When Keenan was awake, that was different, but this … this was for me. A manifesto in my new creed. I might have wanted to hide what had happened to me from my son, but I didn’t want to hide it from myself. I wanted to be reminded of what I’d been through, so I remembered I could get through anything.
Once the mess was cleaned up, I tucked the blanket over Keenan again, knowing he’d probably kick it off again in a minute, then headed for the screen door. The days were hot here, but the nights were perfect. Clear skies, cool fresh air, light breeze.
As soon as I stepped onto the porch, that breeze caught the hem of my gown, playing with it, and tugged at the ends of my hair. The lake was reflecting moonlight in stripes of silver and ivory.
I took a picture with my mind, adding another one to the pile. These moments, these experiences, were the ones I’d go back to when the cloud of reality closed in around me again. People said all you needed was a glimmer of light to lead you out of the dark. I was going to put that theory to the test. Soon. Twenty-five and a half more days.
When my gaze went from the lake to the dark cabin next door, it took me a minute to realize what was parked in the space next to my cabin. Brecken’s truck.
With him inside.
My feet jogged down the steps, carrying me toward him.
“Brecken?” I said quietly, not sure if he’d fallen asleep or had just gotten back. When I came around the front of his truck and examined the look on his face, I guessed he’d been sitting there for a while.
He didn’t see me at first. He didn’t see me at all. He was somewhere else. His body here, his mind in a different world.
“Brecken,” I repeated, reaching for the driver’s side door handle.
When the door screeched open, he broke out of whatever daze he’d been in.
“How long have you been here? Are you okay?”
When I swung the door open, I found his hands curled around the steering wheel, his body stiff and primed. A sheen of sweat covered his skin, and his eyes had a wildness to them.
My hand curled around his wrist, guiding his hand away from the steering wheel. The truck was in park, the engine turned off. I reached for his other hand, leading it away from the wheel, feeling the muscles down his forearm tight and tensed.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, letting go of his hand so I could turn his head toward me. “It’s okay,” I repeated once his eyes drifted near mine.
All at once, he sprung out of his truck, his body crushing against mine. The wildness in his eyes was now a make I recognized. His hands formed around my back, his fingers sinking into me as he spun me around.
My heart took off, my body already spiraling out of control from the look of need in his eyes alone. He moved me against the side of his truck, pressing himself into me from behind. His head dropped beside mine as all he did was breathe me in for a minute, like I was his ticket back home. One hand slid up the bend of my body, slipping inside the top of my nightgown when he reached my chest. The other hand reached for the back of my nightgown, fisting it up over my backside.
When he pressed his hips into me, his erection straining against me so I could feel his need, a whimper crawled up my throat. He paused, pulling himself back just so there was enough space for him to turn my head toward his. I saw the question in his eyes. I heard the unspoken one on his lips. I felt it in every part of him pressed against every part of me.
He deserved so much and I had so little to give him, but this, my body when he needed it, my love in unconditional form, I could give him. At least for the amount of time we had left.
My lips touched his as I reached behind me to work at the buckle on his belt. “Yes,” I whispered, touching his lips once more. “Yes.”
That was all he needed to hear. All he needed to know. His hands left me just long enough to undo what was left of his belt and zipper, then his body smashed back into mine at the same time he moved inside me. I felt him quiver against my back, his warm breath breaking across my shoulder. He gathered my hair into his hand, closing his fist around it as he thrust himself inside me. The sounds he was making as he took me spurred my release from the depths. His truck was hard and cool against my front, his body hard and hot against my back, his hands pulling on me, his mouth sucking at me, driving me closer, one thrust at a time …
I’d thought this was what he needed when I looked into his eyes a minute ago. What I realized, as I felt my orgasm join his, was that I needed it too. I might have even needed it more. To trust another human being enough to let it all go. To give myself over to another soul, in body and mind, and trust that wherever they led me, I’d be okay.
I’d experienced rough sex before, the kind that accompanied no foreplay or warning. I’d come to fear it. This though, this was different. Not forceful in the way of exerting and abusing one’s power, but in the way of two people’s passion fusing together and combusting. This was trust at its pinnacle, not control at its most corrupt.
He shuddered against me, exhaling as his body relaxed into mine. His hold loosened around my hair, letting it slide out of his fist, while his other moved until his arm was tied around my waist.
“Are you okay?” he rasped, leaning his forehead into the truck and turning it toward me. His forehead was creased, the storm retreating from his eyes. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
My hand lifted to his face, tracing the lines drawn into his skin. “You didn’t hurt me.”
His eyes dropped, taking in the sight of my body crushed between him and the truck. He swallowed. “Did I scare you?”
I waited for his eyes to return to mine. “You could never scare me. Never.” When he exhaled, his body leaning away from mine, I grabbed his hand.
Turning around, I pulled him back to me. When my chest was spilling against his, I drew him closer. “Turn me on like crazy, yes, but scare me, never.”
He rearranged my nightgown, smoothing it down my stomach. Then he leaned in and kissed my forehead. “Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
This time, he tipped my chin toward him, kissing my lips slowly. He kissed me the opposite way he’d just fucked me. My head was reeling from it all.
“The interview …” I said, as he started to refasten his jeans and belt.
His jaw moved, his eyes staying away from mine. “It was long.”
“Anything else?”
“It’s over.” He took my hand and led me around his truck toward the cabin.
“Brecken—”
He spun around. “It’s done, Camryn. Finished. They asked their questions, I answered them, they wrote me a check, that was that. I spent all day talking. I don’t want to spend the rest of the night rehashing it.”
I slid my hand out of his. “You didn’t use to hide stuff from me. You didn’t use to not want to talk about things. You used to tell me everything.”
“Yeah, and then I was captured by some bad people who did bad things to good people. I had to listen to my crew being tortured while I sat helpless in a cell.” His voice rose with each word, his movements choppy and agitated. “I had to watch—” His jaw clamped closed as he glared at the lake. “You don’t tell me everything anymore either, Camryn. So don’t start accusing me of hiding things when you’re keeping your own secrets.”
My mouth fell open. I hadn’t expected him to turn this around on me and wasn’t prepared for how to respond. “What are you—”
“Don’t. Don’t play it off.” His eyes cut back to mine. “You want to keep some things to yourself, that’s fine. I respect that.” He started backing up toward my cabin. “Just please return the favor.”
Disappearing up the stairs, he moved through the screen door. I stood there for a minute, thinking. Debating. He had secrets. I had secrets. I knew we were entitled to them, but what concerned me was what secrets like Brecken’s and mine could do to such a fragile relationship as ours. Secrets came with a price, a steep one most of the time. I’d already paid so much to keep mine. I wasn’t sure
if I was in too deep to change course now or if I could afford to lose anything else to keep them.
We only had a limited amount of time together. Would it make a difference? Either way?
As I followed him inside the cabin, I entered with more questions and what felt like no answers.
The lights were still all off in the main space, Keenan still sound asleep, the blanket still tucked around him miraculously. However, I noticed it was tucked differently. Up over his arms, almost under his chin. Someone else had pushed pause on the brooding long enough to tuck a blanket around a sleeping boy.
The sound of the shower sputtering on had me heading toward the bathroom. I’d saved him dinner from earlier—Keenan and I’d made hot dogs and potato salad since we were officially catch-and-release fishermen now—but I guessed he wasn’t hungry. He probably just wanted to shower, crawl into bed, and fall asleep, but I wasn’t sure that was what he needed right now.
The bathroom door whined open when I slid inside, steam already billowing over the top of the small shower. Brecken’s head sat above the showerhead.
“Camryn, please.”
I didn’t say anything as I slid aside the plastic curtain and stepped in to join him. His brows came together when he saw me, and he tried to keep the shower from beating down on me in my nightgown by blocking it with his back.
“What are you doing?” He held the curtain open, gently trying to guide me out.
I didn’t budge, and he didn’t force me. He could have, but he didn’t. He wanted to, but he knew better.
I felt myself fall more in love with him, right then and there. It didn’t seem possible to love a human being that wasn’t my own child more than I already did, but somehow … against the odds … I could.
“You don’t have to talk.” I placed my hand on his chest, looking up at him. “But I’m not going anywhere.” Then I stepped into him, wound my arms around his back, and settled my head on his chest.
At first, he tensed up, like my touch was painful, but then he relaxed. Letting out a breath, his arms scooped around me as he stepped closer, his chin tucking over my head to bind me to him.
“You don’t have to talk either.” He angled our bodies so the warm shower was raining down on me as well. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He was naked, and my thin nightgown was saturated and transparent. He was hard and pressed against me as the signs of our love-making ran down my legs. There was nothing sexual about this moment. Everything about it was intimate though. Being close to him like this, realizing I could choose to tell him what I wanted or didn’t want and that he wasn’t going anywhere, was where love proved itself.
“I was the only one they kept alive. The only one who survived.” Brecken’s fingers curled around me, hanging on. “My crew, they all died in that place. Their bodies? God knows where they are or what became of them.” He stopped to take a couple of breaths. “I was their leader. It should have been me.”
My head shook against him, but he kept going. “At first, they kept us all together in the same cell, so we had to look at each and see what they’d done to us. I didn’t think there could be anything worse than having to watch the limp body of one of my marines being drug into that cell and dropped, but I was wrong. It was worse when they separated us. Different cells. We never got to see each other—we just had to hear. The screams, the whimpers … I had to listen to them suffer. That was the worst part of it all.”
My arms tightened around him. God, I wanted to cry. I wanted to release the sob I felt about to brim over, but I didn’t let myself. I knew if I started crying, he’d stop talking in order to comfort me. This time, I wanted to be the one to comfort him. So I kept my tears to myself and let him say whatever it was he needed to get out.
“I asked them to leave my crew alone—to interrogate me instead. To do … whatever they were going to do … to me.” His voice lost focus, sounding distant though he was speaking right outside of my ear. “They made it twice as bad for my crew instead, leaving me alone to rot. They didn’t question or touch me for months. They made what I was willing to sacrifice for my crew a curse upon them instead.”
His head fell back, lolling under the stream of the water, his eyes squeezed shut like Keenan’s would when he saw something scary. I watched the water roll down his face, wishing it could wash away the demons he carried until they’d all disappeared down the drain at my feet.
“There was one time when one of the guards got lazy. He forgot to double-check my lock after bringing in a meal. I knew the door was unlocked. I knew I could open it and try to escape whenever I wanted, but I waited.” He lowered his head but kept his eyes closed. “I didn’t know where the rest of my crew was being held, and I couldn’t leave without them. So I waited until I heard one of them. The only time I heard them was when they had one of them in the interrogation room. It was McVay. Her screams were always the worst because she’d try so hard not to cry, which only made them try harder to get one out of her. When she did finally scream, I swear it rattled the bars in my cell. I can still hear it.”
I was holding my breath, afraid a sob would choke out when I opened my mouth. He’d been right. I didn’t want to know what had happened. I could imagine the worst, and it still wouldn’t feel as crippling as hearing him relive the event, one word at a time.
“I left my cell, heading in her direction. There were two guards inside with her, and I managed to tackle them both, giving her a chance to run. I told her to go, to escape. I gave her as much of a head start as I could. She barely made it out of the room before they caught up to her. Barely out of that room.” His words echoed, hollow and faint. “They dragged her in front of me … did awful, terrible things”—his fingers dug deeper into me—“and then they killed her. Five feet in front of my eyes.”
My body trembled, but it was at the same time his did, so he didn’t notice.
“I tried to help her—to save her—and I got her killed.” His eyes opened then, staring at me with something I rarely witnessed in him—fear. “I killed her.”
I had to swallow before I could speak. My hand slid around front to settle into the slope where his jaw ran into his neck. “You tried to help her.”
“Trying to help turned out to be the opposite of helping her. It doesn’t matter that I tried to help her.”
“Yes, it does”—I surprised myself with how loud my voice projected—“because she died knowing someone cared. Knowing you did. Knowing you tried to help her. Her last moments, she knew someone was willing to sacrifice himself for her. That matters.”
He stood there, eyes locked on mine, like he was trying to determine if I really meant that, if he himself really believed that to be true. In the end, he sighed. “I’m a marine. We only think in terms of the end result, not what went into getting it.”
I lifted onto my tiptoes. “You’re also a human being.”
“Sometimes I wonder if they beat all of that out of me. That maybe it’s all scattered in pieces around some bombed out prison half a world away.”
I blinked. “For someone I admire so much, who I look up to and respect the hell out of …” Leaning in, I kissed him until I felt him relax in my arms. “You can say the craziest things.”
The corner of his mouth moved. A small success. He’d led me into that dark world with him, let me be a part of it, and now it was my responsibility to lead him out of it. To make sure he didn’t stay trapped inside the portal he’d opened for me.
“Hand me the soap.” I indicated behind him as I went to adjust the temperature dial. The hot water didn’t last long in these “charming” little cabins.
“Why?” he asked, already handing it to me.
“Because we’re in a shower. The place one usually comes to clean oneself.”
“That was my whole plan until you decided to step in here fully dressed and coerce me into talking.”
“I hugged you. And this isn’t fully dressed.” I stepped back to indicate the nightgown plastered t
o my body.
“You hugged me and said ‘it’s okay,’ which everyone knows is like some secret way to get a person to spill their guts. And now that you mention it …” Brecken’s fingers slid under the straps of my nightgown, tugging it down my arms and off of my body. It hit the shower floor with a wet smack. “There. Now you’re naked.”
I attempted a stern look, but it only made him smile. Lifting my finger, I swirled it around. When he turned, I smoothed the soap around his slippery back. After hearing his story, the scars on his back were extra obvious, every one seeming bigger than I remembered.
After a minute of washing him, I’d worked up enough of a lather to conceal the span of his back. Brecken stood there, head bent and arms braced against the shower wall in front of him, letting me clean him.
“Did you tell the media all of that today?” I washed a mark on his lower back that was in the shape of an X. I tried not to think about why someone would want to carve those lines into a person’s body.
His head twisted against the wall. “No. I told them the lighter story. I told them it all happened to me, instead of what I heard … or what I saw happen to my crew.” The muscles banding down his arms burst to the surface as his hands tightened into fists. “Those families have been through enough without knowing what actually happened down there. Whatever they’ve thought about—whatever they imagined—isn’t half as bad as what truly happened. They’ve been through enough. They don’t need to go through the whole nation knowing what their loved ones suffered.”
My hands moved lower, washing the curves and cuts of his backside. “You don’t think once they hear about what you went through, they’ll assume the same things happened to the others?” When he stayed quiet, I assumed my question must have gone too far. “Never mind.”
“They died right after we were taken. Were killed at the same time my supposed execution took place.” His feet shifted weight.
My hands stopped moving. “But you said—”
“What I just told you is the truth. What I told the reporter today was the truth those families deserve.”