Chapter Nine #2
I kept staring down at Anders’s hands holding mine.
A distant part of me wanted to snatch my hands away at the thought of Bill.
I’d hid Anders’s letters from Bill, a part of me knew my correspondence with Anders walked the line of faithfulness to my husband.
I never stopped, though. I never wanted to.
Now I didn’t need to worry. My marriage was over and I was free to do as I pleased and I very much wanted to keep my hands in Anders right now.
“I guess I really can’t trust Bill,” I said after a moment of reflection. “I would have thought the executor would have contacted me directly, though, after my divorce. I’m not really sure. I don’t know how any of this works.”
“What about Bill? Does he have money? Maybe someone thinks they can get his money through you.”
“No. He doesn’t have money. We had a small house, and I didn’t worry whether I could buy food or pay bills, but that was about it.
We never had as much as I thought we should.
We certainly didn’t have enough to be potentially kidnap—” My voice broke on the last word and I couldn’t finish my sentence.
I thought back over my life married to Bill.
“I don’t even know what Bill did for work.”
After ten years of marriage, that seemed like something I should be ashamed of, but then I thought of the times I tried to talk to Bill about his work and how he would dodge the question and change the subject.
“He would talk about how he needed a wife and family for respectability, but whenever I asked him about work, he would be vague or avoid answering altogether. I don’t think I really questioned it, but that’s strange, right?” I asked. A part of me still needed reassurance that I wasn’t crazy.
“Yes, that’s strange.”
I got up suddenly, unable to even stand myself. “How could I not know what my husband of a decade did for work? How stupid could I be?” I yelled, not at Anders, but at myself.
“Remember how Bill is a gas-lighting asshole? He is probably involved in something shady.” Anders said calmly, taking the wind out of my sails. He didn’t blame me for my stupidity. He didn’t even say he thought the same. Maybe he didn’t. That would be nice.
“Right,” I said, much calmer than a minute ago.
I walked over to the pizza Anders had ordered for us earlier while I was lost in the skyline, just trying to process the day, and grabbed a slice. I worried that ordering it would alert someone that we were here, but he assured me he could pay cash and have it delivered to the lobby under an alias.
The pizza was cheese. Just like I liked.
I think I mentioned in a letter once how Bill never got cheese pizza for us.
It was always some gaudy concoction with pineapple or olives.
Anders, though, remembered what kind of pizza I liked from some off-hand comment in one letter however many months ago.
I can’t remember the last time someone took the time to consider what I like instead of just outright dismissing me and my opinions.
My hand shook a bit as I reached for the slice of pizza and I had to swallow down a sudden lump in my throat.
The weight of the day crashed into me. So much happened, and here was a mountain of a man, by every rights I should be terrified of him, but he was so relaxed and open and willing to help.
Longing and hope surged in me, and something else welled up to the surface from somewhere deep in my soul.
I couldn’t tell what it was yet, but it was powerful and it threatened to take over the moment I opened the door it was behind.
I turned to Anders. He sat sprawled out on the couch, his arm slung over the back of it, over the space I was just occupying.
I wanted to crawl back into that space and curl into him.
His arms were shaped perfectly to hold me and guard me from the world.
His whiskey-colored eyes bore into me. I just stood there. Staring. Like a fool.
“See something you like?” He flexed his arms and chest, just a little, and winked.
“Yes,” I said before I could stop myself. Blood rushed to my face, revealing my embarrassment at the slip of my tongue. “That couch is very comfortable. I quite enjoy sitting on it.” My voice cracked a bit in the rush to get something out to cover my embarrassment at being caught staring.
Anders’ smirk turned into a full-blown smile and hearty laugh, filling the space with his voice. His joy. My awkwardness and uncertainty melted away as I returned his smile with one of my own.
“It is a very comfortable couch. Duke picked it out. He’s a stickler for comfort.
Says he spent too many years on a cot to want to spend one more minute roughing it,” Anders said when his laughter died down.
He didn’t make any move to retract his arm or give me more than the barest hint of space.
If it were another man, I might be afraid.
As it was, I made my way toward him to retake my seat, closer to him than I was before.
“Duke is the one with the cat, right?” I asked conversationally, happy to have a reason to just talk about mundane things.
“Midnight. Yes. Somehow he got that thing back home, though I have no idea how seeing as I was unconscious in a hospital when it happened.”
This surprised me. He never mentioned a hospital. Of course, we’d been so focused on my drama that there hadn’t been time for anything about him since we last wrote.
“What happened? Are you ok? Of course you are, you’re sitting in front of me. I can see that for myself. Obviously.” Shut up, Grace. I squeezed my mouth shut and waited for an answer.
He just smiled warmly at me, not at all offended by my awkwardness.
“I got myself blown up on my last mission. Brass wasn’t too happy with it, but since I did something heroic when it happened, they had to give me a purple heart.
Then they promptly booted me from the Marines.
” He said it all so casually, as if getting blown up was something mundane.
Which reminded me of a line in one of his letters about how they saw death as mundane, so maybe it was.
Or maybe it was this veteran’s way of coping with what he had experienced.
I itched to reach out to him, but I didn’t think he would enjoy comforting over something mundane.
“Was it worth it?” I asked instead. “The something heroic?”
“Oh yes. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t do what I did. I also can’t tell you anymore. Owing to the secret nature of my previous job.” He said in that same playful tone he’d used to cheer me all day.
Knowing what I know about him, it was likely helping someone the government didn’t want him to help. I knew enough of the bad people in the world to believe that the government wasn’t above board with everything they did. Probably not even most of what they did.
“So, where’s Duke and Midnight now?” I asked. I curled my legs up under myself and turned fully toward him.
“Lounging in one of his grandfather’s many vacation homes, no doubt,” he replied. A hint of indulgent humor in his voice.
I leaned towards Anders more and more as he talked about Duke, Tink, Grey, and Icebox. They were apparently his brothers, though not literally, and served their entire careers together, moving up in ranks and even going through special forces training together.
“Duke had the balls to sleep with the general’s daughter and was caught running from his house in nothing but socks,” Anders said as he recounted one of the many tales of the Untamed Rascals.
“Of course, I had to come to his rescue and pick him up from the corner near the general’s house.
He was soaking wet from the sprinklers. His ass hanging out for everyone and God to see and I was in my mom’s car.
” The corner of his eyes squishing into adorable little wrinkles as he spoke, and I could help but laugh along with his infectious joy.
“I definitely couldn’t tell her that Duke’s balls had rested on her seat.
Talk about awkward. Thankfully, I thought to get pictures.
Tink has those preserved on various servers, clouds, and hard drives.
There’s no getting rid of them. Grey laid into Duke when I brought him back to the barracks.
I’d never heard someone give such a good reaming.
That’s why we call him Grey. He’s more like an old man and father to us than many of us had growing up. ”
My cheeks and sides hurt by the end of his story. I had leaned fully into him by then, the last vestiges of my anxiety and awkwardness long since burned away.
“That wasn’t the last time Duke got up to something he shouldn’t, usually involving a pretty face and very little clothing.
That’s why we call him Duke. He’s the Duke of Debauchery.
Very few can top his impressive list of screwing around.
” Anders was smiling, too. It was clear he was fond of the men he served with.
“How did you get your nickname? Actually, what is it? I don’t think you ever told me.” The languid atmosphere relaxed my tongue and made me willing to ask questions I might not have otherwise.
“Ares. I got a reputation for being arrogant when I first joined,” he smiled at me as he spoke, “and made a few missteps at the beginning, and then, as time went on, I became reckless and disenchanted with the military. I kind of stopped caring about anything, so my reputation grew. I earned the name the stupid way and then tried to live up to it.”
I wanted more details, but perhaps he couldn’t share those.
A little thrill ran through me, sitting so close, pressed so close, to a man who earned a name like Ares.
I imagined all kinds of scenarios and none of them were very pretty.
I didn’t feel unsafe, though. On the contrary, I didn’t think I’d ever been safer.