Page 53 of Better Late Than Never

Lying in the darkness, drenched in cold sweat, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to catch my breath.

The dream felt fragmented now, coming in flashes of color and fear rather than as vividly as when I’d been asleep. I couldn’t taste sand or blood anymore. A swig of water from the bottle I kept beside the bed helped ground me in the here and now; both the taste and the cold, not to mention the familiar motions of reaching for it, uncapping it, and taking a drink.

I was still jittery. Fucking hated that feeling. Some part of me—probably one saturated in toxic masculinity—thought it was childish to be so shaken up by a bad dream. It made sense for one of my kids to wake up terrified back when they were little. I was a grown man.

A grown man, I reminded myself, with a head full of trauma that the military wouldn’t let me get therapy to treat. Nightmares weren’t weak or infantile; they were par for the goddamned course.

As I steadily came back down to earth, I caught myself missing my ex-wife. Our relationship had lasted long past the end of its shelf life, and I wouldn’t have gone back for anything. In moments like this, though, I was all too aware that our marriage hadn’t beenallbad. On nights when my combat demons dropped in for a visit, Aimee had always known how to bring me back into the present and calm me down. She’d never given me grief for waking her up, and she’d never looked at me differently after she’d seen me cry after an especially bad nightmare. Regardless of the fact that we’d ultimately divorced, I was grateful for a lot of reasons that she’d been in my life. One of those reasons was nights like that.

Nights likethis.

Sighing into the silence, I wiped a hand over my face. After being separated for this long and after my deployments, I should’ve been able to handle this alone. And I supposed I could. Wasn’t like I had much choice.

Was I handling itwell?Hard to say.

Getting back to sleep after a nightmare like that was always hard. It had been easier when I’d had Aimee curled against me, her warm presence and gentle touch keeping me anchored in reality as I tried to slip off to sleep. Alone, it was easy to get lost in the darkness again. To start losing track of what was real, what was a dream, and whathadbeen real at one time while the lines blurred between consciousness and sleep. With or without her, more nightmares almost always came, but she’d feel me jerking or shaking, and she’d wake me up. Sometimes it happened several times in a night. Sometimes I didn’t remember it, but I’d know when I saw her the next morning, heavy circles under her eyes as she clung to her coffee cup.

Maybe it was just as well I was sleeping alone these days. At least then my nightmares only fucked upmysleep.

* * *

I did manage to grab a few hours of sleep. The nightmares still came, and I remembered waking up shaking at least two more times before my alarm went off. I was groggy as all hell, even after a shower and a mule-kick-strong cup of coffee, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. At least my ex-wife hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

I made it to work on autopilot, sucking down coffee all the way, and I refilled my travel mug as soon as I got to the hospital. There was a corpsman in the breakroom nursing a gigantic energy drink, and while I would’ve sold my soul for that kind of stimulant, it wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t even look at the logo of an energy drink brand without feeling the phantom twinge that heralded a kidney stone beginning its southbound journey.

The coffee would just have to do. Good thing I’d long ago learned how to function at a hundred percent—okay, seventy-two percent—when I hadn’t slept well.

After a briefing from some of the hospital’s higher ups almost put me into a coma, and then a meeting with my department nearly finished me off, I was seriously considering indulging in that energy drink after all.Onecan wouldn’t give me another kidney stone, right?

“Either give me something strong or fucking shoot me,”I remembered gritting out to an emergency room doctor.“But do it fuckingnow.”

Coffee it was.

I thankfully made it through an uneventful sick call. Nobody had anything out of the ordinary—the odd injury from overdoing it at the gym, a handful of people who definitely needed to be home in bed no matter what their supervisors had to say about it, and a young Marine following up after being treated for a badly sprained ankle.

I had a feeling there would be a basewide safety briefing in the next week or so about ATVs thanks to a pair of Sailors who came to see me. They’d sheepishly admitted that their scrapes, bruises, one’s sprained wrist, and the other’s concussion had happened on an ATV tour where they’d “totally listened to everything the guide told us!” Yeah, right. I had two sons who’d been teenage daredevils. These two weren’t fooling me.

I sent them off with light duty chits, prescriptions for high-octane Motrin, and a list of symptoms that were “get your ass to the emergency room” serious.

After sick call was over, I ducked into my office for a quick bite to eat and some more coffee. And while I was at it, I took out my phone and perused the gay club scene in a few cities. Sevilla again, but also places like Granada, Málaga, and Madrid. Someplace I could go hook up with someone and forget about the man who kept elbowing his way into my thoughts. I mean, at least that was a more pleasant place for my focus to drift than to my combat days, but it was still distracting and frustrating. I couldn’t have him, so I needed to look elsewhere.

Just browsing the options of clubs in various places actually gave my tired brain a welcome boost. It was something to look forward to, and it admittedly revved up my libido. Even though it was hard to imagine being this attracted to any other human being than Alex, I knew I could be. And this weekend, so help me God, Iwouldbe.

But for right now, I had patients to see, so I headed back downstairs.

I was halfway down the hall with my nose in a chart when bootsteps started coming from the opposite direction. Out of sheer habit, I looked up, and I stopped sharply enough that my own boot squeaked on the gray linoleum.

Alex halted too, eyes wide.

Oh, hell. I was awake now. Like me, he was in uniform—green camouflage with the sleeves crisply rolled to partway up his strong biceps. I thought about the snug T-shirt he was wearing underneath, and how much I’d love to see it stretched across his abs if he’d just unbutton that blouse and?—

Alex found his military bearing before I did. “Uh. Good morning, sir.”

I cleared my throat. “Good morning, HM1.”

We exchanged nods, then continued in opposite directions, Alex completely oblivious to the way my heart was slamming against my ribs.

God help me if we ever crossed paths outside. He was already hot in uniform, but if we were outdoors, we’d both have our covers on. Which meant he’d have to salute me.

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