Page 16 of Secrets in a Sandstorm

I expect Teddy to pull his hand away, but he doesn’t. He knows I won’t sneer and punch him in the face for looking at me with unguarded lust. Somehow, he understood he was safe to rest his hand on my thigh and that he could coax my secrets out into the open. “There’s no nurse, is there?”

That’s an easy lie to tell other soldiers, the same way I tell them my wife is dead. No one pushes when they hear that.

“There is, and I can confirm that he isn’t married because he told me.” He gives my thigh a squeeze.

Me? I’m his nurse? How much vodka has he drunk?

I need another drink. I bring the bottle to my lips and take a long swallow. This cannot be real. “There are rumors that start if you’re too friendly with another man.”

“I have never been friendly with a man…or a woman,” Teddy says.

“You should have dealt with that before you shipped out.” There are places a man can go if he wants malecompany, but they are the places one hears about from other men with the same tastes.

“It didn’t seem right to be that close to someone I didn’t care about and who didn’t care about me.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me.

“Is there a difference?” He asks.

I’m not sure what he’s asking. “Between what?”

“Between being with someone you love and someone you don’t?”

“I did love my wife in a fashion, and I hoped I’d grow to love her the way she loved me, but I loved James with everything in my being. He lit me up…” I smile at the memories, even though they only serve to remind me of what I pushed away. Walking away from him hurt so much. I drank and was terrible to everyone who cared. They all blamed the death of my wife, not the guilt consuming me for loving James. For still wanting him even though it was wrong and I don’t deserve love. “It’s like comparing a warm coal to a roaring fire. He was the first and last person I thought of every day.”

I close my eyes, remembering his smile. He was there for me in those first few days afterward, but the guilt ate me from the inside, leaving only a rotten core. She haunted me through him.

“You speak as though it’s over,” Teddy says.

“It is.” James won’t be waiting for me to return, and I would never ask that of him. I killed any future we may have made. “And I vowed not to make the same mistake again.”

“Marrying the wrong person?”

“Falling in love.” It hurts too much, and my heart can’t take the loss. I remove his hand from my leg. “I need a smoke. You?” He doesn’t, but it’s polite to ask, anyway.

“No.”

I get up and trace my way back to the opening, one hand trailing over the wall. The wind slices through, stirring up the sand. I lean next to the opening and light the cigarette, breathing in deeply.

I shouldn’t have told him.

There was no need to spill my guts.

But he fancies me.

Me.

I’m ten years older. I’m damaged, and I don’t want to swoon in anyone else’s arms. I don’t want the high of their kisses and destruction of their loss. And I can’t keep secrets the way I once could.

There’s been no one since James.

But it’s hard not to look sometimes. To listen to other guys as they talk about their sweethearts and feel so utterly alone. I draw in the last drag and drop the butt in the sand, grinding it beneath my boot. Teddy is sitting in the dark, wounded and seeking some kind of connection, and I’m too broken to even give him that.

I’m not what he wants or needs.

He’s not thinking right.

He’ll find a nice young lady…it’s not a woman he wants. He already knows that while I was still lying to myself at his age.

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