He cried out and shuddered, pouring himself inside me, filling me with his love and trust, bringing us together again.
When he’d finished, he rested between my thighs, his face buried in my neck, his breath still coming in gasps. I stroked his back and told him I loved him.
Eventually he pulled out and curled up next to me: I could feel his cheeks were wet with tears.
“Are you okay?” I said, quietly.
He nodded without speaking, and then he opened his eyes and smiled at me.
“Very okay, Caro. I’m very okay.”
And we held each other without the need to speak again.
After that, the dam holding back our intimacy had been breached, and Sebastian’s mind started to heal as well as his body.
There was something I had to ask him, and I didn’t know if it was going to be a good idea or not.
We were slumped together on the sofa, drinking herbal tea just before going to bed. I didn’t really enjoy the thin, bitter liquid, but caffeine made Sebastian jumpy.
“Sebastian, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, baby,” he said, running his hand down my arm, and twining his fingers with mine.
“Well, I was wondering … what are your nightmares about?”
I felt him tense immediately, and regretted my question.
“It’s hard to talk about, Caro,” he said, his voice low and quiet.
“It’s okay—you don’t have to tell me.”
“I just don’t want you to have that shit in your head.”
“Sebastian, you wake up screaming every night—it doesn’t have to be me, but I think you need to tell someone.”
“I’m not seeing a fucking shrink,” he said, testily.
I didn’t reply.
We sat silently, staring out of the windows, watching the horizon growing paler as the sun sank behind the sea.
And then he began to speak.
“I can’t tell you everything, Caro, because it’s classified, and you can’t report any of this.”
“Of course not!”
I was hurt that he’d even think that.
“Sorry, baby, I had to say it.” He sighed. “We were in Now Zad in the first place to make contact with someone—a local guy—who was going to get us to one of the Taliban leaders—so we could take him out. That’s why they wanted me there, because they were worried about using local interpreters for a sensitive op. It was supposed to be a small patrol, just the 14 of us, with Jankowski in charge. At the last minute, Grant was told we had to take these two guys from the Afghan National Army with us. He wasn’t happy, but he got overruled. We headed out into the mountains for what we thought would be three or four days, but we didn’t get that far. When we got to the village for the meet, we knew right away that something was wrong—it was just too damn quiet. There was nobody in the fields, no one sitting outside their houses. We were all on edge.
“I went ahead with the ANA guys and they were calling out for the man we were supposed to meet. Then this guy came out from behind one of the buildings and he was talking really fast, and he looked fucking terrified. I realized he was quoting from the Koran and I knew then he’d been turned into a human fucking bomb. I yelled at everyone to get back, but then I felt like I’d been punched in the shoulder and I realized I’d been shot. One of the ANA guys had tried to take me out, then shot his colleague and turned his rifle on the rest of the squad. The firefight started, and I could hear Jankowski yelling at the contact to get down. Mark and Jez came running over to help me—and that’s when the bomb was detonated.”
Sebastian swallowed and closed his eyes.
“The Afghan contact was just pink mist: Jankowski, Mark and Jez were caught in the blast. If Jez hadn’t been so close to me, I’d have been killed, too, but he took it for me.”
Sebastian’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“I had pieces of Jez all over me. That’s what I dream about.”
His hands were shaking and his breathing had become shallow.
“I understand, I do, tesoro,” I murmured, gently stroking his cheek. “When I was in Iraq … it was the sound of the helicopters; they were bringing in wounded and I saw … I saw. But I don’t have that nightmare anymore, Sebastian, because my worst nightmare is losing you.”
I held him tightly, because that was all I could do.
Two days later, just as he was finishing his exercises, a sheen of sweat making his body glisten in a way that made my mouth water, I decided it was time to take a further step into the world.
“How do you feel about another challenge, Sebastian?”
He glanced over at me and smiled. “Sounds interesting. Does this one involve leaving the bedroom?”