Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Dennis
Her scream broke his heart.
And triggered a flashback.
Instantly, the elevator was filled with the whirl of helicopter blades, the piercing Doppler effect of bullets whizzing past his ears so crisp and real.
Hot air filled his lungs with a suffocating pull, chest expanding with his sharp inhale.
Dust crowded his nose, nostrils burning, as memory obliterated the present.
The hard stop from the elevator’s brake system shocked him back into the moment, Ana sobbing in his arms, shaking as if her tendons were about to snap. None of this was tenable. A cold sweat broke out across his face and chest.
Too much.
It was all too much.
“Your heart–it’s racing so fast!” She pulled her face away from his neck, mascara streaking down her cheeks. His dysregulation seemed to yank her out of her own.
“I’m fine,” he grunted, both of them knowing damn well he was lying.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Speech was hard, his tongue moving slower than it should. Ears ringing, he felt like his lungs were out of sync with his mouth, which was working to funnel air into him.
“Flashback?”
All he could do was frown.
“Tell me. Tell me what happened.”
“What?”
“What do you see? In your mind’s eye?”
“I’m not your patient.”
“Of course not. But you can tell me. You can share. There’s nothing you can’t say to me.”
“Ana, twenty seconds ago you were shrieking like you were dying. Suddenly, you’re tough?”
“Not tough. Still freaking out. But you need attention, too.”
An acrid gunpowder smell burned in his nose.
“I’m good.”
“Your jaw looks like it’s about to break in half. Your shoulders are blocks of granite.” Her hand was on his arm, rubbing his shoulder cap lightly.
“I work out. Thanks for noticing.”
“Ah. I see. Deflection.”
“Lady, if I didn’t deflect, I’d have died long ago.”
“I’m sure that’s true for parts of you,” she said softly, her doe eyes soft and smart, inviting him to be softer, too. “But it’s not true any longer. You can change. You can let other parts of you step in.”
“What parts are those?”
“The part that’s retired and never has to be in combat again.”
He laughed, his mouth opening so abruptly, it hurt along the jawline. He almost said, You’ve never been in Luview on Valentine’s Day, have you? but the joke would fall flat.
And he didn’t want to get into the whole “You’re a Luview?” b.s. conversation he’d had hundreds of times in his life. Last thing he needed right now was more complication.
A loud crackling sound cut through their conversation from the speaker in the panel.
“Folks? Sorry about this–we’re close to getting you to the lobby. One more floor to go. Can’t pry open the doors because you’re between the first and second floors, so we have to bring the car all the way down. Just a few more minutes. We’re so sorry. You need anything?”
“Bottle of vodka and some fresh underwear!” Dennis shouted back, which made Ana laugh, anemic as it was. His voice boomed enough to bring his brain back to the now, so that he noticed the texture of the carpet beneath him and the soft curve of Ana’s hip against his thigh.
Pressed against each other on the floor, they were not intimate, but also not tense.
“No promises, but we’ll work on it!” the guy said from the speaker, laughing.
Situational awareness would help, he knew, so he stood. Looking down through the wall of glass, he was stunned to see that there were now forty or so people in the lobby, all watching the spectacle of their mishap.
Bending down, he offered Ana his hand. Her fingers were ice cold and she looked ill, but a wan smile greeted him as their eyes met. Pulling her up took no effort.
Neither did wrapping his arms around her and pivoting her so that she faced the doors.
“Shhh,” he whispered into her ear. “You’ll be fine once we’re on the ground. And you don’t need to take care of me.”
“I know I don’t need to. I want to. We can be equals, you know.”
That wasn’t a question. Her voice didn’t rise at the end.
Ana was making a declaration, and he was here for it.
“Equals. You tell me your secrets, I confess mine?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m not a spill-your-guts kind of guy. Takes time. A lot more time.”
She chuckled against his chest.
“We have nothing but time right now.”
“And an audience.”
“They’re still there?” she squeaked, peeling slowly away to look through the glass, then burying her face in his chest. “I can’t look!”
“I’ll look for you.”
“When you tense up, what do you feel? Something triggers you, right?”
“Yeah,” he finally relented. “Not sure exactly what it is, but yes.”
“What do you experience?”
“It’s like I’m back in Afghanistan. Or... other places I can’t talk about. Heat. Dust. Crowded market.”
“Something traumatic happened there?”
“More like daily life was trauma there.”
“A constant bath of it?”
He couldn’t believe they were trapped in a broken elevator while he comforted her during her acrophobia and she psychoanalyzed his combat flashbacks.
“It was… a lot.”
“You strike me as someone who can handle a lot.”
“I can. I could. Until I couldn’t.”
Her sigh against him made his nipple heat up as her warm breath filled his shirt.
“That’s often how trauma works.”
“I’m fine. Just need to adjust to being stateside. Soon I’ll be in the woods, where the only sniper I need to worry about is a guy with bad aim and too much whiskey during deer-hunting season. Or a brain-damaged moose.”
“A brain-damaged what?”
As he opened his mouth to begin explaining Randy the moose, the car jolted, dropping a few more feet. Ana tightened her grip on him, his hands around her shoulders, the scent of her hair so fresh.
So inviting.
Knees slightly bent, he made sure he was positioned to handle whatever kinetic force the broken elevator threw their way, but Ana trembled in his embrace. His hand caressed her between her shoulder blades, gentling her.
“It’s okay. They’re working on it. Just a glitch,” he murmured against her ear.
“I know,” she mumbled against his arm. “Still scary. Just because the rational part of me knows there’s a solution coming eventually doesn’t mean that the piece of me that lives in a constant state of mute terror isn’t screaming right now.”
“That’s a remarkably accurate description of fear.”
“Thank you.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“You’re the one who said it!”
“Then compliment it is.” He pulled back so they could look at each other. “Is your fear of heights from your dad’s plane crash?”
“Hah. Good insight, but no. It’s because when I was six, I decided that if I put my mind to it, I could actually fly like a Powerpuff Girl.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“I am going to assume you failed.”
“Gravity puts a real damper on childhood imagination,” she said with a fake pout that made something inside him unclench even further.
“Gravity can be so mean.”
“Right? Laws of physics win: Gravity, one. Ana’s arm, zero.” She slid her right arm out of their embrace and pushed up the sleeve of her lightweight sweater, showing an old, faded scar. Then she pointed to another, right above her elbow.
“Ouch. Broken?”
“Dislocated elbow. Broken ulna. Broken humerus.”
“Your arm became a bag of marbles in a sock.”
“A magenta pink sock, bucko. I was so popular in first grade!”
“What did you jump off of?”
“A treehouse my dad had made for me.”
“Your dad built you a treehouse? So did mine.”
“No,” she said, her mouth twisting into a wry smile. “He had it made for me.”
“Ah. Gotcha. Not the handy type?”
“My father was handy with money. Everything else, not so much. He was really loving, but with big, grand gestures.”
“And he died when you were thirteen?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It was so long ago, I’m–well, thanks.”
“How old are you?” he asked, realizing she could be anywhere from mid-twenties to early forties. There was a timeless quality to her that he couldn’t quite put a name to.
“Thirty-five. And you?”
“Forty-two.” Something in him cringed. “I’m ancient.”
“Anything but. My father was twelve years older than my mother.”
“Really?”
“And Rick is fourteen years older.”
“Rick?”
“My stepfather.”
“Ah. My mom and dad are the same age.”
“See? Plenty of ways for couples to match up.”
“Are we a couple, Ana? Do you want to be?”
Before she could answer, he covered her lips with his fingers, needing to say more.
“You snuck out of the room this morning, and that’s fine.
I am not pressuring you. At all. It’s just, there’s something about you I can’t shake.
When I woke up and you weren’t there, it was like…
like I’d found a piece of myself I didn’t know I was missing, and then I lost it again.
Your absence threw me off, but I’m a big boy. I can handle rejection.”
“I wasn’t rejecting you.” As she spoke, he lifted his fingers. “I was so stunned by my own behavior that I panicked.”
“Your behavior was pretty damn awesome in my estimation.”
“If you mean in bed,” she responded softly, “you, too. And that’s the problem.”
“Being incredible in bed together is a problem?”
“I wasn’t ready for you,” she said hotly, as if Dennis were pushing her buttons on purpose, egging her on, baiting her into an argument.
Except he wasn’t.
“That’s okay, you know,” he replied, suddenly serious. “You don’t have to be.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to be. I would never push you into something you don’t want. We can just stop here.”
“I don’t want that, either!”
“Then what do you want, Ana?” Quieter now, his words felt like silk strands on the wind, the tips brushing her lips with a featherlight stroke. “What do you really, deeply want?”
“If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t have left your room this morning.”
“Do you mean you want more of this?” He gestured between the two of them.
“I think I’m getting in my own way because I can’t believe this is real.”
“Ah.” The proverbial light bulb switched on, casting light over their half embrace. “Now I understand.”