Chapter 9
“Good night, sweetheart.” Laura leaned down and kissed her daughter on the forehead. Her hair was already starting to poof out all over her head but she smelled clean and warm. Laura paused for a moment and just rested there, her cheek against Emma’s head, soaking in the feel of her breath on her neck. Her little girl was growing up so fast.
“Mommy?”
She leaned up as Emma yawned. “Yeah, baby?”
“Is Daddy going to be here in the morning?”
Laura swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “Yeah, baby, Daddy will be here in the morning.”
A pleased smile spread across Emma’s face as she snuggled down in her blankets, clutching her stuffed bunny close to her chest. She made a happy little sound as Laura stood and left the room.
Laura closed Emma’s bedroom door quietly, relieved that there had been no more major tantrums from either child. She heard movement in the kitchen and found Trent washing the dishes by hand because she still hadn’t managed to fix the dishwasher. Maybe she’d get to it that weekend.
She paused in the archway of the kitchen and watched him move. She’d always joked with her married friends that the sexiest thing their husbands could do was take out the trash. He wore a pair of sweatpants and an old grey college t-shirt that stretched tight across his shoulders.
She did not miss how it hugged the muscles in his back or how he moved with ease and grace. She supposed it must be different, being home and not wearing his body armor all the time. Still, it did something to her insides to watch him—a man who had been the center of her fantasies for all of her adult life—do something as sexy as doing the dishes.
He reached up to put away a plate and caught her standing there. He’d taken his glasses off. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he offered a hesitant smile. “What?” he asked.
She curled her lips in response. “Nothing.” She didn’t want to admit she’d been caught staring.
“Kids asleep?” he asked, drying the plate in his hand.
“Yeah. They were whipped,” she said.
“Do they sleep through the night and everything?” he asked.
The attempt at small talk was awkward at best but he was making the effort. It was something small but something she appreciated. Maybe they needed the small talk.
It was better than the silence that had stretched between them for far too long.
She walked over to the sink, taking over drying duties while he finished washing. They fell into the rhythm easily. He washed then handed her the clean dish. She rinsed.
And they both tried to pretend that this was something normal that they did every night as opposed to an act performed by people who felt like strangers.
“Yeah, they sleep through the night. They’re not babies anymore,” she said.
He handed her the last plate. His fingers brushed hers. A gentle, not accidental, caress. A sweep of soapy fingers across her knuckles.
A simple touch. Nothing more than his fingers capturing hers and lingering over the empty space on her ring finger. One of his fingers slipped down the length of hers, a warm, soapy caress that made her insides twist.
She watched their hands for a moment, mesmerized by the movement of soap and skin. Her blood warmed as he tightened his grip, giving her ideas about impossible things. Things she shouldn’t want anymore. Not with him.
But she did. And that wouldn’t help anyone.
She slipped her fingers from his, rinsing the soap from her hands. She wished she didn’t miss the fluid strength in his arms as he moved, or the patchwork of scars that crisscrossed his hands from too much time at war.
He turned back and she wasn’t quick enough to avoid being caught again. He moved, just a little, and he was in her space. His hands were still wet. The water dribbled down her neck as he reached up to cup her cheeks. His thumb was slick as he stroked her skin gently. “I miss you,” he whispered.
He hesitated, giving her a chance to pull away. Giving her a chance to break this contact before it happened. But everything was twisting and alive inside him, feelings rushing in where none had tread in far too long.
He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to feel her mouth move beneath his. Wanted to close his eyes and taste her so that just for one moment, he could remember that once, things had been good between them.
Her breath was a huff against his mouth. A gentle puff of air that brushed against his lips. Her hands rose, colliding with his chest, her palm resting over the scar on his heart. But for once, he didn’t care.
He kissed her. That first gentle nudge of lips, that whisper of shared breath. His tongue slid against hers, learning the taste of her all over again. And when her fingers curled into the scar over his heart, he was lost.
This was a mistake. Her brain knew it but her body shut down any protests and leaned in closer to the feel of this man. Her hands tightened, trying to hold on to this fleeting taste of him. It would end, all too soon; it would end and she wanted to savor the feel and touch and taste of him. Her blood hummed through her veins, pounding in her ears until the only thing she could hear was the sound of their breathing over the beating of her heart.
If it was a mistake, it was a good one. One that felt more right than anything she’d done recently. She slid her hands over his powerful chest, threading her fingers through the short hair on the back of his head, and leaned into him. Telling him with her mouth, her lips, her body everything that she could not say.
It was Trent who eased away, nibbling gently on her lips with light, teasing nips. She looked up at him, lost in his beautiful dark eyes, filled tonight with desire, not torment. It would be so easy to take him into the bedroom. To close and lock the door and strip away the hurt and the pain and the loneliness until they were all that was left.
But it would be a mistake. A mistake that would break her heart once more.
His thumb brushed over her cheek. “Do you watch TV or anything?” he asked after an impossible silence.
“Not normally,” she said. Her voice sounded off to her own ears. Husky and filled with want.
“Would you tonight?” he asked. She wished she didn’t hear the odd note of hope in his words.
Standing there with him this close and, for the first time in recent memory, well within reach, she decided to take a chance. Because her heart was going to break anyway, why not take a few moments of pleasure before it did?
“What did you have in mind?”
* * *
If Trent was hoping for a second miracle that night, he didn’t get one. He’d wanted her to sit close like they used to, hoped she would lean against him and just be. It didn’t happen but he couldn’t shake the sense of victory that wound through his insides.
She sat at the other end of the couch, her feet buried in the pillows near his hip. Not quite touching but not eagerly seeking distance between them, either. A tentative gesture. One that he would gladly accept.
He was conscious of her warmth, her presence. He wanted to lean closer, to pull her across that space and devour her mouth, kissing her for hours until they both forgot the barriers between them. Instead, he flipped through the channels, trying to find something for them to watch. He didn’t want to admit that he had no clue what was currently popular or worse, what Laura would want to see.
He paused on Animal Planet as her phone vibrated on the coffee table. He frowned.
“Who on earth is calling at this hour?” he asked quietly.
Before he’d deployed, he’d been in command and his phone rang at all hours of the night from soldiers getting arrested and in trouble. He was no longer a commander but apparently his wife’s phone was now filling the role of Annoying Electronic.
She offered an apologetic shrug but her eyes were wary. “Work, most likely.” She flipped the phone open. “This is Laura.”
Her expression shuttered closed. She pushed away from the couch and rushed into the kitchen, writing furiously on the back of an envelope. “Got it. I’ll—” she glanced at Trent. “I’ll be right in.”
She flipped the phone closed. “We have a casualty. I have to go to work.”
He opened his mouth then snapped it closed. They weren’t deployed. What the hell had happened that they’d lost a soldier during their time at home station? Soldiers weren’t supposed to die in the States. They were supposed be safe here. A thousand questions raced through his mind, but instead he simply leaned on the archway leading into the kitchen. “What happened?”
“Fatality at NTC. Kid got hurt on the railhead from someone doing something stupid.
And now his nineteen-year-old wife is a widow.”
“Hey.” The bitterness in her voice surprised him, so much so that he reached for her, unable to leave the distance between them. “Are you okay?”
She looked away, tense beneath his touch. But she didn’t retrieve her hand from beneath his, a tacit acknowledgement of this temporary truce between them.
She breathed out quietly. “It’s just hard when we lose a soldier to something stupid.” She paused. “This whole war is stupid. What’s the damn point?”
She pulled her hand away, her back rigid, her movements stiff. He wanted to comfort her. To pull her against him and tell her that he agreed with her. That the war wasn’t worth it.
But admitting what he’d taken too long to realize would mean he’d ruined their marriage for nothing. And he treasured this peace between them far too much to ruin it all over again tonight.
He didn’t want to argue with her. And he wasn’t ready yet to face the harsh reality of everything he’d done to drive her away.
So instead, he stood with her and watched her write down more information—notes about what she had to do. She rested her head in one hand, her fingers threaded through her hair.
“What do you do with the kids when this happens?” he asked.
Her pen froze in her hand. She turned slowly, her expression telling him that she’d just now realized that for once, she might not have to drag the kids out of bed and to the sitter’s house in the middle of the night. But then her eyes flickered with uncertainty. Her doubt in him cut him, harsh and ragged across the already raised scar over his heart, but he said nothing. He deserved her doubt. He’d done nothing to earn her trust.
Maybe that could change. Starting now.
“They can stay with me tonight. You won’t be all night, right?”
She tipped her head and studied him quietly. The uncertainty in her eyes shamed him. “Are you up for that?”
“Tonight wasn’t too bad.” He shrugged and wished he could figure out what to do with his hands. “I mean, I didn’t run screaming from the house like a Muppet on acid or anything, so we can take that as a win, right?”
She laughed quietly and the sound of her laugh did something warm and fuzzy to his insides. “I shouldn’t be gone all night. Couple of hours, tops.”
She took a step toward him, until he could see the concern written in her eyes, the worry in the lines around her mouth. Lines he badly wanted to smooth away.
“I can handle it, Laura,” he said softly. “They’re asleep, right? Easy.”
Her lips twitched from that strange smile to something warmer.
Because he couldn’t help himself, because the urge was too strong, he reached up and stroked a stray stand of hair from her eyes. “Go. We’ll be here when you get home. And I promise I won’t catch the house on fire, either.”
“Okay,” she whispered. Then she did something completely unexpected. She leaned up and kissed him. A soft, gentle kiss, her lips moist against his. “Thank you.”
Her phone started buzzing again and then she was gone, leaving him alone and unafraid in their quiet house.
* * *
There was a strange silence around him without her in the house. The kids were asleep and the silence surrounded him. He could feel the house sleeping, which was weird because in Iraq, there was never real silence. There was always a hum of a generator or an air conditioner or worse, incoming rounds exploding too close for comfort.
This silence was strange. Not oppressive and heavy. Just…there. Something he noticed. He wondered if he would ever get to the point where the quiet didn’t bother him anymore.
He wandered through the house, unable to sit on the couch now that Laura wasn’t there with him, and looked at the pictures in the dim light. He’d missed so much. His choice.
His fault.
He rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses then looked up. He was standing in the hall between the kids’ rooms. He hesitated; then, because it would have been cowardice to turn away, he quietly opened Ethan’s door.
His room was filled with the chaos of six-year-old boy. Toys were scattered across every available space and he was pretty sure that was a pair of blue undies sticking out from beneath the bed. But it was his son that drew his gaze.
Ethan was sprawled out across the bed. One leg dangled over the edge, his toes brushing the carpet. His son’s hair was sticking out everywhere and Trent had the sudden uncomfortable urge to never see his son with a military regulation haircut.
He leaned down, brushing his hair from his face. Ethan’s eyes fluttered open.
“Hi, Daddy,” he whispered. He rolled over and Trent pulled the blanket over his tiny shoulders, his throat tight.
He managed to make it out of the room without tripping over any toys, a fact that was actually quite amazing. He stood outside his son’s room for a moment and just… stood. He let the stillness wash over him. Fought the tightness in his chest that for the first time wasn’t from anxiety or stress, but simply from too much emotion too fast.
It was like everything inside him had been locked at the bottom of a well and was now geysering through him. So much emotion. So raw. So potent.
It was addictive. Actually feeling again, feeling like he was going to really be able to stay home and be a dad. Yeah, this he could get used to.
He pushed open the door to Emma’s room, curious to see how his little girl slept. He smiled when he saw her. She wasn’t some neat little princess. She was sprawled across the bed like her brother had been, only flat on her back, her arms cast out wildly. A stuffed bunny lay near the edge of her bed, hanging on for dear life by an ear tucked beneath her shoulder. Her mouth was open and she was breathing in slow, quiet huffs. He stood there for a minute, taking her in. Absorbing the clean, warm smell in her room.
He tried to cover her up but the blanket was stuck beneath her butt. So he pulled an extra one from the foot of her bed and tucked it around her. She made a sleepy sound and rolled toward the bunny, grabbing it and pulling it close.
He took a deep breath and closed the door, then settled on the couch. He set his glasses on the table and closed his eyes, wondering if maybe he’d be able to get some sleep tonight without resorting to the little white pills that Emily had prescribed.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt sleep pulling at him—and for once, he didn’t fight it.
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