"I don't understand that at all." I bend over to pull my shirt up and over my head in that hunched way that does nothing for a man's figure.

"You don't really?" he asks into the whiskey tumbler.

I drop out of my pants and kick off my sneakers without so much as a shimmy. "No, I don't. People literally pay money to see—"

Then I get it. Everyone in the city and their gay cousin could see me dance my clothes off. He's one of the few who's ever seen me just take them off.

"Good, you got it." He uncrosses his legs, giving me room to come between and take over servicing his cock. He finishes his whiskey and sets it down on the nightstand, then his eye slides shut and he murmurs, "Christ, that's good."

I've hardly done anything, but I know what he means. Having another person is infinitely better than being alone, definitely when it comes to a hand on your cock, but also…

I kiss him below his ear. "I got this crazy idea."

"Happens to mentally disordered people like us." He rubs his hand over my neck and back but does not stop me from kissing.

Or from talking. "When Jude said we were a match made in Hell, I realized we made a good couple."

He leans back to look at me. "Really? That's how you take that advice?"

"I've never been any match before!" I refuse to budge. If I withdrew this low-burning pleasure, Laur wouldn't allow me to speak. "Look, I know this is probably a disaster and will hurt us both in the long run and I just ... I'd like to ... try it anyway."

His brow arches sarcastically. "You wanna be my boyfriend?"

"Yes," I agree, overly eager.

"I wasn't asking you, just confirming that you want, like, not just sex but dates and seeing movies together and shit? Like in public?"

"Why is this so hard for you to believe?"

"Well..." Laur fumbles for an answer. "You could … anybody in that club would just…"

He pushes me away again, but moves with me, so that I end up on my back and he leans over me. No longer accepting kisses but giving them tentatively as if the taste of my skin might poison him. "You really never dated anyone before?"

I shrug. "Just Paul, and I don't know if he would call it dating. It certainly wasn't healthy. And no one else … you cared. You remembered I didn't drink coffee."

He tsks. "Anyone who doesn't have a coffeemaker either drinks tea or orange juice. Anyone could figure that out. I broke into your house."

"Well, I stalked you and then jumped you in the privacy of your home."

"And I'm still mad at you for that, by the way." Laur opens the drawer of his nightstand and pulls out a tiny jar of Vaseline.

"Ooh, you gonna drag me into your dungeon and punish me?" I spread my legs to accommodate his greased fingertips. I moan lewdly when he pushes inside, considerably easier than when I'd finger-fucked him earlier.

"I think you like my punishment," Laur whispers into my neck.

His ear is near my mouth, and I moan lustily for him as he stretches and opens me.

He presses his lips against my neck. "I bet all the guys you slept with took one look at you and decided they weren't worthy."

"Sure." I roll my eyes. "Or they got a look at my medicine cabinet and ran."

"You've got it under control."

It's my turn to lean back to look at him with disbelief.

"When you don't have your routine fucked up by, you know, assholes with dungeons."

He runs his hands over my chest, and I rock my hips into his fingers. What a strange and intimate way to have a conversation. Even as he pushes in a third, I know I want more than his fingers can give me.

"I'll be a rotten boyfriend," he admits, getting rough and twisting. "Emotionally constipated, mean as hell. I might have a drinking problem, too. Not to mention ass-ugly."

I place my hand on his neck and pull him down to my level to kiss him. The taste of whiskey burns against my lips. He shifts between my legs, pulling out his fingers and angling his cock.

"I might be shit at monogamy." I pull away from the kiss and confess. "I have very poor impulse control."

He pins my shoulders and pushes his cock inside. I gasp from the sharp pain as his cock plunges farther than his fingers have been able to reach. Laur groans from the pleasure, arching back away from me. I feel the tremble that rocks through his body and wonder if it was his shredded muscles spasming or the sex.

Laur looks at me, helpless, with love, I think. "We'll get good at forgiving each other."

"Yeah." I nod and swivel my hips to offer more of myself to his cock.

He grunts and starts to thrust. He could be truly brutal when he moved, but he's clearly trying to keep it gentle. Problem is, he's gripping my thigh as if he's worried I'll slip out of his clawed grip.

"Touch yourself," he commands.

He means my cock. He wants to watch me cum. But I obey only the suggestion, moving one hand over my chest and abs as I rock back into his hard thrusts. Squeezing my own nipples, rubbing my neck and side, dancing around his cock.

"You sexy bitch," he growls and fucks harder.

"Touch me, Laur," I beg.

He strokes along with the pace he's set. I gasp and feel the orgasm rising faster than I thought possible, like everything in me wanted to flood out and drown this man.

"Fuck me harder!"

He obliges. The pain and the ecstasy rise between us to frightened heat. We're both panting for breath and groping at each other, bodies slick with sweat sliding in his sheets.

Then he says, quietly, almost conversationally, "Okay."

"Huh?" I'd lost track of the conversation around the time he'd started mauling my cock.

"You're my boyfriend," he says. "We're gonna be just … gonna be exclusive and I'm gonna come inside."

"Yes…" I tighten my legs around him. "Please."

"I'll try not to be an asshole to the man I'm fucking, and you'll try not to be a slut. And it's going to be impossible because we're both broken as hell."

He pauses in his panting speech to fuck me with rapid and shallow thrusts, shaking the whole bed with the force. I growl and welcome his cock, so close to coming, all I can think of is this passion threatening to immolate me.

Then I burst between our bodies in a stream as erratic as my panting breath and his pounding hips.

"God, I love it when you come while I'm fucking you," Laur croons. "Yeah, boyfriend. And we'll go to dinner tomorrow night or some shit. "

"I work at night," I remind him, rubbing my cum over my abdomen and flexing.

"Yeah, you do." He remembers my job with a sharp stab of his cock, and leans his head back and moans. I bet he's imagining my dance.

He laughs, and I brace myself for his meanness. "Brunch, then?"

"Sure. You can wear your sweater vest, and I'll put on a fancy hat."

He bows over me and kisses me again, a sloppy, desperate kiss. I wrap my arms around his head to lock him in that kiss, and he keeps pummeling my ass, until his body wrenches and he erupts inside me.

He tries to slip away and put distance between our bodies, but I throw my thigh over him and keep him close.

****

Mornings, it turns out, are the hardest time for him. Stiff from not moving all night. When I see how wobbly he is first thing, I thought he would certainly call off our first date.

But instead, he puts the keys to his car in my hand. "You can drive, right?"

He's quiet and hushed at the diner, locked in a conversation with himself that's fairly intense and not for me.

It's only after the coffee has been delivered that he finally says. "Okay. I'm gonna tell you about it."

"Huh?"

He looks across the table at me. Glass eye just as focused and intense as the real one. He lifts his hand and wiggles his missing fingers inside the gloves.

I swallow hard. "You don't have—"

"I know." Laur cuts me off. Then proceeded to sit in silence and stir his coffee.

I let him find his own way to the beginning.

"So … I don't even remember which town. All the names kind of blended together, everything was "Ab" or "Ak" something or else "Qal?eh-ye." I called them all by their map coordinates. That tells you part of our problem over there, doesn't it?"

I nod earnestly as if I had ever thought once in my life about "over there." Hell, I didn't even know which Middle East place he was talking about.

"This terrorist cell ambushed us while we were setting up an ambush for them. We were mostly explosive experts and … the kind of group that doesn't have an official designation."

"Because of secrecy?"

He shakes his head. "Because of war crimes."

I'm not certain I want to hear this, but I also know I'll lose him forever if I don't hear this.

He watches me steadily, waiting for me to speak. When I say nothing, he points at his missing eye. "This only happened when they figured out who I was. Apparently, some of my old friends recognized me by the color of my eyes."

Laur lifted his right hand. "Happened one knuckle at a time over a couple of weeks. After they'd shot or beheaded most of the rest of us. They kept me alive, even though I pissed them off the most because I could translate."

He twists to point to his side. To the word carved there. But then untwists and sets his hands down. He doesn't want to tell me about that … not yet.

"And you know, it's never for knowledge. No one who gets caught knows shit. I certainly didn't. Neither did anyone I ever—"

His gaze falters glancing at the diner's door, then back at me.

"So, if it's not about intel, it's gotta be about vengeance and intimidation. You'd find the bodies—mutilated bodies, partly healed—and that's bad. But survivors are worse. I used to let people escape. If you're good you can follow them home to their friends and leaders. You've made them so afraid of meeting you again, they get reckless."

His gaze unfocused. I lean over to touch his knee.

Laur resumes as if remembering his place in a script. "Once they started working on my legs, I knew me and my boys were going to be a demonstration. Nothing as kind as beheading. Well, I didn't want to be a before-and-after on Fox News, so … well."

He grins and it's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. "Let's say improvised explosives go both ways."

Jesus Christ, he did it to himself.

"I wasn't supposed to survive the explosion. It was the distraction my guys needed to escape. My guys weren't supposed to carry me out. I'd ordered them to run and escape."

"That's the kind of order people always ignore."

He's unimpressed. "People I talk to about this usually think that time is the thing that haunts me, you know. The pain. Watching the mutilation. That's why they left—"

Laur waves his hand dismissively. "It's not the prison. It's the town. Whose name I don't remember."

I tilt my head.

"The rest of the army found us within a day. And in the next hour they wiped that whole town off the map. I can't find it today. Those people didn't know what the fuck was going on. Some of them saw us escaping and gave us food and water. Bandages. Some little girl had a flag— one of ours, I mean. Young enough, she just learned to wear the headscarf, still had hair showing, you know? Not old enough for a burka and she wanted to show her flag to me, to this broken and bloody man who she certainly didn't think was going to outlive her. Then, the whole town goes up like the Fourth of July. And why? Vengeance and intimidation."

The words swirl in my head. What he'd said, what I might say. Silence is best.

"Anyway, that's what happened. Any more questions?"

"No," If I asked for more, I'd get it. But there's a door you can't close once you open it, a darkness that gets into you. He's given me enough of a peak to know why he keeps that door closed except with the people who carry that same darkness. "Thank you for sharing."

"Whatever."

I'd had some idea that knowing would bring us closer, but he was correct. I'm not sure what to do with that information and sit in silence for a moment.

But for now, that was the closest he could get to saying he loved me. Trusting me with something he didn't give away easily.

He's also correct about the place, doing it in public. The waitress comes back to take our order, and suddenly we return to the surface of life and not the dark depth that both of us already know too well. Back to smiling and setting her at ease. Then it's easy for me to ask him more details about his official job and for him to get the list of classes I teach at the gym.

And before the bill comes he reaches across the table and takes my phone.

"You ought to get some kind of security on this thing," he mutters. Then saves his number in my contacts as that asshole who loves you .

The End