Ethan (12 page)

“Conception without relation is a cold prospect. There’s got to be a lot of loneliness in that—and I know loneliness, Shae. You’re looking at nine months with no one to hold your hand, or offer words of encouragement. Probably not how you imagined your pregnancy would be. And what will you tell your kid, when he’s old enough to ask, ‘Daddy was on page nineteen of
See Men Magazine
?”

The comment hurt. For a moment, she was incapable of a reply.
She’d opened her mouth. She had asked.  And she’d gotten his take on the situation. But Ethan was a traditionalist, she reminded herself. And she was anything but.

“Why do you care?”

“You should have it all, Shae. Everything you want. Don’t you think so?”

Well, of course she did. But it hadn’t worked out that way.

“You don’t understand.”

“Why? Because I don’t have a vagina?”

“Yes. Exactly. Or the biological clock attached to it. You don’t feel each sweep of the second hand or wake up in the middle of the night. . .
wanting
. . .”

“You’re right about all of that, except that last part. I do wake up. I do want.
” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. “I want you.”

“And my baby plans are getting in your way?”

He sat
back. “Yes,” he returned.

Chapter Twelve

Ethan paced in front of the glass doors
. Outside, the sun was muted by a bank of clouds that had rolled in off the Pacific. The wind had kicked up, too. It wasn’t uncommon to have a few squalls kick off autumn in this region of California, and it looked like they were going to get a real doozy. He paused long enough to watch a handful of butterflies swirl in the air, more frenzy than the sloping sawing they usually did. The surface of the lap pool rippled. He wondered if Shae had looked up from her reading long enough to notice the change in weather.

They wouldn’t be surfing that evening.

They had fallen into a pattern the past four days. Shae read while Ethan tried to focus on possible upcoming projects. About three o’clock, she called it a day and they hit the beach. Later, over dinner, she posed some questions that made Ethan feel like he was treading water in a monsoon. She was tenacious and never let him off the hook. She was patient, and reworded questions until Ethan finally caved and really looked at the “scene,” as she called them. After she’d received answers she was happy with—and Ethan was, too—they allowed passion to take over, and the steamy glances and electric attraction that snapped between them all day was exorcised in the most intense sex he’d ever had.

That
wouldn’t be happening tonight, either. Not as it usually unfolded.

More than he dreaded her digging into him after today’s reading session—her questions always seemed to pare away
a layer of his skin—he dreaded telling her that this evening would be different.

They would have company.

And he resented it. The past four days had been perfect. Even the digging. He was making strides in figuring himself out—in fact, he knew it was fear that kept him from engaging deeply with a woman and that the fear was connected to betrayal and responsibility. He’d accepted that he had been less than perfect in his marriage, especially towards the end, during his second tour of duty in the Middle East, when his emails and phone calls to Tina had all but stopped, and following his return, when he’d been unable to shake the feeling of eminent danger and relax back into his “normal” life. He’d alienated her.

He expected today’s question
s to delve into Tina’s affair and his role in its happening. He was ready to take a look at it. He’d been pushing back feelings of righteousness, of betrayal, of macho pride all day.

And now this. A phone call from his mom. He still held his cell phone in hand, the warmth pressing into his palm. He tossed it onto his bed, into the rumpled sheets where just hours ago he’d taken Shae in
a glorious moment of mutual need.

Damn, just thinking of the woman made his dick hard.
Her satisfied smile really tore through him. Shae knew how to give, and not just by touch, but to really invite him in and let him see what his touch did to her. There was incredible vulnerability in that. It was breathtaking. It was powerful. It made him feel like a god. But it was double-duty. It left Shae exposed and she demanded the same from him. She prodded him into uncharted territory-and he’d loved every moment of exploration. And yet there was still an innocence about Shae as she guided them to heights before unexperienced—as though she too were surprised by both their discovery and their reaction to it.

They were learning about each other, but also new things about themselv
es. And that was exhilarating.

He checked the clock on the nightstand. Two-forty-three. He didn’t think they would have time for their usual Q and A. Not with the depth that Shae demanded and Ethan needed to experience. And he didn’t want to expose himself emotionally without following it up
with the physical closeness that had been like a salve to burned skin.

He had told h
is mother no, but knew the family would arrive, a huddled mass intent on comforting him and providing support. Eva told them he’d been dealing with Tina.

Ethan appreciate
d their concern. But now wasn’t the time.

He didn’t want to think about an evening without Shae in his arms, without them tumbling around on his bed.
Without discovering the creative ways they could make each other come with the ferocity of a shooting star.

He fell backwards into memory. Her smell. He loved burying his face in her intimate folds, lapping her juices, sucking her clit until her thighs clenched around his head and she arched in trembling  need and came in a flood. But her smell, that drove him crazy. Put the heat in his blood, made him plunge his tongue as deeply into her depths as he could
to reach and stroke that hidden pearl. Damn. She was so soft and ripe. Small. She made him feel a little he-manish. But she accepted him. All of him, no problem.

Seven
and a quarter inches in length—because when he was a stupid adolescent he’d done what they all did and measured himself while fully erect—more than five full inches around. He’d spent days turning himself into a geometric equation. Tina had figured him out quickly and he smiled at the memory. They had been classic—the smart, mature girl and the athletic, sophomoric guy. He wondered if age had been an equal culprit in their demise—while Ethan was away they’d grown apart in so many ways. Maybe they grew into the adults they were always meant to be. But then what had caused Tina to give it all up, to cash in? It didn’t make sense to him. Tina had been more self-involved than altruistic. It couldn’t have been recrimination for acts of betrayal.

He
sat down on the edge of the bed where Shae’s scent was still thick. Shae. She was totally different from Tina. Shae was compassionate; she was courageous, constantly putting herself out there. He wanted to protect her in ways he’d never felt called to do for Tina. He wanted to please her more than he wanted his next breath.

And so, yes, dammit
, he was developing feelings for Shae.

And
the fear that had kept him from true intimacy in the past plucked now at his pulse, made it beat heavily in his temples so that he felt a headache forming. It made his breath shallow. His palms itch. All common symptoms of an adrenalin rush, which fear could produce as easily as ecstasy.

He’d felt it before, and
every time cut out before he could follow the relationship to its natural conclusion. But he’d never arrived at this point so quickly, or felt it so strongly.

That
was his cue to leave.

Yet h
e didn’t want to.

The realization made his throat heavy and swallowing was difficult. He curled his hands into the sheets and tried to steady himself. The damn room seemed to pitch sharply away from

him.

If he stood he knew he’d feel like he was sliding across the face of the earth.
He’d probably fall on his ass if he tried to get up and go to her now.

And what could he offer her? Shae
had plans and he had no part in them. She’d made that clear at dinner last night. And asking her to put the brakes on her dream without offering her promises in return was unfair and not something Shae was likely to chance.

Stuck, that was how he felt.

Ethan
found her curled up on a big pillow in a corner of the office. Streamers of muted sunshine fell through the blinds and created an amber glow off the wood flooring. Shae looked up, then looked at the time in the corner bar of the Tablet. Three-twenty. She’d gotten caught up in a particularly raw section of writing that was all about physical battle but mirrored the struggle that was going on inside Ethan at that time. He was outside a desert camp in Lake Leatherneck, Afghanistan. Insurgents were sending a steady volley of missiles and gunfire their way and Ethan and his buddies were scrambling on their bellies, having been rousted from their surveillance posts. The thoughts going through Ethan’s mind were rooted in home when they should have been tuned into saving his life. His marriage was in trouble; he’d known it, but didn’t know what to do about it from seven thousand miles away. He doubted his heart, which he suspected was apathetic toward the situation. He’d gone so far as to state that he could go either way—ask her to stay and work on the widening gap between them, or watch her leave.

There were no indications of bet
rayal yet. Shae knew because Ethan had told her, but in today’s reading he had laid out suspicion.

She set the Tablet aside and stretched out her arms and legs.

“You’re looking very serious,” she said. He wore a distant expression on his face. She hadn’t seen that since day one. “What’s up?”

“You read about Camp Leatherneck
today,” he said.

She nodded. “I saw a lot of what wasn’t on the page, too.”

“We were under a barrage of gunfire—” he began.

“I know, but the real battle waged inside you.”

He smiled.  “I knew you wouldn’t let me off the hook.”

“I haven’t all week,” she agreed. “I think you were planning to leave Tina.”

She surprised him. It was in his arched brows, in the parting of his lips. “Where did you get that from?”

“You could ‘go either way,’” she quoted. “But you’re a man of action, Ethan. I think you were at a point in your life—not just your marriage—where you realized things weren’t working.
The military wasn’t what you’d hoped it would be. You were running out of fight and idealism had taken a turn through the shredder. You were doubting Tina’s commitment to you—her packages stopped coming, her e-mail replies were taking longer and were filled with ‘impersonal chatter.’”

“Everything was fucked,” he agreed.

“And you didn’t have the heart to try and fix what you suspected had no life left in it.”

“But she was waiting for me,” Ethan said.

“Was she?”

“I thought so.”

“But you found out differently,” she insisted.

“I didn’t know that then.”

“And so you should have been a better husband.”

“Absolutely.”

“While you were on your belly, fighting for survival, in a hostile environment half way around the world?”

“That’s the thing about commitment—it’s supposed to be enduring.”

But Shae shook her head. “Commitment only works when both parties are invested. That way, when one of you weakens the other is the strength.”

“Your instinct into the nature o
f male and female relationships?”

“I
t’s the human condition, Ethan. We all grow weary.”

“But we’re not supposed to quit.”

“Some of us do.” But she knew that wasn’t Ethan’s way. Or the thought that he might have wouldn’t bother him so much. He’d spent the ten years since Tina died drifting somewhere between a win and a loss, committing to neither. “What makes you think you quit on her?”

“
I was never the best writer,” he admitted. “But I made sure I connected with her in some way when I was deployed, on a consistent basis. It just became harder to do.”

“Because you didn’t have it in you, or b
ecause she didn’t?”

He shrugged. “There were long troughs of silence,” he admitted. “But we’re both to blame for that.”

“And maybe that was it. I think relationships are doomed when both parties weaken at the same time.”

“I didn’t want to step up,” he admitted. “I was angry.”

“Because you thought she was cheating on you?’

“I
suspected it. Her distance hurt the most. I’d read her emails and I felt her pulling away. And then, one day—“ He shrugged—“my suspicions were confirmed.”

“How?”

“Typical mistake in this kind of thing—she sent me an e-mail, ‘Dear Kevin.’”

Shae felt her stomach dro
p. “There were intimate details?”

“Nothing sexual. At the time I remember thinking that I was at least spared that, but I’ve grown up since then.
I realized the emotional betrayal was just as bad as the physical.” He sat down in the office chair and turned it so he could look at her. “She loved him. She didn’t know what she would do without him. She agreed to leave me, she just wanted to wait until I was home. So that she could tell me in person. Tina was like that—considerate.”

His sarcas
m was biting.

“I’d noticed she was somewhat self-centered,” Shae commented. “I thought that was due to her age.
”

“You grow up quickly
in the military, and not just the Marine—their wives, too. There’s worry and isolation. Tina wasn’t good at either, but most people aren’t. I expected too much from her.”

“She knew who she was marrying,” Shae pointed out.

Ethan nodded. “We talked about it. The first few years were going to be the hardest—but Tina was going to get her degree and that would take up a lot of her time while I was gone. After that, we were going to start a family.”

That hit Shae particularly hard. Probably because she was on the precipice of starting her own family.

“You lost all that,” she stated flatly, while inside a maelstrom of emotions swirled.

“Yes.” His solemn agreement stirred her emotions more. “But I walked away from it. I d
idn’t try to fix us, or even pretend that I wanted to.”