“Suck it up,” I ordered.
He glared at me then turned to face forward.
I threw back the kickstand, put my feet to the pedals and motored.
*
The last six weeks, Raid was out of town on jobs for three.
This didn’t stink as much as I thought it would (though it still stunk) because he did what he said he would do.
He touched base with me. Frequently.
This included him calling during the day at random times. It also included him calling every night right before he went to sleep.
The first time he’d woken me when he did this, which was the third time he called me at night.
He’d been upset he’d woken me and murmured, “I’ll call earlier next time.”
“No,” I’d replied sleepily. “I want to know you made it through the day and you’re going to sleep so you’ll wake to face another day. Don’t worry about waking me.”
He’d hesitated and his deep voice was warm and sweet when he agreed, “All right, honey.”
Then he did as I asked, calling every night before he went to sleep.
But when I said he touched base, I meant we talked as in talked.
Surprisingly, even though we’d been through a lot, but still were relatively new thus didn’t know each other all that well and he was a man, he was also a man who could have conversations on the phone. It helped we knew a lot of the same people and he cared about what was happening.
He asked me about my day, my business, what was going on in Willow, what I had planned for the next day and he shared about his. Where he was. What he ate. When he thought he’d be home. Nothing deep about his work but he didn’t keep things from me, including if he was frustrated, leads had dried up, informants were jacking him around or things were taking longer than he thought.
Weirdly, these conversations were getting-to-know-you conversations that, if we were normal, we would have had during dates. He learned about the vacation I took last winter. He learned I loved snowboarding. I learned he hated onions and thought Jerry Seinfeld’s standup routines were funny. And we planned to go to Crested Butte when the snow started falling and to find a beach when winter turned bitter and we needed to escape to the sun.
Needless to say, learning about Raiden and planning getaways and vacations was awesome.
When he was home, life fell into a rhythm. I knitted. I did my thing with Grams. We all went to church and ate breakfast together at the Pancake House. I saw to my business. Raiden saw to his in Denver and in the back room of Rachelle’s Café, where I learned he met with his “crew”, who I did not, however, meet… yet. This last was Raiden’s word when he told me he would introduce me to them when “shit slowed down”. He was also a good neighbor, and at his sister or mother’s request, would go off to do things like the yard work for Grams.
This meant between jobs he wasn’t idle. It also meant we had our own things to do, but ended our days together like we would if we were normal.
That was awesome too.
In fact, everything was awesome and had settled in a good way without anything rocking my world.
Except one thing.
Deep into the night one night at my house, the bed moved with such force I woke, sensed Raiden awake and I pressed my hand resting on his chest into his skin.
He shifted swiftly, taking me to my back and reared back a fist like he was going to strike me.
I gasped and tried to scuttle out from under him but got nowhere. Then his arms closed around me and he tucked me under his big body.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“What’s happening?” I asked anxiously, my entire body tense, but I felt the tension in his and it wasn’t like mine.
I was freaked out.
He was strung tight.
“Fuck,” he repeated.
“Raid—”
He let me go, rolled to his back, lifted both hands to his face and rubbed.
I got up on an elbow and watched.
Then I urged, “Talk to me. What just happened?”
I half-expected him to evade my question, but he didn’t.
He dropped his hands.
I felt his eyes on me in the dark and he shared, “I dream.”
Oh boy.
“Dream?” I pressed gently.
“Snippets of memories. Sometimes shit is warped and not what happened at all. But I dream.”
“About—?” I didn’t get it out, but he knew what I was asking.
“Yeah.”
He dreamed about what happened with his unit.
God.
Worry suffusing me, or, it should be said, more worry, I placed my hand light on his chest and asked carefully, “Does this happen often?”
“Not anymore. Not since you. But it happens.”
That felt good, but it was also bad.
“Have you talked to anyone about it?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just now. You.”
I was his “reward”. I gave him whatever it was he needed to feel like he might begin to battle the burn.
I loved that. I loved it a lot.
But I was no miracle worker.
“I was thinking more like one of your buddies,” I suggested.
“That’s not gonna fuckin’ happen.”
I went silent.
Macho man, too strong to share, to release, to let go.