I ripped my hand from his and took two quick steps back.
“No. I was wrong. I thought I could withstand the heat, but I can’t. I wanted to go slow. You pushed us to go fast and I didn’t have enough good times stored up. Your smiles, your laughter, there wasn’t enough to take the heat. You’re a criminal, Raid, and I accepted that. This, I can’t accept. I don’t know what hideous thing happened to you over there except I know it was hideous. But there weren’t enough good times when you were the Raiden I know you are to beat back the Raiden that fucked up shit that happened to you forces you to be that gives me the times I need to endure the inferno within. You lose control of that and I’m close, it doesn’t just consume you. It consumes me.”
“I don’t want you to know what happened in that hellhole, Hanna,” he returned.
“You think that hasn’t escaped me?” I shot back. “The subject barely comes up before you shut it down, but Raid, if you think I don’t feel the squeeze of the elephant always in the room, you clearly think I’m a bigger idiot than I actually am.”
“You feel that squeeze, babe, and you can still breathe. If you actually knew, you wouldn’t be able to live with that shit. You wouldn’t be able to sleep. Your mind would go over it and over it, and since you weren’t there, you’d make shit up that would torture you, but I promise you, none of it would be as bad as it actually was.”
“I believe you,” I retorted. “What you don’t understand since you won’t let me talk about it is that I’d rather live with that torture, the pain of which I would eventually be able to control, than let you hold onto that pain without even a little release so you can learn to live with it.”
He went silent but the air in the room got heavy.
I ignored that and declared, “You need to leave.”
“Hanna—”
“Leave!” I shrieked, losing it, hands straight down at my sides in fists.
Then I was going backwards, tripping over my feet, and I would have gone down if Raiden’s arm wasn’t around my waist.
Then I couldn’t go down because my back was flat to the wall and Raiden’s front was pressed to me.
Not this again.
I couldn’t help it. It freaked me out when he did this so I started panting.
“You know why we do that shit?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t even know what shit he was referring to, but that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer because he was scaring the pants off me.
He didn’t need me to answer.
He kept going.
“It’s not for God, babe. And it’s not for country.”
My chest pressed repeatedly against his with each breath.
Raiden went on.
“It’s for pretty girls with tanned legs that go up to her goddamned throat who ride asinine bikes and who’ll drop to their hands and knees, crawl to you and take your cock, moaning against it, making you so fuckin’ crazy you think your dick’s gonna explode in her mouth.”
Oh God.
“Raid—”
“You might think that’s jacked, but it’s not. It’s the goddamned fuckin’ truth. Whether you got that in your bed before you go or hope to find it when you get back, that’s why you do it. You do it for her. You do it to keep her safe. You planted kids inside her, or you hope to; you do it for them. You get home in one piece, she’s your reward.” His body pressed into mine and his face, partly shadowed, came to within an inch of mine. “You’re my reward, Hanna.”
My reward.
Oh.
My.
God.
Raiden wasn’t done.
“I didn’t know it. When I was over there doin’ what I had to do, I didn’t have any fuckin’ clue. I didn’t know until I saw you laughin’ with Paul Moyer. Jumpin’ up and down with Bodhi, all excited about shiny ribbons on your goddamned bike. So into me you could barely talk when you ran into me. Sittin’ outside on your goddamned fuckin’ porch swing of all fuckin’ things, lookin’ right out of a fuckin’ movie. So cute. Christ, no joke, it hurts even to look at you and believe you’re real. So fuckin’ sweet, I remembered there’s a God and He actually likes me. You go over there, far fuckin’ away, you see shit, you do shit, you get through it knowin’ that’s home. That girl in the porch swing, knittin’ a goddamned afghan and drinkin’ wine, carefree because you sweat and bleed so that’s what she can be.”
Listening to his words, the tears didn’t bite the backs of my eyes.
They spilled over in streams.