Page 45 of Nightfire

Chloe had been young enough that she could still function in the world, though she still had problems.

He shouldn’t be here, he should be out in the parking lot, waiting for her outside the building, as he always did. He knew that.

What the fuck was he doing here, then? Why come here to talk to Chloe when he’d be driving her home, or would be seeing her at Harry’s for supper tonight? Or tomorrow morning in the building’s gym where he’d run her through her weight cycle? Or at lunch tomorrow when she’d come in to consult with Marisa about one of the Lost Ones whose disappearance RBK was engineering?

He was here because he couldn’t stand it anymore. Not for one fucking second more. The situation was driving him batshit crazy, and he was almost unable to function.

He couldn’t eat. Just couldn’t do it. Food tasted like wool in his mouth.

He was forgetting things on the job, which was unheard of. Mike was intensely detail-oriented. He didn’t forget things, just didn’t happen. Until now, because the situation with Chloe was eating up his hard disk.

This morning he had a contract with a bank to go over and he’d spent two hours staring at a picture of Chloe, taken at a family barbecue a couple of weeks ago. He hadn’t even noticed the time passing. He just stared at the fucking picture and there had been wetness in his eyes. Not tears, Mike didn’t do tears, but there’d been definite wetness. That’s when he knew he had to see her.

Right now.

He needed to see Chloe right fucking now.

He’d butted his head against the iron wall of his word to Harry and it was breaking him. It was either Harry or his heart and after holding out for six fucking months, his heart won out. He’d spent the past freaking six months in a hell of penance and enough was enough

The first thing was to ask Chloe out for that date they were supposed to have had at the Del before his shit hit the fan. They were going out on a date like normal people and Harry could go jump in the fucking lake. Or the Pacific, which was right outside his door.

And then maybe Mike could start eating and sleeping like normal people did. Maybe this raw buzzing in his head would stop. Maybe this burning pain in his chest would go away.

First Chloe, then he’d bite the bullet and talk to Harry. He’d…what? Ask Harry permission to date his sister? Not just permission to be around her and carry her groceries in, and be her personal trainer, but be with her, date her. Because surely six long nookieless months was enough to earn him points with Harry?

He’d tell Chloe everything, how he felt about her, how he couldn’t even conceive of being with anyone but her, even though that still astounded him.

If you’d asked him six months ago if he could go six months without sex and without a specific woman, he’d have laughed in your face. Mike Keillor didn’t do abstinence. Mike Keillor needed no one, let alone a woman.

And here he might as well have been living in the seminary for all the sex he’d had these last six months. And even without the sex, he’d walk barefoot across hot coals to watch Chloe walk, talk, hell, even breathe.

Other women? He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go to other women. He’d tried a couple of times and it just…didn’t work. In the sense his dick simply wouldn’t respond, like some contrary member of the board vetoing some proposal. When he tried, when some woman in a bar come on to him, he’d felt a form of repulsion, his dick a piece of dead meat between his legs. Once he’d actually felt his dick shrink in disgust.

If it wasn’t for the fact that he had to hide his hard on or will it back down whenever Chloe was near and that he woke up hard as a rock after dreaming of her, he’d have thought he’d suddenly turned impotent. A eunuch. Game over.

It was pathetic. He’d rather spend the evening with Chloe helping babysit Gracie and Merry, watching the three thousandth rerun of Frozen, than going out and finally getting laid.

More than pathetic. Lame.

And not only that. Every fucking time he saw her, his heart did this…thing in his chest. Like a heart attack, only not.

Every morning he’d tell himself sternly, enough is enough. He was driving himself crazy honoring his promise to Harry. Even though Harry was 100% right. There was something wrong with him, inside. He could recognize that now.

Mike functioned just fine in other areas of his life. He’d been a great Marine, made Force Recon, had headed up the local SWAT team, was a good businessman. In those areas he was okay, more than okay. But in everything else he was damaged goods.

Maybe success as a soldier, cop and businessman was all he’d be allowed in life, because sure as hell he wasn’t good at human relations. Particularly relations with women. It was only now, when his goddamned feelings for Chloe threatened to slosh over and drown him, that he realized he’d never had any relationship at all with any of the women he’d fucked. Never. How terrible was that?

He’d perfected the art of the quick in and out fuck. In after sundown, out before dawn. One woman used to call him The Bat.

Women had never been a problem for him, ever. And here he was, freaking out over a woman.

He found himself incapable of staying away from Chloe. And even though he’d always had the Irishman’s silver tongue with other women, he turned tongue-tied around her. Awkward. Jesus.

Chloe was grace itself. Calm and serene and fucking golden. Harry was wrong to make him promise not to touch her, but he was right, too. Mike was not what she needed.

That was why he’d dedicated himself to doing what he did best with her.

Mike was good with gear. He didn’t know how to open up to her, his brain seized up when he tried to talk to her about anything but externals, but goddammit he knew how to assemble her shelves and keep her car in running order and make sure she knew how to use the weight lifting equipment.