Disarm (2 page)

A guy ran past me, wearing shoes, shorts, and little else. As he zipped by, I was able to give his backside a nice inspection. He had nice, sweaty muscles on his back, and his calves were well defined as he ran. He must have sensed my ogling because he looked over his shoulder and flashed a toothy grin, urging me to catch up.

I geared up to run faster when I heard someone calling my name. I stopped when I saw Danielle, the girlfriend of one of Henry's buddies, coming my way.

“Hey!” I greeted, casting one last glance at the guy, hoping he'd do another lap of the park. I turned my attention back to Danielle, noting her running outfit. “You look great.”

She smiled widely. “Thanks. I reached my goal weight last week, so I bought a new outfit to celebrate.”

I gave her a thumbs-up. Danielle had been overweight when we met at a party several months ago, but now she was wearing capri pants and a tank top and looking healthier than ever. I suddenly felt frumpy in my running shorts that bunched in the middle and old UCLA T-shirt with a hole in one of the armpits.

“So, are you ready for the deployment?” Danielle asked as she began her leg stretches.

I froze. “What deployment?”

“Didn't Henry tell you?” she asked, a look of trepidation crossing her face. “The squadron is leaving in two weeks.”

“What?” My heart, which was already trying to recover from running too fast, was now thundering again. “How long have they known?”

“Mike knew two months ago,” she said with an apologetic shrug.

I tried to rack my brain for reasons why Henry wouldn't tell me about the deployment and only one thing came to mind. “They're headed to Afghanistan, aren't they?” I asked through the lump in my throat.

Danielle's shoulders slumped. “Why wouldn't he tell you? Aren't you roommates?”

My nose was flaring unattractively, I was so mad. “Yes, we are.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stir up trouble.”

I gave her the feeblest smile I could manage under the circumstances. “It's not your fault.” I said my good-byes and headed to my car. Henry wasn't going to have the chance to die in Afghanistan like my brother because I was going to kill him first.

LOCK AND LOAD

I wasn't overreacting to the news of the deployment. At least,
I
didn't think so. It's just that, when it comes to secrets, Henry and I haven't had the best track record. First there was the Bobby Santos incident in high school. Bobby was a sweet—if a little too shy—guy who had solicited Henry's help to ask me to the senior prom, knowing that Jason would have likely said no. Somehow, Henry had managed to forget to tell me, and I'd only found out about it after the event, when Bobby's cousin confronted me in the hallway for standing him up. Henry had apologized, saying he simply forgot, that he had other things on his mind. Forgot, my ass.

Then there was the secret to end all secrets, the one that almost prompted me to move out. Henry had known about Jason's death pretty much the same day it happened, but he didn't tell me until much later, when the official word came out and family and friends were notified. He told me he was trying to protect me, that he wanted to delay the moment when my life changed. Now I'm able see it for the thoughtful gesture it was, but back then, I had been so livid I had left without a word and hadn't come back from California for an entire week. Jason's funeral wasn't held until a month later, when his body was finally returned, but at the time, I'd just needed to get away.

To this day, I still wondered how he managed to act normally and not give away the secret that his best friend had been killed in action. Henry, it appeared, was a very convincing actor.

So really, I wasn't overreacting when, on the way home from the park, I ran a red light, nearly rammed into the slow-moving apartment-complex gate, and parked my Prius like a drunk driver. I tore up the concrete stairs of the building and entered our apartment, slamming the door behind me. “Henry!” I shouted, stalking over to his bedroom and pounding my fist on his door, relishing the idea of aggravating his hangover. “Henry Mason Logan, you get your ass out here right now!”

His door opened a crack and he peered out, his face a scruffy, rumpled mess. “What the hell?” he croaked.

“Are you deploying to Afghanistan in two weeks?”

The sleep slid off his face immediately. “Yeah.”

“Were you planning on ever telling me?”

“Yeah. Eventually.”

“When? On your way onto the plane?” I willed the tears back. “Why didn't you tell me? I thought we were friends!”

He threw open the door, looking weary. “I didn't know how to tell you.” He took a step closer, but I stepped back.

“I think a ‘Hey, I'm going to the place where your brother died' would have sufficed.”

“That's exactly why I didn't tell you. I knew you'd freak out.” He ran a hand through his short, dark hair.

“How can I not freak out? Jason went there and never came back!” My entire body was shaking from the effort of trying not to cry. Henry had seen me cry plenty of times before, but somehow it seemed important that I kept my cool now.

“What happened to Jason won't happen to me.” He approached me with outstretched arms. “Elsie . . .”

“I don't care,” I said, evading his touch. I was being unfair; I knew this, and yet I couldn't stop the hysteria from taking over. My control evaporated and the tears rushed down my cheeks in rivulets. Jason's death was a mark on my heart that would stay with me forever. I couldn't even begin to imagine what losing Henry would do to me too. “Is there any way you can get out of it?” I whispered. “Please?”

I felt like a selfish moron for asking, but I couldn't help it; I was nearing desperation. If Henry went to Afghanistan, he would never come back—I felt the certainty lodged deep in my gut.

Henry's dark eyebrows drew together as he shook his head. His jaw was stiff when he said in an irritated tone, “You know I can't.”

“But—”

He took hold of my arms. “Listen to me, Elsie. I
can't
. It's not possible,” he said firmly, then added in a softer tone, “but I would if I could.”

I couldn't say anything, didn't even know what I'd say if my vocal cords weren't tied up in knots, so I walked away and hid from the truth in my bedroom.

I didn't talk to Henry for the next twenty-three hours. I needed a little time to cool down, to think through my anger to keep from saying things I would really regret.

I couldn't decide which hurt more: the fact that he was headed to the place that claimed my brother or the fact that he didn't tell me.

Anger and fear—mostly fear, if I was being completely honest—roiled inside me in waves. If I saw Henry, I didn't know if I'd want to plant a fist in his stomach or if I'd want to grab hold of him and never let go.

He was up before me the next morning, waiting in the kitchen with an olive branch in the form of a perfectly made cup of coffee. But I brushed past him and made my own in a to-go cup, not bothering to say good-bye before I walked out the front door.

I stayed at work until seven thirty and ate dinner with a coworker before I finally decided to go home. Henry had fallen asleep on the couch, a book lying open on his stomach.

I crept closer out of curiosity and saw the book's title:
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu. How apt, since we were in the middle of a battle of our own.

I meant to leave but something about the way he slept compelled me to stay, how his eyebrows were drawn together even in sleep, his mouth pursed in a thin line. For a minute, I set aside my anger and remembered the very first time we met. We had just moved to Monterey after Dad retired from the Air Force, so Jason was the new kid at the high school. Henry had introduced himself at the lunch line and invited Jason to sit with his friends. Not too long after that, Henry came over for dinner.

I was still in junior high then, all sass and gangly limbs, with curls that always frizzed by the end of the school day, so I was not prepared at all when the boy of my dreams walked through the front door after my brother. Henry sported dark, unruly long hair and a quiet intensity to match. He didn't smile much because of his braces, which gave him a sullen mien, but he was good-looking even then. To my teenage eyes, he was hotter than anything
Tiger Beat
had to offer, hotter even than Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

“Your hair is out of control,” he told me as we shook hands.

“Yours is worse,” I said without hesitation.

He smiled then, all braces and crinkly eyes, completely transforming his entire face. Just like that, I was a goner.

His long hair and best friend were both gone now, and whatever Henry and I had left in common was fast dwindling. And the one thing we had for sure—the trust—was being put to the test.

I wasn't a complete unreasonable dumbass though. I knew that families said good-bye to their loved ones every day, that I wasn't the only person in the world in this situation. Plenty of service members were gone for a year at a time—missing birthdays, anniversaries, even the birth of a child—and I certainly wasn't the only person in the world to lose a loved one to the war.

I
knew
this, and yet my heart would not stop aching anyway. Henry was leaving in two weeks. I'd be alone in this apartment with only my fears and bad dreams to keep me company.

Henry made a little sound in the back of his throat, a cross between a moan and a growl, but he remained asleep. I felt the last of my anger melt away when the crotch of his jeans started to stir, but before I could even see where
that
would lead I nudged him awake. “Henry.”

He opened his eyes and his sleepy smile just about melted my panties. Did he look like that right after sex? Why was I suddenly so intent on finding out?

“Hey,” he said huskily. His hand shot out and grabbed mine to keep me from leaving again. “Talk to me, Els.”

I searched his face and found regret. “I wish you'd told me.”

His eyes held mine. “Believe me, so do I,” he said. “I hated having to keep it from you, but I really couldn't find the right way to tell you.”

I gave a short nod. “I know. But I need to know I can trust you—”

“Of course you can trust me.”

“—to treat me like an adult.”

He sighed, his wide chest rising and falling. “I can't help it. I've always felt protective of you.” I felt him squeeze my hand. “And I know you're an adult. You've grown up into a beautiful, wonderful woman.”

Even though my face felt warm, I said, “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Sometimes it gets me out of trouble,” he said with a grin. “So we have this weekend to do something fun. What should we do?”

I raised my eyebrow. “You want to spend your last weekend with me? You're not going to go see your parents?”

“No.” He said nothing else about the complicated relationship with his parents. He never did. “And most of my predeployment ducks are in a row. So I'm all yours this weekend.”

I thought of something we hadn't done in a while, something we'd loved doing when Jason was still around. “How about we go hiking and camping at Red Rock Canyon?”

“And some rappelling?” he asked, his eyes bright with excitement.

“Definitely.”

He sat up and threw the book aside. He squeezed my hand, a silent promise that he would never do me wrong again. “This will be fun.”

CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

Sometime after Jason's death, I started having nightmares. They were violent at first, causing me to thrash and scream, but Henry had been there to wake me from them each time, to hold my head as I cried. Sometimes I climbed into bed with him in the middle of the night, a preemptive strike against the night terrors. Just the act of sleeping beside him, without even touching, gave me the comfort I needed to stay asleep.

I hadn't had any nightmares in a while. Until tonight.

I dreamt that Jason was walking around a run-down, deserted neighborhood of cement buildings without his weapons or any form of communication. He passed a mangy dog and stopped to pet it, and in that small moment of distraction, a sniper on the rooftop was able to take him out. This dream was different, however, because Henry ran out into the street without body armor and crouched beside my fallen brother. He was shot in the back of the head.

I woke up, shaking and covered in sweat, suddenly filled with an overwhelming need to see Henry and make sure he was okay. So even though it was after midnight, I tiptoed past the living room and peered into his room.

I was relieved to find him very much alive, lying on the bed in nothing but a pair of sweat pants, watching TV with his hands folded behind his head. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

“I . . .”

He sat up. “Bad dreams?”

“You were in it this time.”

He patted the space beside him. “Wanna bunk?”

I stopped at the foot of his bed, suddenly unsure of myself. We'd spent many hours here, talking and crying and cementing our friendship. He'd never tried anything, had never expressed any sort of sexuality with me until the other night. So why was I so nervous all of a sudden?

“Would you just come here already?” he asked, breaking through my uncertainty.

Without another word, I climbed on the bed and lay beside him, staring up at the ceiling.

“You want to talk about it?”

I shook my head and we remained unspeaking for a long time.

He finally broke the silence. “I really am sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Elsie.”

I looked at him. “I'm sorry for reacting exactly as you thought.”

“I just couldn't find the right time or place to tell you. Believe me, I thought about it day and night.”

“You don't always have to protect me, you know. I can handle it. I'm not a little girl anymore, in case you haven't noticed.”

His blue eyes blazed on my face with a look that made my ears burn. “I have.”

I was sure he could hear my heart pounding through my shirt. “So no more personal secrets, okay? You'll always have your classified information, I know that, but you hiding something like this from me . . . well, it hurts.”

He held out his pinky and we sealed the deal. “Promise.”

We looked at each other for a long time, not saying anything.

“So what now?” I finally asked.

“We deal with it, I guess. Not much else we can do.” He let out a slow breath through his nose. “The chance of that happening to me is pretty slim, you know. My job is to guard the base, not mingle with the natives.”

“Can I get that in writing?” I asked with a smile. “I want a written guarantee, notarized even, that you will be okay.”

He gave a short chuckle. “I can't do that. But I can make you a promise that I will try my hardest to come back home in one piece.”

Tears sprang to my eyes unexpectedly. “I honestly don't know what I'd do without you,” I said with a quivering voice.

“Hey,” he said, gathering me into his side. “Don't cry.”

I laid my cheek on his bare skin, tears falling from my face and soaking into the short, dark hair of his chest. “You smell nice,” I said between sobs.

“Sometimes I do this thing called
shower
,” he said to try to lighten the mood. “Try it sometime.”

I gave him a playful jab on the stomach, glad to have the old Henry back. “Smart-ass.”

He grabbed my hand and smacked me with it, his favorite way of tormenting me since our teens. “Stop hitting yourself, Elsie,” he said with a laugh. “Hurting yourself won't do you any good.”

I struggled against his strong arms, laughing despite the moisture on my face. I twisted around and somehow found myself on top of him.

Henry bit his lower lip. “Are you trying to seduce me?” he asked with a cheeky grin.

I pinched his nose and slid off him, feeling a surprising jolt as my nipples rubbed against his chest. Ignoring the confusing feeling, I resumed our snuggling position, resting my hand on his stomach. He placed his hand on mine and gave a contented little sigh that I felt in my bones. I melted into his side, finding myself suddenly sleepy.

“I don't know what I'd do without you either” was the last thing I heard him say before the weight of the deployment proved too heavy for my eyelids.

I was having a surprisingly erotic dream where Henry and I were naked together, his large hands caressing my body as we kissed like we would never see each other again. I could feel his erection pressing into me, his desire so palpable I could almost smell it. He reached down between us and his hand cupped my mound, making me moan when his fingers slipped inside. To return the pleasure, I gripped his thick erection and began a gentle tugging motion.

“Uh, Elsie,” he said.

“Henry,” I moaned against him, pumping faster.

“Elsie, wake up.”

My eyes opened with a start, surprised that it had all been a dream. It had felt so real.

“Umm . . .”

My eyes flew down in horror when I realized that my hand was, indeed, inside Henry's pants, my fingers still wrapped around his erect penis.

“What the hell!” I cried, scrambling away in horror. “What was my hand doing in there?”

Henry stifled a smile as he fixed his waistband. “I think you know what you were doing.”

“I mean, why was it in there, in your pants? Did you do that?”

He laughed now, hearty and thick. “Hell no. That was all you. I woke up with you manhandling me.”

I covered my mouth with my hand—the
other
hand—feeling my face go up in flames. “Was I moaning too?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Oh my God! I thought I was dreaming.” I covered my face with my hands, dying of embarrassment.

He bit down on his lip but was not successful in hiding his amusement. “You dream about jerking me off?” he asked.

“No!” I cried. “I'm sorry for molesting you,” I said and fled the room as quickly as my feet could go, with Henry's laughs trailing behind me like toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

I went to work thirty minutes early the next morning out of sheer embarrassment. I didn't want to have to see Henry's smirk, didn't want to have to explain why my unconscious hand was touching him in his private places.

Several people came by my cubicle at work, asking if I was running a fever because my face was still so red.
Oh, it's just because I accidentally jerked off my roommate this morning
, I thought about saying, then died a little more inside.

I found it hard to concentrate on work. Every time I typed something or reached for my mouse, I'd inadvertently glance down at my hand and remember how Henry had felt in my grip, that soft, velvety skin that gave way to the solid muscle underneath. I imagined guiding him inside me, filling me up completely with that dark look on his face. . . .

I stood up, my entire body overheating, and ran to the bathroom as fast as my boots would allow. I meant to only splash cold water on my face, but as soon as I was in the privacy of the bathroom, I knew there was really only one way I could get through the day, so I locked myself in a stall, lifted the hem of my skirt, and slipped my hand inside my panties.

My body relaxed somewhat for the rest of the day, but the moment I pulled into the apartment parking lot the desire came rushing back. When I slid the key inside the lock, I almost decided to forgo thinking and just fuck Henry senseless.

Yes, the F-word, because he wasn't getting anything less. I was so aroused, I even entertained the idea of fucking him twice.

My hot fantasy was doused when I walked inside and found Henry and another guy in the living room, each lounging on a different couch with a beer in hand. They had been talking about work but stopped when I walked into view.

“Hey,” Henry greeted, his face carefully devoid of expression. I was almost in the clear when his blue eyes slowly slid down my body, inflaming me to the core. My knees just about buckled.

I didn't know when he'd acquired that special power over me, but I wanted it gone. I couldn't afford to burst into flames every time he looked my way.

“Elsie?” he asked, frowning.

I blinked, realizing I'd spaced out for a second. “Huh?”

A shadow of a smirk crossed over his mouth before he said, “Elsie, meet Lieutenant Jack Coulson. He's moving to an apartment across the courtyard.”

I shot Jack a smile, noting the youth and inexperience in his face. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two. “Nice to meet you.”

Jack stood up and shook my hand. “Pleasure,” he said.

“Do you work together?”

Jack remained standing. “Yes, ma'am. I just moved to the Seventy-Second Security Forces Squadron. Captain Logan is my boss.”

I looked over at Henry with a raised eyebrow. My first impulse was to say something funny but remembered to keep my snarky mouth in check. Henry was this guy's boss and needed to maintain a sense of authority. “That's great,” I said instead.

Henry cast that blue gaze at me, his eyes once again doing the sexy slide down my body that felt very much like a caress.

I turned away, sick of my body's disloyal reaction to those looks. It wasn't as if I was really attracted to Henry; I just needed a good lay and he happened to be the nearest available guy. That's all it was. Surely there were other guys who might be interested.

I excused myself, deciding a long run at the park was just what my body needed.

Nearly an hour later, I was back at the apartment, sweaty and still frustrated. I'd run four miles, yet my mystery runner never showed up. I hopped in the shower, hoping to cool down—which worked for the most part, until afterward, when I came out to the living room completely dressed to find Henry definitively
not.
His shirt was off (did the guy even own one?) and he was sweaty from helping Jack move his stuff up the three flights of stairs.

He had his back to me so I was able to leisurely look over his muscular back, from his wide shoulders that tapered down to a lower back that sported two dimples dipping below the waistband of his jeans.

He turned around, wiping his chest with a balled-up shirt. “Hey, what do you want to do tonight?”

Hmm, what
did
I want to do tonight, apart from the obvious? “I was just going to eat a peanut butter sandwich and read a book,” I said as casually as I could.

He raised his eyebrows. “You sure? I was going to order a pizza.”

My eyes flicked down to his torso—he had the nicest six-pack abs of anyone I knew in real life—before I looked away. “I'm sure.”

He cocked his head. “Come on. I'm leaving next Friday. Spend some time with me.”

Well crap, why did he have to put it that way? Still, his words helped because the impending deployment was the sexual damper that I really needed. The fact was, he was leaving and I should be spending time with him. “Okay, fine,” I said with an exaggerated sigh. “But please put a shirt on.”

He grinned and lobbed me the phone. “Call the pizza place, will you? I'm just going to jump in the shower.”

Henry and I ate sitting on the carpet, leaning against the suede couch. The couch had been Jason's first major purchase and he had ordered a five-foot no-food radius around it when it was still brand-new. After his death, it became a ritual we observed to preserve Jason's memory.

I put on a movie about superheroes as we ate, glad to have some distraction for a while.

“If you had any superpower,” I asked. “What would it be?”

“What would I choose, or what would I be born with?” he asked, balancing a beer bottle between his legs. “Because if I was born with a superpower, I'd say it's being really, really ridiculously good-looking.”

I threw a crumpled napkin at him. “No, I meant what would you choose?”

He took a large bite of his third slice of pizza and chewed a moment before saying, “I would choose the ability to fly.”

“Huh, I would have chosen invincibility for you.”
So you could come out of the war unscathed
, I wanted to add, but didn't want to ruin the mood.

“So I can sneak into your shower and see you naked?”

I smacked his arm. “No,
invincibility.
”

“Oh,
that
invincibility,” he said with a laugh, looking happier than I had seen him in months. He took a swig of beer, then said, “So, hey, are we going to talk about what happened this morning?”

The question caught me by surprise and my brain struggled to come up with an elegant response. “I, uh . . .”

“Because I think the elephant in the room needs to be addressed,” he said. “And I'm not referring to my colossal size.”

I burst out laughing, finally finding my voice. “You're not that large, my friend.”

“How large would you say then?” He held his hands two feet apart. “So about this big, right?”

“Riiight.” I chuckled, feeling the embarrassment melting away. “I'm sorry. I don't know what that was about.”

“I think that was about your hand on my dick.” He laughed at my shocked reaction and continued, “Would you rather I call it my phallus? My hammerjack? How about my
porksword
?”

I spit out my drink, having never heard the last one before.