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“Your parents aren’t still around? I remember Dad talking about that before, that he was your only family left.”
Ash moved away from my hands and got back to his side, a pillow stuffed under his head as he looked up at me.
“What’re you doing, Frey?”
“I’m just… I want to get to know you. Is that a crime?”
“It’s not a crime, but what’s the point?”
My jaw dropped, and I knew exactly the moment he realized he fucked up, because his eyes widened.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he started. “It’s just…we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, and I feel like this is only going to make it worse. We’re not a couple, Frey. I’m not a white knight and we’re not going to ride off into the sunset.”
“White knight? No. Maybe a knight in full camo with Glocks attached at each hip. That’s more my kind of knight, anyway.”
He shook his head.
“That’s not what I meant, either. I’m…I’m broken. I can’t even drive a car without chancing another fucking episode. I mean, I’m an elite trained Marine and I’ve got debilitating PTSD? What the fuck even is that?”
His relaxed position was gone. Ash sat up and put his arms around his knees, pulling himself as close to the fetal position as a man his size could get.
“PTSD isn’t something to be ashamed of, Ash. It’s not something you can help.”
“It’s bullshit,” he hissed, staring at the curtained window instead of meeting my eyes.
“No, this is bullshit,” I barked right back. “After six years in MARSOC, and years before that in the Marines, that’s all you have to show for it? A baby tantrum? You’re just going to give up on everything because it wasn’t fair?”
“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” he growled through clenched teeth.
“Oh, I have a pretty good idea, but if you’d like to enlighten me, please, go for it.”
He paused, working his jaw as that brilliant mind of his spun.
“My mom was sick,” he finally ground out. “Dad was a drunk who beat up on her and me occasionally. She held in there until I was seventeen, but then she died. Dad epically took it out on me, and I left home, ran away so to speak and couch-surfed until my eighteenth birthday when they let me join the Marines. This life has been the only life I’ve ever known. I live and die for my country.”
His voice cracked with wariness and emotion as he stared, not focusing on anything as he finished his thought.
“I met your dad the same fucking year, and he took me under his wing unlike any man I’ve ever met. He taught me everything I know that the military didn’t, and he gave a fuck about me. And now I do this, betraying his trust in a way that I can never repair.”
My bruised heart finally shattered with those words.
So he did regret me.
I started to move off the bed, but he reached over and grabbed my hand so tight it almost hurt.
“You want to know the most fucked up part,” he whispered, barely audible.
“What,” I hissed, refusing to look at him.
His hand let go of mine, so I started moving again, picking up my clothes from the floor as he spoke.
“Even though this could destroy everything with him, it was worth it.”
That made me pause.
“Worth it?” I asked half angry, half offended. “So, what? I was a good enough fuck that you’ll deal with the backlash?”
“If I wanted a fuck, I could get one that didn't destroy my relationship with Tom,” he barked back, looking offended, too.
