HOSTILE: A Military Romance Novel (Military Men Book 1) (13 page)

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I woke up in a hazy fog. The only thing I could focus on was Derrick as he stared at me with concern in his ocean-blue eyes.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he said. His warm hand was wrapped around mine. He was wearing a black T-shirt, tight enough to hug the contours of his muscles. The sleeves were also short enough to show me his bandaged injury.

“What happened to you?” I asked. Every word cost me more energy than I had to spare.

“Got shot. It’s nothing, really. How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Liar.” I couldn’t get away with anything while Corporal Watson was around.

“Fine, I feel like crap. Happy now?”

“No,” he said seriously. “I’m so sorry, Ariana. I should never have left you alone. This is all my fault. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

Tears were starting to brim in his eyes, but he wiped them away before I was supposed to see them. I would never have held him accountable for what had happened. He couldn’t have known they’d come for me. He was only trying to protect me.

“It’s not your fault, Derrick,” I said honestly. “I don’t blame you, so don’t blame yourself.”

“But what you went through—”

“I’m okay. That’s all that counts.” I tried to sit up, but it felt like every bone in my body had been run over by a tank. I didn’t remember anything of my rescue, but the details would have to wait for later, when my brain wasn’t so fuzzy.

“No, it’s not. I should have been there to protect you.”

“I’m not arguing with you about this. We’re both fine, and that’s enough.”

The doctor joined us then, pumping me full of morphine and taking me away into a blissful sleep as the pain seeped away from my body.

* * *

I was on the base for a week, half that time in the hospital tent while I recovered from my injuries. The worst part of my recovery was having to recount everything that had happened to the Major. I didn’t like reliving all the ways the men had hit me in order to elicit information I didn’t have.

Derrick visited me every day, but he had changed. His shoulders were slumped with the burden of what he had done. No amount of reassurances I gave him were enough to chase away those demons. He still blamed himself, and I couldn’t say anything to change his mind.

It was a Thursday when I was told the news that I was being moved. A helicopter was on its way and would take me to another base, where an airplane would take me home.

I searched for Derrick all morning but couldn’t find him anywhere. My search grew more desperate as the departure time drew nearer. He seemed to be nowhere, and nobody knew where he was.

“We have to go, ma’am,” the pilot said. “We can’t wait any longer.”

I had no luggage or possessions to take with me, just a paper bag with a change of clothes someone on the base had given to me. Physically I was ready, but mentally I wasn’t. I hadn’t said goodbye to Derrick, and it was tearing me apart inside.

“Ma’am.”

“Yes, okay,” I replied, reluctantly allowing him to help me into my seat. My eyes scanned the area the entire time, searching for the man I would recognize anywhere now.

He didn’t arrive.

He didn’t say goodbye.

Derrick had to have known I was leaving that day. He seemed to know everything that happened on base. But, for whatever reason, he had avoided me instead of seeing me off.

I probably reminded him of his perceived mistake. He was probably grateful that I was leaving so he could move on. He wouldn’t have to apologize anymore, even though I’d never wanted him to in the first place.

As the helicopter took off, my heart squeezed inside my chest. A single tear slid down my cheek as the deep hurt of him not being there filtered through me.

* * *

Everybody wanted to know about my time in Afghanistan when I arrived home. They made it sound like I had been on the adventure of a lifetime, like I was Indiana Jones or something.

There was no way to convey to them the intense fear and horror of what I had experienced while in the war zone. I gave them the sanitized version, the kind where I wasn’t beaten and my heart wasn’t broken.

It was difficult to adjust to normal life again. I kept catching myself looking over my shoulder and jumping at shadows. I searched for Derrick in every crowd I passed through, but he was never there.

I took a leave of absence from my job at the national newspaper. My boss was understanding when I told him I had some post-traumatic injuries that I needed some time to recover from. He didn’t realize Derrick was a part of that trauma.

The scars I wore were on the inside. They made themselves known every time I jumped at a shadow. Or when I saw a couple kissing on the street. My heart was the most damaged out of all my organs.

The funny thing was that Derrick had accused me several times of running home and telling everyone about the bastard soldier who had fucked me over. He had believed I would do it with such conviction that nothing could change his mind.

But the last thing I wanted to do was tell people about him. Our time together was intrinsically intimate; it belonged to just the two of us. I didn’t want to share that with anyone.

Yes, I was angry with him.

Yes, a part of me hated him for what he had done.

But the largest part of me was missing him, craving him, yearning for him. It wasn’t just about the mind-blowing sex that made me horny every time I replayed it in my mind. It was about the connection I felt with him. I’d never encountered that kind of feeling before. I’d never really thought it existed in real life, believing that it was reserved for movies only.

I knew I would have to get over him, but I wasn’t sure how. The sting of missing out on that final goodbye made everything that much harder. There was no closure, for me, at least.

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“Fuck!” I yelled at the helicopter, but it didn’t change anything.

Ariana was gone and there was nothing I could do about it. I’d been given orders at the crack of dawn to head out on a recon mission and hadn’t made it back in time.

Just five minutes earlier and I would have been able to say goodbye. I didn’t even have her phone number, or any idea where she lived. Sure, she’d told me some details, but it wasn’t like having an actual address.

Then again, what good would it have done me anyway? We’d had some good times together, but seeing her scars only reminded me of how badly I had let her down. I would live with that guilt until the day I died.

I returned back to the hospital tent to check in on Marshall. He had suffered the worst injuries in the rescue raid on the Taliban.

Taking a seat next to his bed, I let out a sigh. He looked bad. “What’s the verdict?” I asked.

“Not good,” he replied. I was used to seeing Marshall alive, telling jokes, and taking nothing seriously. He seemed absolutely deflated now.

“What’d they say?”

His jaw clenched before he spoke. “They’re going to take off my fucking leg. They say it’s too mangled and damaged to repair. That it’s a liability to me and slowly killing me.”

“Fuck.”

“You got that right.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to a man who was about to lose his leg. There wasn’t any kind of joke I could think of to lighten the mood and not enough words to tell him how sorry I was.

So we sat in silence until the doctor told me visiting time was over.

The next day they sent Marshall to Germany so he could have his leg amputated. I did manage to say goodbye to him, but I knew I would see him again. Marshall was my Army brother. We were bound for life.

Even as the weeks passed by, the ghost of Ariana never left me. She was in every one of my thoughts and haunted my dreams. I couldn’t escape her. She was everywhere.

And yet she was nowhere.

When I’d first laid eyes on the woman, I’d thought she would be nothing but trouble, and I was right. I just wasn’t expecting this kind of trouble.

My tour was due to end at the beginning of December. My troop received the news that we would be home for Christmas, and it livened us all up. We would be going from the hot desert to the snowy winter, and the relief from the heat would be more than welcome.

We were all excited – partly because of the fact we were going home, but mostly because we’d survived another tour. There was never any guarantee we’d be alive to return home when we shipped out, and we were the lucky ones that had.

Our military plane dropped us all off at the base in Fort Jefferson, Florida. We had to make our own way home from there.

I took a taxi to the civilian airport, nothing on me except my single bag of clothes and wallet. There were planes going everywhere, mostly fully booked in the lead-up to Christmas.

The next plane back to Ohio was in three hours. There was a plane leaving for New York in one.

“Sir? Can I help you?” the check-in girl asked expectantly.

I stood at the counter, my mind racing. Did I dare? Should I? Or was going home the better option? She probably didn’t want to see me anyway. She’d probably forgotten all about me.

But… maybe she hadn’t.

“Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to step aside so I can serve another customer, unless I can help you with something?” Her smile was perfect, her hair neat and smooth. The woman was hot, but held none of the sizzle that Ariana had.

“I’d like a ticket to New York, please,” I replied. All the breath whooshed out of my lungs after the words were out. I had thrown caution to the wind. I just hoped I was doing the right thing.

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I’d been invited to the Christmas party at the newspaper even while I was on extended leave. It was nice of them to make the gesture. A part of me just wanted to stay home, but that wasn’t healthy.

So I threw on a pair of stilettos, a little black dress, and some red lipstick, and I went out, determined to have fun. I had to put the past behind me or I was going to drive myself insane.

The party was at the office but someone had gone to a lot of trouble making sure the decorations covered the real use of the space. Nobody was allowed to think of work tonight. It was purely about relaxing and letting off steam – with plenty of alcohol, of course.

It was good catching up with my colleagues, hearing about what they’d been up to both personally and professionally. But every time they asked me about my last story, I just flashed straight back to the horrible little room in the Taliban hideout.

I never expected to have my own story be the biggest one out of my trip to Afghanistan. I hadn’t told it to anyone yet, not in full. It was safer telling other people’s stories rather than my own.

“Ariana, good to see you,” my old colleague, Brian, said as he leaned on the desk next to me. Judging by the fire in his breath, he’d hit the alcohol pretty hard already. “It seems like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’ve been on extended leave,” I replied.

“Yeah, I heard that. The word on the old grapevine says you had a bad time in Afghanistan. I was sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you. It was difficult.”

Brian was one of the better catches in the office. With his styled blond hair and mischievous grin, there were plenty of women that lusted after him.

He
was
hot, and normally quite a gentleman when he hadn’t been slamming the free beer. He was the kind of guy I would normally have gone for. “How’s things for you, Brian? Like you said, it’s been ages since we’ve spoken.”

“All’s good here. But you know what it’s like – ridiculous deadlines and terrible editing demands. The stuff
you
write – now
that’s
the sweet deal.”

“If I don’t come back, then my spot will be open.”

Brian shook his head, his beer sloshing dangerously close to the edge of the plastic cup. “Nah, I want to see your sweet little ass back in that chair. Nobody else could do it like you can, Ari. Maybe we could talk about it over breakfast?”

He was being nice and made me glad I had come. But, still, there was something holding me back. “Thanks for the offer, but maybe another time.”

I turned and walked away from Brian, finally able to put my finger on the reason I couldn’t flirt back with him.

He wasn’t Derrick.

Somehow, I had begun using Corporal Watson as the standard I would hold any man I spoke with up to. I doubted any of them would measure up.

But he had hurt me, and he didn’t deserve to be the presence he was in my head. I had to get over him, and I’d thought I was making progress in that area. Yet, as I spoke with Brian, the soldier was also present. It was a sobering thought.

By nine o’clock I was ready to leave. The single cocktail I’d had wasn’t enough to give me a buzz, and I just wanted to go home. My bed was calling, as was the solitude of my apartment.

My stilettos clicked on the floor in the deserted foyer as I made my way across. Everybody was having too good of a time inside to be leaving so early.

As I reached the door to the outside, I stopped dead in my tracks before colliding with someone that was entering. Before my trip to Afghanistan, I would have laughed it off, but now I jumped like every person I encountered still posed a threat to me.

I was only chest height with the person, a man. My eyes traveled upwards, taking him all in piece by piece. I found his neck, then his jaw, his lips, and then his brilliant blue eyes.

“Derrick?” All the air escaped from my lungs, choking in my throat at the sight of him. I had to look twice to make sure I was actually seeing him standing in front of me.

“Ariana, hi.”

“What are you doing here?” It was only one of many, many questions I had for him.

“I came to find you,” he said. He seemed equally surprised as I was at seeing him. “You said you worked here, so I was going to convince them to give me your address.”

He smiled, and all those feelings I’d tried to suppress came rushing back in all at once. They were so powerful I nearly fell to my knees.

But he had let me leave the military base without even saying goodbye. He had no right to turn up at my workplace and do this to me. He didn’t deserve all those warm feelings I had for him.

I stepped around him, forcing myself to turn my back on him. “You shouldn’t have bothered,” I said as I headed for my car.

Derrick easily caught up with me, matching my stride with his as I headed toward my car. “Please, Ariana, hear me out. I’ve missed you so much. You’re all I can think about.”

I clamped my lips together so I wouldn’t say something I’d regret later. He really didn’t realize how badly he had hurt me.

When I reached my car and climbed in, Derrick jumped into the passenger seat. I stared at him in disbelief. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve come a long way, Ariana. Please let me explain.”

“Explain what? You made yourself quite clear back at the base when you let me leave without saying goodbye.”

“I tried to, I really did. But I was sent on a mission, and you’d left by the time I got back.”

“Oh, right, like you couldn’t have left me a message or something?” I demanded.

“There was no time. When the Major tells you to go somewhere, you have to go immediately. You have no idea how much I wished I could have been there.” His eyes flicked to his hands as he picked at his fingernail. “I would have promised you I would find you again.”

His story seemed plausible, and it was making me melt by the second. Still, he’d had plenty of time to make things right. He might just have waited too long.

I started the car and began driving. There was no way he was going to get out of my car, and I would rather have an argument at my apartment rather than in front of my workplace.

You could have heard a pin drop as I drove. My anger was seething just below my skin. Part of that anger was at myself because of the way my stomach was doing backflips at seeing him again. Derrick affected me in ways I didn’t want him to anymore.

I pulled the car into the underground parking of my apartment building. Derrick followed me into the elevator and right up to my front door without saying a word. The silence was killing me. It was almost as bad as arguing with him.

The moment I closed the front door and we were alone, I let it all go in one big rush. “You hurt me so much, Derrick. I don’t care what your excuse is, you let me leave you in a friggin’ war zone without a word. I thought I was never going to see you again.”

He held up his arms in a defensive gesture. “I’m sorry, I really am. If I could go back and take that pain away from you, I would. In a heartbeat. I never intended to hurt you, no matter what happened between us.”

Derrick had told me several times that he didn’t do relationships. That he was a free spirit who could never commit and sex was the only thing he wanted from a woman. It made me wonder what he was doing in my apartment.

“Why did you come here?” I asked. We could yell at each other until we were both blue in the face, but there was no point. If he expected a quick fuck, then he shouldn’t have bothered coming.

“I came to see you.” He took a tentative step closer. “Ariana, you’ve done something to me. You make me think I could be a different man. You make me
want
to be a different man.”

“I’m not responsible for anything.”

“Yes, you are.”

I didn’t believe him.