Quadruple Duty

I hesitated for a long moment before answering. “Not really,” I admitted, with a little bit of shame. “Holidays maybe. A phone call here and there, on a birthday. It’s on my end too, if I’m being honest. They were never really my family to begin with, and I wasn’t all that accepting.”

“They got thrust on you,” Ryan nodded. “Just like you got thrust on them.”

“Exactly.”

I went back to my drink, which was nearly empty. Suddenly I needed something stronger. Something other than soda.

“My parents abandoned me,” said Ryan, “from what I was told. Something something drugs. Something something ‘couldn’t possibly take care of a kid’.”

“Do you remember them at all?”

He looked over my shoulder, as if seeing something that wasn’t really there. Eventually he shook his head. “Not really. Vague flashes of my mother, maybe. Bits and pieces.”

“But you know where they are now?”

Ryan’s tensed up again. I could see the muscles of his beautiful shoulders go visibly tight. “Not even a fuckin’ clue.”

“You know their names though,” I said. “Certainly you’re curious enough to—”

“NO.”

The word, and the way he said it, left no room for interpretation or discussion. I saw his jaw flex. The temples on either side of his handsome, masculine head throbbed with defiance.

“I understand what you went through,” he relented, “but for me it was different. I was rejected, Sammara. Disavowed by the people who were supposed to love me, whereas you were abruptly cut off from a family that already loved you.”

He opened his palm. It was a gesture of empathy, an offer of a shared connection. I reached forward without breaking our gaze and gently slid my hand into his.

“You want to get out of here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

Seventeen

SAMMARA

We rode through the streets, and this time I leaned even closer against Ryan’s leather-wrapped body. I clamped my thighs tighter. Interlocked my wrists around the flat expanse of his stomach, rather than just rest my hands on his hips.

I did all this not because I was scared. Not anymore.

I did it because there was less between us now.

We stopped for drinks — some little corner dive bar he’d picked out a long time ago. I didn’t know how long he’d been going there, or who he went with, or how many other girls he’d taken. None of that mattered, really. All that mattered was the closeness we felt as the evening progressed. The walls around the both of us developing cracks and crevasses as the night wore on.

I told Ryan about my own life, what I’d been doing, who I’d been doing it with. I went into some detail about my childhood too, and he listened intently, even if he didn’t reciprocate.

Most of all we talked about nothing. We drank a few beers from the bottle, then shot a game of pool on the rattiest, most shredded up pool table I’d ever seen.

“Never played 9-ball,” I told him, after he racked. “Only 8.”

“Anyone can play 8-ball,” he replied. “9-ball takes more foresight. Shot discipline.”

“Shot discipline?” I’d laughed. “That sounds almost military.”

“It is.”

From there I asked him about his service. Where he’d linked up with Kyle, and Dakota, and Briggs, and how long he’d known them. It turned out he hadn’t toured with them initially in Afghanistan, but instead met them later on in Iraq. He told me stories about each of them in turn, but was conspicuously vague when it came to details about himself.