Broken (8 page)

“No deal. I'll give you
one
hour of quiet time now, but we talk at dinner.”

He takes a small sip of Scotch and studies me. “You're annoying.”

I start to argue that
annoying
has never been one of my personality traits. I've always been more in the polite, mellow, and shy category. I always say the right thing at parties, I respect other people's boundaries, and I dodge controversial topics like they're land mines. But there's something about
him
that's brought out this other version of myself. I kind of like it.

I shrug, refusing to apologize. Besides, the old, sweet Olivia would get
stomped
on by this guy.

“So do you know who Andrew Jackson is?” I ask, pulling my legs beneath me and curling into the soft black leather of the chair.

“Yes, I know who Andrew Jackson is. Old Hickory.”

Old what?
“Whatever,” I say. “Have you heard of this book? It's called
American Lion,
and—”

“Olivia,” he says mildly, turning the page of his book, “that hour of silence is effective immediately.”

I sigh. Guess I'll actually have to
read
this book instead of talk about it. So disappointing.

“Okay,” I say as I open to the foreword. “But you should know that I plan to eat very,
very
slowly at dinner.”

I ignore his groan as I settle in to read about this Old Hickory guy. And maybe sneak a few glances at the hottest guy I've ever seen.

It's hot. So fucking hot, but I'm not even aware of it. None of us are, because it's always hot, and not worth complaining about because there are bigger things to worry about, like the helicopter that went down last week or the Humvee that didn't return to base last night.

The best you can do is ignore the heat, play football with your friends when you can, and pray to any god, spirit, or deity you can think of that you'll be one of the lucky ones.

Then Williams breaks the code.

We're out on standard patrol, and he breaks the damn code.

“I fucking hate it here.”

I'm in the process of mentally thinking about what the hell I'm supposed to write to Ashley, my girlfriend back home, but my brain skids to a halt at Williams's outburst. Garcia and Miller stop bastardizing whatever outdated Jay-Z song they were attempting to sing and stare at Williams with a mixture of dismay and disgust.

Alex Skinner, my best friend since boot camp, just looks pissed. “Goddamn it, Williams.”

Greg Williams merely shrugs. Of all of us, he's the smallest, but he's damned fast. And smart. At least I thought so until he broke the fucking code.

“Don't start that,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “You know the second we start acknowledging that we are in fact, living the shit life, that's the second our luck runs out.”

“I'm just saying. This fucking blows. The sand, the heat, the constant fear of being sent home in a box. You all know it.”

Skinner leans forward to get in Williams's face. “We all knew that getting into it. This isn't some glorified World War I bullshit where we didn't know what to expect.”

Williams shoves at Skinner's shoulder, and I place an arm between them before the two hotheads make a shitty situation shittier.

“I'm allowed to say what I think,” Williams grumbles, shaking both of us off and staring down at his hands. “I'm allowed to say what we're all thinking. There ain't no fucking curse that's going to come because I spoke the truth.”

Less than ten minutes later, we find out he's wrong.

Williams gets sent home in a box.

So do the rest of them.

Suddenly time both speeds up and slows down, and a second later I'm on the ground holding on to Alex, and he's trying to talk but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is blood.

There's too much blood. Mine. His. It's all one bitter, metallic mess.

I try to understand what Alex is telling me. I try to understand his dying wish, try to comprehend his last word, but there's too much blood.

There's always too much damned blood.

It's not the first time I've woken up in a pool of sweat.

But it's the first time since those early days in the hospital that someone's been there when I wake up.

I don't remember the nurses well, but I'm pretty sure none of them looked like Olivia Middleton, kneeling on my bed, wearing only a tiny white T-shirt and pink boxer shorts. What is it with her and pink?

And then I comprehend that she's
here.
In my bedroom.

I comprehend
why
she's here.

The dream. I was yelling, and she came to find out why.

“Get the fuck out,” I say, pushing myself into a sitting position and rolling out of bed on the other side before she can touch me. “Get the fuck out!”

“You were screaming,” she says calmly as she climbs off the bed and turns to face me, the king-size bed separating her from my sweaty, amped-up self.

“Of course I'm yelling. It's goddamned war.”

It takes me a second to register my words, and I run my hands over my face, trying to wake up. Trying to see anything but Alex dying.

“Get out,” I say again.

“How often does this happen?”

I ignore her and move toward the sideboard, where I pour myself a glass of whatever's in the closest bottle.

“Water would be better,” she says. “You're soaked with sweat; the alcohol will just make it worse.”

“Yeah? Water would be better? Water will fix it all?” I ask snidely. “You don't know a fucking thing, Goldilocks.”

“Nice,” she snaps. “Really original. And I don't mind the occasional bit of profanity, but you're starting to get repetitive.”

I toss back the whiskey, relishing the burn. I pour another, wondering how many it will take this time. How many drinks to numb the pain.

Cool, slim fingers wrap around my wrist. “Don't.”

I jerk my hand away and push her back. Not hard, but enough that she stumbles a little.

A tiny, decent part of me starts to reach out to steady her. To apologize. No, to beg for forgiveness, because Paul Langdon is not the type who takes out his issues on women.

But she's too close, and her presence is so wrong, and instead of apologizing, I turn my back to her and place my hands on my head, trying to take deep breaths when really all I want is to slide into nothingness and never come back.

“Paul.”

“Don't,” I snarl. “Just because I played nice and let you ramble on about your childhood pet over pot roast doesn't mean you get to come in here in your minuscule pajamas, trying to wipe my damp brow and comfort me on shit you know nothing about.”

“So then tell me about it,” she says, her voice all calm reason, pissing me off even further. “Or tell
someone.
”

Right. Never heard that advice before.

It's not the advice that pisses me off; it's the fact that for the first time ever, I'm tempted. For the first time, I want to lay my head on someone's shoulder and let them stroke my hair and tell me that it will all be okay. I want to share the monsters inside me.

And that's not the worst of it. Creeping in around the pain of seeing Alex die again, infiltrating the misery of that day, is another kind of awareness: that I'm wearing nothing but boxers, and that Olivia is in little more than underwear.

For
anyone
to be around me after one of the dreams is dangerous. But to have her, with her smooth skin and the lingering scent of the perfume she wears, invading my space when my blood is already pumping and I'm mad and turned on and ready to punish someone—anyone, starting with myself—well…

I turn around again to resume pouring my second drink, but she's moved toward me again, plucking the glass from my hand. Her breasts are against my biceps, and my edginess ratchets up another several notches.

“Leave,” I say. My voice is raspy.
For God's sake, leave now.
I turn my head just slightly to watch her reaction.

She continues to watch me, her expression unreadable. “Or what? You physically throw me out?”

“It's a distinct possibility.”
The safer one.

“I'll leave when you promise to talk to someone about the dreams. What if you start easy? Write it down on a piece of paper.”

Yeah, that'll help. A fucking diary.

“I'm going to count to three,” I say, grabbing the glass back out of her hand and reaching for the bottle. “One.”

“Paul.”

“Two,” I say, never raising my voice. I toss back the shot, pouring another even as the one I just had still burns my throat.

She tries to grab for the bottle, but this time I'm prepared and move it out of reach. Except now we're standing chest to chest.

Her eyes flare briefly. Annoyance? Arousal?

“Three,” I say slowly.

For a second, neither of us moves. Then I grab for her with the ruthless quickness of a soldier and fist my hand into her silky blond hair before she can step back.

Her eyes go wide, and for the first time since I've met her, she looks scared.

Good.

She should be.

Just like the first time, the kiss is meant to punish.

But if the kiss the other day was about testing each other, this one is about domination.

Paul is winning. My mind is fully aware that I've invaded his space and his privacy, and this tortured man thinks that his mouth on mine is teaching me some sort of lesson.

And it's a lesson all right. A lesson in
want.
Because if my mind registers that the kiss is savage, then my body is a glutton for it. The feel of Paul's lips rubbing roughly against mine sets off a chain of fireworks through me.

His fingers tighten in my hair as the other hand snakes around my waist, jerking me toward him. The thin fabric of my T-shirt does nothing to diminish the sensation of being against his bare chest—which, by the way, is even more ripped than I expected. I know it's dark, but I'm pretty sure we're talking eight-pack.

Even when Ethan and I were in the early, just-discoverin
g-each-other's-good-bits phase back in our teens, I've never been what one might call lusty. Maybe sensual on a good day, when I have the right lingerie and am having a good hair day. But it's never been electric. I've never wanted to lose myself in another person.

Not just any other person.
Paul.
The one guy I absolutely, positively should not want. But I do.

The fingers in my hair tighten, tilting my head back as his lips move from my mouth to my jaw, his teeth grazing there just before his mouth moves down to my neck.

I shouldn't let him. I
really
shouldn't let him.

But instead of pushing him back the way my brain demands, I hear myself moan as my fingers move helplessly on his shoulders. He sucks on the sensitive flesh beneath my ear before pulling back just enough to stare down at me.

“Tell me to let you go,” he says.

I open my mouth to do just that, but no words come out. Not when we're chest to chest, hip to hip, and the skin on my neck is still damp from his kiss.

His eyebrows go up in smug realization. “No?” he asks, his voice husky as he bends down and nips my earlobe. “You like this?”

I gasp as his tongue finds my ear.

“What about this?” His hand moves from my waist to my breast, and the thin fabric of my T-shirt does nothing to disguise my response.

He smiles against my neck, and I
hate
him then. But not as much as I hate myself, because I don't push him away.

I let him slide his warm hand under my shirt to palm my breast, hot skin against hot skin. I let his other hand release my hair so that both hands are on me, his thumbs moving over my nipples as I do little more than pant.

And then, God help me, when his mouth returns to mine I kiss him back like I'm starving.

“You want me?” he asks against my mouth. “You want my hands on you?”

Little alarm bells are going off in the back of my head. There's no warmth in his words. No kindness, or even desire. He's playing some sort of cruel game in which my body is definitely the playing board. And I'm a willing participant.

Paul's hand slides down my stomach, moving under my shorts before resting against the thin, damp fabric of my panties.

His breathing is harsher now, and I know he's testing his own limits.

My fingernails scrape lightly at his wrist, reason demanding that I push him away. His fingers move, brushing against me, and my head falls back helplessly.

Paul's breath is hot and fast against my neck as one finger slides its way under the elastic, finding me hot and slippery.

“Christ,” he mutters.

Another finger joins the first, and I'm still gripping his wrist, but this time with no intention of pushing him away. His fingers toy with me, experimentally at first, and then more confidently as he figures out what makes me squirm and gasp.

My orgasm is upon me embarrassingly fast, and he seems to know it, because in those last seconds he pulls me close with one arm, the pads of his fingers moving faster and faster against me until a hoarse cry rips from my throat as I shatter.

As I ride through the aftershocks, I start to lean into him, just until my legs stop shaking and I catch my breath. But he pulls his hand out of my shorts and steps back before I have the chance. I still can't think straight, so it takes me a second to register what's happening.

Paul wipes his hand—
that
hand—against his boxers with a sneer. “Well, that was easy. Makes one wonder who's working for whom.”

There's a dull roar in my ears.
Oh my God.
This isn't happening.
I am
not
being flat out rejected by the guy I just let finger me. A guy I work for.

He reaches for his glass, taking a long swallow of his drink as though nothing happened.

The realization feels like ice water in my face: he doesn't want me. He
never
wanted me. I let myself think this was a midnight liaison driven by animal attraction, when really he was making a point in the cruelest, coldest way possible.

“You're a monster,” I whisper.

He turns to face me, his expression betraying nothing. “You expected anything else?”

“Why?” I ask, trying to keep whatever pride I have left, lifting my chin and meeting his eyes.

Paul shrugs, and his indifference is worse than the sneer. “I was bored. You were begging for it.”

I close my eyes. The truth of his statement hurts worst of all. I did beg for it. I absolutely should have pushed him away, and I crossed more lines than I care to think about at the moment.

But I'm not the only guilty party. I open my eyes again, searching his face for even a tiny bit of remorse. Nothing. Maybe he really is as dead inside as he looks, as he wants everyone to believe. Maybe I'm doing little more than babysitting a statue with a sadistic streak.

And yet…who was that guy who was so obsessed with my running technique that he forgot he was supposed to be injured? Or the guy who shared his billion-dollar whiskey with me while we read by the fire? Or the one I coaxed into conversation over dinner?

There has to be a human being left under the cold savage. I just don't know how to reach him…yet.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, not caring that it betrays my nerves, and take a step backward, then another, my eyes never leaving his. Letting him know that I'm not running away, that I'm not leaving his house just because he played my body like a fiddle and then mocked me for it.

For the first time in my life, I feel myself acting entirely on instinct, and although it feels an awful lot like playing with fire, it also feels oddly right.

“You know where to find me if you want to talk,” I say gently. “About the dream.”

His eyes narrow at the change in topic, and I feel a little surge of victory creeping in on top of my shame. I'm right. That whole terrible kiss and everything that followed wasn't just about humiliating me. It was a red herring. I got too close to his secrets by waking him up from his dream, and he used sex to distract me.

It won't happen again.

I head toward the door, turning my head just slightly to deliver my parting question. “Who's Alex?”

He makes a growling noise, ducking his head as he braces both hands on the dresser, his breaths coming in shallow gulps.

I pause for a second, giving him a chance to respond to my offer to talk, even though I know he won't. I'm right, of course. He says nothing.

I slip out of the room, closing the door quietly before leading forward and resting my forehead against the wood for just a second, trying to catch my breath. My thoughts.

What the hell am I doing?

I can't actually be
helping
the guy. I don't even know if it's possible to help someone who doesn't want to be fixed. But that's not what really has me all wound up and on edge.

It's that deep down, I know that the reason I came here in the first place was the naive assumption that helping Paul would be helping
me
. That I could somehow fix whatever is broken and rotten inside me.

I want to fix the part of me that cheated on the boy I loved. I want to fix the part of me that could betray someone I cared about more than anyone. But…

And what if Paul has the right idea? He might be a callous son of a bitch, but at least he's honest with himself about being a barbarian. At least he's not pretending that he can ever be anything else. So what if he's right and we
aren't
fixable?

I slowly make my way back down the hall to my own room and curl up on my side.

Sleep doesn't come.

Not for a long time.