More, Please (15 page)

She snorts, pulling it from my hand.
“Liar. It says, ‘Tomorrow is a new day.’ Yeah, totally lame, huh? Fortune
cookie messages are so vanilla these days. I swear the companies are afraid to
put something scary in there for fear they’ll get sued.”

“Let me see yours.” I get up to retrieve
it from the desk and immediately want to get back in a lying position. I’m that
tired. I’ve gone without sleep before in the field without any problems. But the
rush of adrenaline keeps me going. Right now, even the fact that an appealing
woman is stretched out on my bed isn’t enough to combat the lure of sleep.

Cracking open the cookie, the message
falls to the bed as I crash alongside her again. She pulls it off the timeworn
bedspread.

“‘Yesterday is forgotten,’” she reads,
and her face curls up in revulsion. “These totally suck. I want my money back.”

My laugh is low and weak as my eyelids
start to droop. Downing the last of my Sam Adams, I roll to my side. “I’m beat.”

“You look it.”

“I’ll sleep on the love seat,” I offer.

“It doesn’t pull out into a bed?”

“Nope.”

“You’ll never fit. I’ll take it, or… I
promise to not accost you if I can share the bed with you.” Her eyes are filled
with laughter.

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not a bit. You’ll hear me snoring better
that way, anyway.”

“Your snores will be a gift from God to
me, Allie.” I pull off my t-shirt. She averts her eyes as I drop my jeans and
slip under the covers. The sheets feel cool and crisp to me tonight, not itchy
and stiff like they did last night. I guess I’m not a guy who can sleep alone
very easily.

A part of me worries I’ll wake up with a
nightmare. I don’t want to scare the living shit out of her like I did Vanessa.
Yet somehow, watching Allie quietly pick up the leftover Chinese and put it in
the mini-fridge, I can’t even begin to compare my ex-girlfriend to her. Allie
is cut from a completely different cloth. And it’s a cloth I’d like to wrap
myself up in, I realize as my brain sinks into sleep.

Some other time. Maybe.

- LOGAN -

When I wake up, my arm is resting on Allie’s
shoulder and I’m sporting morning wood. Not cool. Not good at all, especially
since I really should pull away from her, but everything in me wants to lie
this close to her a little longer.

The snore that escapes her is anything
but ladylike, and for me, it worked better than a prescription sleep aid, the
kind that’s highly addictive with plenty of nasty side effects.

But there just aren’t any adverse side
effects when it comes to Allie. No drama. No pretense. Hell, rarely even any
makeup, I think with a smile looking at her now with her face only inches from
mine.

She is what she is. And what she is, is
perfect for me.

I wish I were perfect for her.

Her lashes are longer than most women’s,
and I’ll bet her friends envy her for that. I see these women wearing their
trendy false eyelashes these days, and they’ve got nothing on Allie’s real
ones. Her cheeks are full; I’d even call them plump, though never to her face
because I doubt she’d like that. Yet they give her face a softness that I just
want to touch. Her hair flows down her neck falling to the top of the nightshirt
that she must have changed into after I fell asleep. I’m almost embarrassed by
how quickly I drifted off and how hard I slept.

And speaking of hard…

I press my lips together in a frown,
forcing myself out of the bed to get my body back under control.

I slip into the shower and the cool
stream of water brings me instant relief till it eventually warms up to a
better temperature. A film of Kosmo’s fur and saliva washes down the drain. Half
of the day yesterday, I sat with him at the hospital, since they allowed me to
pet him and keep him company. I got plenty of appreciative licks for it. Apparently,
he’s like me. He doesn’t like to sleep alone either.

Anxious to pick him up, I rush to brush
my teeth and shave, hoping the hum of my electric shaver doesn’t wake Allie in
the next room. I flick off the power momentarily, and hear her unmistakable
snore coming through the bathroom door. Smiling, I turn the shaver back on. The
girl sleeps like the dead. I envy the hell out of her for that.

By the time I emerge from the bathroom
fully clothed and ready for the day, the snoring has abated and I see Allie
stirring slightly, moving from her side to her back. Her breasts rise and fall
under the sheets, and the sight of it makes my jeans feel a lot tighter in the
crotch.

“Hey,” she murmurs as her eyes open and rise
to mine.

“Morning. How did you sleep?”

Smiling, she moves back to her side,
revealing a hint of stunning cleavage as her breasts press together between her
arm and the mattress. “I think the bigger question is, how did
you
sleep?”

“Like a log. I owe you more than you
know.”

“Stop it. You owe me nothing.” She rises
from the bed, and I can finally see a nightshirt that reads, “I sleep with
dogs.” The oversized shirt has no shape to it, but it’s about the sexiest thing
I’ve seen in a long time. “Mind if I jump in the shower?” she asks.

“Go right ahead,” I reply, grabbing my phone
off the charger and checking for messages. “The vet hospital opens at 8:30.”

“Great. I won’t be long.”

After we’re ready and packed, her car
follows mine as we drive to the hospital, and Kosmo is ready for us when we
arrive. He looks so vulnerable, still heavily drugged, with his chest shaved
and a fresh incision healing up near his heart.

When he sees Allie with me, his tail
wags, but he doesn’t rise. Allie immediately gets down on the floor with him
and presses kisses to his cheeks. Lucky dog.

I go over the post-op instructions with
the nurse, sign the paperwork, and make a follow-up appointment for three
months from now to make sure that the surgery was a success. He still has
trouble walking, so I gather him up in my arms and lay him down in the back
seat of my truck on a blanket that he likes to sleep on from home. I’ve never
been so grateful I bought a four-seater truck as I am right now.

Allie is waiting for me, leaning up
against her car as I settle him in. Approaching her, my heart is filled with something
more than gratitude. For the first time since being on the Teams, I feel like
someone has my back.

“Thanks again for coming, Allie.”

“No problem. I’ll follow you home.”

“How about I follow you?” I suggest.
Truth be told, I’m not sure how many miles her ancient car has left, and if she
ends up on the side of the road, I don’t want to miss it.

“You think you can keep up?” She winks as
she slides into her car.

“I’ll try my best.” I slam her door and
wait to make sure she locks it. Climbing into my truck, I glance behind me at Kosmo,
who looks like he had one too many. “We’ll be home in a few hours, boy.”

I try to keep my truck at a close
distance to hers, and even when I lose sight of her, I can tell she’s close by
because of the drone of her muffler. Her car really needs some work. No, I
correct myself as I look at the rusty rear end of it. Her car needs a grave.

It’s just old enough that I’m not certain
whether she even has airbags, and if she does, I can’t imagine they are very
good. She definitely doesn’t have a back-up camera, and with her being around
dogs, one might come in handy.

I heave a sigh as I hear her engine
sputter when she presses her foot to the accelerator to pass someone. Frowning,
I talk to Kosmo just because he’s a pretty captive audience right now. “She
needs a new car, boy. Don’t you think?”

I nod at his silence. Silence, after all,
means tacit agreement. “Yeah, I agree, boy.”

The angle of the sunlight on Allie’s car showcases
the streaks of dog slobber covering her windows.

No, what she needs is an SUV or a van. Something
that she can transport dogs more easily in. I’ve seen her pile three or four dogs
into her car and it’s a little like watching clowns at a circus piling into an
old VW Beetle.

I wonder how much she’d protest if I
bought her something more suitable. If I tell her it’s for her dogs, I might
get her to accept it.

The drive is long, just long enough for
me to make plans to head to a dealer on Monday morning and take a look at some
options. She’s got a nonprofit. I can donate anything I want to a nonprofit,
can’t I?

I’m surprisingly happy when I pull
alongside Allie in front of the townhomes. “You’re home, Kosmo,” I tell him,
glancing behind me to see his eyes are half shut.

Allie greets me at my car door, extending
her hand. “Want me to open the door for you guys?”

I nod, handing her my key, and stoop to
lift Kosmo. He seems to shun my help, though, and stumbles out of the truck on
his own, half wagging his tail as he approaches the front door. He staggers
straight to my leather couch and looks at it with longing, unable to make the
jump up on his own.

I bend over and lift him onto the couch.
“You’re home now, boy.” I scratch his neck lightly and kiss his cheek. “Now get
some rest.”

Allie is standing by the door. “He seems
happy to be home, huh?”

“Yep.” Me, too, I realize. “I better grab
my mail. Want me to get yours?”

She nods. “I’ll get a bowl of water for Kosmo
in the living room in case he’s thirsty.”

“Good idea. Thanks,” I say over my
shoulder. It’s almost noon, but the birds are still in high form, singing their
hearts out. I can hear the creek babbling behind the backyard and imagine
yesterday’s rainfall is making it flow a little harder than usual. The gravel
crunches beneath my feet as I feel remarkably content after a good eight hours
of sleep. I crack a smile. More like ten hours, I realize, doing the math. I
certainly wasn’t much company for Allie last night.

And Allie was the best company I could
have asked for.

I grab a couple envelopes out of Allie’s
box first, all junk mail from the look of it. In my own, the usual stack of
bills greets me. And a card.

My heart seizes up as I see the return
address.

I don’t hear the birdsong any longer and
the cheerful babbling of the brook has been replaced with a loud, droning sound
from the surge of blood flowing to my head. I know what the envelope is.
Instinctively, I know.

Walking back into the house, Allie says something
to me, but I don’t know what. I’m not even sure if I shut the door behind me,
and only with the knowledge that I don’t want my dog wandering off, do I force
myself to check it.

I set the mail down on the counter and
lift the card. The handwriting is neat, probably Clare’s, each letter proudly
created with a calligraphy pen. There are no tears on the envelope. Now isn’t a
time for tears.

Now is not the time for rage, either, but
it’s what I feel building inside of me.

“What’s that?” I hear Allie ask me, but I
can’t even come up with an answer. I open it, seeing the words on the card. Even
though I already know what they’ll say, each one cuts into me like a knife.

“It’s a graduation announcement,” she
answers herself, since apparently, I seem unable to.

My hands are shaking as I flip it over
and a wallet-sized photograph falls to the counter from behind it. It’s small
and posed, like most high school senior photos. And God, the kid looks just
like Torres.

I can see him now, ducking behind the
Humvee, his leg shot up and his hands covered in blood as he struggles to stop
the bleeding from Crosby’s neck. But there’s no panic in his eyes. There was
never any panic in his eyes. Nor in mine; it was what we were trained for. No
panic, even as I made the call that would end his life.

“Who is that?”

Her voice seems so faraway to me now, and
I feel like I have to crawl through a tunnel back to her world to answer her.
“Son of one of my brothers in the SEALs.”

A silence hangs between us for a moment,
and I feel myself sinking again into a memory till her voice tugs me back. “And
his dad died?”

I’m surprised she figured out that much,
and I almost glance at her except that I can’t pull my eyes from the photo of a
young man who is graduating without a dad because of me.

“My fault,” I say, and I’m shocked to
hear the words fall from my lips. It took six months with a shrink before I
could say that to him, and I never was able to admit it to anyone outside of
his office on base.

I wait for her questions, but they don’t
come. Instead I feel myself talking again. “We were on a mission and got hit by
an IED followed by some heavy fire. We had two men down, and I was pinned
behind a Humvee with them. One was bleeding pretty bad, shot in the neck. It
didn’t look good. Torres was shot in the leg. We had another Humvee coming up
behind us and needed to get to them, but the vehicle couldn’t make it to where ours
had fallen off the side of the road.”

My palms are wet, caught up in emotions as
this kid’s picture slices my soul open and raw emotion pours out of me. “I had
to get them to safety. But I’d have to do it one at a time. Crosby was worse,
so when our backup started firing to cover me, I grabbed him and ran. I had
thought I could make it back to Torres in time, but I was too late. He was shot
in the head.”

“You couldn’t save them both.”

I snap back to reality, the colors and
contrast of the world suddenly so sharp to my eyes that they burn. “I couldn’t
save either one of them. Crosby died only minutes after I pulled him away from
the Humvee. There was nothing I could have done to save him. I could have saved
Torres. If I had taken him first, he would have lived. And this kid,” my hand
is shaking as I wave the photo in Allie’s direction, “would have his dad at his
graduation rather than in a fucking casket.”

I wish she’d leave, and I want to tell
her that. But I can’t. All I can do right now is feel the two hands that she’s
planted at either side of my face as she looks into my eyes. “You couldn’t have
known Torres was going to get shot again. Anyone else would have taken the
other man first, too. He was in the most trouble. You couldn’t have known what
was going to happen. If you had taken Torres first, you’d be feeling guilty
about Crosby because you wouldn’t have known that he was going to die anyway.”

“Yeah, no shit, Allie. But at least this
kid would still have a father. It’s about him, not me. Who gives a shit how I
feel?”

“I do!” Her eyes are harsh now, unlike
the sweet girl who rescues dogs in her spare time. I don’t want to see the
anger in her. This is why I can’t be with her. There’s blood on my hands and I
can’t wipe it clean, no matter how many shrinks I see.

I grasp her hands, probably too firmly,
and pull them off my face. Her gentle touch burns me right now. I don’t deserve
her compassion. She should save it for Torres’s kid. He’s the one in pain right
now. He and his mom.

I feel the rage burning inside me—rage
I feel at the world, not at Allie. But she’s the only one around and if she’s
smart, she’ll get the fuck out of here now. “You want to know why I’m up at
night?” My voice sears my throat as the words escape me. “That’s why, Allie. That’s
why I can’t be with someone like you. Your world is different than mine.”