Unraveled (Woodlands) (13 page)

"I won't be long." He gave me a quick smile and jumped off to rappel down to the bottom. I sat down to knit under the shade but didn't even pull out the project. Instead, I stretched out on the rock and let the heat bake into me. It felt great.
I
felt great. I had been in a state of hibernation—and not just about guys. I’d shut myself off, and now I needed to work on being more social, enjoying interaction with others beyond my family and a few coworkers. Bitsy was right. I needed to start hanging out with other people my age, not just the over-fifty widows in my knitting support group.

I opened the backpack that Gray had shoved my knitting in and found sandwiches, chips, protein bars, and bottles of water. And napkins! My god, a girl could only be so strong. Mentally I prepared my police station confession.
I'm sorry, Officer, but he held my hand, smelled amazing, and then provided me food. I had no recourse but to attack him. Go easy on me.
Pushing to my feet, I decided to check on Gray. I stood and stared down at him—past the jutting rocks and the branches of trees growing out of the side of the cliff and long stretch of space until there was land. I leaned forward and felt the vastness take hold of me. And I laughed. It was more like a scream or a cry outside of my body but inside I felt relief and exhilaration. I didn't hear him at first because I was caught up in my own feelings. His voice was just an echo, like a free bird cawing to its flight formation in the wind.

"Get back!"

The sound was closer now, and when I looked down, my toes were poking into the space of the blue sky, and for a moment I tottered forward, startled by his shouts.

"Get the fuck back!" Gray roared. He was waving his arm at me. I wasn't sure if he was coming or going, but I stepped back obediently, my pleasure fading quickly. He clearly had a thing with people standing close to the edge. I didn't want to him to freak out anymore, so I lay down on my belly and dangled my arms over the edge as I watched his body get bigger and bigger as he closed the distance between us.

He was fuming mad when he got to the top. Even though he didn't say much, the jerky way he coiled the ropes and stuffed things into the backpack were pretty telling. Anxiety took hold of me. I hated when people were angry with me and when I disappointed them. It's why I kept having lunch with Will's mother once a month, even though it was more painful than a root canal as she tried to reminisce about the good old days when Will was still alive. Looking down at my shoes, I tried to shut out Gray's movements.

"Do you want to have something to eat?" he asked. Impatience rang out clearly in his voice even though he tried to pretend like he really wanted to sit on the nice rock under the nice shade and have a nice afternoon snack.

"No," I replied still looking down. "I think I need to get back."

His only response was to grunt and start walking down the hill. It didn't take long to get to my car and we hadn't exchanged more than two words on the hike back to the parking lot. When we were on the road, I ventured a thank you. "I had a good time today. Thanks for bringing me."

Gray sat in silence for most of the trip, but he obviously wanted to say something. He’d open his mouth, clear his throat, and then shut it again.

“What?” I asked, exasperated. “What is it that you want to say?”

He drummed the console between us with his finger tips for a moment and then gruffly asked, "Are you depressed? Do you need to see someone? There’s nothing wrong with that."

"No! Why do you ask?" Where did this come from? I was so embarrassed.

"Because you were…” he paused, clearly fighting some stronger emotion, but I didn’t let him finish. His unjust accusation fired my temper.

"I stood on the edge to see if you wanted to eat something. Clearly you have lingering guilt over the widow in your unit. Maybe
you
should see someone," I shot back.

"It's a platoon,” he said curtly.

"I don't really care, soldier," I replied sarcastically.

"I'm not a fucking soldier, and you know it."

"Don't curse at me."

"Don't call me a soldier."

"You Marines are neurotic about this, you know. You should see someone, just so you can get it through your head that not everyone is insulting you when they refer to you as a soldier."

"Only the Army has soldiers." Gray fumed.

The Rover came to a shuddering halt at the light at the top of the exit ramp. "See, neurotic." I pointed at him, not even paying attention to the lights. We were both breathing heavily, chests heaving. Quick as lightning, Gray reached across the console, and for a second, I thought he was going to kiss me. Maybe he was going to and he changed his mind at the last second. Instead, he pressed his forehead against mine.

"I'm sorry," he said.

I should've still been angry with him but his apology, his fear, his resignation wiped it away. "Me too," I whispered back. We might have stayed like that forever if not for the cars honking their horns at me because the light had turned green. I pulled back reluctantly and took Gray home. I helped him unload the ropes, and he gave me a quick hug.

"See you around, Sam." And then he was gone.

Gray

I
WANTED
TO
FIX
THINGS
with her but I wasn’t sure how. It occurred to me that I kind of sucked at interacting with women. When I wasn’t wearing the uniform, when I didn’t have the power of the Corps behind me, I was inept. The girls I’d been with didn’t hang out with me because I was funny or interesting to talk to. They fucked me and left me. I’d told myself for years that the only connection I ever wanted with a woman was a physical one.

The weird hiccups in my heartbeat when I watched my boys interact with their girlfriends made it clear that that statement was a lie. I’d shoved the desire for something more with a female down so deep I believed it didn’t exist, but here I was all worked up because I’d fucked up with a girl I barely knew. Although that was another lie.

I’d shared more meaningful conversation with Sam than anyone I could remember, in years. Her eyes held no judgment only understanding. Maybe it was because she’d been married to a soldier, but she
knew
me. She could see inside of me and that both scared the shit of me and excited me in a way that made me worried for my own sanity.

A wicked ugly sense of insecurity washed over me and suddenly I was angry. At myself in part but at Sam, too, for opening my eyes.

I’d never gone hiking with a girl before. I’d never just simply enjoyed hearing her wild laugh at the first step off the cliff. Shit, that was a sound of pure freaking joy and I’d ruined it. When she’d leaned over the edge, her arms out wide, the sound coming from her was enough to make the entire valley smile, but for me? Within me, the sound had turned sour, and I’d reacted without thinking. I needed her to stop laughing, and so I accused her of doing something I knew, deep down, wasn’t going to happen.

My actions came from the protective sense of self-preservation I’d cultivated since my girlfriend Carrie had cheated on me during my second deployment. I was getting shot at, my friends were fucking dying in the field, and I spent every night dreaming about being home with her, in her bed. But while I was creating fantasies to keep me from going insane, she had been shacking up with the local Marine recruiter.

Only in the Marines did you love your brothers one minute and then hate them the next for sleeping with your girl, rifling through your mail, and stealing anything of worth that wasn’t locked down. A true fucking dysfunctional family. I wasn’t sure why I loved it, but I did.

But it had been there for me when Carrie wasn’t. When I came home to find her shaking the tires off her car with the Marine officer, it had been my brothers who took me out and got me wasted. It was the Corps that had given me so much shit to do that I didn’t have time to think of Carrie. I had been too tired to even stroke my wood if I had the urge—which I didn’t for several months after I saw her pale ass bouncing in the window of the car. It had been the men in my platoon who found me hook up after hook up until I was lost in a sea of unfamiliar pussy and had forgotten my own name as well as Carrie’s. It had been Hamilton, my battle buddy, who’d recommended doing the friends-with-benefits thing with a local first responder. And one thing led to another until all I had in my life was my family, my brothers from the Corp, and a few women who I called up at ten at night to ease my physical ache. Then I left them, because lying in bed with a woman for the entire night was more than I could stomach.

I never spent time with woman just casually unless it was my mother. No wonder Sam confused me. But even as she scared me, I was drawn to her. We weren’t done yet. I just had to figure out how to convince her to give me another chance.

The next morning, I took Noah and Bo up on their offer to run around the neighborhood. I think I’d foolishly hoped I’d bump into Sam. At five in the morning. Hey, she’d fucked with my mind. What could I say?

“This is like physical training. You always were a gunner, Noah,” I panted as we came off a sprint. I’d made the stupid mistake of asking Noah how he was training for an upcoming fight he had on television. Come and see, he’d said, which was the same as saying that he didn’t think my post-deployment ass could make it more than a few miles. I couldn’t stand down from a challenge. I was regretting it now. Rather than a sustained run for eight or nine miles, Noah had decided that Bo and I should run interval sprints. For an hour. The good thing was that I was too tired to think about the shittastic ending to yesterday’s hike. My cheeks felt hot when I thought about the tantrum I’d pulled. Rivulets of sweat blurred my vision, and I grabbed the bottom of my shirt to wipe my eyes and cover my flush. "You two do this every morning?”

"Bo's too busy with AnnMarie to run every morning," Noah complained, before sucking down an electrolyte pack.

"Got one of those for me?"

Noah pulled out two more from the pocket of his running shorts and handed them out.

I pushed the entire contents of the pack in my mouth and slid the crumbled plastic into my pocket. "That true, Bo? You wimping out?”

"God didn't make a girl like AnnMarie so she could wake up alone," Bo replied, his mouth still around the opening of his energy supplement.

"So she's sleeping with some other guy this morning?"

"Fuck you. She's at the house, and I'll be showered and back in bed for some morning delight before she's even awake.”

"Or she and Grace will be making breakfast with Finn," Noah suggested.

"Man, I hope it’s peach French toast. That shit's the bomb." Bo and Noah knocked fists together.

“I’m surprised they allow you to eat French toast.” I ruffled Noah’s hair, which wasn’t easy to do given we were about the same height.

He knocked my arm away. “I can have one piece.”

“So this is the good life outside the Marines? Hot girls making you breakfast? Hook me up.” I forced out a laugh because joking about casual encounters with girls was normal. Wanting Sam, regretting marring the connection we’d had was something I barely understood myself and wasn’t ready to lay out in front of the guys.

"What am I? OKCupid? Close your own damn hook ups." Bo slapped his empty pack in my hand and ran off. Noah laughed like a loon and followed. Fisting the garbage, I gave chase and eventually ran Bo down close to the house and tackled him in the grass. I shoved the empty electrolyte pack down his shirt.

"I always knew you wanted me." He made kissy faces at me while I play-punched him in the face. Our fight was interrupted when the front door opened and Noah and Bo's girlfriends were standing there—awake far too early but dressed in tiny shorts and tank tops. Goddamn, summer was my favorite season. I must've stared too long because Bo slid a glancing blow across my chin.

"Stop staring at my girl, motherfucker."

"Can't. She's too hot,” I said just to screw with him. Noah had sprinted up the steps and spirited Grace inside rather than expose her to my lecherous gaze, I guess.

"You gotta learn some manners," Bo growled.

I swung to face him and put up my fists. "Yeah, wanna try to teach me some?"

He crouched into a fighting stance and we started circling each other.

"You coming in to have breakfast, or would you rather piss all over each other in a show of real animal dominance?" AnnMarie called from the door.

"I'm going to knock this fucker on his ass and then I'm coming in for breakfast," he called back.

"You get hit in the mouth, Bo, and we can't do those things we talked about last night!" She stood on the front stoop, hands on her hips. I made the mistake of turning to look at her and Bo took the opportunity to smack me right in the chin. I let him have the blow though, because I wouldn't want anyone looking at my girl either. But so he didn't think I was going to let him hit me any time he wanted, I kicked his Achilles heel and when he stumbled, I jumped over him and ran up to her.