Chapter 3: The Aftermath
The buzz of the phone was a knife through the quiet. Jacinta flinched, and Jake’s hand tightened around hers for a second before letting go.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice rough from disuse.
She turned her head. The screen glowed on the nightstand. David. A knot of cold dread formed in her gut, right beside the fading warmth of Jake. She didn’t reach for it. She watched the light die, leaving the room in deeper shadow.
“Husband?” Jake asked. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling steadily.
“Yeah.”
“What’s he saying?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
He turned his head then, his eyes finding hers in the gloom. “You should.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to have to.” He said it not unkindly, just a fact. He pushed himself up on one elbow, the sheet pooling around his waist. The dying light caught the ridges of scars, the dark ink. She reached out, her fingers hovering over a jagged line just below his ribs.
“Where’s this from?”
He glanced down. “Fallujah. Shrapnel. Not a good story.”
“And this?” Her finger traced the date inked over his heart. 2009.
He caught her hand, pressed her palm flat against the skin there. She could feel his heartbeat, steady and strong. “The year I lost my team. Good men. My fault.” He said it so simply, the weight of it crushing.
“You carry that.”
“Every day.” He released her hand, but she left it there, feeling the life in him. “Your turn.”
She sighed, the sound shaky. “There’s no shrapnel. No dates. It’s just… silence. A slow leak. He works. He comes home. He looks right through me. We haven’t… in a long time. I started to think maybe it was me. That I’d just… dried up.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “Then you showed up and started tearing out the old rose bushes.”
A slow smile touched his mouth. “They were diseased. Rotting from the inside. Had to go.”
The metaphor hung between them, obvious and perfect. She looked away, her throat tight.
“Look at me, Jacinta.” She did. His expression was serious now. “This, here, today. It’s real. But it’s also a grenade. You pull the pin, you gotta know the explosion’s coming. You ready for that?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, the truth of it terrifying.
He nodded, as if he’d expected that answer. Then he leaned down and kissed her, a soft, closed-mouth kiss that felt more profound than anything that had come before. It was a kiss of understanding, of shared loneliness. It unraveled her completely.
When he pulled back, he brushed the hair from her forehead. “Then let’s just have this. For now.”
He lay back and pulled her with him, settling her against his side, her head on his shoulder. Her leg hooked over his. The intimacy of the pose, the effortless closeness, was almost more shocking than the sex. David hadn’t held her like this in years. She listened to the steady rhythm of his heart, smelled the salt and sex on his skin, felt the incredible, living solidity of him.
“Tell me something good,” she said into the quiet. “Something from before.”
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, his voice a low rumble beneath her ear, he began. “Had a dog. A mutt I found outside Ramadi. Named him Bear. Big, stupid, loyal thing. He’d sleep on my boots so I couldn’t leave without him knowing.” He paused. “He’s with a buddy of mine in Oregon now. Has a big field. Kids. Lives better than I do.”
The image was so ordinary, so achingly human, it brought tears to her eyes. This rugged, scarred man, missing his dog.
The light faded completely. The room was now lit only by the faint blue glow from the ensuite bathroom nightlight. In the half-dark, everything felt softened, edges blurred. His hand stroked slowly up and down her bare arm.
Desire kindled again, not the frantic hunger from before, but a slow, deep burn. She shifted, rolling onto him, bracing her hands on his chest. He looked up at her, his hands coming to rest on her hips.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
She lowered herself, taking him inside her with a slow, deliberate roll of her hips. He filled her completely, a perfect, aching fit. This time, there was no frantic race. It was a slow, rocking exploration. She set the pace, and he let her, his hands guiding her, his eyes never leaving her face. It was tender, almost reverent. Each movement was a word in a silent conversation, an apology and a promise neither could keep.
She came quietly this time, a slow-motion shattering that felt like letting go of a breath she’d held for a decade. A single tear slipped down her cheek and fell onto his chest. He followed soon after, his body arching under hers, a muffled groan lost against her skin.
After, she collapsed onto him, spent. They were both slick with sweat, breathing in the dark. The digital clock on her bedside table clicked over to 7:14 PM.
Real world time.
“He’ll be home soon,” she said, the words heavy.
“I know.” Jake didn’t move for a moment, then he gently shifted her off him and sat up on the edge of the bed. The broad planes of his back were a map of shadows and ink. He found his jeans and pulled them on, the sound of the zipper loud in the quiet.
She watched him, feeling a desperate, clawing loss already beginning. He stood, then turned and looked at her, a dark shape against the lighter doorway.
“The job’s done,” he said. “The new soil’s in. You just need to decide what you want to plant.”
It was about more than the garden bed by the porch, and they both knew it.
He leaned down, picked up his shirt, but didn’t put it on. He walked to the door, opened it. The hall light framed him for a second—a giant, temporary silhouette. Then he was gone.
She heard his soft footfalls on the stairs, the distant click of the front door.
Silence rushed back in, thicker than before. The room smelled of him, of them. Her body hummed with the memory of him. On the nightstand, her phone buzzed again, insistently this time. The screen lit up, showing two missed calls and a new text preview: Running late. Client dinner. Don’t wait up.
Jacinta lay in the dark and didn’t move. She listened to the empty house. Out in the garden, a sprinkler system kicked on with a sudden, rhythmic hiss.