So. Long(52)

Her tongue darts out to wet her lip. “At the banquet…”

“Yeah?”

She draws a figure-eight around the flat disks of my nipples. “You seemed really passionate about all of it.”

Now I’m the one who shrugs. “I’m a vet. I like to support fellow veterans.”

“I know, but…it seemed to be more than that.” Kelsey pushes up onto one elbow.

I thread my fingers through her hair and smooth it down. “I’ve been seeing a shrink at the VA Hospital for a while. And I’m doing okay. Life is reasonably good—now.”

Kelsey nods as she continues swirling her fingertip over my heated skin.

How much do I tell her? Does she want all of it? Can I tell her all of it?

No.

She doesn’t have to know to understand. The reason I enlisted and went over there was to keep the horror from coming home. No sense in bringing it to Kelsey, filling her mind with the terrible things I’ve seen—the things I’ve done.

She flattens her palm over my heart and gives me a little shake. “Life is good now—but?”

My ribs crank down on my lungs for a moment. “No judging?”

Kelsey shakes her head. “None.”

“When I was over there—well, I’ve—some things stick with a person.” I rub my forehead.

How do I put this?

“No matter how much I fill up my time, no matter how much I tell myself that I was doing my duty…no matter how many sleeping pills I take or how many anti-depressants I shove down my gullet, some things won’t leave me. They lurk in the hallways of my mind, they’re in the brown eyes of a child at the grocery store, they’re in a dirty shoe abandoned on a dusty road, and they wait for me in a thousand other places and things I see and hear every day.”

Kelsey’s warm body comforts me in a way I didn’t know was possible. I pull her closer and lace my fingers behind her.

“It took me a while to learn to deal with them. To figure out how to live around them, maneuver through my everyday life without tripping over them at every turn, every backfiring truck, every firework show, every little thing that can trigger one of them and bring them to the front of my mind, instead of leaving them safely tucked into the recesses of my memory where they belong.”

For a few moments, there’s only our breathing to break the silence.

Kelsey finally says, “And?”

“And most of those vets are there, on the streets, because of something that happened to them or around them while they served our country—protected others who will never know the sacrifices they’ve made. The horrors that live in their minds, that have fractured their realities, that drive them to drink or do drugs—they wouldn’t have any of that in their heads if they hadn’t put our country first and served.”

“I can understand that.”

“And—any of those guys you saw on that slideshow? I could be right there with them. Homeless. Desperate. Hungry. Alone.”

She shakes her head. “No. I can’t see that happening to you.”

I lay a kiss on the top of her head. “Beautiful girl, I appreciate your confidence in me. But really, any step along the way—if I’d have faltered, if my doc hadn’t shown up for work one day, if I’d have called to talk to a buddy and he hadn’t felt like dealing with my truckloads of shit, if I hadn’t been able to open up enough and let some of it out, take the pressure off, so to speak—yeah, I could have been.”

“So you give talks at fundraisers.”

“Yes. It’s a small thing, but it’s at least one thing I can do.” I turn her over and tuck her close against me, smoothing her hair beneath my chin. “Now, go to sleep. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” She wiggles her ass, upping the pressure at my crotch.

“Tomorrow, I’ll take you again and again and again. I’m going to make you scream my name and forget your own.”





Adam is a super-snuggler. All night he held me tightly, his body entwined with mine. Every time I moved a half-inch from him, he’d pull me closer. His warm breath on the back of my neck, his kisses on my shoulder, his hands caressing my skin like he couldn’t touch me enough—all combined in an effort to blow a hole through my defenses.

But I can’t let that happen.

And he wouldn’t want me to anyway.

I woke with Adam’s arms locked around me and a story swirling in my mind. The words have been running through my head since sometime in the wee hours of the morning. The characters chattered among themselves so loudly it was all I could do to stay put as long as I did.