Authors Note: I skipped ahead a couple of chapters because Chapters 11-13 deal wih a soldiers suicide and the aftermath. While they are important parts of the story, they are something I felt should be read within the context of the entire book and not in a one off chapter. If you know someone who is struggling please call the veterans crisis hotline .
A PLACE CALLED HOME
Chapter Fourteen
“Can I come in?”
He was drunk. She could see that by the way he leaned against the doorframe, barely upright. She’d come seeking solace from the day’s events but looking at him then, she didn’t think he’d be the person to give her anything but a hangover.
A hangover would be preferable to the horrible sadness she felt right then.
She was terrified that he was going to close the door in her face and she didn’t know what she’d do if he did.
She’d called him before she’d looked up his address. And then she’d worried when he hadn’t answered the phone. Fear had writhed with grief on the ride to his house.
Now, she wasn’t so sure that had been a good idea.
“Why?”
“Why not?” she shot back. Please don’t ask me to leave. I’m terrified of being alone.
“Because I’m not really fit for company tonight.” He wasn’t slurring but he was close.
“Neither am I.” She swallowed, hard. The smart thing to do right now would be to walk away and leave him to drink quietly by himself. But something about leaving him alone seemed incredibly sad.
She’d never seen him drunk before. Didn’t know how he handled his alcohol or how he would if he was—as she suspected—dealing with an addiction.
She took a single step toward him. He towered over her.
She reached out, placed her hand over his heart. It beat slow and steady beneath her palm.
He was real. He was alive.
It was a connection she needed. Badly.
“Can I come in?” she whispered.
He was going to say no. She saw it written on his face. It was a long, long time before he answered.
“Sure,” he said dryly, stepping aside to let her in then closing the door behind him.
The house felt like him. It was Spartan and functional. The couch was old and well-worn and she could see his favorite place to sit. A bottle of vodka sat on the coffee table and drew her focus. She didn’t know the history behind his drinking but from the looks of things, he wasn’t doing too well tonight. She turned when silence grew too heavy. He hadn’t moved from where he’d stood near the door.
“What do you want, Emily?”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight.” She took a single step toward him. Slid her arms around his waist. And gambled that he wouldn’t ask her to leave.
“You’ve got other places you can go. You don’t want to be here right now.”
“This is exactly where I want to be,” she said. And she meant it. She didn’t know how to ask how he was doing. Didn’t know how to get him to open up to her. Didn’t know how to ask about the drinking.
Didn’t know how to tell him how much she needed him. “I think I’d like a drink,” she whispered.
He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. She slipped away and padded to his kitchen. There was milk and orange juice in his fridge, along with something that might have been a cucumber at one point but now resembled a fuzzy, wet caterpillar. Closing the fridge, she searched his cabinets and found nothing beyond a couple of cans of tuna and a couple of shot glasses.
She took the shot glasses. She didn’t know the story behind Reza’s drinking but tonight she didn’t care.
She just wanted to forget.
She circled the old leather couch and curled into one corner after kicking off her shoes. She leaned forward and twisted the cap off the bottle. His lack of response was unsettling her resolve. Whispering in her ear that this was a terrible mistake.
That he hadn’t really cared a damn thing about her before now and that tonight was just another ending.
Reza finally moved, approaching the couch and sitting in the opposite corner. His expression was blank, his movements rough.
She wanted to ask how much he’d had to drink but resisted. She wasn’t here as a shrink, she was here as a lover. As a friend.
And as worried as she was about him, she suspected he didn’t need to be poked about drinking. Not tonight.
It could wait. Not too long. But it could wait.
“So that’s why you’re here? To crawl into the bottle with me?” His voice was heavy, thick. As though he’d been about to fall asleep.
“I’m not here to crawl inside your head, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She picked up the first shot glass and looked at it like it contained a foul poison. Frowning, she held her nose and tossed it back.
It burned. She managed to choke it down but then gasped. “Oh my god that burns.”
Reza raised both eyebrows.
“Oh my god.” Emily was still coughing, incapable of making conversation yet. Her eyes filled with tears and she breathed deeply when she could. “That’s terrible. How do you do that?”
“I’ve been drinking since I was fifteen.”
“That’s when your mom died,” she whispered. The burn spread through her veins. Her mouth felt numb. “Why?”
“Because what else was I supposed to do after my dad put my mom in the hospital?” He reached for the bottle.
“Oh, Reza.”
“He beat her so bad she never woke up.” He took a long pull from the bottle. “I’d tried to kill him that night. Tried to stop him from hitting her.” He set it down hard on the coffee table. “Let me tell you, a skinny kid doesn’t have a chance against a grown man.” He reached into the fridge for a new can, frowned to see they were all empty. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Let me ask you something.”
“Let me get this next drink down.”
“You might want to slow down before you end up puking on my bathroom floor. It’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.” Sarcasm. She glanced at him. Good. It wasn’t anger. Or at least, if it was, it was well hidden.
“I’ve been drunk before.”
“On wine coolers?”
“Ha ha ha. On wine. And a wine hangover is terrible.”
He pointed at the shot glass near her hand. “You haven’t felt anything yet. Wait ’til you wake up tomorrow.”
Emily’s eyes filled as she chased the next shot and this time it wasn’t from the liquor. Ignoring the ache in her chest, she set the bottle down. “What’s your question?”
Reza paused for a long moment. “Did you know Sloban was as fucked up as he was?”
“Is that the clinical term? Fucked up?” she asked, anger snapping in her chest. “No, Reza, I had no idea. I evaluated his medical records and endorsed the recommendation long before I met you or knew who Neal Sloban was. I’m sorry I didn’t remember. I’m so goddamned sorry.” The silence stretched between them, cold and uncomfortable and filled with blame and guilt and a thousand other unnamed things.
“Soldiers die every day. Get used to it, sweetheart.” There was no sarcasm in his voice. No blame. A cold, harsh comfort, from a man who knew far too well the weight of personal failings.
Tossing back the next drink, she set the bottle down roughly. She shifted so she could look at him. “Does it get any easier?”
Reza looked away and reached for the bottle. He took another pull. Shorter this time. “Not really.”
Emily gripped her hands tight in her lap. “Oh.”
Silence hung between them. The memory of the crack of Sloban’s gunshot echoed in the quiet, a requiem for the dead.
***
He wasn’t too drunk to see how badly she was hurting.
But nothing he felt compared to what he saw written into her features. Blame. Guilt. She wore them like a funeral shroud. Her eyes were red from crying, her nose pink. And now, she was sitting on his couch a little lopsided because she hadn’t yet realized how hard the liquor had hit her.
Idly, he hoped she’d throw up because she might not be sober for quite a while. He had the distinct impression she wasn’t a big drinker.
She stared into the distance. He knew what she was seeing. Sloban raising that gun. Over and over again.
Violence tended to do that. The images repeated until they drove you crazy trying to get away from them.
He hadn’t wanted her here.
Hadn’t wanted her to see him like this.
Part of him had thought he could handle it. That he could take a few drinks and start again tomorrow.
But it wasn’t that simple. Now he wanted another drink. And another one.
He couldn’t do that now, not now that Emily was here. And he found himself needing her more than he wanted another drink.
He shifted, leaning closer to her.
“Blaming yourself doesn’t solve anything,” he said, breaking the fragile silence between them.
She looked up and offered a watery smile. “Who else am I supposed to blame? I approved the eval that ruined his life.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t even know him.”
Reza swallowed another pull from the bottle, decided she needed the truth. “Did you do it on purpose?”
“Excuse me?” Her outrage was slow to appear, her reaction time already dulled. Her speech slurred.
“Did you sit in your office and gleefully downgrade anything he’d reported? Did you do it to fuck him over?”
“Of course not.” Her ‘s’ was drawn out. Her eyes were glassy. It was a long moment before she moved. She crawled down the couch toward him, her movements wobbly and unsteady. And then she was there, pressed against his side, her head resting in the pocket of his shoulder. The smell of her hair brought tears to his eyes and he dug his fingers into them. He’d never wanted this for her. For anyone. The innocent fervor of her passion for her work had been refreshing. Unique. She hadn’t been jaded. She’d wanted to make a difference.
And instead, she’d failed. In her eyes, she’d failed. It didn’t matter that she was fighting a deeply flawed system. It didn’t matter that one person couldn’t hope to make a difference against the machine processing soldiers out of the Army.
The generals wanted soldiers fit to fight. Guys like Sloban who’d done their duty should have been in a different category than guys like Wisniak, who’d never served in combat. Even then, knowing what he now knew about Wisniak, Reza wasn’t so sure that was the right answer, either. People could talk all day long about systems and processes but at the end of Sloban’s life, it had been Reza who’d failed, not Emily.
Another brother lost. Another soldier he should have protected forever lost to the war just the same as if the enemy had pulled the trigger.
Emily shifted against him as he reached for the bottle. Her hand curled over his heart and he realized she’d passed out. Good. She’d been falling apart when she crawled into his arms and though he hadn’t planned on doing anything but drinking himself into a stupor tonight, a dark, wicked part of him was strangely touched that she’d come to him.
Part of him was grateful that she’d cared enough to check on him. She curled up against him now, her body warm against his. She’d descended into the blood and mud and her uniform now bore the dirty stains of war. But now, watching her lying on his couch as her tears dried on his t-shirt and her breathing slowed until it was steady and even, bitter regret crawled up his throat.
The war had taken its due from her today. There was no therapy to end the relentless replay of the violence she’d seen. She’d close her eyes ten years from now and the flashback would come, as vibrant and brilliant as if it had just happened.
He knew that. He’d lived it long enough to know the harsh road she’d been thrown on today.
Reza’s soul was already blackened. The fresh horror of Sloban’s death only added to the nightmares Reza had already lived through.
He raised the bottle they hadn’t finished to his lips, swallowing down a lump of overwhelming sadness.
***
“You’re awake.”
Reza’s voice rumbled beneath her cheek. She stopped trying to shift her arm to a more comfortable position.
Her head was no longer clouded with grief and vodka. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m awake. Semi-conscious might not be too much of a stretch.”
His soft laugh vibrated through his chest and his arms tightened around her.
“How long was I asleep for?”
“I wouldn’t say you were asleep, exactly. Passed out is a slightly more apt description.”
Emily turned her face into his chest, grateful for the darkness that hid her embarrassment. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. Shit days deserve shit endings.”
She blinked until the shadows formed into things and she could see his face in the dim light. “What time is it?”
“No clue. You’re lying on my watch.” His fingers tightened on her back to hold her in place. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you sober?” she asked suddenly.
He shifted until he could look down at her. In the shadows, his body surrounded her. “Sober enough. Why?”
“Because of this,” she whispered, reaching up and threading her fingers in his hair. She tugged him down until his lips found hers in the darkness, until he moved his body between her thighs and simply kissed her. Kissed away the memories threatening to crush her. Kissed away the pain and the fear and the emptiness inside her.
She arched beneath his touch as they stripped off their clothing in the darkness. She didn’t wait for him to reach between their bodies. She wanted to feel something other than numb. She guided him inside her, urging him deep before she was fully ready.
The moment her gasp broke the silence, he stopped. He froze, refusing to budge. Slowly, he pulled free of her body and sat up.
“What are you doing, Emily?” He didn’t look at her, simply cast the question into the darkness.
“Obviously not having sex anymore,” she muttered.
His laugh surprised her, his gentleness as he reached for her and pulled her into his lap even more so. “I won’t let you use me to hurt yourself,” he said against her mouth. “You can’t bring him back, Em.”
She lowered her face to his neck, a quiet sob escaping her.
He didn’t let her cry. He lifted her face to his, kissed her hard. Lost himself in her taste and touch. “You can’t bring him back.”
She wanted to be mindless. Wanted to forget.
But Reza whispered in the dark—warm, soft, senseless things. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of his voice, felt the whisper of his breath on her skin. His touch slipped over her skin, stroked away the pain that ached in her heart. He teased her nipples with his teeth and she forgot her own name.
He laid her back on the couch. The leather was cool against her back, his skin hot against her front. He traced his fingers down her belly. She trembled beneath his touch. Lower he kissed, until he parted her sex with the tip of his tongue. She arched off the couch with a cry and let the horror of the day fade away. Her pleasure pushed away the darkness, filling the emptiness and pushing aside the grief.
She’d gone to him tonight. She could have dealt with her grief alone but she’d gone to him.
***
He licked his tongue down her belly, showing her with his touch the things she knew he couldn’t say.
There were no words for the things inside her. No words to tell him how she felt when she was around him. He continued his sensual assault, taking her just to the edge and backing off. She eased her hips away from his mouth, tugging him up.
She wanted him inside her when she came. He teased her sensitive flesh as he crawled up her body, pausing only to roll a condom in place.
“Emily.” He whispered her name as he slid inside her. He wrapped his arms tight around her and then he started to move.
Emily was beyond thought. Everything was pure sensation. The full tightness of Reza inside her, the fire that burned in her veins as he slid into her body again and again. She arched against him, wrapping her legs around his hips, her arms around his shoulders.
She kissed him as she came apart, not in a shuddering earthquake but in something so much more powerful. A deeper wave of passion crashed over them both and they fell together. Damaged. Wounded.
But together.