CHAPTER TWO

Jaden

Of course, sleep eluded me. I kept replaying everything Kahli said, as well as every one of her gestures and facial expressions. A few things struck me as odd, but in a good way. She didn’t seem upset that she wouldn’t have the apartment to herself, and she seemed totally fine with sharing the car with me. I hoped I wasn’t seeing things I wanted to see, or misinterpreted what I saw and heard, but she seemed pleased I hadn’t deployed.

I reached back to five months ago when I was getting ready to start my “payback” years to the Navy. They’d put me through medical school, and when they didn’t have a placement for my residency, they provided authorization for me to participate in a civilian match, which was a five-year residency in orthopedic surgery at Loma Linda. The deal I signed up for was: when I was done with my residency, I had to give them my time and expertise for four years, and go wherever they wanted me to be anywhere in the world.

Kahli had just finished her bachelor’s degree at UCSD, and was going to start her Masters year in September. My smart Kal had been accepted into the five-year BS/MS program, which was a contiguous Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree course of study. That’s when I suggested we get married. I told her the truth about the health insurance, and the support the Navy would provide when I was deployed. But the real reason I wanted her to marry me was because I wanted her under my protection. Safe and comfortable, and exclusively mine.

My apartment was in a nice newer building in a good neighborhood in Point Loma. She’d have my car, and only a twenty-five-minute drive up the five freeway to UCSD. She wouldn’t have to worry about rent, food, gas money, or anything, except school.

She was wrong about me feeling guilty about Raffie dying. I was pissed the fuck off he was dead. We’d been friends since we were five-years-old. I knew him inside and out, and though I loved him like a brother, he’d done a lot of asshole shit over the years. And him deciding to go into the SEALs was the ultimate selfish prick thing to do. We fought about it plenty, but there was no stopping him. At least he remembered to designate Kahli as his survivor, so when he left her all alone at least she received the Navy’s one-hundred-thousand-dollar death gratuity, which paid off most her undergrad student loan.

Their parents had saved for their higher education, but it wasn’t the whack they needed to cover all the costs. The Naval Academy cost Raffie nothing, but UCSD cost about thirty thousand a year. Raffie gave Kahli all the money their parents had saved for both their educations, which was about forty-thousand dollars. She refused to dip into whatever was left over from their life insurance payouts, insisting Raffie bank the money in case either of them needed it for an emergency down the road.

Between the death gratuity and her parents’ education fund, she’d had enough to pay off her undergrad loans, and barely enough to pay for the one year of her Master’s program.

So yeah, I did my version of a knight in shining armor by giving her a good place to live without worries about having enough money to live on.

But I’d been keeping a secret nobody knew. Not even Raffie. Or more to the point, especially not Raffie.

In looks and personality, Raafe Saab was the dark to my light. Raffie was a trouble magnet, and since we were kids, I ran interference so neither of us got into too much hot water. As we got older, Raffie switched his talents to girls, and I made sure he didn’t do anything stupid or irresponsible. Neither of us were particularly virtuous, but Raffie took bad boy to a new level.

It didn’t surprise me he wanted to go to the Naval Academy. He was self-aware enough to recognize he had a short fuse and was an adrenalin junkie. He knew he needed structure to channel his more destructive personality traits.

But the one place Raffie shined and never faltered was with his little sister, Kahli. We were seven when Kahli was born, and Raffie guarded her like a Rottweiler. With her, he was tender and caring. He called her his awhara, his jewel. And as far as Raffie was concerned, nobody touched his jewel. Ever.

So, when Kahli turned eighteen, telling Raffie I’d fallen irrevocably in love with his precious jewel of a sister was out of the question. Then the stupid fucker went and got himself killed, and finally, though it sure as hell wasn’t the way I wanted to get it, I had a clear shot.

Except, the jewel turned out to be impenetrably hard with about a thousand sharp, pointy, edges.

Which led me to tonight.

I hoped with everything I was that I didn’t misread the signs.

Maybe, just maybe, Kahli felt something more for me than friendly gratitude.

I knew I could work with that more.

***

Kahli

Why did he have to walk around the apartment with his shirt off? And go commando when he wore sweat pants? Like I needed a reminder of how perfect he was everywhere, and how unbelievably tempting he was. There was no ice cream flavor in the entire world that could, in any way, taste better than Jaden Heathrow Schuyler. Heathrow, btw, because that was where his folks banged in a bathroom, and decided that was the day he was conceived.

I had no direct experience tasting Jaden more than the pecks on the cheek we exchanged over the years. But I had a really expansive imagination, and I’d known and loved him all my life.

He was always in our house, especially at dinner time. Neither of his parents could do more than grill hamburgers, hot dogs, and bake potatoes. In direct contrast to their limited culinary abilities, my father cooked like a master chef. He made the best sfiha – flatbread open-faced meat pies, kibbeh – Lebanese meatballs with bulgur wheat, and lots of other dishes, including his fantastic knafeh - shredded phyllo with heavy sweet syrup, cheese, pistachios, and rose water.

From my earliest recollections right through their college years, the boys had bottomless stomachs, and both Jaden and Raffie grew like weeds. By the time they were sixteen, both of them were over six-two. Jaden was always an inch taller than Raffie, who was bulkier than Jaden.

They doted on me, and treated me like a princess. They took me out for pancakes, or ice cream, and even suffered the mall to take me shopping for girly stuff like hair clips and nail polish. But I knew as early as when I was six-years-old that I was going to marry Jaden.

And here I was, married to Jaden, who was sleeping on the pullout in the living room. Gah.

I knew he loved me like a sister, and cared about me all the way down to his big, sweet heart. But I wanted him to need me like air. Ravish me because he couldn’t keep his hands and mouth off me. And love me the way I loved him. From the depths of my soul.

Of one thing I was certain: Jaden was passionate. When we fought, which I made sure happened often, his face was expressive, his words heated, and his voice dropped lower than its usual low, and got raspy. I knew this was kind of freaky, but I got off watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down when he got supremely pissed off to the point his deep blue eyes shot fire.

Tonight, I’d been inspired and ecstatic. He was home. He wasn’t going away for six months to somewhere he could get hurt. This was the perfect opportunity to implement my Get Jaden in Bed with Me plan. So to move that plan along, I invented Alexander Weinfeld.

It would’ve been too obvious if I’d started walking around the apartment in silk teddies and lace underwear. I needed Jaden to come to the realization that he loved me all on his own.

The kind of deep love a man felt about the woman he asked to marry him.

When he had “proposed” it was more a business plan than a declaration of love. His reasoning had been carefully delivered with logical points. But while he was laying it out for me, there were times I saw and felt him get caught up in the idea of marrying me, and in so doing, he revealed crack in his “brotherly” shield. He’d stumbled when he spoke, and Jaden never stumbled. And he’d stared at his sneakers a lot, like he couldn’t look me in the eye.

I knew him, and could read his emotions in his beautiful blue eyes. That he wanted to hide them from me told me way more than any of the less than brotherly glances I’d caught him sending my way over the past few years.

Alex Weinfeld was the perfect foil. Smart, but not as smart as Jaden, yet smart enough to present a challenge. Clearly interested, since he talked to me in the lab and walked me to my car. And available due to his similar research interests, which gave him proximity Jaden had no control over.

Yeah, this was definitely a bit of poking the bear, but I had to do something.

I wanted my husband to be my husband.

And I’d do anything and everything to make that happen.