I think through all the things we ate. “You think it was the potato salad we had at lunch?”
She shrugs. “You ate more of it than I did.”
I huff. “Yeah, but all those years in the military eating MREs toughened my gut.”
“What’s an MRE?”
“Meal Ready-to-Eat. Individual field rations.”
“How many years were you in the military?” she asks.
“Too many.” The words hang between us. “You ready to try heading back to bed?”
“Not yet. I don’t think I’m done.”
She’s right. She’s sick so much that by the end of it, she’s got nothing left in her stomach and is simply gagging. But I stay right there with her. Holding her in between fits of vomiting, rubbing her back.
“I think I’m done.” Iris climbs off my lap, and I feel like the spell’s broken. What spell, I don’t know. Maybe the one where I can care for her, be the one who looks after her, and she lets me.
She puts some toothpaste on her toothbrush and stands hunched over the sink, her braced hand on her stomach. When she’s done, I lift her into my arms, and she lets me. I gently place her back in the bed and take a minute to fix her pillow for her, then pull the covers over her body. She’s still in my hoodie, which looks sexy as fuck on her, especially since I know she’s naked beneath it.
She sighs as she lies down, then rolls onto her side, curling her knees up to her chest.
I crawl in behind her before pulling her close. I don’t know much about soothing women. It’s never been something I’ve had to overly worry about. But I suddenly want to know what else I should be doing. “Can I get you anything, little chick?”
“Distract me,” she says. “Tell me a story, about a moment that was important to you.”
I place my hand over hers on her stomach and sigh as I think through important things. Our fingers entwine. “The day I enlisted. I don’t even know why I did it. I just remember having this feeling of being lost. Of not knowing what the fuck I was going to do with the rest of my life. I had the Iron Outlaws, my old man was a patched-in member, and I’d prospected for the club. Camelot, Uther’s dad, gave me my road name. But there was still a hole. Something about not doing enough for my country.”
Iris’s hands stroke over mine. “Was your dad proud when you enlisted?”
I huff. “Proud as fucking punch. Wouldn’t stop telling anyone who had a spare minute about it. I, on the other hand, regretted it almost as soon as I’d done it. I had the potential for so much freedom with the club, and instead I’d given away every single freedom. My time was theirs. My clothes were theirs. My haircut was theirs. Even my life was theirs if they felt it could be spent and lost for the good of America. But it turned out I was good at it. I found the discipline worked for me. The structure.”
“I have kids in my class like that,” Iris says quietly into the dark. “When we have free play, they’re almost confused by too many choices. They need me to narrow it down.”
“How do you do that?” I ask, just to hear her speak. Her words soothe me.
“Depends on the child. I might be specific. Like ask, why they don’t go get the paints and paint a picture of their house? Some I might give a choice, like would they like to carry on reading a specific book or feed the guinea pigs?”
I huff out a laugh. “You have guinea pigs?”
She nods. “Two. Macaroni and Cheese.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Whose idea was that?”
“Not mine,” she says weakly, and I realize she still feels like shit.
I kiss the side of her neck. “How are you feeling?”
“Meh.”
“I saw thirteen men I was serving with killed by a suicide bomber, and only I survived,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I’ve even really thought about what I’m saying. It’s a kick in my stomach to say them. There’s a mental echo that reverberates them around in my head.
Iris turns over in my arms, so we face each other in the dark. I can just make out the slope of her nose and cheekbones. “I’m so sorry, Tyler,” she says. I like the way my real name sounds on her tongue.
Her hand touches my cheek, and I lean into the comfort of it. “Keeping Kabul Airport open was supposed to be about aid. But there were so many people to evacuate. I mean, the people there saw what our government couldn’t. That a decade of trying to keep peace, teaching and training locals, was never going to be enough to hold back the Taliban. They knew as soon as we withdrew, their world would explode. And desperate people will do desperate things. People would run at moving aircrafts. Every hour was another shitshow. Another burst gate. A crush of thousands of people. Roads were blocked. It was impossible to check who should be on the evacuation flights out of there. Some planes were leaving with hardly anyone on them; some were twice their legal flying load.”
“That must have been heartbreaking to observe.”
“Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, frustrating because we couldn’t do more. That morning we were to keep the Abbey Gate secure. Joey and I had beds next to each other. Fucker snored like an accelerating Mack truck and got the best care packages from his mom. Socks every month and a shit ton of Slim Jims. And because he was a good kid, he shared. We’d been winding Draymond up all morning because his missus had sent him her underwear in an envelope, but I was secretly jealous, wishing I had someone sending me shit regularly.”
“No one did?”
I shrug. “I got some shit. My ex wasn’t the most reliable, but she’d pull something together if I needed it. The old ladies of the club would send something out from time to time. My folks did occasionally too. But sometimes weeks would go by without anything from home. Anyway, the three of us were together and then . . .” I struggle for the words. I don’t know how to describe what came next. The shock, not being able to see or hear straight. I can’t find the right words. “Then we weren’t. I tried to triage, do CPR and shit until the medics got to us, but it was too late. Joey and Draymond were gone, along with all the others. I was the only military survivor of the immediate blast.”
“I’m so sorry for the loss of your friends.” Iris’s fingers slide over my hip to my back. “The tattoos?”
“One for each of them.”
“You do know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
I let her question hang in the air.
“Tyler,” she says more firmly. “You do know it’s not your fault?”
I kiss her forehead. “Try to get some sleep, little chick.”
“Tyler, you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight. Please, sweetheart.”
I feel her sigh. “I’ll respect that. But go to sleep knowing I don’t think you were responsible, and you shouldn’t either.”
“I appreciate your faith in me,” I say, tugging her close, because I don’t have the same faith in myself.
20
SPARK
When I wake, it’s with my arms wrapped around Iris. Her fist is up by her cheek, her leg is threaded between mine, and her tits are pressing against my chest. My first thought after processing all that is I didn’t have another nightmare. Heck, I didn’t even dream.