Redeeming Justice (10 page)

When he was finally able to stumble from the bathroom he found his two best friends
and de facto brothers waiting for him. The conversation he knew they were about to
have would have been better without the hangover, but there was no use crying over
spilt milk or an empty bottle as the case might be.

Drae, the cool headed analytical one of their group, went first. “I wouldn’t even
know where to start so how about you just tell us what brought this on.”

“And what we can do to help,” Cam added.

Alex folded onto the sofa like a rag doll losing its stuffing. A strange feeling grabbed
hold of him, almost like he wanted to cry. The very thought freaked him out more than
the indulgent hangover. Guys did not boo hoo like chicks.
Fucking hell, man.
Talk about indignity. Emotional blubbering wasn’t his style.

With his head against the back of the sofa, Alex flung his arm over his face to cover
his eyes. He struggled against the tingling in his nose that went along with the battle
he was waging to fend off some uncool and very unmanly waterworks.
Fuck.

Swallowing the lump that formed in his throat he sat up and heaved a deep sigh, letting
loose with the first thing that came to his mind.

“The anniversary is next month.”

“Shit,” Drae growled.

Cam followed up with a pithy, “Goddammit.”

A couple of intense, silent minutes passed as each man considered what that meant.

“Alex,” Cam grumbled, about to say his piece. Alex didn’t let him, it would be a waste
without knowing it all.

“Wait. There’s more,” he told them.

This was the hard part. He wasn’t sure what to say, how much to tell them. It wasn’t
that he was trying to keep anything from the two people he knew would always have
his back, no matter what, but this was emotional landmine territory for all of them.
Especially him and they didn’t even know the half of it.

“I met Meghan in Germany when I was at Landstuhl Medical Center. Actually, that’s
wrong. We didn’t meet until yesterday.”

“Uh.
Okay
,” Drae said calmly although the confusion in his reply was obvious.

“Shit
.
This is coming out all wrong.”

Cam passed Alex his coffee mug and told him, “That’s okay, man. Just say whatever
it is. We’ll figure out the details as you go along.”

He didn’t mean for his voice to sound shaky but it did. “I wrote to her. As the C.O.
Hated writing those fucking letters.” Cam and Drae wore expressions that let Alex
know they understood what he was referring to.

“Oh, fuck,” Cam muttered as the realization of where this was going dawned on him.

“Yeah, dude.
Oh fuck
, only it’s worse than that. Remember The Kid? David. David Anderson was his name,
and she was engaged to him. I wrote her one of those bullshit screeds about service,
sacrifice, and war. We exchanged a bunch of letters. Kept it up after I came back
to the states. It was a bad time for me—the surgeries, rehab, and therapy. I looked
forward to her letters, because they took my mind off everything else.”

Drae looked like he was having a coronary. “Holy shit Alex.”

“Right?” Alex answered with a snort of disbelieving agreement.

“You’ve been in touch with her all this time?” Cam asked.

“Yes and no. After my discharge it was mostly an annual Christmas card. Nothing more.”

“So, this visit is
what
?” Leave it to Drae to ask for clarification.

Alex just looked at him, I mean what else could he do or say? There was no fucking
way he could explain the connection those letters had forged.

“She doesn’t know,” he murmured, ominous and low. “Thinks I’m some sort of shining
hero because that’s how The Kid talked about me. Shit got out of hand last night after
you guys left.”

Drae again. The man should have been a prosecutor. “Meaning?”

“We were in the hot tub and…”

“Wait! You were in the fucking Jacuzzi last night with a gorgeous woman? Oh, come
on. You
never
use that thing.” Cam sounded stunned. A little like how Alex felt.

“She thought it would help my leg and, well I …..” He clammed up after that. No way
was he going to admit that wanting to see her in a bathing suit had been the deciding
factor in his getting into that tub. Neither of his brothers was stupid and the way
they both leered at him let Alex know they did the math on their own and came up with
the missing words.

“Fuck you both,” he growled.

“So, that’s what you mean by shit got out of hand? Like how far out of hand and why
the hell would you think that? She’s a beautiful woman. You’re not half-bad yourself
although that shitty attitude could use a little work. So what’s the big fucking deal?”
Drae asked.

“The big fucking deal, as you so eloquently put it, is she’d be married by now if
I hadn’t fucked up her life.”

They exploded the minute he said he’d fucked up her life. “Bro!” Cam barked. “You
did
not
fuck up anyone’s life. That goddamn bomber was insane and nothing you did or didn’t
do would have made any difference.”

“Fuck!” hollered Drae for good measure.

They’d been down this road before. His brothers knew he held himself ultimately responsible
for what happened that day. Years of trying to convince him otherwise only led to
a stalemate. Alex felt he knew the truth—knew in his heart that if he hadn’t ordered
a raid on a remote village, the dickhead insurgents who waited for bad shit like that
to happen so they could fire up the locals wouldn’t have managed to talk a widow with
a young son into strapping explosives to her body. To make it all that much worse
in Alex’s head, less than twenty minutes before the explosion one of the bad asses
who handled interrogations reported on recent intel that suggested a possible strike
against their base.

Common sense told him that twenty minutes was like the blink of an eye in a war zone
and even if he’d known five
days
earlier, the intel had been so sketchy that thinking a trusted local, especially a
woman with a kid, would be a threat would have been the last thing anyone suspected.
The top brass agreed and determined that nothing could have been done to change what
happened. They even gave him a fucking medal afterwards because of his injuries.

But for Alex, there was no escaping the haunting what ifs. What if the raid hadn’t
gone bad? What if he’d had more warning of a possible attack? What if? What if?

In the end, the only thing he knew for sure was the body count. David Anderson’s name
was on that list. Kissing Meghan had been nothing short of disrespectful to a dead
man. There was no way to seek absolution for his actions. Not then. Not now. In a
word, he was
fucked
.

“Meghan came here to thank me for helping her through a tough time. I think she wanted
closure or something like that. The last thing she needs is some fucked-up asshole
with a guilty conscience.”

“God-fucking-dammit!” Drae growled. “You have nothing to be guilty about. And you’re
no more fucked up than either of us. Maybe you should remember that. I seem to recall
you giving both of us shit for thinking similar thoughts and yet look at us now. I’ve
never been happier and fucking Cam actually smiles now for Christ’s sake. That has
to count for something! C’mon Alex. Maybe this girl is your redemption. I fucking
hate that you see things that way but really, what if Meghan is meant to heal that
wound?”

Alex snarled and pinned Drae to the spot with a fierce glare. “I don’t know what to
think. Maybe if I did there wouldn’t be an empty bottle of Glenfiddich headed to the
recycling bin.”

“Look,” Drae continued. “You don’t have to tell us what
shit getting out of hand
means, but I have one question. Was the lady opposed?”

Alex gritted his teeth. No, she hadn’t been opposed. If he hadn’t pushed her away
there was little doubt that shit really
would
have gotten out of hand.

“Okay then. I’m taking that silence as a ‘no’.
Dude
. Take it from someone who’s been there. Trust your feelings, man. Shut down that
brain of yours and go from the heart. If in the end you’re as lucky as Cam and me,
you’ll be glad you did.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll find some way to fuck it up. After all, we both did! Thank God
our women knew better.” Cam slammed his empty mug down and gestured for the door.
“C’mon. Let’s go see what Ria’s whipping up for breakfast. And Alex, chill the fuck
out man. We’ve got you covered. Having the Three Stooges along for breakfast will
give you and Meghan a breather, okay? Oh, and dude? Go take a shower and put some
clothes on. You smell like old gym socks, and the half-naked with sweats hanging off
your dick look isn’t all that flattering.”

Alex flipped them both off with a wry grin. “You guys suck.”

Their laughter could be heard far beyond the walls of the study. Maybe the conversation
hadn’t solved anything but Alex felt better now that they knew the whole story. He
only hoped that when it came time to face Meghan, he didn’t see hurt in her eyes—hurt
for the way he’d treated her or hurt for realizing it was him who had cost her the
man she loved.

Now that she didn’t have a work schedule to stick to, Meghan tried to sleep in and
wake up much slower than she had when getting her ass in gear and at school well before
her first class of the day had been a top priority. It was another rare luxury in
her new life.

But this morning, no amount of slowly rousing was going to take the edge off a shit-tacular
night. Why is it that just when you want your brain to turn off, it fires up an endless
loop of images and emotions that make it damn near impossible to relax? She had a
sleep hangover. That gross, knot-in-the-stomach, fuzzy headed reaction to having tossed,
turned, and basically fretted through the night.
Ugh.

Staring at the wood beams crossing the ceiling above her head, she tried taking a
series of deep, meditative breaths hoping to clear her mind and bring a sense of calm
but nothing was helping. Not when all she could think about was Alex and the incredible
kiss they’d shared. Especially when that tingling, sexy memory was quickly followed
by the humiliating memory of being dismissed from his presence like a naughty child.

Get your ass out of here. Don’t look back. I’m not worth it.
What the hell had all that been about? There wasn’t any doubt that an undercurrent
of something powerful had been going on between them and the strength of the hard-on
she’d felt when he hauled her onto his lap made a lie of pretending otherwise. She
totally got that they were in a weird situation, but his reaction had been extreme.

Scurrying away from the mortifying scene in the hot tub had felt like a walk of shame.
She’d been shocked when he pulled away and worried that her lack of expertise had
turned him off. All the guys she dated after David had been nice, uncomplicated. Translation
– they were boring as hell.

Because she’d been engaged, it was expected that Meghan knew her way around a man’s
body. But nothing could have been further from the truth. The physical relationship
with her fiancé had been respectful and tame, something she’d chalked up to her youth
and the fact that David had been her brother Michael’s best friend. And that was a
big part of the problem.

Except for a handful of hormonal make-out sessions, her engagement had ended with
Meghan still hanging on to her virginal status. Almost two years later, when she’d
gotten hammered on a booze cruise with a bunch of grad school chums and had finally
gotten up the nerve to sleep with a muscle-bound jock, she’d been annoyed that he
hadn’t even realized he was her first. Men were so dumb at times. Especially the younger
ones.

The experience had been less than stellar and once the deed was done she’d walked
away wondering what all the fuss was about. The whole thing had been tawdry and cheap,
helped along by a river of fancy umbrella drinks. Maybe that was why she hadn’t put
any real effort into dating. Oh, she accepted the occasional invitation and even pursued
a potential relationship with an ambitious architect she met through her coaching
services. He was pleasant and laidback and though it hadn’t worked out, the experience
helped her define what she needed in an intimate relationship, and it wasn’t
nice
or
easy
. No. She wanted heart pounding, panty drenching passion. The type that fries your
brain. In other words, exactly what she’d experienced for a few brief moments with
Alex.

How friggin’ cruel was it that just when she’d finally felt a little bit of the arousal
she dreamed about, the guy pushed her away. Meghan turned her face into a pillow and
groaned. Maybe staying at the Villa wasn’t such a good idea. He had told her to get
out and not look back.

Thing was, though, she wasn’t a quitter. Running just wasn’t in her wheelhouse, but
it didn’t help that she was seriously attracted to a man she’d thought would be nothing
more than a blip on her radar screen.