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Relief.
He’s alive.
The breath whooshes from my lungs and I drop my chin, tangling my fingers in my hair. He could’ve been killed. His troops could’ve been killed. It’s possible that he was one of the four men injured, but knowing that all the soldiers will make a full recovery and no U.S. military deaths occurred helps to calm me down.
But my fingers twitch, the urge to write him and reach out to him stronger than it’s ever been. More than anything, I want to know he’s okay and that his men are okay, which terrifies the hell out of me because it means I’ve let him in. Somehow, in this short amount of time, I’ve allowed my feelings to come out of hiding and I’ve begun to care about him. You never stopped caring about him, I think to myself.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I push back the onslaught of emotions. How did this happen? Not only have I let myself get close enough to the one person who could hurt me again, but on top of that, he’s a soldier—someone who could easily be ripped away from me at any moment.
“Katie?”
The soft voice reaches through the fog, pulling me out, and I rub my eyes, determined not to cry. When I finally peek up, Maggie is watching me carefully.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Straightening my back, I run a shaky hand over my face. “I’m good.”
“Really?” she asks, her eyebrows raised. “Because whatever that was”—she waves her hand in my direction—“it wasn’t okay.”
“Stop it. I’m fine. I just … that reporter …” Unable to get my words out, I finally give up and flop back on the couch. A couple of seconds pass and Maggie stays quiet, so I close my eyes, take a deep breath and say, “That news story scared the shit out of me. I’ve never paid much attention to the news. I’ve never had a reason to … until now.”
“Because of Devin?” she asks. I nod my head, listening to her fingers tap the keyboard of her laptop. “Remind me what his last name is? Devin what?”
“Clay. Devin Clay.” I pause, afraid to open my eyes because I’m sure I sound like a complete nutcase, and I don’t want to see it reflected in her eyes. “I know it’s silly. We haven’t talked in a decade, Maggie, but it’s like we never stopped.” My hand fists my shirt, right above my heart. “I can’t explain it, but I feel it … reconnecting with him was meant to happen.”
“Does he have really short dark hair?”
“No idea,” I quip, tossing my hand up in exasperation. I let it slump down covering my face. “I only know what he used to look like, and he hated short hair. It was always shaggy, but yes, it was dark.” Memories of threading my fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck flash through my head. “His hair was fucking sexy. It was rugged in a bad boy sort of way. I can’t picture him with short hair. I bet if he has short hair, then he’s probably not near as good-looking,” I rationalize, hating that I desperately want to know what he looks like. I want to know if his dark lashes still make his green eyes pop, and if the dimple in his left cheek still stands out the way it used to. “Yup”—my body relaxes—“I bet he hasn’t aged well. If I saw him, I probably wouldn’t feel a thing.”
I know that’s a fucking lie, because it wasn’t Devin’s looks that I fell in love with. It was his heart and his mind and so many other things that I’m not going to list because I am not interested in a relationship, damn it!
“Maybe you’d feel a little bit more than nothing,” she says suggestively. Flinging my arm off my face, my eyes fly open and I stare at Maggie. She glances down, smirking at me and then at her computer. “Because he sure as hell doesn’t look like a man that hasn’t aged well. Mmm-mmm-mmm. Nope, that soldier is sex on a stick.”
“Maggie,” I breathe, my eyes painfully wide. “You can’t look him up.”
She shrugs. “Too late, already did. Wanna see?” she asks, showing me her laptop.
“No!” Popping up, I quickly shut her laptop. Maggie’s mouth drops open. “Good Lord, Mags, he’s going to think I’m stalking him or something. You can’t just do that,” I say frantically. “You can’t just look someone up like that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I … I don’t know. You just can’t. It feels wrong.”
“Oh, trust me,” she says, “It’s so not wrong.”
“Okay. Well, maybe I don’t want to know what he looks like anymore because that’s not what it’s about for me. I’m not interested in anything more than what we are right now, which is two old friends who have managed to—”
“Or maybe,” she says, pushing my hands off of her computer, “you need to stop worrying, stop thinking and just look. Maybe”—she opens her computer, which is still open to MySpace, and I cross my hands over the screen, shielding it from view—“the connection you feel toward Devin is strong, not because he’s an old friend but because he’s your lobster.” She waggles her eyebrows, a grin tipping the corner of her mouth.
“Oh good God, Maggie.” Pinching the bridge of my nose, I take a deep breath, fighting the urge to strangle my best friend. She can’t do this. She can’t plant these crazy notions in my head. “He is not my lobster.”
“Really? Your eyes light up when you talk about him,” she says. “He’s been able to pull things out of you with letters—fucking letters, Katie—that no one else could pull out of you. And just now when you were watching that news story, you nearly hyperventilated. Hell, I nearly hyperventilated just watching you.” She drops a gentle hand to my arm. “You two have a connection. I know you feel it because you’ve told me. And you’re right. It doesn’t matter what he looks like because that connection is there, and it’s real. But what if that connection has the potential to grow? What if that connection could blossom into so much more than friendship? What if you guys could not only get back what you lost, but gain so much more?”
Damn it. How does she always know the precise thing to say to get me to change my mind? Doesn’t she know I’m not ready for this? I mean, I’m not ready for this … right?
No, I know what I want and what I don’t want, and anything other than being friends with the only man to ever break my heart is something I definitely do not want. And if that’s the case, then seeing his picture won’t change anything.
But what if it does?
