A Very Dirty Christmas Read online

  I laugh, deep and long, so hard that I almost double over, before I pick her up again and carry her to the bed. "I plan on keeping you out of clothes as much as possible, Addy. You're not going to need them."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ADDY

  THREE YEARS AGO

  I stare at the computer screen, the cursor blinking in the middle of the body of the email, the message empty except for the address my mother gave me. She said that Hendrix is in Okinawa, on the other side of the world.

  Hendrix is safely on the other side of the world, where nothing can happen between us. That was my first thought when I heard where he was. It's fucked up that I thought that way. It's fucked up that my first thought was about us, and not the fact that he's a Marine who could wind up in Iraq or Afghanistan. I was relieved that he was stationed someplace so far away that no one could possibly expect me to visit him. That makes me a terrible person, I think.

  But my momentary sense of relief was immediately followed by an overwhelming sense of dread, panic at the thought of losing him in the War. I had to count by fours, then by eights, then by twelves, until I was finally calm enough to breathe again.

  Why is it that I'm sitting here, filled with the same sense of impending dread now, staring at a blank email to Hendrix? It's only an email – it shouldn't strike fear into my heart.

  I begin to type out what I want to say, one word at a time, stilted and disjointed. Then I erase the words and begin again. It's funny how the words flow so easily when I write them in my journal, lyrics to songs I'll never get the chance to sing. But they don't come now that I'm looking at an email to the one person I want to write.

  Instead, fear clutches at my chest and I can't breathe.

  I wonder when I'll be able to breathe again.

  * * *

  PRESENT DAY

  Hendrix is as good as his word, and I spend the next few days with him holed up in the apartment where I don't wear a stitch of clothing except for his t-shirt when we come up for air. Otherwise, we screw and lie around naked and talk about stupid stuff, laughing the way we use to when we were teenagers. Hendrix's face takes on a lightness, a happiness that I haven't seen from him.

  When I get a voicemail from my mother, lecturing me on how all charity donations, especially for things like my clothes, should go through her since she's my manager, I pick up a pillow from the living room sofa and toss it at Hendrix's head. "You donated my freaking clothes?"

  Hendrix grins, looking completely and utterly fucking pleased with himself. "You're going to tell me you don't support veterans organizations?"

  I slap him hard on the arm. "You think veterans want my closet full of clothes?"

  Hendrix laughs. "Vets don't want your designer labels, sweet cheeks," he says. "They're going to be auctioned off and the proceeds donated to a veterans organization. But, I mean, if you want them back…"

  "I can't believe you stole my clothes," I say, shaking my head. I can't believe I'm not angry. There's something about Hendrix that makes his completely over-the-top behavior, his over-protectiveness, suddenly endearing. Sex has to be making me stupid.

  "I wanted you naked all the time," he says. "It's a small price to pay."

  "For you maybe," I say. "I'm the one who lost her closet. You go and do something so terrible and then it's for a good cause so it's impossible to hate you."

  "We both know it's impossible for you to hate me anyhow. Relax, sweet cheeks," he says. "I kept the stuff I knew you loved. It's in my closet."

  Then he picks me up, his hands under my thighs, and carries me to the kitchen counter. My ass is cool against the marble, and he grins up at me from between my thighs. "I'll make it up to you," he says, touching his mouth to me.

  "I don't know," I say, leaning back and closing my eyes, reveling the sensation of his tongue on me, exploring me. "It was a lot of clothes."

  "You're a spoiled brat," he whispers, and I pull his head closer to my pussy.

  "I'm getting more spoiled by the minute," I say, as arousal washes over me like a tidal wave.

  * * *

  Reality doesn't intrude on us until a country music festival I can't cancel. In the middle of one of the slow songs during the performance outdoors, I close my eyes and breathe all of it in for a moment, and I remember how fucking lucky I am. When I look over at Hendrix, standing off-stage, he gives me a "thumbs up" and that cocky, shit-eating grin of his. And I feel a hell of a lot luckier.

  After the performance, about to get in the limo, when it happens. Fireworks explode -- once, twice, and then a smattering in quick succession. Hendrix's face goes chalk white and he freezes, standing there beside the limo door.

  "Hendrix." I touch his arm, and he yanks it away, and he's shaking as another set of explosions go off. Fear grips my chest when I see this normally strong man paralyzed by something I don't quite understand. I take his arm, more firmly this time, guiding him into the back of the limo. We sit in silence on the way home, and Hendrix is shivering. I don't know what to do, but he doesn't push me away when I slide my arm around him. He just lets me sit there beside him, pressed up against him, until the trembling seems to subside.

  In my apartment, I take him straight to my bed, strip off our clothes, and climb under the sheets. Neither of us say a word. Hendrix puts his head on my chest, lying quietly against me, and I look up at the ceiling for a long time, not knowing if he's awake or asleep. I don't know what else to do, other than to be here. And I hope that's enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HENDRIX

  TWO YEARS AGO

  "Cannon, you're writing in that notebook all the fucking time. Thought you were writing letters, but you never send them." Watson kicks the dust on the ground with his boot, spits the juice from his chewing tobacco into the dirt, then takes a sip of an energy drink.

  "Fuck off, Watson."

  "Touchy," he says. "I didn't know you were such a pussy. Maybe you're just writing in your journal, talking about your feelings and shit? You should go see the head wizard, cry a little on the couch or whatever."

  "I'm writing a fucking letter, douchebag," I say, rolling my eyes. "You'd understand that if you had any friends outside of us assholes that are stuck with you."

  Watson laughs. He knows I don't mean a word of it. He's a good guy, as solid as they come. He pulls out a letter from his wife Mandy, shows me another photo of their new baby, Amy, the kid he hasn't seen. We get email here, even in the mountains in Afghanistan, but Mandy sends him letters every week, packages too, when they make it. He's from Kentucky, not too far from Nashville, and I like him even though he's redneck as fuck, because he reminds me of home.

  "When we get out of here, we're going straight to the coast, Mandy and Amy and me," he says. "We're taking a family vacation, away from her crazy mother, just the three of us. It's been a while since we've gone on a family vacation. What are you going to do when you get home?"

  Home. I didn't think of Okinawa, and then Twenty-Nine Palms in the middle of nowhere, California, as home. When I think about home, I think about Nashville. I hated it when I was there, but now that I've been away from it, I've started to remember it fondly, the bad parts of it fading into the past. And the good parts…well, Addison was the only really good part of it.

  I still haven't gotten the balls to send the letters I write. They just sit in my notebook. I can't send them, not because I'm afraid for her to know what's in them, but because it seems like the kind of thing you should say in person.

  If I get the chance to walk the hell out of here and say them in person.

  Here, we're living on borrowed time. Before we go outside camp and set a firing line, I offer up a silent prayer that we'll come back relatively unscathed. We've been lucky, so far.

  The casualty count here is higher recently than in other parts of the country.

  Casualty count. That's what they call it. It's clinical, sterile, a way of reporting to the higher-ups running the show how many Marines were k