Wilde Love (Forever Wilde 6)

“I wouldn’t have volunteered to keep coming back if I planned to die in this place,” he continued.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sound of his rough voice as his strong fingers continued working out the kinks in my neck and shoulders. I knew he was trying to calm down my overwhelming feelings of fear and guilt, and I wasn’t too proud to accept whatever comfort he was willing to give.

“I had an older brother and a younger sister,” he began after a while. I tried not to let my surprise show. “Well, I suppose I still do, but that’s a story for another time.” He cleared his throat and started again.

“Anyhow, when I was a senior in high school, my little sister was fourteen and had been in love with seventeen-year-old Clayton Burns for what seemed like forever.” He chuckled. “She was all big-eyed and stupid whenever he came around with his mom. You see, his mom worked for our family business. My dad owned a chain of supermarkets, and after her husband died, Mrs. Burns came to work as my dad’s bookkeeper.”

He sighed and pulled his hand away from my neck, sinking back against the trunk of the tree and rubbing his face with his hand.

“I, uh… I was different, you see. Am different, I mean to say.”

I didn’t see, but I nodded along anyway if only to keep him talking.

“There was this man.” The major clenched his jaw, highlighting the tendons along his neck. His face was rough with dirt and stubble, and smears of dried blood ran along his chin like he’d scratched it with bloody fingers at some point.

“He and I were… well, let’s just say I was under his spell. I…” He stopped and looked up at the jungle canopy as if it would help him find better words.

Listening to this normally confident and commanding officer scramble for words finally clued me in to what he was trying to say.

“Like… like you were like that?” I asked, thinking of the two men I’d seen touching each other behind one of the buildings on base before we deployed. It had been the dead hours of the middle of the night, and I’d been late getting back from my grandmother’s funeral. “Queer, like?”

Major Marian’s jaw ticked again. “Yeah. Like that.”

I wondered why the hell he was admitting that to me. If anyone found out he was queer, he could be kicked out of the army. Or worse.

“Go on,” I said softly. I had to admit, if only to myself, seeing him vulnerable like this was a gift. And after a while, I realized that was exactly his intention. Not only was he giving me the gift of connection and companionship, he was giving me the gift of his trust.

Major Marian was entrusting me with his secrets.

“The man I liked… his name was Bobby, and he was twenty-five. I was only seventeen at the time, still in school at home, but I worked part-time for my dad too. Bobby had a job loading produce at one of my dad’s warehouses.”

He glanced over at me before looking back down at his hands. “Bobby said he was going with some of his friends to a place in Los Angeles where there were other… men like us.” He took a breath. “God,” he said, rubbing his face again. “I wanted to go so badly. Just to see. Just for once to feel like I wasn’t the abomination the church and my father seemed to think I was.” He shook his head and chuckled softly again. “But it turned out I was.”

My heart felt tight in my chest. I hated seeing anyone feel like dirt, especially a man who’d fought like hell to survive several tours in this shithole while flying hundreds of missions to save others.

“You’re not,” I said roughly, reaching for his arm to squeeze it. “You’re not.”

“My dad had already caught me once with Bobby. He could tell by the way we were standing and touching that we were more than just friends. So when he caught me sneaking out that night, he was furious. He gave me an ultimatum: stay home and change my ways or go with Bobby and never come back.”

There was a trace of pain in his voice and my heart ached for him—both for the kid facing such a decision and for the man who’d lived with the consequences of what he’d chosen. I held my breath, waiting for him to continue.

“I was stupid and stubborn and left anyway, meeting up with Bobby and his friends down the street. The two friends were even older than him, and I got a bad feeling right away. We only got a few miles away when they pulled over and parked on the side of the road. They said they needed to get some money. I thought they were stopping at one of the other guys’ houses or something. It wasn’t until they told me to get behind the wheel and keep the engine running that I got suspicious. I asked what they were really doing, and Bobby laughed. Said my father had caught him with a man behind the warehouse and fired him on the spot. Bobby figured my dad’s bookkeeper, Mrs. Burns, owed him some payroll money, and he was going to collect before we went to the city.”