A Marine Affair (4 page)

“Sorry.” No platitudes, no coaxing comfort, just a plain and simple word that encompassed so much more.

“Me, too. Anyway, how’s Christina?”

“She’s good. Recovering. Kid’s cute—well—not really, he’s ugly as sin, but then most babies have that smooshed look, so I figure he’ll grow out of it. Healthy.” Eli rubbed the back of his neck like he wanted to say more, but their chef arrived, along with the waitress. She delivered the kitchen-prepared appetizers including Eli’s tempura. They ate in silence and watched the food preparation show.

“You have your new orders yet?” Small talk gave them both an out.

Eli shrugged. “Marine Barracks next Monday. Fitness assessment and debrief. Probably get them while I’m there.”

“You apply for anything?” Eli’s rank and credentials could open a lot of doors.

Shaking his head, he speared a piece of meat with his fork. “I thought about it, but I don’t want a desk job. Colonel Spears asked me to consider a teaching position either at Parris Island or OCS at Quantico.”

A position at either base would keep Eli in-country—Quantico would keep him in the region. Rick swallowed back the urge to give him any advice. “Nice.”

“Maybe. What about you? Running your department yet?”

“No.” Department head was the last thing he wanted. “I didn’t want to play those politics. I like my patients. I like training interns and I like having something of a life outside the hospital. Department Chief doesn’t give me much time for any of that. I am going to Amman in a few weeks, but it’s a three-week clinic to train some of the locals at the hospital.”

“Huh.” The bland grunt didn’t reveal as much as the tightness flexing Eli’s jaw. He didn’t like it.

“I like keeping my hand in and they need a cardiothoracic specialist. Too many of their cases have to leave the country, they’ve got some good candidates signed up for the training, and the top two will return here for another six months of training that I’ll supervise.”

“You ever think we’d be teachers?” Eli finished all the meat on his plate. He didn’t like mixing his foods. He ate methodically, one dish after the other.

“Not as a life goal, no. But it makes sense. See one, do one, teach one. Learned that in medical school.” The educational method described most of his internship, fellowship and his current residency. He could have his pick of civilian hospitals, but preferred his military service. Two years as a medic to a forward unit during the initial incursions into Afghanistan taught him more than all his years at a hospital combined.

“Christina tried to set me up with another date.”

The unexpected bit of news sent a shock through Rick. He chewed a piece of chicken thoroughly as he tried to digest the information.
I can handle this
. “Yeah? Anyone I know?”

“One of her girlfriends from college—thrice married. Apparently she thinks my prospects are limited and wants to fix me up with my first divorce.” If Eli tried to be funny, the humor was lost on him.

“She doesn’t know.” The revelation stunned him. Rick’s family knew about him, his mother more comfortable with the information than his father, but both accepted it. Eli’s family didn’t?

“Nope.”

Why hasn’t he told them?
The thought burned through him, igniting a dozen other questions. He clamped a lid on it. In a decade together, Eli never indicated he kept his sexual preference a secret from his family. He mentioned them in passing, kept it light, but never more than surface details. Rick half-thought the emotional distance came from Eli’s constant assignments, those took a toll on personal relationships. But if they didn’t know, could that be the problem? He mulled that thought over and over, eating to try and cover his silence.

Two beers and half the meal later, Rick turned sideways in the chair. Bit by bit Eli relaxed while they ate. Maybe it was the company, the day’s loss or the alcohol—or some combination of the three, but he wanted their cards on the table. He wanted Eli back.

“I miss you Eli. I want us back. What do we need to do make that happen?”

They went for a walk after dinner, pausing at Eli’s truck for some cigars. Rick had let him off the hook for the obvious delaying tactic. The area around the restaurant had certainly grown over the last several months. Once upon at time, it stood alone on its patch of highway. Construction added townhouses, a mall, several gas stations, and more. Fortunately, the Japanese steakhouse boasted its own gardens.

Walking slowly along a pathway illuminated only by paper lanterns, Eli considered Rick’s proposition. His lover had gone above and beyond trying to reach out. “I miss you, too.” He relented, giving some ground on his hard ass position, but keeping his gaze fixed on the darkness. “We have issues that go deeper than just…mutual longing.” The words sounded even more pathetic out loud than they had in his head.

“Yeah, I’m not saying we don’t. But not talking about it doesn’t fix it. Neither does ignoring it. And frankly, being apart hasn’t managed to do anything either.” Passionate conviction colored the words. “Has it for you?”

“No.” Trained to compartmentalize, Eli had the ability to pack away his feelings and shut them up for the duration of a deployment. He focused on the job in front of him and left everything else behind. It kept him alive throughout his career.

Lonely, but alive.

“Okay, can you tell me why you don’t want to say anything to anyone? Why you want to keep it quiet?”

“Is it so hard to believe that I like my private life, private? That I don’t want to advertise or put it out there for others? Our relationship is ours—no one else’s.” He didn’t want to unpack more of the muddy past than necessary.

“No, but our private life doesn’t just belong to you.” Honest and direct, Rick didn’t spare his feelings on the subject. “The key phrase there is ‘ours.’ But you wouldn’t even discuss it. I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to—I never wanted that. But I do want to understand. I want to have the talk. Tell me how you feel. Explain it to me. Hear what I have to say.”

Sounded easy in principle, but talking about it meant revealing an ugly part of his past. Ugly and painful.

“If it’s about trust….”

Eli stopped and pivoted to face him. “It’s never been about trust.” If Rick got nothing else from this night, Eli wanted him to know that. “I trust you.”

“Then trust me to listen.”

Pacing away, Eli frowned. “Why don’t I start with the listening? Why is it important to you?” Maybe if he could wrap his mind and his heart around it for Rick, it wouldn’t hurt so much to rip open the old wounds.

“I tried to tell you this once before.” Hurt slid under the words and Eli grimaced.

“Yeah, I know and I was an ass who walked away. Tell me now.” They kept their distance, smoked their cigars, and stared at each other like some warped version of a showdown in an old Western—only they were armed with their wants, their needs, and their fears.

He needed Rick to blink first.

“I never liked being a secret.” Thank God for him, because he did. The physician exhaled a long stream of smoke and fixed his gaze on the cigar in his hand. “You’re the only guy I know who can get me to indulge bad habits and shut up my internal doctor. You’re the only guy I know who I like just hanging out with—even if you watch the wrong teams.”

Eli laughed, a friendly if short sound. They really didn’t agree on sports—and it made playoff games when their teams were in opposition a hell of a lot of fun.

“But I never liked the secret. I accepted it—because we had to. You have your career to think about and I have mine. The burden—hell, that’s the wrong damn word—it’s not a burden. We had to do it. But we don’t now. No one can judge us and if they do, fuck them. It won’t cost us our careers. I assumed…” Rick blew out a breath and frowned, as though searching for the right words. “I assumed that was the only reason we kept it quiet. Maybe ultimately that was our problem—we never discussed any of this. We just did it. We buried it, put up a perimeter, laced the area with landmines and kept everyone else away.”

If either of them ringed their relationship with landmines, Eli had, but Rick didn’t load the blame only on him. The man was worth his weight in gold. Rick shared the responsibility. “You know I never thought of it that way.” Eli never gave it much thought. He liked him—one date turned into two, two turned into three, and then weekends, leaves, and time. “We grew our relationship in isolation because of our deployments.” Their leaves hadn’t always coincided; they could go months without seeing each other.

It made every reunion sweeter, and they spent more time in the sack than out of it, but when they had to make do with two days out of every few months, what else could they have done?

“You know I get that. It worked for us and I love what we had.”

“But you want more.” Eli didn’t have to put the words in Rick’s mouth, but Eli wanted him to know he got the message.

“Yeah. I guess I do. You spend more time out of the country than I do. You’re the one who leaves.” Accusation strung between Rick’s words.

“I’m good at what I do.” He wouldn’t defend his choices. “It’s what I know. I save lives. I make operations possible. I can’t do that from here.”

Rick closed the gap between them but didn’t touch him, both too well trained to be openly affectionate in public. “I am not asking you to change. I have never asked you for that. Just like you didn’t ask me to not go to Amman in there, or to volunteer for placement with a Marine unit in Afghanistan. You hated both ideas.”

“You’re a doctor.” Eli didn’t doubt Rick’s courage or his convictions—not for an instant. “I don’t like it. You had close calls in Afghanistan and Amman’s not exactly Club Med.”

“Good thing I’m not a Club Med doctor.” They shared a quick smile. Rick’s quirkiness endeared him. He must have left the hospital right after the last surgery because his five o’clock shadow made him scruffy and altogether kissable.

Moving on from that distraction, Eli gazed around the quiet garden. They were alone, but it never hurt to keep a wary eye out. “No, you’ve never been that, Rick. Doesn’t mean I have to like you putting yourself out there.”

“Pot, meet Kettle.” Rick’s dry humor earned another smile. “Look, Eli. I
miss
you. I let you go before and didn’t push it because I knew you needed to calm down. I overstepped somewhere, but you didn’t let me in far enough to see where that was. You’re back, but I want to know you’re in—hell, you just told me your family doesn’t know. How the fuck did I not know that before?”

“We don’t talk about our families….” What a weak ass excuse.

“Bullshit.” Rick apparently agreed with Eli’s internal assessment. “We talked about your nieces. My dad. Your mom. Your sister. My cousins.”

“We mentioned our families, Rick. We didn’t talk about them. I mentioned my nieces being born, or my sister being pregnant. You talked about going home for the holidays, or when they came to visit. They were moments in conversation—never the subject.”

“That’s a fine splitting of the hairs, Eli.” Rick didn’t approve, but he didn’t argue either. “But I’ll give that to you. We didn’t talk about them specifically.”

He wasn’t trying to be an ass and didn’t quite understand when he got on the wrong side of the argument. “Yeah, sorry. Look, I never told my family because, well, frankly because I didn’t want it out there. I’m a Marine. I went to boot, I serve my country and it’s none of their business.” He ground his teeth. “It’s what I always told myself. And after Mitch…I couldn’t tell them.”

“Who’s Mitch?”

He expected the question. Hell, he needed to answer the question. But his soul resisted ripping off that Band-Aid. He could end the conversation right there and walk away, or he could face the damn music and get it over with.

If Rick hated him after—then so be it.

“Mitch is my brother.”
Is. Was. Always would be
.

Putting out the remains of his cigar, Rick stared at him. “I didn’t know you had a brother. You’ve never mentioned him.”

“He killed himself when I was in boot camp.” He hung the words out there and waited. Rick put a hand on his shoulder, offering quiet strength if Eli needed it. Clearing his throat, Eli met his gaze. “He killed himself because he was gay and he’d been taking hell from some jackasses who found out about it. He felt alone and didn’t think anyone would understand—not his family, not his friends…and who can blame him? I kept my secret and my brother died because I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Eli….”

He shook his head. He didn’t want sympathy or pity or empathy at the moment.

“I made a judgment call and it cost my brother his life. You want to know why I don’t want to take this public? Now you have your answer.” Emotion clogged his throat and he pulled out of Rick’s grasp to drop the spent cigar in the community ashtray station. He needed to get the hell out of there. Rick caught him in a hard embrace. He didn’t say anything…just hugged him.

Eli fought the cracking sensation in his soul. He wanted to push Rick away, but instead pulled him closer.

Rick didn’t say anything.

What the hell could he say?

Chapter Four

Rounds dragged and so did Rick. His interns provided him with condition report after report. He chatted with patients, answered questions, dispensed advice, and under the surface of it all, he couldn’t stop thinking about Eli. They hadn’t said much after the hug, but he’d heard the coat of tears in the man’s voice when he said he had to go.

Allowing him to walk away, get in his truck and drive home alone was the hardest thing he’d ever done. But Eli opened up, revealing a dark truth he’d kept hidden away for so many years and he needed the time to himself. It seemed remarkable that he understood that, better than Eli probably did. A natural loner, he fit the psychological profile of a sniper almost too well. He liked distance from his targets, he liked solitude, and he craved privacy. His resistance to opening their relationship up to external scrutiny made a hell of a lot of sense.

Wrapping with the last patient on his rounds, Rick left his interns to do pre-op. He had surgery in thirty minutes, but he wanted coffee. Cup in hand, he found an empty on-call room, locked the door and called Eli.