Unraveled

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Samantha

“SO YOU’RE OLD FRIENDS WITH Gray?” I asked after Adam and Finn had left. Ethan Drake made me feel uncomfortable and I wished they hadn’t left. I called Gray again but he wasn’t answering his phone. I didn’t want to be here alone with Drake so while Ethan was looking at every corner of my small condo with an appraising eye, I texted Tucker. He was probably on his way into his shop. Maybe he could stop by.

Ethan whistled as he looked around the small place. "Nice setup you've got here.” He stretched out his arms as if measuring the square footage of the place. “So you’re Gray’s new lady.”

He sounded like he knew Gray, sounded like they were friends but there was something off about him. His eyes were really bright and he looked flushed, like he’d just got done exercising or something. Oh, who knows. I was being far too judgmental.

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"Beer'd be great." He sat down and raised his feet to rest them on my coffee table and then thought better for it. I was relieved. I didn't really like when strangers touched my things. But beer in the morning? That seemed…weird but again, who was I to judge?

“You served with Gray and his friends?” I handed him the beer and it felt like he deliberately brushed his fingers over mine. He gave me a lazy grin and sat back, one arm stretched across the sofa, looking like he owned the place. Ethan Drake sure had a lot of confidence.

"Yes, ma’am. We were all part of the 101^st and I got out about the same time Noah and Bo did. Noah asked me to come up and help him train for his next fight.”

“That’s nice.” This is a friend of Gray’s, I reminded myself. Be nice to him. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I asked, “Were you deployed with them? I know Gray went to both Iraq and Afghanistan.” He was clearly agitated. His leg bounced up and down and then he stood up and walked over to the window and then back again.

"A-stan."

I scratched my head as I watched him pace back and forth. "Are you okay, um, Drake?”

He flashed me a big smile, a smile that affected a lot of girls positively. It was very charming. He had dimples that made him look roughish and endearing at the same time, but for some reason his smile bothered me, probably because he’d crossed the room and was standing so close to me that if I took a deep breath, my breasts would brush against his chest. I slid backward as unobtrusively as possible, but he followed me until my back was pinned against the counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the main living space of the condo. “Call me Ethan.” Then he did the move that Gray always did, which was to tuck some of the strands of my hair behind my ear.

I pressed a hand against his chest and pushed but there was no budging him. “Ethan, I’m sorry to say this but you’re making me feel really uncomfortable.” For a second, I felt him push forward and I felt frightened, almost more frightened than when I feared the chute wouldn’t open. Where was Gray?

Then Ethan laughed and took a step back. “You’re a little high strung, aren’t you?” He slugged down about half the bottle and then sauntered back into the living room. “I can see why Gray’s into you. Own your own place. A lot of nice cars in the lot out back. Got rich friends. This what you spend your death benefit on?"

I gasped. You never asked a widow what she spent her death benefit on. Even on the Internet forums where women shared everything from how they shaved their pubic hairs to where they could shop if the PX got shut down, no one ever talked about the death benefit but in the vaguest terms. It was the height of rudeness to come out and just bluntly put that forth. Not to mention he was making me feel unsafe in my own home.

"Look, Ethan Drake, I don't know why you came here but you can just leave now." I stalked to the door and threw it open.

Drake did get up off the sofa and lazily walked toward me. He set his bottle on the granite counter. “You know why I’m here? Cuz your man asked me to come and try to seduce you. I told him I wasn’t into that kind of thing, but he begged me. It wasn’t pretty. And you know us Marines got to stick together. So I did it for him but I can’t really guess why he’d want into your dried-up cunt.”

I slapped him. I just up and hit him with my open palm across his face. It was instinctual, like my whole body revolted and wanted to push back. Drake didn't hesitate to return the favor. The blow from his hand was swift and hard. Maybe I deserved it. I hadn't ever hit anyone before in my life. My head hit the back of the door and I felt something warm trickle down the side of my face. For a moment we stood staring at each other, as if neither of us could believe what'd just happened.

Shaking, I pointed. "Get out. Get the fuck out of here and never come back."

“I wonder what I’ll tell old Gray. Should I tell him how easy it was, how you didn’t hesitate to drop your panties on the ground for me?”

I wanted to fly at him but was too afraid of being hit again. "You get out or I'll call the police on you."

"Fuck you, cunt." He spat at my feet and then walked out. Still trembling, I closed the door behind him and sunk to the floor.

It's funny how the mind allows you to forget the exquisite feeling of pain but leaves behind the memory of it. Looking back, I remembered being so overwhelmed with anger and sadness and loss when Will died that it was hard to get out of bed. The cocoon inside the bedcovers made it easier to shut out all truth and make up my own reality—the one where he was still alive and I was living with him in Alaska. But each day had gotten a little better until I no longer fought to stay inside my dreams and I could get up and move around and while my chest still felt hollow, like I'd buried my beating heart somewhere with Will, I was upright and functioning.

The mind's ability to self-heal wasn't a boon, it was a nightmare. If I could still call up the exact, piercing, debilitating pain that I'd felt when I lost Will, I wouldn't have ever allowed myself to fall for Gray. I'd have protected myself. Maybe I could've had sex with him, or maybe I would've just stayed away because then I wouldn't be reduced to this cold, trembling, little girl thing on the floor of my condo. I wondered at my endless capacity to generate tears. Was salty water all that I was made of?

My face throbbed where Drake had hit me, but that blow was nothing compared to the knife in my gut. How could I not have foreseen the danger Gray presented? Why hadn't I done a better job of protecting myself? I curled up in fetal position and cried until I didn't have anything left in me.

I'd never felt so betrayed and misused in my entire life. If this was love, I was better off a widow for the rest of my life.

I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe it was thirty minutes but it felt like hours. A pounding at the door startled me. Standing up, I looked out the peephole, afraid that Drake was back but the person on the other side was almost worse.

“I don’t want to talk to you or see you ever again.” I leaned my back against the door and started crying again. I’d told him I loved him. I said I’d move to Japan for him and he had to test me?

“Baby, forgive me.” I heard him say and whatever hope I’d had that Drake had made it all up burnt to a crisp under the flame of his apology. If Gray was sorry then Drake hadn’t been lying.

“Why?” I asked. My hands were trembling, and I was shaking all over. “How’d you ever get the idea that I would cheat on you? That I needed to be tested? Why’d you bring that awful person into my life?”

“I was drunk. I wasn’t thinking right. I’m so, so sorry.” He jiggled the doorknob. “Let me in,” he pleaded.

“No, you knew exactly what you were thinking. This was cold and calculated. I'm a person. Not a thing. You don't test me. You either trust me or you don't.”

“I trust you, baby. I swear it.” A thudding against the door had me moving away. It was like he was…running and jumping against it.

“Stop it.” I pounded on the door right back and the thudding stopped. “You take your tests and get the hell out of here. I never want to see you again.”

“You don't mean it.” He sounded anguished but it didn’t touch me.

“I do. I'm done with you. I'm done with military men. You aren’t good enough for me!” I cried, and then I left the door and ran upstairs to my bedroom. I heard him plead and knock on the door, but I buried my head under my pillows and curled into a tiny ball. I searched out that place I’d discovered back when Will died. That open cavernous place where I’d spent so many nights after Will’s death, and I enfolded myself in the cold loneliness that I thought I'd left behind.

Gray was a bump in the road. I'd get over him, and I'd never fall in love again. There was no room for that anymore. My heart couldn't take it. I wrapped it up, surrounded it in concrete blankets. Safe, secure, and…dead.

From a distance I heard him call my name. And I thought I saw him. I ran toward him but he kept moving farther and farther away and I was so so tired. I'd forget him in time. That's what I’d spent the last two years learning. How to forget.

I closed my eyes. The voice that called my name was distant and indiscriminate and finally the thudding stopped.

It was done.

Deep down in somnolence I found peace. And I never wanted to wake up again.