He didn't say anything.
"Oh my God, Cade," I said. "We were kids. We didn't know any better." I leaned forward, kissed him lightly on the lips. He didn't push me away. So I kissed him again, gently, and his lips parted. Then he kissed me back. Wordlessly, I climbed on his lap, sat on his crossed legs, wrapped my legs around his back, held his head to my chest. I breathed in, feeling my heart rate settle and come down low as I held him tight against me. I kissed his forehead, breathed him in.
And felt warmth spread throughout my body, in response to the smell of him.
How wrong was it that I was thinking about how much I wanted him inside me? Cade was sitting here, feeling ashamed and horrible, and all I wanted to do was ride him.
As if he could read my thoughts, Cade looked up. "Come here," he said, his hand at the base of my neck, pulling my hair, pulling me into him. He kissed me, roughly, and I felt my nipples harden to his touch, need washing over me.
It wasn't slow and gentle, not like the way he'd made love to me this morning. This time, there was no time for foreplay; it was all I could do to rip myself away from him in order to grab a condom. I didn't want to talk anymore, and I didn't want to think about who Cade was or what he might be a part of. Hell, I didn't want to contemplate those questions myself.
I guided him inside me, rocking against him, my movements intense from the very beginning. There was no build-up, no gentle rhythm. We were both consumed with need, too caught up in the moment to worry about anything else.
But when we did explode together, not more than minutes later, just before I came, I thought, he's going to make me fall for him - and then he's going to leave.
I woke with a start, fear gripping my chest like a vise, and it took me a moment to even register what had woken me. Beside me, Cade was thrashing in the bed, talking to himself.
"No, no, no," he yelled, followed by a string of something that was unintelligible. From her bed on the floor in the room, Bailey whined.
"Cade," I said. Then, louder again. "Cade!" He flailed wildly, and I had to move back to avoid being hit.
He jerked awake, gasping for air, looking at me.
"Are you ok?" I asked.
He didn't say anything, didn't acknowledge me. I wasn't even sure if he heard me, and I wasn't quite sure whether he was awake or still asleep. He leaned forward, his head in his hands, his breath more and more shallow, choking.
Panic attack.
I definitely recognized those.
I slid close to him, put my hand on his back. "Just breathe," I said. "Breathe."
I kept my hand there, still, until his breathing began to slow, then got a cool washcloth from the bathroom and dabbed it on his forehead.
"Here," I whispered, taking off his tee-shirt. "You're soaked."
"June," he said. "I'm sorry."
"It was a panic attack," I said. You have nothing to feel sorry for. "I get them too."
He wrapped his arms around me, slid into bed behind me, his skin warm against mine. "The nightmares don't happen every night," he said.
"It's okay, Cade." I closed my eyes. "You're safe."
Before I drifted off to sleep, I thought, It's my heart that's in danger.
Axe
Safe.
I lay there, holding June, not daring to move, listening to her breathing get deeper as she fell asleep in my arms. I wanted to avoid having to talk about what had just happened. I didn't need to play twenty questions with her about this shit.
The fucking nightmares, the panic attacks...they were old hat for me now. I'd had them for years, and it wasn't like June could do anything about them. Right after I'd gotten out, I talked to someone at the VA, made it through a couple sessions before I decided dredging up my past was about the most useless shit ever.
I didn't want to relieve that shit with June.
She was in that convoy - the explosion. She'll understand.
I squelched that fucking voice in my head. I'm sure June didn't think I knew, but I'd looked her up. I knew about what had happened, how she was in Afghanistan, attached to one of the medical battalions who'd gone out on an easy humanitarian mission. Teaching doctors from a local Afghani hospital. As soon as I started reading the article about her, I knew she would have loved that, volunteered for it. One of the vehicles in their convoy had hit an IED and the convoy had taken fire - a whole fucking group of doctors. June had dragged her wounded corpsman out of the line of fire, but he'd died anyway. The article had called her "the hero surgeon."
If anyone would understand this shit, it would be June. She'd said she had panic attacks. I knew from experience that was probably the tip of the iceberg. But June, she dealt with things differently. Fuck, she channeled her shit into opening a bed and breakfast. Her big act of rebellion was quitting her job as a surgeon.