Page 25 of The Press Secretary's Passion
“I happen to like you when you lose your head in close proximity to me,” he replies with a smug expression playing about the corners of his mouth.
“You would,” I mumble.
“But I’d also like to explain to you the order of events that led to the demise of my sixteen-year marriage to my high school sweetheart,” he says. “And I’d like to hold you while I do it.”
“Okay,” I agree, because what else do you say to something like that? So I take a hesitant step toward him. And then another. And another until I’m standing right next to my bed.
“Come here,” he says one last time, holding his good arm out, and I curl into his side. “Now, it’s story time. Are you ready?”
“No,” I answer honestly, and I feel his mouth smile against my head as he holds me close.
“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway.”
“I figured as much.”
“I was two years older than Kristen, two grades ahead of her in school. And even though we were young, I knew I was going to marry her,” he says, and I feel something ugly curl in my belly. “That could have been the hormones, but I knew, so I married her the second she graduated and not a moment later. And I moved her into married student housing at A&M. I worked my ass off to graduate a year early, and I was already committed to the Marines. After that, we moved constantly with each new billet. And then came Caleb, who you met. Two years after that, Lacy.”
He said it all like that explained everything, when in actuality, it explained nothing, and I’m left with more questions than answers. Questions I would not now, nor ever, give a voice to, because it isn’t my business, but also because it might just break my heart.
“I was deployed,” he continues, and I can’t help but feel like this is where the fairy tale turns into a nightmare. “Kristen was getting tired of being a full-time single parent with a husband who was never there. I had thought things were fine. She sent the kids back to Texas to be with our families and said she had to work, and she did, but really she was having an affair—not with Alan, but some office douche.”
I glance up at him, expecting to find pain in his eyes, but his face is completely void of emotion.
“One day, when I finally got the chance to call home, she broke down and told me. I wished for a long time after that she hadn’t, because it changed everything. We were broken. I came home, and we tried, but I couldn’t. I would lie in our bed with her at night, and when she turned to me, I would wonder, did he touch her like I did? Did he kiss her neck like I did? And I couldn’t. We were broken, but not because of her affair. We were broken long before that when we let things get to the point that she would turn to someone else.”
“I’m sorry,” I say for lack of anything better.
“Me too,” he says, squeezing his arm tighter around me for a second. “I won’t say it was the best for a while, but we’re still friends, and we managed to raise great kids. Alan works for himself, so when I said I had the opportunity for this job, they all signed on to follow me to D.C.”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s nicer than nice,” he agrees. “We’re a team, and it works.”
“I’m glad you have that,” I tell him, my voice soft.
“I’m glad you like that for me, honey,” he says, and I think story time is over when he turns the tables on me. “Now, let’s talk about what drove you to the hospital scared to death tonight.”
“Story time is over,” I reply, trying to pull away.
“All right, darlin’,” he concedes, and his Texas twang is more pronounced than normal. “I’ll let you make that play… for now, and we can move on to more… pleasurable pastimes.”
“What?”
“I might need a little help getting undressed though.”
“You can’t be serious!” I practically shout. “You were just shot!”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he says as he begins to shrug out of his T-shirt. “It’s just a little bit more than a flesh wound.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I mumble as I watch him reveal his tan skin and muscle inch by gorgeous inch. “They said you were in surgery.”
“I had to get a little patched up. They didn’t even need to put me under,” he says. “You’re going to have to do all the work though.”
“Do you really think we should be doing that right after you’ve been shot?”
“Baby, you are exactly what I should be doing right after I get shot.”
I gasp. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
