Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(7)

Caden and I had met in a war zone. I’d been prepared to live in that zone my whole life. My family prized duty and loyalty to near fetish.

He had gotten a direct commission as a doctor in late 2001 out of a sense of duty he wasn’t explicitly raised with. He held it in his heart next to his need to be a part of a solution. He entered the army with his privilege, his money, his medical pedigree, and a cockiness usually only found in fighter pilots and bomb specialists.

We were from different countries in the same America. When I’d arrived on base, he was just another good-looking soldier who wanted to get in my pants. Another one denying he was stressed. Too boastful, too proud, too full of himself to take no for an answer.

He broke down my professionalism by being honorable, dutiful, brilliant, and just enough of an asshole to remind me he was fully a man, and just vulnerable enough to remind me he was fully human.

He also smelled nice and had a casual way of touching me that made me want to purr.

My CO had issued me a pass just long enough to fly home and get married. We did it at my parents’ house in San Diego. He had no one in New York. The night before we tied the knot, I had a vivid dream. In it, I was marrying the wrong man. On top of a tall building, guests filled the chairs. Mom congratulated me. Dad flew in on an F-14. Colin wore camo and boots he wouldn’t be caught dead in outside a dream.

And I was marrying the wrong man. No one would listen. They thought I was crazy. I woke up in a terror, convinced I was making the mistake of my life.

Then I saw Caden sleeping next to me, and the terror fell away. I wasn’t marrying the wrong man. I was marrying Caden, and he was right. I was never as sure about anything in my life as I was about him.

In New York, the last place on earth I thought I’d find myself, those first months of our relationship seemed like a dream. I remembered the blood, the explosions, the prayers uttered to a God I’d forgotten a hundred times, but the hours of gentle relief with him became more of a home base to balance against the violence I’d seen. That knowledge that no, I wasn’t making bad decisions because he was with me, became my anchor.

Before we were married, and after he inadvertently rescued me from an assignment that would have ended my career, we both got approved for R&R.

We couldn’t acknowledge each other on the streets of Amman, but in the American hotel, we could be a couple. We became intimate with the hotel tea shop and the details of our separate rooms. On the rooftop patio, he traced the red scar down my right wrist. His lips were parted a little, as if ready to kiss at any moment, and his face was lit by the sun’s reflection.

“Your eyes match the sky,” I said to him. His face was framed in the blue Iraqi ceiling.

“They’re actually holes in my head,” he said. “You’re seeing right through.”

Caden ran his fingers over the top of my hand, connecting the knuckles like a man taking territory one hill at a time. We were so deep inside each other, there was no such thing as a public place.

I hadn’t gone to Iraq to fall in love. I was there to do the impossible—talk to soldiers about how they felt in a situation where feelings could kill. It was exhausting.

Caden energized me.

He traced the scars I’d gotten when I broke my wrist. “Does anyone think you tried to kill yourself?”

“Everyone. My mother still thinks I’m trying to hide a suicide attempt.”

“Why?”

“I was a goth teen. Eyeliner out to here. The world was so boring, like, so uninteresting.” I rolled my eyes dramatically.

“Can’t imagine it.” His fingers kept tracing the scar.

“I did want to… well, I almost gave up after I broke it. I lost flexibility, and it was permanent. I wanted to be a medic.” The admission embarrassed me, because I’d failed.

“That doesn’t surprise me at all.” He lifted my face by the chin. “You’re an adventurous spirit.”

“So are you.” I nudged him.

“No, really. You’re pretty angry at your limitations.”

“Angry?”

“Frustrated. Don’t worry, we’re going to get rid of either the anger or the limits.”

“When?”

“Don’t rush. We have a lifetime.”



* * *



Jenn showed up in leggings and a gray army hoodie, exactly on time. Five in the morning like a good soldier. I was early, stretching on the summit of a huge boulder in Central Park. She joined me.

“Ronin’s coming,” she said. “That all right?”

Ronin and I had dated, if that was what you called sporadic sex in the first year of enlistment, then a long separation, then a few rolls in the hay when I was a resident at Walter Reed and he was working in Intelligence.

“What’s he doing in New York?”

We took off down the boulder, stopped at a small rock embedded in the grass, and dropped for push-ups.

“Who knows?” Ten then back up the rock.

“Really?”

“Left Aberdeen Proving grounds.” Top of the rock. Squat thrusts.

After everything that happened at Abu Ghraib, they’d sent him to Aberdeen. Jesus Christmas on a ladder, the army was fucked.

“They sent him here? Why?”

“He’s out of uniform now.”