If You Leave

  To anyone who knows what it’s like to be broken and

  to everyone who is stronger because of it.

  The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

  —Ernest Hemingway

  Chapter One

  Kabul, Afghanistan

  It’s the smell of blood that tells me I’m dreaming.

  Or awake.

  At this point in my life, it could be either one.

  Either way, the smell fills up my nostrils and sticks inside my nose; rusty, metallic and sweet. I know from experience that if I’m sleeping, it’ll still be there when I wake up. A pungent reminder of a night I’ll never get away from.

  It’s a hell that I’ll never escape.

  Even as I squirm, as I try to wake, a noise penetrates my consciousness, a noise that doesn’t belong in this dream. I know that because I’ve relived the same nightmare a hundred times. This new sound and sensation don’t belong.

  It’s the unmistakable crunch of bone in my hand.

  My eyes snap open and I look around, registering several things at once.

  I am in a whorehouse in Kabul, the same one I always use. The girl’s black hair is grasped tightly in my fingers, wrapped around my left hand. With my right, I clutch her limp hand, her broken fingers splayed at unnatural angles.

  I immediately release her fingers and she stares at me, pressing her other hand to her mouth to contain a scream. Tears flood her eyes and spill down her crushed cheek. The blood turns her tears red and I realize something. The smell of blood wasn’t coming from my dream. It was coming from her.

  Jesus.

  There is blood everywhere, spewing from her nose and her eye, from the entire side of her shattered face, dripping onto her naked olive skin and staining the yellowed sheets of the bed. I gasp and instinctively back away from her in horror, my gut tightening in shock.

  “What the fuck?” I manage to choke.

  When I move, she cradles her broken hand.

  The hand that I broke.

  Sweat forms immediately on my brow and my heart pounds wildly. I did this to her. I did this to her. What the fuck have I done? I’m panicked and shaken, but at the same time, my training kicks in and I pull myself together.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her quickly, gathering my wits and stepping toward her, reaching out to assess her injuries. She flinches away, fear apparent in her wild eyes as she turns her shoulders away from me, as if to absorb another blow. My gut sinks at her response, at the knowledge that she is terrified of me.

  At the sick realization that she has a reason to be.

  I swallow hard, the thick taste of self-revulsion pooling in my mouth.

  “Please,” I tell her raggedly, holding my hand out. “Let me see. I won’t hurt you again.”

  The prostitute, a slender girl named Niki, trembles but forces herself to remain still as I feel her arms and legs. She sucks in a breath when I get too close to her broken hand, but rigidly allows me to examine everything else. It’s almost odd. I’ve fucked this girl twenty different ways to Sunday, but right now she’s as distant as a stranger. Because she’s terrified.

  Of me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell her, glancing away from her stiff blood-spattered shoulders. “I won’t come here anymore. I was asleep. I didn’t know what I was doing. I won’t ever hurt you again, Niki. I’m sorry.”

  One of her eyes is swollen shut, but the other one widens at my words and she grabs me with her good hand. Her fingers are cold and they shake.

  “No,” she whispers. “If you stay away, they will beat me for being unpleasing to you. Please. Do not stay away, soldier.”

  I stare at her, aghast. “I just beat you,” I tell her slowly. “I didn’t mean to, but that’s not an excuse. I just beat you.”

  Niki shakes her head, flinching as the movement causes her pain. Guilt floods through me. I hurt an innocent woman. Jesus Christ. I’m a monster.

  “You were sleeping,” Niki says adamantly. “You have nightmares when you sleep. It wasn’t you. It was the bad thing.”

  “The bad thing?” I ask uncertainly, my eyes frozen on her bloody face. She nods.

  “It chases you,” she answers solemnly in her thick Afghan accent. “It is different for everyone, but it chases us all. The bad thing caught you.”

  The bad thing caught me.

  I swallow hard, trying to dislodge the fucking lump that has formed in my throat.

  “I’m sorry, Niki,” I tell her again. “Maybe the bad thing did catch me. I swear I’ll make it right.”

  She looks at me curiously, her body tense with pain, but stays motionless as I wrap a sheet around her shoulders and quickly get dressed.

  I’m out the door and down the hall within a minute. I ignore the moans and shrieks and thumping noises coming from the other dark, tiny rooms as I make my way down the battered hallway to the office. I know the man in charge sits in there, because I pay him every time I visit Niki.

  He looks up at me in surprise when I walk in, but I don’t hesitate. I toss all the money that I have in my wallet onto his desk; all the strange-looking foreign money that is equivalent to hundreds and hundreds of US dollars.

  “The girl has pleased me,” I tell him quietly. “I will be returning to the United States, but I’ll miss her. She should be rewarded. Also, she needs a doctor. She’s hurt.”

  The man stares up at me, his dark gaze gleaming at the sight of the large pile of money. He nods curtly without speaking, clearly unworried about the bloody girl down the hall as he snakes out dark fingers to scrape the bills toward him.

  “She needs a doctor,” I tell him firmly, gritting the words from between my teeth. “Now.”

  I slam my fist down on his table, hard, right in the middle of the money.

  He looks up at me and wordlessly picks up the phone. He mutters words into it that I can’t understand, then hangs up.

  “It is done,” he says shortly, returning his attention to the papers on his desk.

  Without another word I slip out into the darkened streets of Kabul, making my way back to my camp outside of town. After I’m back in my tent, I mechanically begin folding things neatly into my knapsack. When my fingers brush against my satellite phone, I pick it up, then punch numbers into it.

  “Colonel?” I say when he answers. “You’re gonna need to send another XO out here. I’m coming in.”

  The colonel doesn’t ask why. He knows me well enough to trust my judgment calls. If I say I’m coming in from the field, he trusts that there’s a good reason. And of course there is. This is the only life I’ve ever wanted. Only something monumental would force me to walk away from it.

  The bad thing caught you.

  I’ve never retreated in my life. I’ve never backed away from a fight and I’ve never cowered in fear. Ever. That’s not who I am. But I’ve been in combat long enough to know that when something unbeatable chases you, you do the only thing you can do.

  You run.

  Chapter Two

  Eight Months Later

  Chicago

  Madison

  The music in this club is so loud that it literally thumps in my chest, rattling into my rib cage. What the hell do people see in places like this? I cough from the fog-maker’s smoke, then strain my neck as I try to find my friend Jacey among the hundreds of sweaty people crammed in this room.

  The last I saw, she’d disappeared into a dark corner with her loser boyfriend.

  “Have you seen my friend? The blonde in the tight red shirt?” I yell to the random guy who has been intently watching me like a creeper for ten minutes. He smiles a piranha grin and inches toward me.

  “No,” he yells back. “But we don’t need her for what I have in mind.”


  Gross.

  “Not now, not ever,” I answer coldly, turning my back on him to search the crush of people on the dance floor. I seriously just want to go home.

  How I let Jacey talk me into coming into the city to celebrate her birthday is far, far beyond me right now. I’m supposed to finally meet her brother tonight, but Jacey disappeared with her boyfriend over an hour ago and I haven’t seen them since. My feet hurt, I’m exhausted from working sixty hours this week and I need something to eat before I stab someone’s eye out.

  Knowing my limitations, I make my way through the bar and onto the sidewalk out front. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m the one who drove us, but I’m sure Jacey can get a ride home with Peter if she needs to. Her boyfriend can’t hold down a job, but at least he can drive.

  I pull my phone out. I’m leaving. Can you catch a ride home with Peter?

  As soon as I send the text, I realize that she’s not going to be able to hear it. So who knows when she’ll see it? With a sigh, I decide I have to hunt for her. At least for a few minutes. It wouldn’t be right to just leave her here.

  “If I wanted to have public sex with my boyfriend, where would I be?” I muse aloud, trying to think like Jacey as I walk around to the side of the club. Jacey is pathetically bad about PDA. She doesn’t give a flying eff what people think about her. It’s one thing that I both admire about her and get annoyed at.

  As I get farther and farther away from the sidewalk and into the shadows, it seems more and more like someplace Jacey and Peter might be getting it on against the building. But at the same time, it also seems like the perfect place to get mugged. It makes me instantly nervous and I glance around quickly.

  I’m in an alley now, a narrow wet street that is littered with trash and graffiti. My heels click on the glistening asphalt and I take a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air as the inky darkness swallows me.

  Thank God I’m out of that club. That’s my main thought as I walk farther into the darkness, but even still, I reach into my purse and grip my little can of pepper-spray. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

  There’s nobody here. That much is apparent as I take in the dirty building, the heaping trash bins and the empty shadows. Well, I’m hoping the shadows are empty, anyway. They seem to be. And I seem to be all alone. While that’s comforting on the one hand, it’s frustrating on the other.

  “Jacey, where the fuck are you?” I mutter.

  Just as I’m getting ready to give up and head back into the club, I catch sight of something that snags my attention and I stop.

  A guy is leaning against the building a little ways from me, half in the darkness, half in the light. Normally that wouldn’t give me pause, especially since I’m in an alley alone. But something about his posture intrigues me, something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

  I peer at him more closely.

  His long legs are crossed gracefully in front of him as he leans against the building. And holy cow, he’s big. He’s got to be a few inches over six feet tall with a broad chest and wide shoulders that narrow into a slender waist.

  It’s chilly outside, but he’s not wearing a jacket, only a snug black T-shirt and a pair of perfectly fitting jeans. There isn’t a trace of fat on him. He’s lean and muscled, with short darkish hair. From the side his features are chiseled and from what I can tell, he’s got just the barest hint of stubble along his strong jaw. That’s an instant turn-on for me. It seems so rugged.

  And this guy… he definitely seems rugged. Everything about him screams strength and power. That’s an instant turn-on for me too. I decide that this is what intrigues me. He’s like power personified. He holds himself with purpose.

  As I watch, he lights up a cigarette and takes a drag, releasing the smoke slowly into the night. His lips are full and masculine and he’s got a cleft in his chin. He’s undeniably sexy. Normally I would stay far away from someone like him, someone sinfully sexy but so… forceful. A guy like that is trouble. That’s for sure.

  But I didn’t come to the club tonight to run away.

  I came here to hook up. To blow off my responsibilities and be reckless for a night. To act my age. To be someone I’m not.

  I eye the guy again.

  Normally I would run away from him.

  But maybe… just tonight… I won’t.

  I don’t have to be me tonight. I can be anyone I want to be because he’ll never see me again.

  Just for tonight.

  I hesitate, trying to decide what to do.

  Then, almost as though my feet have a mind of their own, I take a step toward him. And then another.

  * * *

  Gabriel

  My cigarette burns red in the dark as I take a nice long drag. I suck in the city air and the nicotine, then exhale the toxic waste. I know that smokes are bad for me, that they’re shit for my lungs, but I don’t particularly care right now.

  From inside the club, I can feel the bass thumping against the wall, vibrating my spine. Inside, women are mindlessly mashing together on the dance floor in time to those drums, waiting for guys like me to take them home and fuck them.

  I don’t care about that either. I had to get some fresh air, to get away from the claustrophobic club smoke and sweat before I fucking exploded.

  If I were a normal person, I’d be nervous in a dark Chicago alley by myself. I’m not a normal person, though, and the shit I saw in Afghanistan rendered my ability to feel fear impotent.

  But not the rest of me.

  I shift my weight and adjust the boys and my semi-hard dick. I’d have to be inhuman to not be horny after watching the half-dressed drunk girls rub themselves on anyone who might buy them a drink. I should feel bad about that, but I don’t.

  Before my tour overseas, I wouldn’t have been caught dead with any of them. But after being overseas for three years, my penis isn’t listening to reason anymore. It knows what I need.

  I sigh and adjust the constraining crotch of my jeans again, before taking another deep breath, then another. My dick starts to calm down and my claustrophobic feelings begin to fade. Thank God. One of the many things I brought home was claustrophobia, and it’s not even the predictable kind where I’m afraid of small spaces. It’s the random kind that can strike at the strangest times, like in the middle of a crowd.

  Fuck it.

  I toss down the cigarette and grind it out with my heel, then pull out another, lighting it up. It’s a bad habit I brought back with me, along with a couple tattoos and the tendency to wake up in a cold sweat from crazy-ass nightmares.

  “You know those will kill you, right?”

  I startle to attention, my head snapping around to find the soft voice in the dark.

  A woman steps closer and I can’t believe that I didn’t see her approach.

  Fucking hell.

  We’re the only two people in an isolated alley. How could I have missed her? My senses have seriously dulled since I’ve been back stateside. She’s a tall, willowy bombshell, the kind of woman who stands out in a crowd, let alone an abandoned street.

  Blonde hair falls halfway down her back and wide eyes stare at me. Her full lips are pursed, as though she’s trying to decide if it’s safe to be out here. And it’s not, especially for a woman who looks like she does.