Book of the Month: CARRY ME HOME
#bookofthemonth #carrymehome #cominghomeseries
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Claire moved toward the coffeepot in the conference room of the lodge like a crack addict looking for a fix. Luckily, no one bothered to intercept her, which was good because she was liable to commit murder if she didn’t get coffee. Soon. Holy ever-loving hell, how could she have been so stupid last night? She poured the coffee into a cheap Styrofoam cup and let the hot caffeine burn her tongue and the entire path down to her stomach.
She’d slept like shit after Evan had slipped out of her suite. She was grateful he hadn’t tried to stay. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover her postcoital reaction. Awkward was when you couldn’t remember someone’s name. This was more along the lines of epic mistake. Deeply uncomfortable. Sipping her coffee, she scanned the room. She paused for just a moment on Evan, who was sitting in the corner beneath the TV. He looked irritated and rumpled and drop-dead sexy. Her blood warmed at the mere sight of him.
Yeah, she was going to be real effective on the ranges today.
Looked like sex hadn’t done either one of them any good. She sniffed and packed away her twisted emotions. She needed to focus on work. His mood wasn’t her problem.
Claire sat by the fire for a long moment, watching the flames dance as they bit into the logs. Memories danced in those flames, too. Memories of missions gone bad. She bit back the crushing sense that the dysfunction in this unit went far deeper than they could see. And she was terrified, because there were people she cared about in this formation.
Colonel Danvers seemed completely unconcerned that very few people from the support company had been out at the shoot house yesterday. They’d get people to combat practice when they could had been the response that had come through the operations officer.
Relentless frustration burned inside of her. There was little she could do to protect them. And worse, she knew that Colonel Danvers had set a command climate that placed higher value on PowerPoint skills than on combat effectiveness in their junior leaders. Bad leaders did stupid things that got people killed.
Reza walked into the dining room and made a direct assault on the coffeepot. She smiled when she saw the outdated brown sweater he had on beneath his uniform jacket. “Are those even authorized for wear anymore?”
Reza grunted as he filled his stainless-steel travel mug. “You can keep that moisture-wicking crap. I’ll take my old wool sweater any day of the week.”
“In my day, we had wool sweaters and we liked it,” she said, making her voice sound like an old man’s. “We didn’t have all this fancy, shmancy gear you young pups have.”
“I’m three years older than you.” Reza sighed and shook his head. He looked ragged and, for the first time since she’d met him, hung over. “Only in the army would you think thirty-five is old.” He breathed in the steam rising from his coffee, but his faint smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t suppose this is any good?”
“It’s better than the goat piss they used to serve in the ops office in Iraq, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.“ He sighed and braced himself for that first bitter taste, then flinched. “This is worse than I expected. Ugh. I might do without.”
“Please don’t. You’re not nice when you don’t have caffeine and you’re out of Rip Its, last I checked.”
Reza smiled and said nothing, staring into his drink. Finally, he sighed. “You’re not going to bitch at me about last night?”
Claire studied him carefully. Searching for the words she needed. And beneath her worry was the agonizing fear that she would lose him forever if she said what needed to be said. Just like she’d lost her dad. “Would it work?”
“Not really.” He sipped the terrible coffee.
And Claire turned away from the fight. “Then I’d just be wasting my breath. I’ll save it for when it will make a difference.” But her voice broke, and there was nothing she could do to hide it except to turn away.
“Ah shit, Claire, don’t cry.”
She wheeled on him, keeping her voice low, her actions tight and controlled. She didn’t want to draw any attention to them but from the corner of her eye, she caught Evan watching. Alert. Tense. “I’m not crying over you, you son of a bitch. I’ll save my tears for your goddamn funeral.”
She walked away before he could say anything else. Before she could see if he was angry or if maybe, just maybe, her words had made a difference.
They hadn’t. She knew they hadn’t.
Reza was going to die. Not from an enemy bullet, but from his own stupid choices, because whatever demons he was battling, he was losing the fight.
And she was going to lose one of the only people she could call friend.
* * *
The small contingent of trainers gathered around Evan as he started to lay out the mission for the day. Finally, after days of ranges and briefings and inspections, they’d reached the important training: convoys. He glanced at LT Engle, who was blowing on her hands as though her breath were going to magically penetrate the army-issued cold-weather gloves. The kid had grown up fast in the last year. Hell, no one who went to war came back as innocent as when they’d gone in.
He glanced around, looking for Claire. She should be happy they were finally hitting the convoy portion of the training exercise but when he saw her earlier this morning, she had looked drawn and tense. He was worried about her. She hadn’t spoken to him much over the last few days of the exercise and despite their having slept together, he felt the distance between them more sharply than ever.
He crouched down, pushing away his worry, and drew a quick sketch of the mock city in the snow, doing his best to ignore Claire, whom he’d finally spotted near the edge of one of the buildings, talking to Sarah. He shut down his reaction to her, focusing on LT Engle, who looked excited to finally be running convoy training. He almost smiled at her eagerness.
“Okay Engle, your platoon is going to enter the city here and you have to get the supplies to the objective here,” he drew an X at a four-way intersection, “and two of the four streets will be blocked with burning tires. From there, depending on how you react to the civilians, you’ll either get ambushed or make it through the rest of the city to the objective.”
“Got it,” Engle said. “I just wish we’d found someplace less freezing than this for the exercise.”
Evan raised both eyebrows and looked up at Engle. “Unless you plan on driving the entire battalion to somewhere warm and sunny like Fort Irwin, California, no.”
Reza slapped Engle on the shoulder. “Toughen up, sissy. You haven’t been frozen until you’ve spent forty-five days in Grafenwoehr.”
“What’s Grafenwoehr?” Engle asked, rubbing her hands together.
“A training area in Germany. You want to talk cold, you haven’t seen shit until you’ve spent a month at Graf in December. Takes three weeks to thaw out your balls when you get home. If you had any. Which you don’t. Nevermind.”
Evan glanced to his right when he heard the sound of boots crunching on the snow. Claire walked up and was looking down at the quick terrain sketch Evan had done. She stayed silent, but the bones in her jaw looked close to snapping from the sheer pressure she was putting on her teeth.
He’d wanted to catch her after breakfast but she’d disappeared after talking with Iaconelli. Now, she looked unapproachable at best. Frustration snapped at him. He’d thought last night would be the start of something new between them. Instead, she seemed terrified of the intimacy between them.
The group dispersed at once and he didn’t miss how quickly Claire tried to disappear. He fell into step with her.
She was trying to put distance between them again.
Too bad for her, Evan had stubbornness issues. He caught up with her as she surveyed the frozen landscape that was standing in for an Iraqi village in today’s exercise.
Evan pulled her into the shell of a building where they could have some privacy.
“What happened this morning with Iaconelli?” he asked.
She paced for a moment before answering him. Then finally she turned to him and said, “I’m tired of him drinking himself unconscious.”
“You’ve known him a long time.” It wasn’t a question.
“Longer than anyone else in the army.” Evan watched her for a long moment, fighting the urge to reach out, to offer her comfort.
She looked so rigid and stiff, as if she might shatter at the faintest touch. “Reza is what all the little infantry privates want to grow up and be,” she said. “Any other soldier, I would have directed to the behavioral health docs long before now. I wouldn’t even think twice.”
Evan watched as Iaconelli worked his way through the formation. He trusted Iaconelli more than any other warrior in his formation. His skill on the battlefield was unnatural, but it kept his men alive, and Evan couldn’t help but wonder at the cost of that skill. Had the descent into hell been worth it? Iaconelli was the warrior Ajax personified and more deeply flawed than any Greek hero. A nagging voice whispered in Evan’s ear that Iaconelli was a grenade with the pin already pulled, simply waiting for the handle to be released to explode. “He needs help,” Evan said.
Claire stood at an empty window frame, staring out at nothing as the first vehicle stopped in front of Iaconelli, focused on the battle in front of her. Claire might want to protect Reza from the consequences of his drinking but she couldn’t ignore it forever.
Evan was close enough to see the tiny curls that escaped the bottom of her helmet.
Finally she turned back to him. “I can’t turn him over to the army, Evan,” She said. “Don’t ask me to do that.”
For one moment, all her shields fell away and he was looking at a woman with no barriers. No walls. Vulnerable. And damaged. So beautifully damaged.
“There isn’t another way,” Evan said softly. “He needs time. The only way to get him that time is if the army knows.” He swallowed the next words, knowing they were going to crush her. “Otherwise, we’re going to be standing at his court-martial. Or his funeral.”
The last vehicle disappeared around the corner, their view blocked by an empty, graffiti-marked bell tower. The silence hung on between them and she finally looked away.
“The army isn’t the answer here, Evan,” she said, her words harsh and cutting.
“You don’t know that.”
“Really? Let’s talk about what I do know. I know that when it comes right down to it, officers like you will throw someone like Reza out of the army the moment he becomes a liability. In combat? Sure, he’s a god. Back here in the rear? He’s a risk. He’s one serious incident report too many.” Claire started to stalk away, but she was stopped short by his words.
“Officers like me, Claire?”
* * *
She heard the hurt in his voice and closed her eyes, clenching her fists at her sides. “That’s not what I meant,” she whispered.
“What did you mean, then?”
She didn’t honestly think he was giving her the chance to take her words back. They’d cut him, deeply. But they were also true and came from a place that Evan would never understand.
She turned back, lifting her chin, fighting for every scrap of strength it took for her to remain upright. “You have no idea what it’s like for enlisted soldiers, Evan. You’ve never been a private, who could be thrown out of the army for looking at someone the wrong way. You’ve always been an officer. You’ve always been protected from the arbitrary desires of whoever the current commander is.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not. But it doesn’t make it any less true.” She looked up at him, saw the anger glittering darkly in his eyes. “You don’t understand. If Reza goes to rehab, if he enters into the alcohol program, one wrong move will end his career.” She pushed down the well of emotion. “The army is all he has. He pisses red, white and blue and if someone takes that away from him, I will cut their heart out. We need men like Reza in the formation. Flawed and all, he’s still a leader that men will follow willingly.”
“If he wraps himself around a tree, he’ll just be another a dead hero. Can you live with that, Claire?” Evan’s words were a slap. At her. At him. At everything they might have been to each other.
There was no relationship between them. There never could be. They’d been lying to themselves all along. Claire lifted her chin. It was time one of them, at least, acknowledged it.
“We have work to do,” she said quietly, turning away from him. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“I do.” He followed her, catching up to her at the top of a stairwell at the end of a dark, dusty hall littered with empty soda cans and old concertina wire. He stepped in front of her, blocking her escape.
“Damn it, Evan, this is neither the time nor the place,” she said quietly. “We can’t do this here.”
She sniffed and took a step back, bunching her fists by her sides. Shaking her head, she looked down the hallway, toward the sound of the battle. Her bottom lip shook as she finally met his gaze. “Reza is the best friend I have. And I don’t have the courage to do what it takes to get him to stop drinking.” She swallowed hard, her words bitter and harsh. “And he is likely going to die because of it. Because I’m a coward and I don’t want to lose one of the only friends I’ve got.”
Shock, thick and viscous, flashed across his face. Her mouth went dry, waiting for his reaction.
“Claire—”
“Don’t, Evan. Just don’t. Okay? We need to get through this evaluation.” Her words trembled. Her eyes filled. She tried to walk past him.
He stepped in front of her, blocking her retreat.
Again.
* * *
They were in the middle of the empty frame of the building. The pretend battle popped off down the street. Duty called.
But Evan could no more break away than he could slice his own flesh. He raised his fingertips to the soft curve of her cheek, skimming her flushed skin. He lowered his mouth to hers but stopped just short of touching her. Her breath flitted across his lips and he imagined he could taste her. A thousand memories from last night rose, tormenting him with that too brief taste of perfection. He nudged her top lip gently with his own, opening his mouth just a hint more.
“You’re not alone,” he whispered.
The warmth of her breath teased him and with a hesitation born of desperate need, he slowly, so slowly, touched his tongue to hers. Felt her quick hiss of breath, then his own sigh as she stroked her tongue against his.
There were a million reasons why kissing her was a bad idea and only one that made him slant his mouth against hers and take everything she was willing to give him: this was Claire, a bright and brilliant spark in the center of his ragged soul.
He felt burned to the soles of his feet. There was no more cold. No more frozen fingers. The fear around his heart clenched tightly, resisting the warmth from her touch. Until there was nothing but the heat from her lips, the fire from the barest touch of his fingers on her cheeks.
He eased back, tugging on her bottom lip gently as he did. He stroked his thumb where his teeth had just been, then lowered his hand, granting her unspoken plea and letting her go.
Chaos stormed in her eyes and she looked ready for war.
And then she was gone, leaving him with too many questions, far too many regrets.
ONE CLICK CARRY ME HOME TODAY…
APPLE BOOKS | BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON | KOBO | GOOGLE PLAY | JESS’S BOOKSTORE
