The Top Gun's Return. Kathleen Creighton
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smile that made him ache to hold her. Touch her.
If I touch her now, he thought, it would be like that napkin. Strange. Alien. If I hold her, it’ll be like holding on to that bag of toiletries they gave me. Like a crazy person, holding on because I’m too screwed up, too afraid to let go. I can’t do that to her. I can’t.
He grinned and said, “Sorry,” and saw her relax a little as she accepted his pitiful attempt at humor for the gift it was meant to be. He ate more chicken while she played with hers and the silence thickened. Helplessly he thought, We’re like strangers. And then: We are strangers.
Casting for something with which to break that silence, he cleared his throat and said, “I talked to my dad—” at precisely the same moment she got fed up with it, too, and decided to ask, “Did you call your…dad?”
He laughed and said, “Great minds…”
And she laughed and said, “Yeah.”
He began again, nodding as he chewed. “He was my second phone call. We had a good talk.” He looked up and flashed her his out-of-practice smile. “Well—actually, he did most of the talking. I guess I was pretty much in a state of shock.” His gaze fell, and he was staring at nothing, his mind a bleak landscape of shifting shadows. “Still am, if you want to know the truth. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. Nothing seems real. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up at some point and I’ll be back in that prison—”
“I imagine that’s normal,” her voice interrupted, hurrying, trying to hold steady. It scattered the shadows, at least for the moment. They’d be back, he knew. They always came back. “It’ll get better, Tris. You just have to give it time. You need to get well, get your strength back. Once we get home and things settle down…” Her voice trailed off.
He looked up and saw her eyes on him, pleading silently in her pale face, and suddenly felt defeated, overwhelmed. She wanted too much from him. Wanted so much for him to be okay. To be the man she remembered. The Tristan he’d been before.
“You’re wondering why I asked to stay over here, aren’t you?” he said abruptly. “When they probably would have shipped me home as soon as they had me cleaned up and deloused and knew I was fit to travel.” He pushed back his plate. He wanted to reach for her hand, but found the album instead, and curled his fingers around it. “It’s not what you’re thinking—”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” she said with unexpected heat. It was a flash fire, only a glimpse of the Jess he remembered, but it caught him by surprise and made a nice spreading warmth inside him—like taking a slug of what looked like iced tea and finding out it was whiskey. He smiled, and for the first time since he could remember, felt like the smile came from someplace deeper than his tonsils.
“Anyway, I got to thinking, after I’d talked to Dad. He mentioned that where we are now isn’t that far from where he grew up, and I thought—”
“I know you always wanted to see Germany.” He heard a definite break in her voice. “We talked about it, remember? We always said we’d go, someday, when Sammi June was grown up and gone….” Her eyes had that suspicious glow again, and there were splashes of color in her cheeks. He felt the warm place in his chest grow larger.
“I do remember,” he said, staring hard at her, his voice gruff and raspy. “And I guess maybe I have a different take on ‘someday’ now than I used to. I asked to stay a few extra days in Germany so I could check out the places where my mom and dad grew up. And I wanted you to go with me. Because it was something we talked about. Doing together. If you want to.”
“I’d love to.” Her voice had a furry quality to it that made him feel as though the temperature in the room had risen ten degrees. “Are the doctors okay with it? How soon can we go?”
“Oh, the doctors seem to think it’s a great idea.” He grinned, but it was the new, painful one back again. “They’d like for me to get adjusted to ‘normal life’—whatever that means—as soon as possible, but I think they’re a little leery of turning me loose on society until they’re sure I’m not going to self-destruct at some point on down the road.”
He saw her throat tighten, but she nodded and her voice was matter-of-fact as she murmured, “Post-traumatic stress…”
“This way,” he continued dryly, “they can let me out on a leash, so to speak, then reel me back in so they can run tests to see how I’m coping.” He finished with a shrug and another half smile. “Something like that, anyway. Hey, I don’t mind, as long as they let me go. As long as you want to go.”
“Lord’s sake, you know I do,” she said, and hearing that Southern accent of hers made something tickle inside him, like bubbles in champagne. It came as a surprise to him to realize it was pleasure. “How far is it? When can we go? Tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow.” All at once the heat in him cooled and the bubbles fizzled, swamped by a new wave of fatigue. He wondered if he was ever going to stop feeling tired all the time. He said with a smile of apology, “It’s probably gonna be a couple days before I’m up to it, darlin’. Tomorrow they’ve got me scheduled for some more tests…more debriefing. Which reminds me—” he clutched the edge of the table and clumsily pushed back his chair “—my shadow’s supposed to be picking me up at twenty—uh, make that nine o’clock, and if that clock radio over there is right, it’s near that now. I’d better be getting downstairs.”
“You have to go back?” She was on her feet, too, with her head held high. She kept her voice light, and because he knew she didn’t want him to, he tried not to see the disappointment in her eyes. “I just assumed you were staying here tonight.”
It was the moment he’d been dreading, and from the tense and defensive way she was holding herself, he wondered if she’d been dreading it, too.
“Jess,” he said gently, “I can’t. You wouldn’t want me to.”
She nodded once, quickly—and yes, half-relieved. “It’s okay. I understand.”
She didn’t, though, he knew that. Overwhelmed once more with tiredness and a sense of failure, he tried to explain. “I don’t…sleep well. I’m not used to sleeping in a bed—”
“Oh, hell, I knew it.” Her voice was suddenly bright and quivering with melodrama. “My stars, it’s this damn bed, isn’t it?” She threw her arms wide to encompass the bed, which he’d already noticed took up a good bit of the room, and he knew she was trying to ease the awkwardness between them by making light of it. “It’d scare anybody off. Not to mention, it’s just downright tacky.”
“It is a lot to live up to,” Tris agreed, coming up behind her. “I don’t think my prison cell was as big as that bed.” He lifted his hands, but didn’t allow himself to touch her. Her scent, one he was familiar with but couldn’t place, drifted to his nostrils, and he closed his eyes and drank it in, swaying a little with exhaustion and longing. So sweet…so clean.
God, the irony of it was terrible. He’d dreamed of her for so long…how she’d look…how she’d smell. How she’d feel. In his mind he’d explored her body, every inch of it. He knew…he remembered…every detail: the sprinkles of freckles on her shoulders and even across the tops of her breasts where her bikini didn’t reach; the way her nipples looked when she was aroused; the tiny red mole, no bigger than the head of a pin, just where the two halves of her rib cage came together; the scar low on her belly from the Caesarean she’d had when Sammi June was born. How he’d loved to kiss her there…then lower…oh yes, lower. Now here she was, inches away…a breath away. His wife. And he could hardly bear to touch her.
“I have nightmares,” he said, his voice ragged with his anguish. “I’m afraid I might—I don’t want to hurt you.” He knew how lame it must sound.
She turned back to him, moving in that abrupt, jerky way—and just like that, he was flashing back again to a Florida beach and the first time he’d ever