Bring Me Home for Christmas (Virgin River #16)(25)

She wanted him. She wanted to throw herself on him and kiss him until her panties melted off. She wanted to lick him like a lollipop.

“You okay, Becca?”

She shook herself and dumped her clothes in her suitcase. “I can’t figure out what makes me so tired…” she said, pulling back the floral bedspread.

He lifted the suitcase back onto the floor, away from the bed so neither of them would trip on it. “Injuries will do that to you. I broke a couple of bones in Afghanistan and I could barely drag myself around.”

She was frozen in place. “You were wounded?” she asked.

“Not exactly. Motor-vehicle accident two days before I was scheduled out.” He laughed and ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Couldn’t happen eleven months before, but two days. What luck, huh? Jump in there. Put a pillow under the ankle.”

“Are you going to tuck me in?” she asked.

“You object?” he asked, lifting one sexy brow and giving her a half smile.

She slid into bed, grabbed one of the pillows to prop up her ankle and let him pull the covers over her.

“You want the light on for reading or anything?” he asked.

“No. Do you?”

“Nope, I’m ready for lights out if you are.”

“Ready,” she said.

“I’m going to leave the bathroom light on and pull the door mostly closed, just in case you wake up in the night.”

“Thanks.”

And then all was quiet and almost completely dark. They were both very still in their respective beds, his on the floor at the foot of hers. There wasn’t so much as a rustle of bedding, a cough or a snore. Finally she said, “Denny?”

“Hmm?”

“You guys—you and Rich and Dirk and Troy—you’re good friends.”

“Yup.”

“I don’t remember even hearing about Dirk and Troy till you and Rich came home.”

“Aw, you know… Guys don’t talk that much about guy friends. We were all together in Iraq. Me and Rich were just kids. Troy and Dirk are a couple of years older. There were a bunch of us who were like brothers over there. Six years ago, the conflict was still young and exciting and scary. We stay in touch. Phone and email—I borrow Preacher’s computer sometimes. When I went to Afghanistan, Troy was called up for another tour in Iraq.”

“You guys toasted a lot of friends… There was one toast to Swany…”

He was quiet for a long moment that seemed to stretch out in the dark. Finally he said, “Eric Swanlund. Gunny. He was killed by a sniper. We never saw it coming. Great loss. He had a wife and couple of little kids.”

“In Iraq?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. I wasn’t with Dirk, Rich and Troy anywhere else….”

“But…but we were still together then,” she said. “That was before we broke up. You never mentioned…”

“Becca, I tried not to tell you things that would just make you worry—things I couldn’t control, anyway. Not my mom, either. I didn’t tell her anything that might cost her sleep. Anyway, we guys hung tight. We talked about it till we wore it out.”

She was quiet, contemplating this. Then very softly, she said, “I never even thought of that—that you wouldn’t tell me things….”

“We were young then,” he said. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“It was only a few years ago!”

“I know,” he replied in a low voice. “Amazing what a couple of wars and some hard times will do to grow you up.”

“What does that mean? Does that mean that if you were sent over there now, that if I were your girlfriend now, you’d talk to me about it?”

He took a breath and let it out. “Becca, I thought I was doing you a favor by not saying too much about Iraq while I was there. We couldn’t be in touch that much, you and me, and most of the guys didn’t want to worry their wives or girls, so I figured that was the way to go. I’m not going back…but if I went now, I might do a lot of things differently.”

“Like?”

“When I did my first hitch in the Corps, it was hard but good. These guys and some others—they were like my brothers. For an only child with no extended family, that meant something. I had you at home, my mom, my brothers in the Corps and I felt like I belonged to something. I knew right away I didn’t want a military career, but I didn’t regret a second of it. So when my mom died, all I could think of was to go back to a place I understood, where there would be brothers. Family. I had no idea it wouldn’t be the same.”

“I would’ve been your family if you’d have let me….”

“Yeah, I know that now. I’m not going to make excuses, Becca, but I was so screwed up right about then, I couldn’t have made a smart decision for a million dollars. That second deployment sucked. We weren’t a tight squad, it was miserable and felt futile and I regretted every second. Instead of feeling like I was back where I belonged, I felt like I was in jail.”

“You could’ve answered my emails. You could’ve written. You could’ve—”

“Should have,” he corrected. “You can say it. I knew right away I should have been in touch, but I didn’t have the guts. After I’d been out of touch for months, I just wanted to finish my commitment, get out of the Corps and go home so I could look you in the eye and try to explain. I didn’t want to write a letter and ask you to forgive me and then wait for me. Becca, what made perfect sense to me when I was signing up for the second time made no sense at all when I got to Afghanistan. Seriously, it was a bad idea. It cost me. When I got back to you, I was too late.”