“Then my place. Please?” Emotion thickens his tone, and he feels so good, smells so good, and he’s so earnest…I give in.
“Okay. But you’re paying for my cab when you’re done explaining.”
Ford nods, drapes his arm around my shoulder, and steers me down the sidewalk. His tiny studio is only a few blocks from here, and we walk, not saying a word, as my mind races. He’s the most honest man I’ve ever met. I’m pretty sure there’s a picture of him next to the dictionary definition of boy scout. So if he says he didn’t cheat, he didn’t.
But that doesn’t let him off the hook.
As soon as he closes his apartment door, he heads for the fridge for two bottles of water. “Want one?”
“I want an explanation.” But, I’m still a little tipsy, so I take the water and rest my back against the door.
“I don’t know…fuck. They warned us about this.” He stalks over to his little window. The view isn’t anything—just a little courtyard with a decrepit fountain, but he’s fixated on it like it’s a lifeline. “The first time you kill someone. It’s…I can’t…you don’t deserve this darkness.”
Ford braces his forearm on the upper windowsill. He barely fits in this apartment. Six-foot-ten, not bulky, but hard as a rock, he’s always been my granite teddy bear. The nicest, sweetest man in the entire world. But now, he’s so distant. I approach carefully, and when I rest my hand on his back, he stiffens. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Touch you? Ford? We’re…I love you.”
“I don’t deserve you. Your love. Not after what I’ve done.”
My hackles go up, and I back off a couple of steps towards the door. “You said you didn’t cheat—”
“I didn’t!” He whirls, and I see the truth in his eyes. He didn’t. But he didn’t just kill one person. He killed a lot of them. “You went to war, Marine. You had to know it’d be bad.”
“Not this bad. They gave us the furlough so we could get our heads on straight. Hell, my CO told me to find you and bury all this balls-deep—fuck. I’m sorry, baby.”
“I like you balls-deep in me.”
This makes him laugh, but it’s not his normal, relaxed chuckle. No, this sounds like he’s forcing the sound through a steel trap. Given how quickly one of the muscles in his jaw is ticking, that’s probably pretty accurate.
“Stay with me tonight, Joey. Please. I don’t care if we do anything but sleep. Just…stay.”
Linking our fingers, I lead him to the bed. He’s putty in my hands. So far from the commanding, strong, confident man who left me for his first oversees deployment six months ago. He lets me undress him, staring off into the corner like it holds the answers to the secrets of the universe. When I’m down to my tank and panties and he’s only wearing briefs, we snuggle under the blanket. “You can talk to me, Ford. Whatever it is…I’ll still love you.”
But he stays silent, and as I drift off to the sleep, I wonder if he’ll ever come back to me.
The next morning, I open my eyes before the sun comes up. Ford still sleeps soundly, though his face is anything but relaxed. I don’t want to wake him, but I have study group in three hours, and I need a shower and…clothes that don’t make me look like that bar-bunny from last night. Grabbing my skirt, I pad over to his kitchenette counter and find a little notebook and a pen.
Ford, I love you. I don’t know what happened over there or why you can’t tell me about it. But love requires trust. And hard work. I know you leave this afternoon, but please…think about what I said. We’ll never survive if you can’t let me share your pain. -Joey
After I slip on my heels and my too-short skirt—I’m going to freeze trying to catch a cab this time of the morning—I escape out the door and head for home.
“Asshole,” I mutter as the third cab passes me by. I guess my bachelorette party attire doesn’t make for a guaranteed fare. My apartment is only another ten blocks away, but my feet already ache, and my arms are two skinny icicles covered with goosebumps. I turn down an alley as a shortcut, but three steps out onto the next street, a muffled scream and a thump sends fear snaking frigid tendrils around my heart.
Picking up the pace, I focus on the four lane road only a couple blocks away. Traffic streams by at high speed this time of the morning, and there, I’ll find people.
“Two-for-one?”
The raspy voice startles me only a second before a hand claps over my mouth and I’m dragged into the shadows of a large, darkened building. Flailing my legs, I catch a second man in the stomach with the heel of my shoe, and he mutters something in Spanish.
My screams go nowhere, and once the second man recovers and glances down at his shirt, where I’ve left a rip and a bloody scratch, his dark eyes turn almost black. “You’ll pay for that, bitch.”
Clawing at the strong arm banded around my waist, I draw more blood. The scents of cigarettes and bad aftershave surround me. The second man pulls a pouch from his back pocket as the first man propels me towards a black van.
If they get me in there, I’m dead.
Throwing my head back, I feel a satisfying crunch as I hit the first man’s nose and smell blood. The hand slips from my mouth as he cries out, and I scream with everything in me. But he still has me around the waist, and I can’t escape his hold.
“She broke my nose!”
