Every Breath (26 page)

“Hmm, okay.” I tap my chin, trying to think of what I really want to do right now, which is impossible with nearly-naked Sawyer lying next to me. Well, there’s always that. Yeah, right. Like I ever had anything else in mind. “Decision made.”

He kicks the blankets away. “Help me up, I’ll get dressed, and we’ll go wherever you want.”

“No, I want you to stay right here.”

“Makenna,” he huffs, scrunching his eyebrows. “You’re not going anywhere alone. It’s just not safe.”

I pick my head up and prop it in my hand. “What makes you so sure I’m going somewhere?” My fingertips trail along his sternum, down to his belly button, and just inside the elastic of his boxers. “I’m right where I want to be.”

“Yeah?”

I lean over to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Well, if I’m want you want, then I’m all yours, darlin’. You have total control.”

Ooh, I love the sound of that, and I’m pretty sure he does, too. My eyes skim down his body, trailing across his golden skin. I can’t seem to make it past his strong torso, which is covered in proof of a hard life. The tattoos and scars signify the war he’s been thrown into, the battle he chose to fight for his country.

But some of the scars, I have a feeling, are from the war he fought as a child in his own home. The small circular scars at the center of his chest are the most concerning because they look very similar to the accidental cigarette burn my uncle gave me on my elbow. It’s possible to consider one an accident, but not
three
in the same spot. I graze my index finger over them, and he looks down at me.

“William told you, didn’t he?” It’s not a question. He knows.

I can’t speak, so I nod once. He presses his lips together, and I can feel the tension in his muscles beneath me. His mood is immediately shifted into something darker, colder. It’s like we’re suddenly in quicksand, fighting the darkness that awaits us below, and I’m damn sick of being in that place. He helped rescue me from my demons, and I refuse to allow him to give it to them.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I place my lips over the group of scars, closing my eyes and wishing away the pain associated with them. When he reaches up to touch my face, I push his hand back down to the bed and hold it there, letting him know that I’m taking the control he gave me. Then I do the same with every scar I see, kissing every little reminder of the hurt he’s felt to chase it away.

When he starts to relax, I run the tip of my nose from the outside of his shoulder, up the side of his neck, and to the outer ridge of his ear, where I tug his lobe with my teeth and suck it gently. His sharp intake of breath tells me he’s back with me, free once again from the ever-threatening shadows. His fiery eyes are fixed on me, leaving an unrelenting heat wherever his gaze touches my skin. His mouth falls open slightly, and I take it as a direct invitation, crushing my lips to his, devouring the pliable flesh with indelible passion. As soon as I get the first sweet taste of his tongue against mine, I draw it into my mouth, sucking it roughly and taking all he’ll give.

It’s not enough though. I have to have more. There’s an unquenchable ache burning its way through every nerve of my body. It’s taking everything I have not to throw myself on top of him and feed this powerful, merciless craving. I need him. Every part of him.

Yearning for more, I drag my lips down to his stomach and nip at the skin around his belly button. I don’t know what it is about this man’s stomach that makes me want to bite it. I kiss my way down to those delectable hip bones, nipping at one before skimming my tongue across the top of his boxers to treat the other in the same manner.

When I hook my thumbs under the waistband, I peek up at him. His hooded eyes bore into me, and there’s more than just longing in them. The love that emanates from them is enough to form a lump in my throat. What he feels for me isn’t just a word; it’s in his actions, in his touch.

“Makenna,” he whispers, “I need to touch you.”

And need him to.

I gather all of the pillows on the bed and pile them behind him, so he can sit up against the headboard comfortably. He looks confused until I slip off my bra and panties and straddle his lap. I raise myself up slightly, and when his hand dives into my hair and pulls me in for a kiss, I reach down between us and lower myself onto him painfully slowly.

He groans into my mouth, and his hand moves down to clench my hip, grinding me against him, causing me to moan in response. Of all possible times, why does the conversation with my mom about the meaning of “deeper” pop into my head right now? Oh yeah, it’s definitely deeper. It’s the most pleasurable pain I’ve ever felt, and it drives me to seek it out, grinding harder, to the point that we can’t possibly get any closer.

I almost whine when he pushes my hip back, nearly breaking the intoxicating connection, but when he shoves my hips back down forcefully, I cry out, digging my nails into his shoulders. Ooh. I guess it
is
possible to get closer. Taking his lead, I raise myself up and sink down onto him, over and over, and I can feel myself getting closer to the edge. Primal instinct takes over, and I can no longer think or act on my own. I’m driven by this carnal bliss that somehow finds a way to push me harder, faster. I don’t want it to end, but my body craves it.

“Look at me.” Sawyer commands breathlessly. As soon as I open my eyes, I can feel my body slow down, but seeing those dark honey eyes nearly does me in. “Don’t stop moving, darlin’,” he whispers as his hand moves down my stomach. I keep my eyes locked on his, fighting for any shred of composure I can cling to while I feel the heat continuing to build between us.

That all goes to hell when his thumb plunges between the sensitive folds of skin at the apex of my thighs. First it traces around the outer edges, but as soon as he flicks across the delicate center, I’m back to sheer compulsion, hammering myself against him and losing myself in sensation.

“
Damn
,” he groans and I feel him get even harder. When he latches onto my breast, one flick of his tongue is all it takes for the world to fall away completely. I explode around him just as I feel his body tensing, and I feel his warmth within me. I’m so lost in oblivion that I barely hear myself moaning.
Loudly
. Before I can even catch my breath, his mouth finds mine, and we spend the next several minutes sharing sweet, lazy kisses until our hearts decide to find their normal rhythm again.

When we finally decide we can’t put off getting up any longer, we opt for soaking in the whirlpool tub together. It takes a minute to rig a trash bag over his cast, but it’s not a problem a little duct tape doesn’t solve. Maybe I’m a little biased and possibly in a post-coital fog, but he’s even kind of hot with a black trash bag taped to his arm. Although, it ends up cracking me up when things get a little “steamy” in the tub, and I hear it rustling with every movement.

By the time we make it back to bed, I can tell Sawyer is needing his pain meds, and I have to spend fifteen minutes convincing him to take them. But finally, he gives in, and we curl up in bed to watch a movie. He doesn’t last five minutes before he’s snoring softly.

Darcy finally decides that the action in here has died down enough for her to come in, and she curls up at the bottom of the bed between Sawyer’s feet. She looks up at me for a minute as if she wants to make sure I see her at his feet instead of mine.

“Yeah, Darcy, it’s okay. I love him, too.”

Sawyer yawns for the fourth time since we sat down to eat breakfast, and I decide I should say something. “Not sleeping well?”

He shrugs. “I think so. I’m not sure why I’m so tired.”

“Any dreams that you remember?”

“Not that I can think of. Have I been talking in my sleep or something?”

Just as I suspected. He doesn’t remember. “Actually, I’ve woken up the last three nights, and you weren’t in bed. The first two, you were in your closet, and last night, you were in the floor in front of my bed again. I just told you it was time to come back to bed, and you did.” I was sure that after the “active” day we had yesterday, he’d sleep through the night without incident, but clearly I was wrong. I decided this morning that I’d bring it up to him somehow.

“Uh, in my closet?” He drops his fork into his plate and his eyes go wide. “What was I doing?”

“You were just sitting there in the floor, staring blankly at your clothes. It was a little eerie. But when I told you to come to bed, you let me help you up, and you went back to bed without a word. I’m not even sure if you knew I was there.”

“Weird.” His shoulders relax a little. “Maybe I should call the doctor and talk to her about increasing my dosage.”

I pop a piece of strawberry in my mouth. “Won’t you have to see the ones on base this week? Maybe you should talk to them about it.”

“Yeah, I will.” He stretches his hand across the table to brush his fingers over my knuckles. “I’m sorry I’m putting you through that. I know it has to be strange for you. If there’s anything I can do to stop it, I will. Promise.”

“Hey, as long as you don’t start sleep walking like in that movie about those step brothers, we’re good.”

He smirks. “You draw the line at putting couch pillows in the oven?”

“Actually,” I clarify, taking our dishes to the sink, “I can deal with that. I draw the line at the coffee confetti party. If I wake up in the morning and don’t have coffee, you’ll be sleeping on the porch.”

“I’ll stick with couch pillows.” He smacks a kiss on my cheek. “You ready to go?”

“Mmmhmm,” I hum into my coffee cup, draining the last drop. Even though I had these great plans of keeping Sawyer out of his clothes, I didn’t really think it through. He needs clean clothes if he’s going to stay here with me until he leaves tomorrow, and he’ll need clean laundry to take with him. I’ve been so busy worrying about keeping him comfortable and entertained that doing laundry hasn’t exactly crossed my mind. So, like any abnormally normal couple would do, we’re spending our last day together this week washing his clothes.

It may be a little weird, but I’m kind of excited about it. I hate doing my own laundry, and I put it off until I absolutely can’t wait anymore. But this picture in my head of the two of us stooping over a laundry basket and folding it in neat little piles while engaging in impossibly witty banter . . . it’s like a Norman Rockwell painting. And I’m totally good with that.

“Let me run up and get Darcy. I think she’s still snoozing on the bed.” I jog upstairs and turn into my room, expecting to see the little fur mound in the wad of blankets, but she’s on the windowsill, bird watching. The bed, however, is not the way I left it. It’s perfectly made, without a crease, and the comforter is pulled so tight, I could bounce quarters off of it. I have some serious respect for a man that can make a bed like that with only one good arm.

“I knew you couldn’t do it!” I yell down the stairs, and I hear deep laughter echoing from below.

“Sounds like the second load just finished.” When Sawyer doesn’t answer me, I lift my head from his lap and see that his eyes are closed and his book is laying on his chest. “Pretty sure War and Peace put me to sleep a time or two, as well,” I say softly as I get up.

I carry the basket into his room and set it on the foot of the bed. I’m not totally sure where he keeps everything, but I’m sure I can figure it out. Lucky for me, the majority of this load was shirts, so I pull a handful of hangers from the closet and begin hanging them as close to his degree of meticulousness as I can. Which isn’t very close.

Once I get the last of it on hangers, I take the entire bunch to the closet and shove back the ones already there to make room. But as I’m reaching up to the empty space on the pole, I notice the wall behind it. Or I should say, the
opening
in the wall. Had it been closed all the way, I don’t think I would’ve ever noticed it. I assume it’s meant to be a hidden area to store valuables, and I feel dishonest even peeking inside, but I can’t help myself. So much of Sawyer is still a mystery, so before I can talk myself out of it, I’m sliding the wooden panel all the way back.

The opening is quite large, measuring roughly three feet wide and about as tall. Four narrow shelves fill the space, and they are littered with various items, like a watch face, a few scraps of paper, and a couple of name patches. The back wall, though, is covered, and I’m not sure what to think of it. At first I think it’s some sort of memory wall, covered in pictures and newspaper clippings of his fellow soldiers and friends. But upon closer inspection, some of the pictures have obituaries beneath them. My guess is, these are soldiers that died in the war.

As these smiling faces stare back at me, I only want to cry. Sawyer’s PTSD is far worse than I ever imagined. It explains why I’m finding him in the closet at night, but how do I even begin to bring this up to him? Or do I just let him keep this secret until he’s ready to share it with me? Before I’m caught, I decide to close it and just forget I’ve ever seen it. And I almost do.

The last face I see before I close the panel is a child’s.

I slide it back open and look even more closely. There are a few children, actually. And elderly people, male and female. This isn’t a soldier’s memorial at all; there isn’t a single justifiable reason that I can come up with to explain it.

I nearly jump out of my skin when a shirt slips off a hanger and falls to the floor, but that’s not the reason my heart starts hammering in my chest. The slightest puff of air from the shirt blows the edges of the clippings up, and I swear I see a familiar face under one of them. With a shaky hand, I reach forward and pick up the corner of the paper on top to reveal the picture underneath.

Without warning, my knees buckle, and I slump to the floor. It’s Shane. My Shane is on this wall, and it’s not a picture from my house. It’s the obituary from the newspaper, which I’ve never seen. I never
wanted
to see it. Why?
Why
does he have this? Who the hell are these people?

My sorrow for Sawyer turns into pure, unadulterated rage. I’m not sure what to think or feel about this, but what I do know is that I want answers. Now. I’m suddenly suspicious that I’m all some part of a psychotic scam. Hell, I don’t know.

The noxious combination of anger and curiosity finally boils over the surface, and I jerk the tack from the wall to remove the clipping. I barely even remember walking into the living room, but apparently I’m loud enough that Sawyer wakes up.

“Hey, there, pretty girl,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry I fell asleep.”

I try to think of a way to do this without blowing up, but I don’t see how it’s possible. I walk over and drop the slightly faded square of paper onto his lap and wait. There
has
to be a good reason. I know there is.

As realization dawns in his eyes, they dart to me. “Makenna, I . . . damn it. I’ve wanted to tell you.”

I can’t hold it in any longer. “Tell me then!” I raise my voice unintentionally, but I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I opened Pandora’s Box, and I’m not going to like what comes out of it.

“Sit down.” His face is grim, and his eyes are becoming moist. “I knew it the night you told me about the accident.”

“Knew what, Sawyer? Damn it all to hell, just tell me what’s going on.”

“That wall,” he begins, fighting the quiver in his voice, “it’s a memorial of sorts. A reminder of how I’m never good enough at what I do. It’s a reminder of my failures, so I always try harder. I look at those faces . . .” He angrily wipes a tear away from the corner of his mouth. “Those faces haunt me every day.”

“Why? I don’t understand.” My voice seems so far away.

“In the Army, I’m a combat medic, Makenna. And when I’m back home, I work as a paramedic. Every one of those people . . . it’s my fault they aren’t here anymore. I wasn’t good enough, fast enough, skilled enough to save them.”

The room is spinning, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. “Shane?”

“Yes.” He reaches out to touch my hand, but I jerk it away. “I immediately knew it was him when you told me the story that night. It was such a big deal for you to talk about it; I couldn’t find a way to tell you. And I was being selfish. You were my lifeline, the only person I had to really talk to. I was too afraid to lose you. I swore to myself that I’d tell you when I came home, but I haven’t been able to find the right words to tell you how deeply sorry I am.”

“It’s
your
fault he’s dead?
You
are the reason that I spent the last two years alone and dead inside? I had to sit through Callie’s wedding and stare at the name on that empty chair all evening because of
you
?”

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Yes. I’m so sorry. I would trade places with him if I could, with any one of them.”

“But you can’t!” I scream. “Nothing will bring him back!”

“No.” He chokes on the sobs that finally break free from his chest. “When you told me the story of the accident, I remembered everything. I remembered you.”

“I don’t want to hear—”

“Please, just listen,” he interrupts. “We were less than a mile away when the call came in, so we were the first ambulance on the scene, and my partner ran over to help the person in another vehicle. I decided to check the other vehicle, but I knew it was going to be ugly. To be honest, I didn’t think there could possibly be survivors, judging by the way the car looked. But there were two. You were both somehow still alive. I ran from one side to the other, trying to figure out what needed to be done.”

“That was when I saw the branch. It went all the way through. I knew he didn’t have much time, and I called for more help. But he grabbed my arm and told me to help you first. He said, ‘Take care of my girl.’ He was adamant. So to make him feel better, I went to your side, and I noticed the blood dripping from your leg. I’ve seen injuries like it before, and I knew you had less time than he did if I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Your pulse was already faint, and you were nearly unconscious. I kept telling you to stay awake, but your eyes were so heavy. I stayed there with you, doing everything I could to stop the bleeding until we could get you out.”

I can’t do this. I’ve lived through it a thousand times, and I don’t want to do it anymore. He had the choice to help him, and he chose not to. He made the decision that took Shane’s life. I probably would’ve been fine if he’d helped him first, but he didn’t.

“I stayed with you until I handed you over to the ER docs, and I even came by the hospital the next day to check in on you. That’s when I found out that he died at the scene. I could hear you crying from the hallway. It has haunted me to this day, knowing that I caused you that pain. I could’ve done something differently.” He stands and walks to the window. “I’m so sorry, Makenna.”

I finally stand even though I’m not so sure my legs will carry me very far. Silently, I walk into his room and grab everything that I didn’t take home with me earlier, and I muster up every ounce of determination I can. I won’t let him see me fall apart, even though I want him to feel every stab of pain in my heart right now. “Sorry just isn’t enough sometimes. How could I ever forgive you for that?”

Before he can answer, I storm out of the house, stealing one last glance at those eyes, knowing it’s the last time. Deep down, I know my reaction isn’t fair, not at all. Hell, he saved my life. But how can I ever forget that he didn’t make a single attempt to help Shane? How can I forget that he’s the one who took away my happy ever after?