Wounded (5 page)

There's an Xbox, here for when Lani's younger brother comes over after school on Thursday afternoons. Some games, mostly sports, a role-playing game, and then the latest
Call of Duty
. I haven't played that one yet. We don't get the new games over there very often. I pop it in and change the channel to the correct TV input. The opening screens cycle, and then I'm in, quick play option. It's scarily realistic. The sounds are dead on, filtered through speakers, but enough to crash into my head and call up the real thing.
 

I'm racking up kills like crazy, biting it and respawning, and the controller is slippery with sweat and I'm leaning forward, teeth grinding. Certain parts are realistic, others aren't. The sounds are the most realistic.
 

I feel small soft hands on my shoulders, sliding down my arms to take the controller from me. I let her take it.

"Hunter? What are you doing, baby?" Lani's voice is muzzy with sleep.
 

I turn away from the TV and look at her. She's so beautiful, wavy blonde hair sleep-mussed, blue eyes squinting at the light. She's wearing one of my T-shirts, a Slipknot concert shirt, and it comes to mid-thigh, her small, perky breasts poking the cotton.
 

"Got back from the bar with Derek and couldn't sleep," I say.
 

"I never felt you come back to bed."

I shrug. "I didn't. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep."

She circles the couch and sits next to me. "Isn't that game a little...difficult for you to play?"

I don't answer right away. I shrug, eventually. "Yeah, guess so. Just curious."

"You okay?" she asks.

I hesitate, then decide now isn't the right time to address what's on my mind. I'm half-drunk, and she's half-asleep. "Nah. Just coming down and getting tired."

"Well, why don't you come to bed?" Lani slips her hand around my bicep.

"Yeah, I'll be right in."

Lani laughs, a breathy giggle, and that's when I realize why the Rack's giggle irritated me: it was like Lani's. I push the thought away and turn to her.

"What's funny?" I ask.

She scratches her nails up my arm. "I meant, come to bed..." and the tone of her voice suggests what she's getting at.

"Don't you have to wake up for work in a few hours?"
 

I ask myself why I'm arguing and don't come up with an answer.

"It's only two-thirty," she says. “I don't have to be up till seven. We have time." She stands up and backs toward the bedroom.
 

I sit and watch her, feeling the zipper of my jeans tighten as she peels her shirt off, revealing her naked curves. I stand up and follow after her, shedding my shirt and pants as I go. I'm hard and ready, and she's crawling backward across the bed, her hair splaying across the pillow, her hand reaching for me as I climb up between her legs.

 
Sex with Lani never fails to be spectacular. She's passionate and vocal, crying out when she comes, moaning my name as I plunge into her, soft hands clutching my shoulders.
 

Her eyes, though, when I glance at her, reveal a distance as they look at me. A kind of disguised apathy. As if she's acting. The thought bothers me, and I push it away. I release with a soft grunt, my face buried in her neck.
 

I wish she would put her hand on my head when I bury my face against her like this. She never does, though, and I always find myself wishing she would. I never say anything, because she'd do it, but only since I asked her to. It's a little thing, insignificant, but somehow it always seems to hit me like this. She does what she thinks I want. She knows I get horny when I'm drunk, so she has sex with me when I get back from the bar. I'm not sure she wants to, though. Not really.
 

She's asleep again, turned away from me, still naked, beautiful, and it seems for a moment as if we're in different realities. The absurdity of the thought makes me snort. I roll over behind her and slip my arm over her hip. She's warm and soft and present here with me.
 

A glow of affection for Lani spreads through me, replacing my doubts. She loves me, and I love her. All is well with my world, in this moment, at least.

A tiny voice in the very bottom-most, shadowy part of my heart speaks up.
 

Right
?

And then I fall asleep without answering that question.

*
 
*
 
*

The next few weeks pass somewhat awkwardly. Lani is increasingly distant. She usually is in the days and weeks prior to my shipping out, but this is different. More pronounced. We don't have sex again.
 

She's on her phone a lot, texting nonstop. She plugs it in next to her bed and puts in on silent. Sometimes it's under her pillow. It's always in her hand or in her purse, or in her back pocket. It's never, ever where I can see it. If I approach her while she's texting, or on call, she pauses until I go away, putting the phone against her chest.

I ignore it as best I can, but warning bells are going off. I ignore those, too. Nothing's going on, right? I mean, I'm about to ship out in a week, for Christ's sake. She would wait till I'm gone to start anything, right?

I go to the gym three days before my plane leaves Des Moines. I'm only there for about half an hour before I feel something in my shoulder pull and decide to call it a day. Usually I'm at the gym for an hour or two, which how it’s been since high school.
 

The gym is a couple miles away from Lani's apartment, and I walk the distance, huddled in a thick coat and sweatpants, feeling the wind bite through the cotton to freeze the sweat on my legs. As I approach the apartment complex, my heart begins to hammer in my chest. There's no reason for it, but it's a feeling I've learned to recognize. It's foreboding. Premonition, maybe. A gut feeling. I've learned to recognize these feelings and trust them. Something is wrong. I don't feel the prickling of my skin, the crawling of my flesh and the cold sweat of fear, so I don't think it's a danger situation, but something is off.
 

I approach Lani's front door and slip in, silently. The hinges don't squeak, and the knob doesn't scrape. My footfalls are stealthy on the carpet. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm in a tactical crouch, and my hands are clutched in front of me automatically, as if I'm holding a rifle. It's habit, reflex. Every sense is attuned.
 

I shrug out of my coat and drape it across a chair back. My skin tightens with apprehension. Is Lani hurt? I don't smell blood. I smell...sweat? Bodies. I smell sex.

Then I hear it: a sigh, gentle, brief, and female. It's a sound I know all too well. It's the sound Lani makes when she comes. She doesn't scream or cry out; she clutches me close, arms around my neck, and sighs—almost a whimper—into my ear. I can almost feel her arms, hear the sigh, but I'm not in that bedroom. She’s not making that sound for me. I wait, crouched outside her door and listen, just to make sure I'm not mistaken. Maybe she's pleasuring herself. I don't like that idea much more, since why would she need to do that if she has me? But...no. I hear him. A deeper sigh. A grunt. Murmured words, her laugh, a male moan.
 

She’s having sex, and it’s not me.

Fuck.
 

Anger ripples through me, turning my sight red, making my hands shake. I breathe, hard and deep and fast. I wait, force my blood to slow, force my hands to unfist. I can't afford mistakes. I can't afford to lose my temper. I've been too careful about it for too long to mess up now. Juvie was bad enough. I'm not going to jail. I'm not going to get court-martialed.
 

When I'm as calm as I can get under the circumstances, I fling open the bedroom door. There she is. Naked and beautiful, underneath Douglas Pearson. Doug. Skinny little Doug, nerdy, introverted, acne-scarred, works at an insurance agency Doug motherfucking Pearson.
 

I resist the urge to throw him out the first-story window.
 

"Get the fuck out, Doug." My voice is a whisper. Calm and deadly. "Get the fuck out,
now
. I'll be gone in a minute, and you can have her back. I just need to talk to her."

Doug scrambles off the bed and dresses in record time. He stops in front of me, his eyes wide with terror, his nostrils flaring, reeking of fear. But he stops in front of me and faces me. I give him credit for having some balls. "You won't...you won't hurt her? If you're going to hurt someone, hurt me."

I laugh. It's not an amused sound. "Don't tempt me, pencil-dick. No. I'm not going to hurt anyone. Except you if you don't get the
fuck
out of my face."

He gets out. Lani clutches the bed sheet around her chest, as if I haven't seen her naked a million times before. As if we didn't lose our virginity together at fifteen. As if I didn't have a ring in my duffel bag. That act, the shielding herself from my view, tells me all I need to know.

"Three days, Lani. Three goddamn days. You couldn't wait
three
motherfucking days?" I turn away from her and talk to the door. I'm too pissed to trust myself facing her. "I don't get it. If you didn't want me, why the fuck didn't you tell me? I mean,
fuck
."

"Stop saying that word, Hunter. I don't like it."

I whirl. "Fuck you, Lani. I'm a goddamn Marine. I've got a dirty fucking mouth, and I'm pissed off. You
cheated
on me." I force myself to take two long steps across the room away from her. "I’ve never asked. I come back, and I don't ask you any questions. I'm gone for a long time, and I’ve never asked what you do while I'm gone. But...while I'm here, I kind of expected you to be faithful. Is that too much to ask?"

Lani doesn't answer.

"How long?" I ask. "How long has this been going on with that little prick?"

"Don't talk about Doug like that, Hunter. He's a good man. He—"

"I didn't ask about him. I don't care.
How...long.
" It doesn't come out as a question.

"I first started seeing him about two months after you left the last time." She lowers her eyes away from mine.
 

That's a full year. More.
 

She's ashamed, and she should be.
 

"And you've been going behind me with him all the time I've been back?"

She nods, a tiny jerk of her chin.
 

"Fuck." I want to hit something. My fist balls and I lift it to punch through the wall or the door, but I don't. "Un-fucking-believable, Lani. If you don't love me, have the balls to say so."

She moves forward off the bed, sheet trailing behind her, clutched to her chest. "It's not that I don't love you, Hunter. I do. But...I'm not
in love
with you."

"What's the difference?"
 

She reaches for me and I pull away. She lowers her hand. Her vivid blue eyes shimmer. "There's a huge difference."

I collapse backward against the wall, anger fading to confusion and hurt. Without the anger to prop me up, I'm limp. "Then explain it."

She pulls clothes from the drawers, glances at me, and hesitates.
 

"What?" I ask. "Like I haven't seen you naked before?"

"It's not that," she says. "It's...I don't know. I just feel weird about it. Just turn around and give me a second, okay? Please?"

I turn and stare out the window at the wind-driven drifts of snow. I ignore the rustle of skin and cloth, resist the urge to turn and watch her dress. It will only hurt more.
 

"Okay," she says. "I'm ready."

I slip out of the room to the kitchen without looking back at her. "I need a drink."
 

She follows me. I open a pair of beers and hand her one. She holds it without drinking.
 

"Hunter, listen. I do care about you. I love you. I've loved you since the tenth grade. But...things change. You're gone. You're fighting, and you're not here. That's really it. It's hard to stay in love with you when you're thousands of miles away for months at a time. I was lonely. Doug was there. I...love him, too. I'm
in love
with him. I'm so sorry. I can't image how that must hurt to hear, but you deserve the truth."

"I deserved the truth months ago, Lani."

She winces. "I know. I feel terrible. It's just...he's good to me. He takes care of me. He's there for me."

Something dawns on me. "He knew about this? He knew about us? You and me? And he was okay with it?"

She has the decency to look chagrined. "Yeah. I know how that must seem, and he...he hated it, but I told him it would only be for a little bit. Just until you left again."

"How long were you planning on stringing me along?" My beer is gone and I get another. I need it for fortification against the rage.

"I was going to send you a letter." Her voice is tiny.

"God, really? A Dear John? You were actually gonna send me a real Dear John letter? Fuck, Lani. That's the cruelest shit you could've done. There's nothing worse." Suddenly that second beer is gone and a third is cracked open.

"Slow down, Hunter. Please. I can't have this conversation with you if you're drunk."

"We'll have this conversation however the fuck I want. You owe me that much."
 

On impulse I go get my duffel bag, move around the apartment shoving my things into it, and then rummage until I find the ring. I drop the duffel on the floor by the front door, put my coat on, and turn to Lani. I open the ring box and set it on the counter by the front door.
 

"For your information, I had something I've been keeping from you, too. I was going to—I loved you, Lani. I was always faithful to you. All the time I was gone, I never hooked up. Never. All the other guys went to the brothels and the bars and shit, and I never did. I waited for you. Because I love you. Because I was
in love
with you."

Lani crosses the room to examine the ring. "Damn it, Hunter. Goddamn it." She never swears. "You aren't in love with me. You're in love with the idea of me. You've never been with anyone else. I'm comfortable for you. I'm what you know. That's it. That's all it ever was and all it ever will be."