Page 33 of Hold on Tight

It was Friday, two and a half weeks since he’d kissed Mira and fled. On the way home from her house that night, he’d felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it until he jogged back to his apartment, then fished it out.Should have known, he thought, when he saw the screen.

The text was from Mira.Don’t worry about tomorrow—I’ll go with the new sitter.

Of course. It made sense. They’d proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither of them knew how to dosimple.

But it had still made his stomach sink.

It wasn’t like she was cutting him off. She wasn’t telling him he couldn’t see Sam.

And he didn’tneedto be a babysitter. It wasn’t a good job for a twenty-eight-year-old man. For a soldier. He needed to find something real to do. But he felt …

Fired. Dumped.

He’d spent the shittiest night ever, tossing and turning. And he’d had some shitty nights, like the one he’d spent after his rucksack didn’t make a jump and he’d frozen his balls off without a sleeping bag, bundled to the gills in layers of the other guys’ clothes but still too cold to fall into more than a fitful sleep.

He’d come home from Mira’s house and poured out every drop of alcohol in his apartment and lain on his bed for eight straight hours, sleepless. Eyes jammed open like that godawful scene inA Clockwork Orange, only for him it wasn’t so much images as sensations, the feel of Mira’s mouth fitting into place against his, the slide of her tongue, the tingle and squeeze and draw of his body demanding what it had been missing. Her vague floral scent, a day’s sweat fighting its way through some girly deodorant, the sea smell of her arousal drowning his good sense. And those fucking noises, whimpers so low and deep in her throat he could feel them in his own chest, in his thighs, his balls, histoes.

He should have kept her up against that wall and peeled her out of her clothes. Gotten his thigh between hers, licked her mouth, bitten her neck, breathed against the curves of her ear until she went limp against him.

He should never have kissed her.

What thefuckwas he thinking, kissing her? This wasn’t some girl he could pick up in an off-base bar, take back to her apartment, enjoy like an ice-cream cone, and forget about. This was themother of his fucking child. This was disaster and mess, weeping and ranting, judges and courts.

And he couldn’t even stand on two good feet and kiss her like a man.

He had almost gotten out of bed and gone out to Downtown Spirits to replace his goddamned Jack. But then he thought of Sam, of the races they’d run, of the way the boy had collapsed beside him on the front stoop afterward and then rested his head against Jake’s arm.

Jake had rolled over with a groan, pulled the covers over his head, and given sleep another try.

There was another noise she’d made, when he’d first kissed her. When his lips had only grazed hers, before the full intensity of the chemistry had registered with him. Barely more than a sigh, something like relief.Yes. This.

He’d felt that, too. As if they’d been waiting. Years.

He was hard again.

But for the record? You can get it up.

He’d rolled onto his belly, propped himself on his arms, sandwiched his cock between his own weight and the bed, and fucked the mattress, almost idly. He hadn’t jerked off—or tried to, he guessed was more accurate—since the night he’d gotten stuck with the interminable antidepressant erection. He and the guys had once laughed at that line in the Viagra and Cialis commercials: “If you have an erection that lasts for more than four hours—”

“Then you’ll find me balls deep in a very happy woman,” Mike had said, hooting with laughter. Back when he laughed.

It didn’t work like that in real life.

In his bed that night after he’d kissed Mira, he could feel the pressure, the arousal, building, skyrocketing, so fucking fast. The way he’d felt it when Mira’s hand had slid down his chest and stomach and lodged itself in the waist of his jeans.Jesus. His mind had leapt ahead, his dick straining toward the notion of being freed from its denim bindings, and he’d thought,God, don’t let me come in my pants right now.

In his mind, she knelt at his feet and opened his jeans, took him deep, her blond hair tickling his thighs as she worked. She hummed and moaned, and he thrust into her mouth, down into the mattress, and came so hard he strained something in his shoulder.

First time he’d been able to get off in months.

Then he’d slept.

In the morning, he’d woken hard and mad. Mad at her, sure, but maddest at himself. For kissing her. For not staying to finish what he’d started. For being a hothead and a coward.

Fueled by anger, he’d put on running clothes and taken the bus to Green Lake. The bus dropped him off and he walked down toward the path. If he thought about it too much, he wouldn’t be able to do it, so he tried not to think. He let himself break into a run. One minute he was walking, the next he was skip-jogging.Foot, foot. Foot, foot—

And then he realized he’d stopped thinking about it. That he was doing it, reflexively. Running.

If he’d been the kind of guy who cried, he would have. It felt that good.

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