She’s the only person I’ve ever wanted to talk to every day, even when I was with someone else.
I love her. With all my heart.
Blaire cries out my name, the look of ecstasy darkening her eyes. “Come with me, Sawyer. Come inside me.”
Any holding back I was doing is no more. As her pussy convulses, I hold myself deep in her depths. Releasing the seed that claims this woman as mine forever. I just have to figure out how to tell her what she means to me.
5
BLAIRE
The morning sun cuts through a crack in the curtains. Curtains Sawyer only has hanging at my instance. Their gray tones match the comforter.
A warm body is spooned behind me, Sawyer’s arm draped over my stomach. Our legs are intertwined.
This would be a fairytale, except…it never should’ve happened.
I have a light headache from that one stupid wine cooler I didn’t want. I drank it after I caught Brett in the hot tub with a topless girl, their lips sloppily fused together. The image of him squeezing her perky breasts is burned into my memory.
Dread twists my stomach in so many knots I think I might throw up.
Sawyer is my best friend. Not some rebound. What the hell have I done?
We’ve never shared a bed before, but we have shared a room. I know he sleeps like the dead unless his alarm goes off. It allows me to untangle myself from his hard, warm body without disturbing his comfortable sleep. I feel his absence instantly and my entire body shivers from the loss of him.
It’s better this way. I can’t stand seeing the look of remorse on his face when he realizes what we let happen. I’m terrified I’m about to lose my best friend. But maybe…maybe if I slip away and put some space between us while he’s out at his field exercise…maybe we can go back to the way things were before last night happened.
I didn’t love Brett—that much I know for certain. But that doesn’t mean I had a clear head to make the decision I made last night.
Hurriedly, I dress and request an Uber.
A tear rolls down my cheek as I leave Sawyer asleep in the bed. I’ll text him when I’m a safe distance away. But right now, I need to go before I lose my nerve. Before I ugly cry in front of him for an entirely different reason than the one last night.
I just hope he doesn’t hate me.
SAWYER
My alarm wakes me up suddenly. I sleep like the dead except when that one tone sounds. Then I’m on my feet like my life depends on me getting my ass out of bed. “Sorry, I—Blaire?” I reach my hand across the bed, finding the sheets cold.
I frown when I listen for signs of movement in the small house but don’t hear a thing outside the ticking clock and the churning of the ice machine in the freezer.
“Blaire?” I call out, knowing it’s no use. If she were here, I’d know it. But that lavender scent is too faint.
My phone is on the kitchen counter, next to a melted tub of strawberry ice cream. But I don’t care a bit about the sticky mess. Only the text message on my screen.
Blaire: Sorry I had to leave. Have fun in the field :)
As far as text messages go, this is bullshit. No way last night was a one-and-done. Or some friends with benefits crap either.
I glance at my half-packed duffle, then the clock. I have to be on base in two hours. “Fuck,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand through my hair. My usually methodical ways of packing for a field exercise are out the window. I shove it all in my duffle bag, knowing this doesn’t set the best example for the platoon I’ll be leading.
But dammit, I need time to see Blaire before I’m gone for two fucking weeks.
Several times I contemplate texting or calling her, but I’m afraid I’ll spook her. What I have to say to her needs to be said in person, and it can’t wait.
I speed through town, going the opposite direction from base to Blaire’s apartment. Fate smiles down at me when someone going out holds the door for me. I don’t know if Blaire would buzz me in or not.
She can act nonchalant all she wants, but I know my best friend better than I know myself. It’s just a cover. She’s pretending everything is all right when it’s definitely not.
Last night…it was everything. Everything I’ve ever wanted but never thought was attainable. It’s not just that it was Blaire, it was what happened to me when we became one. My entire world changed. My perspective of everything evolved. I saw the woman I was always meant to love and protect in a completely different light.
I race up the three flights of stairs, too impatient to wait for the elevator to drop back to the first floor.
I pound on her door. “Blaire?” I call loud enough to attract a couple curious neighbor’s attention. “Blaire, can we please talk?”
I hear the shuffle of feet approach the door, but the latch doesn’t click.
“I can hear you, hon.”
The door cracks open. “You’re going to be late, Sawyer.”
“I don’t care.”
“You can’t be late. Your first sergeant won’t—”
“I love you.”
Blaire tries and fails three times to say something.
“I think I’ve always loved you. I just never realized it until last night. Last night was—”
“A mistake.”
My heart twists tight in my chest hearing those words. I see the pain and vulnerability lingering in those soft blue eyes. All I want to do is gather her in my embrace and promise her the world. But the small crack in the door doesn’t offer me the opportunity.
“I’m so sorry, Sawyer. I never should’ve let it happen. Can we—can we please just go back to the way it was?”
“You mean to being just friends?” The phrase tastes sour in my mouth.
“Yeah.”
The thought of losing Blaire stings less than the thought of never holding her in my arms again like a lover. Never kissing her. Touching her. Being insider her. “I can’t go back, Blaire. There’s no returning to that anymore. Not for me. I’m in love with you—”
“I can’t.”
With the clock ticking away minutes, threatening to get me in serious hot water with my superiors, I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done. “Then I guess this is it.” I turn and walk away, my heart shattering into millions of shards with each step further away from the woman who is destined to be my future.
But until she realizes that, I can’t do this anymore.
6
BLAIRE
The past two weeks have been miserable. No surprise there, though. I’ve never gone this long without talking to Sawyer in the ten years I’ve known him. Not even when he deployed and I had to wait for him to get situated before he could call me.
My life feels empty.
“You have to stop this moody, depressing vibe you have gone on,” my coworker Audra says to me with a dramatic wave of the hand. We’ve worked together for the past year in the base housing office. Outside of Sawyer, she’s the closest thing I have to a real friend.
“I’m sorry,” I say with a heavy sigh.