Class couldn't end soon enough. It should have been an interesting discussion. Violence and belief discussed in cool, academic terms. Emotionless. Rational.
And yet, it was exactly that cold, academic level of the discussion that set me off.
Violence isn't cold. It's not rational.
It is hot. Burning. Thrashing. Tearing at everything and everyone around it until there is nothing left. It is not helpless. It is not passive.
It is action. It is motion and energy.
It is alive, a force of its own.
It's one thing to discuss it in class. It's another to have lived it. To have squeezed the trigger of your weapon and know that another's life has ended directly because of your actions. And that if you do not act, then someone you care about will die.
It sounds so simple in class. Away from the violence and the chaos.
But it's not. And the legacy of it is twisted and complicated, and I'm afraid it will never, ever let me go.
I have to fight this. I want to come home.
I want a chance. A chance with Abby.
I want to be with her. I want to take her back to my place where it's quiet and dark and try to forget about the war and what it’s done to me.
But it's robbed me even of that. The simple pleasure of lying skin to skin has been stolen from me.
"What happened back there?" she says, falling into step with me. We walk out of the old gothic building and into the construction zone of central campus.
I shrug, not sure how to answer. It's a long moment before I respond, wondering how much of the reality she's willing to absorb. "It's just hard to talk about violence like you're getting a tooth pulled, you know?"
A simple, uncomplicated version of the truth.
Her hand is warm on my shoulder, and I want to pull her against me. To bury my face in her neck and breathe her in.
"I get that," she says quietly.
I look at her, watching her silently. "I hope not."
Her smile is flat, her vibrant golden eyes sad. "We all have stuff in our pasts we're trying to outrun."
There is more she's not saying. A sadness in her eyes that makes me want to ask her what she knows about violence. A fear in my own heart that her answer will not be "nothing”.
I don't want to think of her hurting.
But now isn't the time. I suppose it never is.
"Not Parker." I deliberately try to shift the conversation.
Her eyes sparkle brightly. "Even Parker," she says.
Her arm brushes against mine, and I seize the moment to thread my fingers with hers.
“Who hurt you?”
Her fingers spasm. “Let’s just say Mom didn’t make good choices after my dad died.”
I take a step closer and cup her face with one hand. She practically purrs against my touch. Something opens inside me, like a live thing reaching for the sun after a long winter’s sleep. “I’m sorry for your pain,” I whisper. “But without it, you wouldn’t be who you are today.”
She presses her lips together and looks away. “I think I’d be okay with that.”
The world passes by around us. There is only Abby. The sadness in her eyes. The painful truth that both of us are more damaged than either one realizes.
“Don’t say that.” I lean closer, the need to taste her overpowering any notion of common sense. “I like you the way you are.”
Her lips part beneath mine, a quick huff of breath a moment before I claim her. Slowly, her lips part and I capture her tongue, sucking gently, so gently. Her gasp is a thing of beauty, hitting me square in the chest and pulling me under in a wave of pleasure that is more potent than the strongest drug.
Making me want.
It takes everything I am to ease back, to put space between us. Her fingers flex on my sides. I want more. I want the rest of the afternoon to just explore her mouth with soft kisses and gentle strokes.
"What do you have next?" I ask. I’m amazed my voice is even working.
She takes a single step back. The distance might as well be a mile. "Work. Some alumni function, so I'm working an extra shift."
Slowly, she shifts back into the Abby I know from class. Polished. Professional. No hint of the passion in her touch. I’ve been given a hint of a secret thing. And it is not enough. "Do you ever have any problems at those things?"
She offers a wry smile. "Is ‘problems’ a euphemism for drunk groping?"
See? I told you she was perceptive. "Maybe."
She shrugs. "Not really. Most of the time people behave."
I swallow and grip her fingers a little tighter. "Would I be setting feminism back a century if I admit that I'm uncomfortable with the idea that you've had to fend for yourself?"