Page 40 of The Way We Fell

“Do you think your relationship with Katy… is that part of youravoidance habit, as you call it?”

“Excuse me?” I sit forward on the small couch, hackles raised. Guy Fitzjohn might come highly recommended as a counsellor. He might have firsthand experience of war. He might even be a decent bloke. But I’m sure as fuck not going to sit here and let him insult the way I feel about Katy.

“I don’t mean to diminish what you feel, Jay. You know that. But I do think it bears examining.” Guy doesn’t flinch at my barely-concealed disdain. He merely pushes his wire-rimmed glasses up to the bridge of his nose and continues. “You tumbled into this friendship with Katy awfully quickly, amidst all the turmoil of recovering from your injury and finding your feet—pardon the pun—in the civilian world. Is she someone you really enjoy spending your time with, giving this much of yourself to, or is she just a prop—another method of avoidance? Are you, by virtue of spending all of this time with Katy,avoidingthe rest of your emotions?”

I’m pretty sure I snarl at him like a rabid animal. Like the wild wolf I feel like half the time. Like at any moment, I might flip the rickety side table, smash the green lamp, and leap out of the window, beating my chest and howling.

“How the fuck dare you.”

“I think it’s a valid question, Jay.” He tilts his body forward slightly, one leg folded over the other, elbows on his knee. He presses his fingertips together, palms facing each other but not quite touching.

“Do you? Because I sure as fuck don’t.”

“Is that because you’re using her as an avoidance tactic?”

“No, it’s because I’m falling in love with her, and you’re on your high and mighty soap-box talking like I’m using her for some fucking mind game.” Spittle flies from my mouth as I raise my voice. I’m on the edge of the couch, trembling with an anger I can barely restrain. Guy tilts his head in a small nod.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeats. “That’s all I need to know. If you’re certain, if you love her, and your relationship isn’t a crutch, then that’s all I need to know.”

I sit back, my shoulders heaving as my breaths come heavily. I’ve never said it out loud before, but now that I have, it feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and another one has settled on my chest. I’m attracted to her, of course. I’m a warm-blooded man, and she’s a beautiful woman. But it’s not just her face and her tits. It’s everything else, too. I’m starting to realise that what I’m feeling for Katy Keller is…more.

I think I might love her. I might be falling in love with her coffee eyes and her sunshine smile, the sweetness of her voice, the tenderness of her touch. I’m falling for her wit and her heart, her fearless compassion, her endless empathy.

Aren’t I?

I drive home almost on autopilot.Love? Is that what this is—this feeling that blankets me whenever I think of Katy? She’s fucking beautiful; my eyes know it, and my dick knows it, too. For a while, I didn’t know whether it would respond to anyone again. But it responds to Katy. And the more I come to know her, the more Iwantto know her. The more I crave her presence.

I’ve only been in love once before. I thought it was love, at least. For a long time, I was certain that’s what it was. Bailey Cannon was a Floridian transplant living a little outside the barracks in Colchester, and we met in a packed bar shortly before a fist fight spilled out into the street. All I remember of that night is her wide, doll-like blue eyes, and my hand on the bare skin between her shoulder blades as I hurried her up the road, away from the fray.

I had her pushed up against a wall with her skirt around her hips and her lips fixed to my throat not ten minutes later, and so began the next three years of my life.

Bailey loved my uniform, and I loved her. She paraded me around like a show horse, and I followed pathetically like some lovesick puppy, drawn in by her honey hair and ocean eyes, smitten with both her skimpy wardrobe and her youthful zest for life.

Three weeks after I deployed to Afghanistan, I had my heart broken for the first time when she dumped me in an email. It was too much for her to be apart from me and not know when I’d come home, or whether I’d come home alive. She wasn’t sure she could trust me not to meet somebody new—in an active war zone, no less—and so, she sought comfort with her ownsomebody new. She packed up everything she had at my house and posted her key through the letterbox. I never heard from her again.

For months, I mourned her loss. Being thousands of miles from home, from her, was hard enough already. And then she had to go and break my heart. When I finally returned home, emotionally drained and covered in stark tan lines from the Middle Eastern sun, my then-teenage sister had her new best friends over on a Saturday afternoon, and instead of one skinny brunette raiding my parents’ kitchen for snacks, I walked in to find two brunettes and a blonde.

I distinctly remember leaving my old bedroom, heading for the bathroom, and slamming into someone small and warm, closing my hand around a slender arm to steady us both. My eyes locked with a pair of hazel ones, framed by dark lashes and even darker curls, and lips turned up in a grin as small hands came to rest on my chest.

“Huh. Guess soldiers reallydohave big muscles,” she laughed. “Sorry.”

She ducked back into Ruth’s bedroom, and it’s taken until right now for me to realise that was the first time I met Amie and Katy.

Katy. The way she makes me feel is nothing like how I felt about Bailey Cannon. With Bailey, I was chasing my own tail as much as I was chasing her, desperate to please her, to keep her. With Katy, I can be myself, and I know she won’t judge me. She won’t pity me. She won’t use my uniform for clout or manipulate my emotions. She just accepts me as I am. She pushes me just as much as she grounds me. She’s my safety net, my anchor—but she’s my cheerleader, too. For Katy, I want to do everything,beeverything. I want to be better for her. To be the kind of man she deserves. I want to be worthy of the way I’m falling for her.

As soon as I close my front door behind me, I cross my tiny studio to the bathroom and switch on the shower. I’m emotionally spent and exhausted. Ruth is in New York, and Katy is on the coast visiting her parents. My own parents are on a river cruise somewhere in the middle of Germany. I feel wrecked, and the only things in my fridge are a single Tupperware of leftover lasagne, and three cans of Coke. I’d prefer it to be beer, so I can drink myself into a happy buzz. Or better yet, a good scotch, so I can drink myself stupid. But all I have is sugar, so microwaved leftovers and a shower to scrub away the day will have to suffice.

I strip immediately and step into the shower, turning the water as hot as I can handle to sluice the day’s shame off my skin. I pour a generous amount of shampoo into my palm, still unused to the longer length of my growing-out hair and beard. For two decades, I wore it in either a buzz cut or short back and sides, but now, I have the freedom to explore. It’s growing out nicely, and I’m starting to learn how much—or how little—of the fruity gloop I need to use.

Citrus floods my senses and I’m brought almost to my knees as I remember the stricken look in Katy’s brown eyes when she admitted that I’d scared her. The conversation comes back to me like a punch in the gut. I’d all but forgotten it, focusing only on moving forward, on finally getting the help she’s been encouraging me to seek. But now, all I can think of is the sadness in her eyes, her downturned lips… fuck, I’m an idiot.

It’s been eleven weeks since I met Katy Keller again, and it’s taken eleven weeks for her to move into my head like she fucking owns it. That bright smile, those painted pink lips, that free, joyous laugh that has her coffee eyes twinkling. She’s become the most important person in my life, and for the first time in a long time, I’ve found someone Iwantto talk to. Someone I can see myself spending more and more time with.

She’s someone I can see in my future. On the sofa as we watch a movie on a rainy Sunday, talking about everything and nothing. In the kitchen as I kiss her while we cook together. On her knees, with those pink lips wrapped around my dick as I fuck her mouth. On her back as I fill her, her pussy stretched around my dick, hot and tight and begging for me. On my face as I suck her into my mouth, licking at her folds like she’s my last meal.

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