Can't Hold Back (7 page)

At lunchtime most days, Alia took a break and swam across the lake and back. It took her about half an hour at an easy pace, so she estimated it was probably a quarter-mile in each direction. It was part exercise and part meditation, the sameness of the strokes, her fingers cutting through water, the quiet under the surface, only the bubbling of her exhalations audible. She could
think
under there, or, rather,
not think,
which was the point. To empty her brain, which lately had been jumping around like a monkey on her.

Maybe I should tell Nate the truth.

The truth being the fact that she had, once upon a time, loved him. That the letters had held so much of her, that the care package and the IMs had been all her, and only her. No fictional amalgam.

He’d told her so much the other day, the way it had felt to hit bottom, why the kayaking mattered to him, the exact shape of his survivor’s guilt.
I didn’t do anything to make him die or to make myself live. It was just what happened.
And then—offhand, as if it weren’t the thing he thought about most:
He was such a nice guy, the kind of guy everyone loved.

She knew what he was really saying was,
If it had to be one of us, it should have been me.

Of course, there was nothing fair, not from a human perspective, about who lived and who died—not on or off the battlefield. But that wasn’t what he needed to hear.

She’d almost said it.
You’re that kind of guy, Nate
.
The kind of guy everyone loves. And I know, because I—

“Wait
up.
” A shout loud enough to cut through the water in her ears.

Murphy’s Law of Empty Lakes,
she thought.
The guy you’re thinking about is the one gaining a length per second on you.

He reached her and they treaded water. “You look great,” she said.

Jake was due back in three days. Nate had grown stronger; the dark shadows had faded from under his eyes, and his skin had bronzed—but that wasn’t what she meant. She meant that he moved more easily, as if pain were no longer his constant companion.

She’d given him a regimen of stretching and strengthening, cardio to keep inflammation low and endorphins high, and loads of water to drink. But she’d also done everything she could to keep him off her table and out of her quiet office. If pain surfaced when he was working with her in the open, central physical therapy area, she gave him more stretches, encouraged him to tap with a tennis ball on the tense spot, or sent him to the hot tub (without her). She told herself she was building his confidence, his independence, but the truth was, she was scared of him. Or, really, she was scared of herself. Of how badly she wanted to cross the line, slide a hand under his T-shirt, under the waistband of his jeans, between his thigh and the table, over his flat abs, up, down—everywhere.

And this—alone in the middle of a lake, mostly naked—was not an improvement.

“Looks like you’re going to be fine to do the trip, huh?” she asked. They were bobbing up and down the way one did when treading water and conversing. She wondered what her breasts were doing under her sporty swimmer’s suit, and whether they were too small altogether to register with him. She’d seen the body type he went for—if Becca was an indication—and, well, it wasn’t hers.

He shook his head. “I have to get to the point where the pain is more under control. It keeps jumping out at me.”

“That’s going to happen for a while. The trick is not to get into a fear-pain cycle when that happens—not to let yourself tense up and make the pain worse. Can you just…I know this sounds funny, but
accept
the pain?”

He gave her a scornful look. “You try accepting it. It
hurts.
”

“I know. But it
is
something you can learn to do. That’s the basis of a lot of pain-reduction techniques. I’m leading this morning meditation cir—”

“I don’t meditate.”

“You also didn’t want to do PT,” she pointed out.

“I don’t meditate.”

It had been a tough sell to the other men, too, at first. She’d meditated alone the first four mornings after she’d stared her “circle.” But she’d stuck it out, and they’d begun to show up.

“The Seattle Seahawks do it. And I just read an article about Marines who’ve started doing it. To help with battle strain.”

He gave her a look, as if to say,
What the fuck does that have to do with me?

“Three guys came this morning, including Griff.”

His eyebrows went up.

“Yep, Griff,” she said smugly. “I think you should try it. It’ll help you feel like you have a better relationship with the pain.”

“See? It’s when you say stuff like that that I can’t take you seriously at all.
A better relationship with the pain?
”

“Just try it.”

He shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll do it my way, thank you very much.”

She shrugged and got a mouthful of water for her trouble. “Are you going all the way across?”

“Was thinking of trying.”

He fell in beside her. They swam side by side, and that was good, too. There was the quiet, and the steady, peaceful rhythm, and then there was his company, which should have unsettled her but felt like a tether. She’d never liked the deep, dark middle of the lake much, but with him next to her, it bothered her less.

They were closing in on the far shore when she realized she’d lost him and turned to see him struggling.

She swam swiftly back, and he grabbed for her, but she moved out of his way, afraid he’d pull her under in his panic and drown both of them. From her high school lifeguarding days, she remembered: There was nothing more dangerous than a panicked swimmer. “You’re okay,” she said, soothingly. “You’re okay.”

“It hurts.” He was flailing like he’d never swum a stroke in his life.

“You’re okay. Turn on your back.”

He was beyond hearing her, still reaching desperately for her.

“Nate!” She wasn’t sure where the drill-sergeant voice had come from. “Turn. On. Your. Back.”

Damn it, she’d slap him if she had to.

He flopped himself onto his back and, bit by bit, stilled his struggles.

For a moment, the only sound was his breathing, fast and rough, then slowing gradually as he registered that he was going to be okay.

She had to take a minute to calm her own breathing, too. Only then did she let herself realize how far away from shore they still were. How big the sky was over their heads, their two little selves in this blue vastness. Note to self: Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing on earth to swim all alone out here.

“What happened?” she asked.

He’d been caught off guard by his pain, the way he’d described earlier. “I panicked, and I kept going under.” There was a kind of wonder in his voice. “That’s never happened to me. I’m a strong swimmer.”

“I think it can happen to anyone if they panic.”

They swam slowly to shore and climbed out of the water. She led him into the sunny clearing, where she liked to sit on a big log and dry out.

“You see? I can’t kayak by myself with a little kid. I’ll scare the crap out of him. And what if I need to rescue
him,
and I panic like that again?”

“If you had to, you’d do it. You let me help you because I was there, but if the situation had been reversed, you would have snapped out of it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.
Fuck.
”

“It hurts?”

“Will you tap?”

They were alone in a clearing that was so quiet and peaceful and beautiful it was like a chapel. Tall trees, firs and cedars, towered overhead, but there was enough of a space here that sunlight filtered down and warmed the air, warmed the ground, warmed the log where they were sitting, and warmed their bodies. Or maybe it was his warmth she felt.

She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she knew where his pain was and how to make it go away. So she did it.

She used her fingertips, loose and gentle, to tap a rhythm on the strong muscles of his neck and down the long, lean muscles that defined the groove of his spine. The bare, damp cap of one shoulder, starting to turn gold from regular sun exposure. The front of that shoulder, the length of his collarbone, and then, at some point, without meaning to, she simply gave herself over to it, to whatever he needed. She exhaled deeply, long, deliberate sighs to remind him to breathe. Clenched a handful of his shoulder where the tension had to be coaxed out. Brushed long strokes of her palms over the planes of his back—because. Because that was what he needed.

Because that was what
she
needed.

It turned out that Alia was shockingly sexy in a bathing suit, all curves and long, strong limbs, and a pale powdering of freckles all over. Hair streaming, drops of water sparkling on her bare skin—and her demeanor, too: powerful and certain, but calm and peaceful.

He’d noticed that about her before. Sometimes it seemed like she was absorbing his pain directly, soaking the hurt into her vast tranquillity, like wide-open blue sky, where everything small got lost.

He’d told himself he wanted only her hands on his body. He loved her touch. He was greedy, like a kid who wants his mom to stay and keep rubbing his back at bedtime.

That was why he’d asked her to tap. That was why he was sitting here now, as she moved around him, tapping, stroking, squeezing, digging her strong knuckles and fingertips into the give of his muscle. Because he was greedy for human contact, for soothing touch.

He felt her breath brush across the back of his neck as she worked on his shoulder. He shivered.

She stopped and sat beside him on the log. “You cold?”

“I’m okay. You?”

“Freezing,” she admitted.

She was covered with goosebumps. He took one of her hands. “Ice. We should swim back.”

But neither of them moved.

He wanted to push the damp piece of hair off her forehead. And he wanted to play dot-to-dot with the freckles on her shoulder, following them to where they disappeared under the strap of her bathing suit.

Huh.

The way she looked now, shoulders exposed, speckled with the sun’s gold glow, reminded him of the way she’d looked that day at the picnic. The way he’d
felt.
Words spilling out of him like they had on the table, like he couldn’t hold himself back from her.

She’d rescued him earlier, maybe even saved his life, with no more rustling of her surface calm than she showed in the PT office.
This is what needs to be done. Here. Done.
No nonsense.

He was suddenly filled with such a deep gratitude that it felt uncontainable. Unmanageable.

He wanted to lick the drops of water off her throat. And off her breastbone above the swell of her breasts, which were way too well guarded by that high-necked suit. Except for her nipples, whose exact shape and degree of hardness were vividly revealed. He wanted to peel down the top of the suit so he could toy with them and find out what color they were and what sound she would make when he drew one into his mouth and flicked his tongue against it.

He wanted to take her in his arms and warm away the goosebumps. He wanted to know if she’d whimper when he kissed her, if she’d yield or push back, if she’d protest about her job and if he could stop those protests with his mouth.

He wanted to know how the woman in front of him connected with the woman who’d written the letters and stocked the care package and—maybe—typed those instant messages.

He reached out his hand, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then pushed the strand of hair off her forehead.

She made a small, uncertain sound and drew back.

The world hung, suspended. And then, without deciding, he’d decided something.

“You make me feel so good,” he whispered. “I want to do that to you.” He wove his fingers into her wet hair and drew her toward him.

And he kissed her. Her mouth was cool and still at first, and then warm, and then hot, and mobile, and greedy. Her hands came to his back, to the back of his neck, but not the way they’d always come before. She wasn’t stroking or tapping or reprogramming his pain response. She was demanding. More, deeper. Giving him her tongue, taking his. And playful. Nipping, teasing, drawing back, then letting him have her again. So good. He tugged her onto his lap, desperate to feel the press of her almost-naked body against his. The cool length of her thigh against the way-too-hot—

She broke away. “Nate.”

He took her wrists. “I
need
this. Can we do this now and regret it after?”

“Oh,
God,
” she said, and for a blissful split second she didn’t resist, and he felt her breath brush his lips before she pushed back with both hands. “No, Nate, I can’t. I
can’t.
” She got up and walked away, facing the lake, her back to him.

As if that, somehow, was supposed to cool his ardor. But honestly? There was no view of her that wasn’t tempting. Her waist was slim, and her ass—
Aw, not fair.
“Because you’re treating me?”

She hesitated, then nodded. She turned to face him, her cheeks pink. “PT code of conduct forbids sexual contact between PT and patient. And Oregon law backs it up with threats to my license, fines, all sorts of stuff.”

She sounded like she was reading from a speech. All starch and bluster.

If it hadn’t been for her
Oh, God
earlier, he might have let it go. He might have assumed that protesting about her job was her way of saying
no
gracefully. But that
Oh, God
had come straight from the soul. It had been breathless and needy and grateful—she’d liked what he’d said, about making her feel good. She liked that he wanted her. She wanted him, too. He wanted to plunge into the center of that
Oh, God.
He wanted to be there with her, at that flash point.

“But if
I
kiss
you
—”

Her eyes got big and dark at that, but she shook her head. “The law says it doesn’t matter who initiates. I’ll have to stop treating you.”

That was like a giant bucket of cold water.

“Why?”

“Because it’s wrong for me to treat you and…let you kiss me.”

He wondered what she’d been about to say. Whether her mind, like his own, had leapt ahead to all the things he wanted to do next. Lick the trail of freckles across her shoulder. Take the strap of her bathing suit in his teeth. Lower the suit to reveal what was underneath. Drink his visual fill.

Parts of him were already screaming demands—
more, more, all!
—and he meant what he’d said, that he wanted her to feel it, too, the pleasure of being taken care of, the sense of having the weight of her own self lifted off her, the rush of released tension. The afterglow.

The other part of him was panicking at the thought of losing the relationship he already had with her. The version of Alia that stood over him on the table, drew the map for him, listened as he talked, even when what came out of his mouth was as ragged and unmapped as his hurting body.

Maybe there was a way, though, to have it all. “What if you let me kiss you, but you don’t officially treat me? Like you just help me out from time to time, unofficially.”

She made a face. “Even if you’re my ex-patient, I’m not supposed to seek a relationship with you.”

“So, what, if you meet someone and you’re really attracted to them, you’re supposed to ignore it?”

She nodded. “Pretty much. I mean, there’s wiggle room in the law—”

He’d taken a step forward almost without meaning to. “If there’s wiggle—”

She held a hand up to stop his advance. “No, but not in
this
situation. I mean, first of all, way too weird, right? Because of what happened—”

He waved it away. “Forget that.”

An emotion flashed across her face, one he couldn’t read, and she turned away for a moment. Then back, expression set, determined. “You’re here for what, six weeks? Minus the weekend you’re away with Braden. And then you’re off to help J.J.’s parents. And I’m trying to convince Jake to give me a job here. I want to
stay
here. And there might be wiggle room in the law, but let’s face it, I’m not going to get hired at a new job if my first act on being given a two-week trial period is to totally lose all control.”

“All control, huh?” What a pretty picture that made. And again, the words of her sexts—officially, Becca’s sexts—crossed his mind. How much of
MenInUni242
was in Alia Drake?

“Nate. I really want this job. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m good at it. Guys like you—they
need
me.”

He did need her. The idea that if he crossed this line, he might lose access to her completely—he hated that idea.

So he might very well not find out how much of
MenInUni242
was in Alia. Not now. Maybe not ever.

He hated that idea, too.

That kiss had almost shorted out her brain. The heat of his mouth, the sureness of his lips and tongue moving against hers.

She’d thought (before thought had vanished):

Holy, holy, holy, holy—

And,
Oh my God—

He’s kissing me. Me. The
real
me.

Because after all this time, even though she’d given him away and done her best to ruin things forever—this was happening. The sweep and tingle, the claiming, the grip of his hands on her shoulders, his breath rough wherever it touched her.

And then, as if that hadn’t been enough, the biggest, hardest, most indisputable evidence a girl could ask for that he needed her in the most primal way, and it had almost made her want to cry with longing.

She had pushed him away, but her mind had run on ahead even as she had, wanting to rock against him, to try to work herself closer to him. To straddle him. They were wearing so little clothing. His bathing trunks and that teeny-tiny strip of her own bathing suit, which his kiss alone had turned into a wet mess between her legs. She would straddle him and he would twist that strip of fabric aside and thrust into her, just like that, while she was sitting in his lap.

They could almost pretend they weren’t doing what they were doing, then. They could almost pretend that she hadn’t ever deceived and hurt him, that their being together now wasn’t breaking rules and risking a friendship and a career.

He’d be big and he’d fill her and she’d rock on him and slide on him until all the tension and pain drained away. Until the past drifted out of view—

Yeah, so not sublimating.

But instead she’d done the right thing. She’d pushed him away. She’d explained in no uncertain terms why what she wanted couldn’t happen. And here he was, nodding.

“Okay,” he said.

Damn it,
that was the answer she was supposed to
want.
That was the correct answer. That was the answer that would allow her to keep treating him—which was the best thing for him. It was the answer that would allow her to keep working toward a real job at R&R—which was the best thing for her.

So why did she feel so disappointed?

The look in his eyes when he’d said,
I
need
this.
She was trying to think if anyone had ever looked at her quite like that. Like she was the answer to a prayer. The missing piece of some cosmic puzzle. And she’d thought it was heady taking away his pain. She’d thought it was addictive to make him feel good. But this was something else entirely. That look in his eyes had hinted at the fact that she could make him feel
better
and
best, too,
and her body had wanted desperately to take a shot at giving him that.

Her body
still
wanted a shot at that.

Stupid bodies.

“We should—head back.”

“You feel good enough?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Funny. Pain’s gone.”

Not funny at all,
she thought.
Oxytocin.
That was the sex hormone, the very same hormone that his drug of choice had been artificially crafted to resemble. Great natural painkiller. An orgasm would produce even more of it—

Okay, that was not a thought she should have allowed herself to have. Because it had conjured a way-too-vivid picture of how blissed-out she could make Nate, if she gave him what she knew he needed.

It was time to get away from here.

Stepping back into the lake, she was hyperconscious of her body. The cold water heightened the sensation of heat between her legs, made her internal muscles draw up against the icy touch. Her nipples, already painfully hard, tightened even more. And that sent another current of pleasure into her low belly. One kiss. He’d
kissed
her and she was raring to go.

And then, as they struck out across the lake, him setting the pace, she had to admit something else to herself. She wished he’d pushed back harder. She wished he’d overcome her resistance. She wished he’d needed her
so damn much
in exactly the way his eyes had showed her that he’d decided all the rest didn’t matter.

Holy hell,
she was in trouble.

And the thing was, none of this should come as a surprise to her. She knew from the past how good she was at deceiving herself and how bad she was at resisting him. And she had just done both again.

God, she was an idiot.

She made up her mind. She would stay as far away from him for the next three days as humanly possible. And when Jake came back, she would tell him,
Let’s transfer Nate’s care to you. He kissed me, and I don’t think I should treat him.
That would be enough truth for her to feel like she wasn’t lying, without risking her future employment at R&R. She’d help get Jake up to speed on what was working best for Nate’s care, but it would be Jake laying hands on Nate’s smooth, golden skin from this point forward. Temptation removed.

What a relief that would be.