.jpg)
The bar was dark when we got back, all the stools up on the tables. I led her upstairs to the apartment and, unsurprisingly, Xavier was at the kitchen table, some kind of thick textbook on the table, a laptop next to it, with a bunch of electronics bits and pieces and doodads and gizmos and gadgets spread out around him. He was reading the textbook at lightning speed, flipping pages every few seconds, and every once in a while he’d do something with the wires and motors and computer chips, tap at the laptop, fiddle a bit more, and then go back to reading.
Mara stopped at the table, watching. “What are you doing, Xavier?”
He blinked at her for a moment, as if registering that she was there and that he was expected to respond. He kind of goes into a trance when he’s working like that, so he was a little slow on the uptake.
“Oh, hello Mara,” he said, finally. “I’m, um, studying.”
“Studying what?”
He flipped the textbook closed to show the cover. “Advanced Computational Mathematics.”
She gestured at the laptop and robotics. “And all this?”
Xavier just blinked at her. When he was in his head like this, it always took him a while to re-gear into a socializing mindset. “Um, it’s basic robotics, I just…” he glanced at me uncomfortably.
I laughed. “Boy genius here has focus problems.”
“But…he’s doing two super advanced things at once,” Mara pointed out.
“Yeah, well, Xavier’s focus problem is the opposite of everyone else’s. He reads so fast and his brain comprehends so quickly that it’s like…listening to the radio while driving for the rest of us. He has trouble sitting still and paying attention if he’s not mentally occupied. So he has to do something to entertain all of his brain.” I picked up a finished robot, a three-legged little thing, and showed it to Mara. “He builds these robots while he studies. They’re simple little things that only do one or two things.”
“I can answer for myself, you know,” Xavier said, his voice sharp with sarcasm. He glanced at Mara. “But what he said is correct, even though he spoke for me.”
Mara examined the robot; it was just a box with three tiny pegs for legs, one each on opposite sides of the cube, and then a third on the front forming a sort of off-kilter tripod. “So what’s this one do?”
Xavier took it from her, set it on the table in front of his textbook, and flipped a switch on the bottom. The little box sat on the two primary legs with one edge touching the table, and then rotated backward flat to the table so it was sitting down, so to speak. When the legs and corresponding cube face were parallel to the table, it suddenly flipped into the air, did three somersaults, and landed again, then used the single “front leg” to push itself back into a sitting position, at which point it reared back and repeated the simple performance.
Mara laughed delightedly. “Oh my god, that is so cute!” She crouched to watch the little robot do its jump and flip, laughing every time it launched itself into the air. “And you do this just for fun?”
He shrugged modestly. “Sure. Just to keep myself busy while I’m studying.”
She picked up the robot and turned it off, then examined it again. “You ever think about selling them?”
Xavier did the blank, blinking stare again, the one that made it seem like you’d spoken in Swahili or something. “Sell them? To whom?”
Mara laughed. “Anyone! Online, or downstairs in the bar? You put in one of those USB rechargeable batteries and put a cute little face on this? I bet you could get twenty or thirty bucks out of it.”
Xavier stared at the robot like he’d never seen it. “That’s, like, maybe five or ten dollars in parts. The most expensive part is the chip, and I get a wholesale discount from a supplier I know.”
“Exactly. Huge profit margin, and you make them in your spare time.”
Xavier turned the robot on and watched it flip. “You really think people would buy them?”
“Absolutely.” She dug her wallet out of her purse and set three tens on the table, and then took the robot. “There. I’m your first customer.”
Xavier poked at the money like he’d never seen a greenback before. “For real?”
Mara laughed again. “Yes, sweetheart, for real. This thing is amazing! I could watch it flip for hours while I’m doing paperwork. I know for a fact if I put it on my desk at work, before lunch at least five people would ask me where I got it.”
Xavier pointed at a slot on one side. “It already has the USB battery, because that’s just the easiest way of charging and being able to reprogram it.”
“See? And everyone has a mini USB cord somewhere around the house, so there’s no need to include one. I think you just make it look more like an animal or monster or something, just a little head and eyes or whatever, give it a cute name, and you’re in business.”
“A cute name?”
Mara nodded, tapping the robot on the head. “Like, I’ll call this one Flipper. Like the old TV show about the Dolphin? Only this actually is just a flipper, so it’s…stupid, but—”
“No, that’s cute. I see what you mean.” He was already on his laptop, tapping away. “I could design a basic starter website in like an hour. I’d just need a PayPal account, and some way of packaging them…” And then Xavier was gone, mentally, mumbling to himself, fingers clacking and flying on the keyboard.
I laughed and led Mara toward my room. “You know he has crates full of those things in his room? If he sits and studies or reads for three or four hours, he’ll put together four or five of them. And they’re all like that, simple, cute, funny, and endlessly entertaining. I think you just created the CEO of the next Apple Corporation.”
Mara smiled at me. “It’ll start there, and then he’ll design a more complex one, and next thing you know, he’ll be selling his IPO for half a billion.”
“Exactly,” I said, closing the door behind us.
“Is he always up at this hour?” she asked, glancing at my alarm clock, which read 5:48am.
I nodded. “He sleeps maybe four hours a night max. He’ll go to bed at one or two and be up again ready to go at five or six. Usually, though, he goes to bed at three or four and wakes up at seven or eight.” I shucked my shoes and jacket, setting them aside. “He’s always going, doing, studying, reading. He’s exhausting, is what he is.”
There was an awkward moment, then. Mara stood just inside my room, the door closed behind her, her zip fleece in one hand, purse in the other, staring around my room, at the bed, at me, looking unsure.
Like, where do you start when it comes to just literally, physically sleeping with someone? How do you approach it? It’s weird.
I slid off my socks and tossed them in the hamper near my closet, then approached Mara slowly. “Hey, look, this doesn’t have to be weird or awkward, okay?”
She tilted her head to the side and made a face. “Yeah, well, it already is, isn’t it? I mean, what do you wear to bed? Which side are you sleeping on? Do you brush your teeth before bed? How am I going to take off my makeup?”
“I usually wear nothing or just underwear to bed, but I can go with shorts if it’ll make you more comfortable. I usually end up on the left side of the bed, but I’m fine with whatever you’re comfortable with. We have a bunch of extra toothbrushes around, and Bast’s wife has a bunch of girly makeup shit in the bathroom, so I’m sure if you poked around you’d find what you need.” I grinned. “Anything else?”
She frowned. “I can’t just poke around another woman’s makeup, especially one I’ve never met. That’s…it’s…anathema.”
I shrugged. “She won’t mind—she’s cool. Plus, she and Bast are in Baja on their honeymoon, so it’s not like she’ll ever know anyway.”
“I’m not rifling through your sister-in-law’s makeup collection. I’ll just wash my face with soap and water.”
“Suit yourself.” I went to my bureau and pulled out one of my faded, worn, washed a million times Navy T-shirts, handed it to her. “You
get changed while I find a toothbrush for you.”
It had been weird at first, getting used to having a woman living with us. Dru had stuffed our once-bare medicine cabinet in the bathroom with all sorts of weird shit, and our bathroom towels were all folded all the time, and she’d bought a fancy toilet paper holder instead of just leaving the roll on the back of the toilet where it had been for as long as I could remember, and I had to remember to knock if the door was closed. And there were bras hanging from Bast’s bedroom doorknob, panties on the floor of his room, tampon and pad wrappers in the bathroom garbage—and there was a bathroom garbage in the first place. She bought all sorts of food we never stocked, did the dishes for no reason whatsoever, vacuumed, dusted even—don’t get me wrong, for an apartment filled with a bunch of bachelors, we were plenty clean. I’m former military, so I’ve got that stereotypical neat-and-orderly bug, and Bast had been in charge of the rest of us growing up and he hated mess and dirt, so it wasn’t like we were a bunch of slobs. But we were dudes, and we lived a dude life in a dude’s pad.
Then Dru moved in and all that changed. For the better, mostly, but she did yell at us when we left the toilet seat up in the middle of the night or missed the bowl. It’s kind of impressive, honestly, how easily she fit herself into our life, surrounded by a bunch of guys. The other brothers lived over the studio a block or so down, but this was the home base for all of us, so often as not there’d be someone passed out on the couch or playing Xbox or making food, since Dru had taken over grocery shopping and kept this place stocked like a restaurant.
I changed into my shorts and then browsed in the medicine cabinet for a new toothbrush; I found one, and, conveniently, several little white packages that said “makeup remover pads” right beside them. After pissing, brushing my own teeth, and washing my hands, I snagged one and brought it and the toothbrush to Mara.
“Look what I found!” I said, showing her. “She’s got like four of these packages in there, so I really don’t think it’s a big deal if you use some.”
And then it registered what I was seeing: Amarantha, wearing my favorite Navy shirt, looking sleepy and sexy and gorgeous…and just so perfect and so right, so natural in my environment, lounging on my bed scrolling through her phone. The way she was lounging left it obvious that she wasn’t wearing a damn thing under the T-shirt, which didn’t help me in my determination that we were just going to go to sleep, and nothing else.
She looked up at me as I came in, and gave me that cute, quirky, lopsided grin. “Thanks. Taking off makeup without remover is tricky.” She eyed me, then. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
The emotion I was feeling was hard to pinpoint. Soft…tender, possessive, comforted…all of those at once, and more I didn’t have the words for.
I let my gaze linger. “Just…you,” I said. “In my bed, in my shirt, looking incredible.”
She blushed. “There you go with that flattery again.”
“It’s also just having you here, like this. It’s….” I trailed off, hunting for the right words.
“Comfortingly domestic, in a bizarre and unfamiliar sort of way?”
“Exactly.”
She sat up. “I may look like the picture of confidence and cool, collected, adult rationality, but inside, my heart is going like this…” she patted her chest over her heart in a quick rhythm. “And I’m not at all cool or collected.”
I sat on the bed beside her, pressed her hand over my heart; her hand was warm and smooth and soft. “Feel that?” My heart was hammering like drum. “You’re not the only one, babe.”
She gazed up at me, her hand still on my heart. “Why are we being so weird about this? We’re just sleeping.”
“I know. I was wondering the same thing. It’s stupid for me to be nervous about this, but I am.” I laughed. “Put me in the back of an airplane with a backpack and a rifle, about to drop thirty thousand feet and attack a bunch of bad guys who’d love to kill me…and my heart will be steady as a rock. Not so much as a single missed beat. But this? Going to bed with a woman I’ve already slept with, a woman I like more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m—I’m like a boy about to kiss a girl for the first time.”
She laughed and sank against me, putting her arms around my waist and her cheek to my chest. “How do you always know what to say to reassure me?”
I could only shrug, my breath stolen by the soft, sweet tenderness of Mara with her arms around me, nuzzling against me, whispering to me. Feeling like she belonged here.
She just held on for a long moment, and then stood up, taking the makeup remover and toothbrush. “Be right back.”
I snagged my cell out of my jeans pocket and plugged it in, then reclined in the bed, pulling up my text thread with Bast.
Me: You up?
Him: Yeah. What’s up?
Me: Random question, and you can’t get up in my shit about it. How’d you know you wanted to be with Dru? Like, that it was a real thing with her?
Him: That hot medic, huh?
Me: The boys have been talking? Gonna have to beat some ass.
Him: Nah, I saw you take off with her at the wedding.
Me: So? How’d you know, with Dru?
Him: I fucking hate that I’m saying this, but…you just know, man.
Me: That’s a shitty answer.
Him: I know. I’m sorry. But it’s the real answer. If you can’t make yourself let her go, then you know. If the idea of her leaving and never coming back makes you crazy, then you know.
Me: So let’s say, hypothetically, that I’m about to sleep, JUST sleep with her, and my heart is pounding and my hands are shaking worse than before my first combat drop?
Him: Then I’d say you probably know.
Me: So what do I do?
Him: How the hell should I know? Don’t let her go? Figure it out. If you can earn a bronze star, you can figure out what to do about a woman you’re hung up on.
Me: How’d you hear about that?
Him: Why, is it a secret?
Me: I just don’t talk about it.
Him: Marco?
Me: Yeah.
Him. Sorry.
Me: I told Mara about Marco.
Him. Damn.
Me: I know.
Him: You’ll figure it out, and if not, we’ll be here for you, bro. Now, I’m gonna go back to sleep with my wife.
Me: Why didn’t you tell me I woke you up?
Him: Because you’re my brother and you wouldn’t text me at 5:45 in the morning if it wasn’t important.
Me: Well thanks.
Him: NP. Later.
Me: Later.
It was weird texting Bast—he’d been kind of a caveman when it came to technology of all kinds, as in he hadn’t had a cell phone, computer, game console, nothing. The first thing Dru had done when she moved in was instruct him in no uncertain terms to “go get a cell phone and learn how to fucking text, you goddamn Luddite.” Dru could and did curse like a sailor, and having been a sailor myself, that’s saying something impressive.
I set the phone aside as Mara came in, her hair brushed, face clean of makeup, eyes flicking around, fingers plucking at the hem of the T-shirt. I tossed aside the blankets and held out my arm; Mara hesitated at the foot of the bed for a few moments, and then climbed toward me, slid her feet under the blankets, and nestled her head against my chest. My arm curled around her waist and palmed her thigh, her hand fluttered around before coming rest on my chest, under my chin; we were both stiff for several minutes, until I laughed, reached out to shut off the lamp, and tugged her more fully against me, sliding lower in the bed.
Gradually, we both relaxed.
“This is…really nice, actually,” I said, feeling sleep finally tug at me.
“Mmm,” she answered, her voice muzzy. “The nicest. I’m glad I thought of it.” I heard the sleepy grin in her voice.
“Yeah, well, you’re pretty damn smart.”
“I have all the best ideas.”
/>
“Sure do.”
Silence, then, for a long time. I was on the verge of sleep when I heard her speak again. “Zane?”
“Hmmm?”
“I get nightmares a lot, still, and disoriented, sometimes. If I wake up and I’m crazy—”
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head; I hadn’t thought about it, it had just happened automatically. “I do too. If it happens, we’ll deal.”
She made a quiet, innocent little humming noise in her throat in response, and then nuzzled closer to me, her whole body curled around and draped over mine, my arms wrapped around her. I could smell her hair, the faint odor of toothpaste, and just…Mara.
I’ve never fallen asleep so fast in my life.
She never woke up with a nightmare.
I woke up slowly, gradually. Sunlight streamed into the bedroom from my window, seagulls cawed loudly…and a woman snored softly.
I blinked my eyes open and glanced down—Mara was facing away, body curled into a comma, blond hair tangled and messy and draped over her face, obscuring her features. She was pressed back against me, back to my chest, thighs against mine, ass nestled against my hips.
Her mouth was partially open, a soft, feminine snore snuffling out every few breaths—and that was, possibly, the most adorable sound I’d ever heard. My heart clenched, squeezed, skipped half a dozen beats, and then started up again, pounding and hammering.
I didn’t deserve this. Not her, not this peace—
Deep, deep, deep down, that was the fear that plagued me.
That was the reason my heart was pounding so hard I felt it slamming against my ribs. That was the reason I’d frozen, my hand on her hip, my nose in her hair—I was scared to death I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t know how to be a guy she could stay for. Not saying it was easy for Bast and Dru, but neither of them had watched best friends die bloody, violent, pointless deaths. Neither of them had fought off dozens of insurgents alone, standing over the body of their blood brother. Yeah, I got a fucking stupid bronze star—people expected me to flash it around and swagger like a cocky badass because I got a medal. Sweet, great, I’m proud of it; I am, too, in a way. But I’m also ashamed of it. Marco died. He took a bullet, just inches away from me. I see his eyes go glassy in my nightmares, a hole in his forehead. He fucking died, and I went apeshit, and got a stupid piece of bronze for it. Marco is still dead, and his kid is still without his daddy, and that bronze star won’t bring him back. Worse yet is that I’m not really supposed to talk about how I got the star, or that have it at all, because we were on a covert mission, and the only reason I got it is because my actions saved the rest of my team and the extract crew. I didn’t do what I did for honor or glory or for the extract team or even the rest of the guys…I did it to avenge Marco.