Anything Between Us (Starving Artists Book 3) by Mila Ferrera & Sarah Fine

Author:Mila Ferrera & Sarah Fine [Ferrera, Mila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mila Ferrera Books
Published: 2019-07-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sasha

I lurch awake to the sound of Nate’s anguished voice. My heart thudding, I sit up. The room is pitch dark except for slivers of light around the door, which is open a crack. Nate’s on the other side of it, muttering in a shaky voice that makes my chest hurt. Is he having a nightmare?

A digital clock next to the mattress tells me that it’s almost six in the morning. Hazy memories from last night swirl in my head, the misery of being towed out of the party by Marcus, of sitting on the curb after my escape, of catching sight of Nate and Nora by her car. The knowledge that he was probably going to go home with her crushed me from all sides, making it difficult to breathe. But then he was pulling me up from the ground, wrapping his arms around me, supporting me as I stumbled along.

He almost got in a fight with Marcus. I remember that, too—how his body tensed, his muscles so taut it felt like they might snap. And then we were in his living room and he was feeding me cheese and crackers and I was throwing myself at him, practically begging him to fuck me.

He didn’t. He tucked me in and slept on the couch, and honestly, I don’t think I should have expected anything different. Nate was raised right, and he wears the stamp of that decency with an unabashed steadiness.

“I can’t,” he’s saying now, and it pulls me up and draws me to the light.

Then I hear another voice, a man’s, say, “Let’s take it one moment at a time. Where were you standing, exactly?”

“Dusty courtyard,” Nate says. “Behind the blast walls but in front of the barracks. We’d muster there before each patrol.”

“How many people were in the courtyard that morning?”

I frown. Who would be here this early?

“We had three fire teams of three or four men each. I had one, Sam had another. The sergeant had the third, plus communications and the medic. Translator, too. And then there were the Afghan guys. There were twelve of them, I think.”

“Good, Nate,” says the man. “How distressed are you right now? Zero to a hundred.”

“Sixty,” he says tersely.

I press my face to the door and peek out. Nate is sitting at his kitchen table, his back to me. Elbows on the tabletop, head bowed. He’s shirtless, and his broad shoulders go rigid as the man says, “What were you doing before you noticed anything was wrong?”

I squint into the dim light of Nate’s living room. Though I can hear the man’s voice, Nate seems to be alone.

“The strap of my M4 kept catching on my magazine pouch. I was fiddling with it like an idiot.”

“You don’t need to pass judgment on your actions here,” says the man, his tone gentle. “Just relay the concrete facts.”

“I was trying to free the strap and make sure it didn’t catch,” Nate says in a flat voice. But even as I hear him, the Nate in front of me bows his head and sighs.

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