Tori Carrington - A Few Good Men

“I want you to come to Texas with me,” he said.

She squinted at him in the darkness. “What?”

Her heart beat a million miles a minute.

“I need to go down to take care of some things at the ranch before I leave again for Afghanistan. Come with me.”

Sara’s eyes burned as she pulled the top sheet up to cover herself as best she could. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

There was the question she’d been dreading. The one she’d been running full out from since the moment she’d first spotted him on the beach. The one she’d known was on the tip of his tongue since he’d figured out she was Samantha and that he didn’t care, he wanted her anyway.

“Sara...”

She told her feet to move, but they refused her.

“I know that you think you’re betraying Andy by being with me, but…”

She shifted to look at him in the darkness, the only light in the room provided by the full moon looming large outside the bedroom window.

“Hey, look, I loved the guy, too, you know?” He ran his free hand restlessly over his close-cropped hair. “You don’t think there’s a day goes by that I don’t wish I could have done something more to save him?” He looked everywhere but at her. His voice dropped lower. “You don’t think there’s a moment when I don’t wish that it had been me instead of him?”

Sara’s eyes burned and she bit her bottom lip to keep from making a sound.

“But that’s not what went down. No matter how much I wish differently, Andy’s still gone…”

She absently budged her wedding ring around her finger, seeing no more than a blur through her tears.

“But you’re here, Sara.” Eric reached out and touched her. “I’m here…”

ERIC HADN’T FELT SO convinced of something since he’d first signed on to become a marine. He knew down to his boots that asking Sara to come with him to Texas was the right thing to do. He needed her to take a step outside the past she held on to like a cocoon. Needed for her to see him as something other than an enemy and her late husband’s best friend.

He needed her to see him.

He could tell this battle was going to be all uphill. With potentially no end to the hill.

He reached out and touched her bare shoulder, marveling at the satiny feel of her skin.

“Sara, I’m not asking you to marry me. At least not yet.”

She shifted to stare at him so quickly that he was afraid she might fall off the side of the bed.

He grinned. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. As a marine, I know that around every corner, behind every bush, someone may lurk, someone determined to end my life…I don’t have to explain it to you. You’ve lived long enough around marines to know that we tend to have a different view of time clocks. What might loom too soon for some seems too late to a marine.”

“But don’t you see…that’s what I’m afraid of. I’ve already lost one man…I couldn’t go on, couldn’t survive if I lost you, too…” Her words drifted off.

Eric had fully expected her to shut him out. To counter his proposal with an offensive that would leave him bleeding his emotions all over the sheets.

Instead she’d finally laid her heart, her fears, open to him.

He sat up, for the first time hope emerging, pushing through his array of weapons.

“You won’t lose me, Sara. I won’t allow that to happen.”

“How can you say that?” she whispered. “You don’t know what might happen tomorrow, or the day after that.”

“Neither do you.” He longed to haul her into his arms. “So why waste time we can spend together worrying about what if?”

She looked at him. The pain shining bright in her eyes sliced like a knife through his heart. “What about my job? Truman?”

He knew a strong relief. But also knew he had to act fast, before she shut him out again. “Take some time off. You can probably see to a lot of your tasks on your laptop, right? And we can take the Lab with us.”

She didn’t appear convinced, as if she’d expected a different answer. Or perhaps it wasn’t the answer at all, but the question that should have been different.

“What about Gertrude and Howard?”

Andy’s parents.

Eric blinked. In all honesty, he had never considered the older couple. Andy had been their only child. And when he’d visited the other day, he couldn’t help feeling awkward in their company. Because of the circumstances of his past with Andy, yes, but there had been something more…almost as if their continued close connection with Sara allowed them to buy into the delusion that their son was only away on assignment and he would be returning any day now.

“Tell them you’re going on vacation.”

She laughed without humor. “I never go on vacation.”

He reached out and cupped her chin with his hand, wiping some of the dampness from her skin. “Well, then, it sounds like it’s long time since you started…”

To his surprise, she leaned into his touch and then melted into his arms, allowing the sheet to drop. Eric closed his eyes, marveling in the warmth of her skin against his. How small. How sexy.

Her movements doubled the hope swelling inside him. Did he finally have her? Would she come to Texas with him?

He thought of his family and all he’d introduce to her. Show her. From the stables to the back nine where he used to spend so much of his time as a kid chewing on stalks of straw and contemplating the world from under his Oilers ball cap.

“I can’t.”

She’d said the words so quietly, he nearly didn’t hear them.

But hear them, he did. And his heart dipped low in his stomach. But rather than let go of her, he held her closer.

“Thank you, Eric. Your offer is the best one I’ve heard in a long, long time.”

He heard the deep click of her swallow even as she clutched him like she might never let him go, despite the meaning of her words.

“But I can’t.”

He tried to open his mouth, push out the word sitting on the tip of his tongue: Why? But it refused to come. Mostly because he didn’t have a breath on which it could exit.

She pulled slightly away, searching his face in the dim light. “I have so much to thank you for. For being patient. For making me feel alive again when I’d felt like I’d died right along with Andy. For…well, for making me look to the future again with curiosity rather than dread.”

“Then come to Texas with me, Sara. Take that step into the future.”

She looked down and slowly shook her head. “I understand that you have your timetable, Eric. What you must understand is that I also have one. And it has yet to adjust to all the changes you’ve wrought in my life in the past week.” She blinked up again and caressed the side of his face much as he’d done to her moments before. “I can’t move at your pace. Too many people will get hurt if I do.” She smiled a ghost of a smile. “Including me.”

“I’d never hurt you.”

“No, you wouldn’t. At least not purposely.”

He opened his mouth to protest and she rested her hand against his lips.

“Shhh. I’m not done yet.”

He forced himself to shut up and listen.

“I need you to promise me something.”

He wanted to say he’d do anything she wanted. Then he realized that this particular promise was going to be something he didn’t like.

“I want you to promise that when you leave here tomorrow morning, that you do so without looking back.” Her voice caught and she appeared to have trouble keeping her breathing even. “I want…no, need you to promise me that you won’t try to contact me. Not by phone. Not by e-mail. Not by IM. Not by any means.”

“Sara—”

“Promise me, Eric.”