Chapter 7 - Nico #2
The bitter joke doesn’t hide the hurt underneath. She offered understanding and I gave her nothing back.
“Ground defense,” I say, because I’m an idiot who can’t stop pushing toward disaster. “If you end up on the ground.”
“This requires me to pin you,” I say, and my voice sounds like gravel.
She lies back on the floor, looking up at me with those honey eyes. “So pin me.”
Christ.
I kneel beside her, trying to remember this is training. “I’m going to hold your wrists down. Your job is to escape. Use your hips to bridge, create space…”
“Just do it.”
I move over her, take her wrists in my hands, press them to the floor above her head. My body covers hers, not quite touching but close enough to feel her heat, to inhale every breath she exhales.
She’s completely still beneath me. Not fighting. Not trying to escape. Just looking at me with parted lips, chest rising and falling in rhythm with mine.
“You’re supposed to be escaping,” I manage.
“Am I?”
Her back arches slightly, bringing our bodies into contact. The motion is deliberate, unmistakable. Her lips part further, an invitation written in the curve of her mouth, the way her tongue darts out to wet them.
“Marisol.”
Just her name, but she must hear everything I can’t say because her eyes darken, pupils dilating.
“I know what you want,” she whispers. “I want it too.”
My grip on her wrists tightens. She doesn’t protest. If anything, she arches more, pressing up against me, and I’m about to break. About to close the distance between our mouths and find out if she tastes as good as I remember, if she’ll make those sounds again when I…
I release her wrists and push away so fast she gasps. I’m on my feet, backing toward the door, and my hands are shaking. Actually shaking, something that hasn’t happened since Afghanistan, since the dust and blood and decisions that still wake me at night.
“That’s enough for today,” I say.
She’s still on the floor, looking up at me with confusion and hurt. “Nico…”
“You did well.”
“We weren’t finished…”
“We’re finished.”
I turn and walk away because if I stay another second, I’ll go back. I’ll pin her wrists for real this time, find out what sounds she makes when the monster gets what it wants.
Behind me, I hear her sit up. Hear her breathing. Hear her not following.
The shaking in my hands intensifies.
I close the guest room door and lean against it, trying to remember how to be the soldier I’m supposed to be instead of whatever I’m becoming around her.
My phone buzzes. Gunner. A welcome distraction. I asked him to contact me with any security threats, and he's come good.
Cesar’s nephew is asking questions. Wanted to know about the new boyfriend. Told him to fuck off. Also, Logan says the Zayas are moving product through the port.
A threat circling. Multiple threats. I should care more than I do. Should be planning tactical responses instead of thinking about how she arched beneath me.
A soft knock on my door.
“Horse Man?”
I don’t answer.
“I know you’re in there. I can hear you brooding.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“You’re aggressively not-brooding. It’s very loud.”
We’re talking through a door like teenagers. It would be funny if everything wasn’t so fucked.
“I’m not going to make this weird,” she says. “We can pretend nothing happened.”
“Nothing did happen.”
A pause. Then: “Right. Nothing. We were training, and then nothing. That’s why you’re hiding.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Very convincing through a closed door.”
I hear her sigh. Then, quieter: “For what it’s worth… I wouldn’t have minded. If nothing had become something.”
Her footsteps retreat. Her bedroom door closes.
I stay frozen for five more minutes before emerging. The apartment is quiet, her presence confined to her bedroom, but I can feel her everywhere. In the air that smells like her perfume. In the space where we trained, where I had her pinned, where I almost…
I find myself at the rooftop door, looking through the glass at her pool. The water is perfectly still. Not a ripple. She hasn’t been in it once since I’ve been here. Eight years of avoiding water because it reminds her of her mother, of before everything broke.
I understand that now, standing at the edge of something and being too afraid to dive in. She’s brave enough to see my monster, to name it, to not run from it. But not brave enough yet to face her own ghosts.
We’re the same wound. Different scars.
I press my palm against the glass. On the other side, the pool waits. Still and perfect and patient. She’ll swim again someday. When she’s ready. When she’s brave enough.
The thought that I might not be here to see it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.
But standing here, I wonder if my discipline is just another word for cowardice. Wonder what would have happened if I’d kissed Marisol when she arched beneath me, lips parted, offering everything. Wonder if all this control is just fear with a tactical name.
The monster wanted her. Wants her still. And for the first time in years, I’m wondering what’s so wrong with letting it have what it wants.
Just once.
The pool reflects the afternoon sun, and I stand there watching it, wondering which one of us will be brave first. Wondering if discipline is keeping me safe or keeping me from living. Wondering how long I can be a coward dressed up as a soldier before she sees through that lie too.