Never Been Kissed (12 page)

“That’s where you were wounded?”

“Yep. Halfway through my first tour.”

“Did you … did you always want to be a Marine?”

“Maybe not always, but for a lot of years.”

“Why?”

He was silent for so long she thought he wasn’t going to respond, that they’d hit the ceiling on what he would reveal.

But then he actually answered. “My brother was the kind of kid people picked on and then he was the kind of kid who mouthed off to the wrong people and couldn’t back it up. So I did it for him.”

“You liked fighting?”

“I liked protecting him. I don’t know if I ever liked fighting, but I was good at it. I was big and strong and people were either scared of me or respected me. The Marines promised to take all that and turn it into something useful. I’m going to wash your hair now,” he said and the fake flower smell filled the room again.

A cold gush of slime covered her hair and dripped down over her eye. She brushed it away and dropped her hand back in the warm water.

He worked her hair into a big pile of suds.

“You must have been so angry when you were injured.”

“I was.”

“Did you splash water at your nurses when they tried to give you a bath?”

His laughter was a gust against her hair. “That’s nothing. I’ll bet Nurse Olsen still thinks of me and makes the sign of the cross.”

“Where were you?”

“Bethesda—Walter Reed. For about six months.”

“Did your family come visit you?”

“Once,” he said. “Sean tried to hit on Nurse Olsen.” She could hear in his voice that he was smiling.

“Why is that funny?”

“Nurse Olsen had thirty years on him and six grandkids.”

Bubbles popped, and whole new territories of her were revealed. Her hip, her belly button, the knob of her knees.

“What about Linda?” she asked, trying to corral the stockpile of bubbles into covering more of her.

“She sat by my bed and held my hand and tried not to cry. A whole lot of fuss over some burns and a knee surgery,” Brody said. But she knew that wasn’t true. He could have just as easily been dead as alive, the bittersweet reality of luck and timing. That’s why Linda had tried not to cry.

She would have done the very same thing.

“What about your father?”

“He couldn’t come in the room. Stood in the doorway. Put your head back under,” he said and she slipped down and shook her hair under the water. When she came back up the bubbles in her stockpile had all disappeared. And she could see the naked pink of her legs.

“Do you miss it? The Marines?”

“Not as much as I did.”

“Why didn’t you go back? Re-enlist?”

“I’m broken, Ashley. Bad. There was no more use for me.”

That was the hard truth of Brody, the rocks he carried in his pocket. His knee was so close, she could touch it, offer him her lame comfort. But he would reject it, so she clutched her hands into fists and held on to herself instead.

He’d never wanted anything like that from her. From anyone, she imagined. He was cold and hard and alone and that seemed to be the way he wanted it.

One iceberg of bubbles drifted across the water and the dark curls between her legs appeared.

I wonder if he can see that,
she thought, embarrassed and yet not. This body, it was barely hers. It was just a shell she was rattling around in.

“You’re done,” he said. “Finish up while I get you some clothes.”

She touched her hair, gathered the silky, conditioner-slimy lengths of it into her fist. “You did it,” she whispered.

“I’m miraculous,” he said. “You shouldn’t fight me so hard.”

He shot her one of his half-grins. Those lip quirks that were, in their sparseness, so devastating. If he were to actually smile or laugh, she’d be ruined.

But then he was gone. And she was growing cold in a tub full of broken bubbles.

“Whose is this?” Ashley asked from where she sat on his bed.
On his bed.
She was stroking the red flannel edge of the plaid robe he’d found for her to wear.

And he was watching her from the corner of his eye. He’d spent a lot of hours convincing himself he didn’t feel anything inappropriate for Ashley Montgomery. When she was seventeen and he was in charge of her safety, he’d convinced himself that his feelings were platonic.

Brotherly, even.

But there was nothing brotherly about what he felt for her now.

You are disgusting,
he told himself, trying to bury his lust under shame.
She’s hurt, vulnerable, and you can’t stop staring at her.

Brody put cornbread on a plate and dished a little of the chili over it.

That was the way his mother had done it.

“Brody?”

“Yeah?”

“The robe?”

“Ahh …” He turned away from the oddly compelling sight of the chili served in a way he would have sworn he’d forgotten about, and faced Ashley. She was pink-faced and clean, her hair beginning to dry in places—it made the black stitches on her forehead, her bruises even more obscene.

He wasn’t braced for it and he found himself scowling at her, thinking of Yeri.

The smile fled her face.

“That bad, huh?” she whispered, her fingers touching the bruising around her downcast eye.

“Yep.” He set the plate on the small table of pillows he’d made for her on his futon. It had been so easy to talk to her in the bathtub when she wasn’t looking at him. Now, with those brown eyes following him around the room, he realized what a mistake it had been to open up to her.

She rolled her eyes. “You are amazing for a woman’s confidence.”

“You want to pay me for compliments?”

She blinked at him, stunned as he was by his tone. In isolation, his varied feelings for Ashley were not threatening. They weren’t even all that big a burden, but in combination, his admiration stacked upon his worry, stacked upon this utterly inappropriate lust, stacked upon the fact that he liked her and had always liked her, it was just too much to carry.

Especially after that bath. His hands in her hair, the tender, vulnerable curve of her neck, her ears. The beautiful flush on her skin, those fucking bubbles …

Under the bruises and the anger, he saw her beauty.

“The robe was Neil’s, he worked as a bartender for my dad for years.”

“It’s nice.”

Brody turned back toward the small kitchen. “You want salad?”

“Yes, please.”

“A drink?”

“Water?”

It was so fucking polite he wanted to smash something. Instead he got her a chipped bar glass rejected from downstairs but accepted in the apartment and filled it with tap water.

It smelled like the river and for a minute he felt bad handing it to her, thinking as he always did that she should have better.

But she drained half the glass and smiled like it was spring water.

It always surprised him that she was so used to adapting.

She was resourceful that way, cobbling together something where there was nothing. He understood immediately why Kate had wanted Ashley in Dadaab. If you were trying to build a community, you needed a person like Ashley.

Someone who wasn’t just kind but who also understood what drew people together. And could provide it, use herself as glue.

“You’re staring at me,” she said.

He blinked and headed across the small room to get salad. “I was thinking of you playing cards with the chauffeur.”

It took her a second, but then she remembered, he could see it on her face, the memory a light behind her eyes.

“Jeremy?” She laughed. “He liked poker. Thought it was hilarious to teach me how to cheat.”

“And what was your tutor’s name?”

“Ms. C, that’s what we called her.”

“What did she teach you?”

“Besides algebra?” She groaned. “To knit. Or tried to anyway. I hated knitting.”

The sound of the plastic salad container being ripped open under his clumsy hands was epically loud. He dumped some on a plate, grabbed a fork, and turned back to her. She was staring at him.

“You all right?” she asked.

No, I’m not all right. I made a stupid decision bringing you here.
“Fine.”

He put the salad down and then, laptop in hand, sat as far as he could from her on the futon.

“You taught me chess,” she said after a long silence.

He nodded, opening his browser and clicking through to find the BBC website. This had been a bad conversation to start, there was only one place it would lead and he did not want to talk about the night—ten years ago—when she kissed him.

“You weren’t very good at it,” she said and he both loved and hated that teasing quality in her voice. Loved it because it meant maybe she was slipping free of this depression, hated it because … she had no business teasing him.

“I’m average at it.” Only an idiot engaged with her when she was like this, so effervescent, but he was unable to help himself. “Who knew you’d be so good?”

“Good?” she mocked him. “I was great. You can admit it.”

“I freely admit it.” And here he was, sucked in despite himself.

“Who taught you to play?” she asked.

“My dad.”

“Ed?”

“No, my birth father.” He could feel her quick interest, could imagine the slack-jawed expression on her face before she looked back down at her food.

“You must have been young. You were adopted when you were six, right?”

“I was young, probably why I suck at it.” He tried to make it a joke, but it fell flat.

“What was he like? Your dad.”

“I barely remember him,” he said.

“What about your mom?”

“She was deported back to the Philippines. At least that’s what I was told. It was just me and Dad. He worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant.”

“What happened to him?”

“Our apartment building caught fire. He got me out and went back to help some neighbors, never made it out again.”
How the hell had they started talking about this?
He pointed to her food. “You need to eat.”

“Brody—”

“Eat.”

He could feel her looking at him and it was all he could do to stay in the room. The urge to get out of there was overwhelming. Finally she began to eat, picking her way around the edge of the bread, until she got to the chili.

“This is delicious,” she said. “Who made this?”

“A woman named Cora. Sean brought it over while you were sleeping.”

She hummed in her throat one of those speculative female sounds that managed to say everything and nothing. Men had no comparative sound, it was a lack in their language. “She one of those girlfriends you were telling me about?”

“I wasn’t telling you anything about girlfriends. I was telling you I don’t live in isolation.”

“I’ve never met a man who uses conditioner.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that every teenage boy learns his own uses for conditioner.

And just the thought of it, of his own hand around his dick, the slick slide of water and conditioner, made his blood hum, and the temperature in the room soared.

He cleared his throat. She dropped her fork, only to pick it up and then put it back down again.

“Too spicy?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head, her color high, and he wondered if she somehow knew what he’d been thinking. And then, because he was right on the edge of his own control, it was her hand on his dick, her pink fist, the white knuckles, her pristine flesh, turning him on. Jacking him off.

Shifting, he pushed the edge of the laptop against his dick before it got any harder.

The truth was he’d wanted her when she was seventeen and he wanted her now when she was beaten and nearly broken. And none of that felt right.

“I just … I don’t want to get sick. Better to go slow.”

“Better to get healthy,” he said. “You’re pretty skinny.”

She gaped at him and then laughed. “What a charmer.”

He felt himself blushing. Which was weird for him. “Sorry, you just used to be—”

“Fat? Really, Brody, are you doing this?”

“You weren’t fat!”
Oh my God, how did things go so downhill so fast?

She was laughing and he didn’t know if it was at him or with him.

“It’s all right, Brody, I’m just teasing you,” she said. “You always were easy to tease. So serious all the time.”

The edges of her lips seemed to get heavier, until she didn’t smile at him anymore, and then she was staring at the edge of the robe, her fingers back on the frayed flannel edge.

Oh Christ, here it comes,
he thought.

And suddenly, as if the clock had reversed itself ten years, he could hear the hum of the soda machines in the hotel hallway, smell the chlorine of the pool on the other side of the door.

She’d been cold, wet. The bright blue of her suit straps dissected the white skin of her shoulders, until she’d slipped them off.

He had been guarding the back door of the pool area while she swam and he’d never expected anyone to come in through that hallway, much less her.

But she’d been planning it. Working up the courage. Orchestrating things in a way he never would have given her credit for.

Perhaps the chess skill should have been a clue, but he’d spent all those games simply being amazed by her. Just … soaking her in.

“
I’m sorry,
” she’d said in a huge rush, totally blind-siding him.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinking about you and I know this is probably a bad idea but I can’t stop.”

And then she’d kissed him.

He never touched her, even when she had pressed her body into his, leaving a wet print against his dress shirt. Her face had been cold, her lips warm, and her whole body had shook.

“
No,
” he’d whispered. “
Ashley, no
 …”

“
I’m not a kid,
” she whispered back and peeled off those straps and he’d watched, horrified at himself, unable to stop as the top of her suit fell away from her beautiful body.

And then Patty Montgomery had walked in.

In the apartment above the bar, the fridge kicked on and Ashley jumped, as if she too had been lost in that hallway.