Drive Me Sane (9 page)

Her subconscious demands were obvious now that it had. And whoa! It was definitely demanding. Everything seemed to rouse at once. Her hands itched to feel the roughness of his face against her palms, to smooth her thumb underneath his eyes where she knew the skin was soft. His long, thick lashes played havoc down below, reminding her just how long it had been.

Another time, another place and she would readily hurtled herself on top of Tyler and began the pleasant task of waking him with slow, torturous moves. But she and Tyler weren’t what they used to be. In fact, she was finding out that they were much different than before, and instead of climbing aboard and enjoyably forcing their bodies together, she folded her head closer into Tyler’s shoulder.

She hadn’t realized how badly she’d missed the physical contact that only came with being in his arms. It was like she was home after being gone for so long. In a sense, she was. She was right back where she’d been before going to the army. It felt good. It felt really good, especially since she felt no obligation to lie there and cuddle with him for any reason other than because she wanted to.

Cuddling wasn’t enough to bypass the quiver from the leg she’d draped over Tyler’s thigh to her middle, though. How good it would feel to get lost in what Tyler could offer. At least physically. They’d always fit together perfectly. Unfortunately, she was smart enough to know that it would always be so much more between them. They could never be each other’s indulgence or friends with benefits. What they’d shared was too sacred for that. Besides, at some point, those types of arrangements always filtered into a responsibility for one of the people involved. It was a situation she’d found herself in with Rollins and it was one she wasn’t interested in again. She hated that their friendship had been tainted. She regretted that she’d allowed the bond they’d formed in Afghanistan to influence her scattered thoughts. Their relationship might have started off with her thinking there was more between them, but it didn’t take long for her to understand that she and Rollins were nothing more than really good friends. Unfortunately Rollins hadn’t appreciated her honesty when she explained that to him.

“Somebody snores.”

Unaware Tyler was awake, she laughed with his words. “Yes, you do. You kept me up all night.”

Tyler erupted in a chuckle. “Sweetheart, you were not up all night.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I woke up a little after midnight and you were sound asleep.” He smoothed her hair down against her back.

“But you still snore,” she teased again, lifting her head to see him fully.

She was suddenly becoming worried about the situation. Twice they’d slept together. Maybe not in the conjugal sense, but in the same bed, and last night they’d crossed over from just a friendly gesture to something more.
Had he pulled her into his arms when he woke or had her body reacted to him being so close?
The problem was, despite what her body wanted, she didn’t know exactly what kind of “more” it meant or what she could offer and if Tyler was even interested. The few hints he’d thrown didn’t mean he was looking for a relationship. He could simply be lured into rekindling the past for a short fling before he set off around the country again. Either way, they needed to figure it out.

She tilted her head up to see the clock on the other side of the bed. Almost ten. She had two hours before Maggie would be there to bring her to her therapy appointment.

Tyler dropped a kiss to the top of her head when she sank back into his chest. It was friendly enough, but the way her hand rubbed underneath his shirt sleeve was much more intimate—and a line she was hesitant to cross when she realized what she was doing. The internal quandary made her stop, but she didn’t pull her hand away, catching sight of the ink surrounding his arm. She pulled the hem of the sleeve up for a better view and saw her name, beautifully inscribed, staring back. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. She’d told him so when he got it and had even asked what he planned to do if they ever broke up and met someone else. Of course he’d laughed at her and said that it would never happen. Yeah, right, Sera thought with a nervous snort. “Bet you regret having to explain this to the ladies.”

She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Biting down on her lip, she regretted it. She didn’t want to know more about Tyler’s personal life. Did she?

• • •

Tyler looked down at his arm where Sera thumbed the black color. He could now admit that it was an eighteen-year-old spur-of-the-moment thing to do, but to this day he never regretted her name had become a permanent part of him.

He laughed dryly, trying not to cough out the swell of emotions that had woken with her in his arms. Silently, he wondered if she had any understanding of exactly what she meant to him, and how she might react to knowing that there’d been others with whom he’d tried to distract himself. Not many, but a few, and it was just that—a distraction for what he was missing with her.

“I’ve been asked about it a few times,” he admitted honestly.

“How many?”

The snap in her voice had him taking a deep breath as he pressed his lips together.
Of course Sera automatically assumed they were talking about sexual encounters, which they were, but she hadn’t actually asked that. And of course it mattered to her that he’d been with others even though they’d been apart. Despite their current situation—and he wasn’t even sure what that was—Sera had a jealous streak. For the most part it was flattering, but when she let her insecurities run wild, he hated trying to make her see reason. Because sometimes she was the most unreasonable person he knew.

“There’s been a handful,” he answered, then asked, “How about you?” So she’d know he had the right to ask if she did.

“One,” Sera blurted out, rolling off his chest and sitting up.

He could see where this was going. She was on the bedside, ready to get up, before he was able to grasp her arm. Forcing her around, he asked, “Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad.”

“The hell you aren’t. You forget how well I know you.”

She shrugged from his grasp. Standing, she straightened her shirt over her shorts, snapping, “I’m not the same girl you think you know. And I’m not mad.”

Shuttling to the door in record speed, she couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. She was right about one thing, she wasn’t the same. The Sera he knew met things head on. And while she might be trying to do that with her problems stemming from the military, she kept running away from him.

Sera sat looking out at the hillside, noticing for the first time since being back in Cobb City how kind spring had been that year. The trees were lush with color, the ground covered in a carpet of hunter green and dark emerald. She had never seen any other place that compared to the beauty that Kentucky had to offer. Although Chicago could certainly boast about its sculpted cityscape, it held too much hustle and bustle for one to really enjoy anything it presented, and Texas, where she’d been stationed prior to and after her deployment, reminded her too much of the sandbox overseas to bring any pleasant memories. At the age of sixteen and within weeks of her arrival, she knew Kentucky would always be her home.

Hearing the door creak open and then close, she continued to stare out at the wooded slope until Tyler sat down on the steps beside her. She waited for him to say something and when he didn’t, she grew tired of all the tension-filled silences of the past few days. “I’m not mad at you.”

“So what happened in there, then?”

So much for giving way to all the bitterness
. “Maybe I am, but not for the reasons you think.”

“Why then?”

How he could be so calm when she wanted to roar, she didn’t know. It was infuriating, though. She brushed her head sideways to look at him. His stoic look, trained forward, gave no real indication of his true disposition. He wasn’t calm, although there was softness underneath the harsh tone in his voice. She wasn’t sure what he was. So much about Tyler was different, yet the same.

“I can’t believe we are even talking about this,” she said, thinking about the conversation that had her flying out of the house.

“About what?”

“About sleeping with other people.”

“You brought it up.”

She had. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Plus, I thought you said you weren’t mad about that.”

“I’m not.” She wasn’t really. Jealous, yes. Mad, no. There was no point in being mad about something she was also guilty of. “I’m upset because you still affect me with the simplest of things. I thought we were done and I’d moved on. But clearly not as well as I thought … and I’m so damn mad at myself for feeling that way. It’s maddening to know I’m still jealous over you when I have no right to be.”

“You never called.”

“What?” she asked, turning toward him.

“You hung up on me and never called back.”

How their conversation had gone from jealousy to the day when their relationship ended, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to go there either. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“You must still have feelings if you’re jealous.”

“So you’re putting all the blame on me because I never called you back?”

“I just want to know why.”

Leaning forward, she rubbed her fingertips at the sides of her temples. They were getting nowhere. “I don’t know why, Tyler. I don’t know why I did any of it.” She covered her face. “All the tension between us before I left, I knew I was doing it, but don’t ask me why, because I don’t know what to tell you.” Dropping her head to her chest, she said, “Maybe I am crazy.”

“You’re not crazy, Sera.”

“You don’t think?” She smirked. “I came home hoping to get my life back together, and it’s more of a mess now than it was two months ago. I don’t know if I’m coming or going most days. One minute I can’t stand you and the next I enjoy being around you. I don’t want you here to remind me what a disaster I am, but then I get jealous and I sleep better when you’re there. I’m confused about so many things and it’s not just you. I don’t understand why I’m having such a difficult time. What I went through was nothing, yet I act like it was a catastrophe.”

“People react differently to situations. There isn’t a textbook that tells you how you’re supposed to respond. I don’t know what happened, although I keep hoping you’ll tell me. I do know that you need to quit beating yourself up because no matter what it was, it wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was.”

“No,” Tyler adamantly stated. “It doesn’t matter to me what you maybe did or didn’t do. I know you and I know that you would never have done anything that intentionally hurt anyone.”

“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t at fault.”

“I don’t know what I can say here,” Tyler snapped. “There’s nothing I can do to make you understand that you couldn’t have changed anything. Sometimes life just sucks, Sera, and I’m sorry that it sucks for you right now. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No!” she shouted. “It’s not. I told you I didn’t want your pity.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

Trying to hide her face, she turned away, biting down on the inside of her lip. She had already cried more in the last five days than she’d done in the last year and she was tired of crying. Standing, she refused to look at Tyler when she said, “I don’t want anything.”

• • •

Like she’d done several times over the last couple of days, when things started getting heated, Sera left him alone to think about what she’d said. He was having trouble digesting it all, except that Sera admitted to knowing what she was doing to them prior to her deployment. If she’d known the stress she caused, then why had she continued to do it? She said she didn’t know—but dammit, he didn’t understand how she couldn’t. Clearly something had caused her to lash out and cause tension.

Sitting where she left him, he turned every word that was just spoken over in his head. If he’d been confused before, he was even more so now. One minute he was holding her and the next they were outside arguing. His shitty days just kept getting shittier. The only positive thing about the whole episode was that by the end of the conversation, she had gained some of her strength back. At least now she was starting to fight—another hint of the old Sera, except he wished she’d pick her battles more carefully. This wasn’t something they needed to argue over. They needed to talk it through.

When he heard the door open and close again, he looked over his shoulder. She’d come back out, but it was clear she wasn’t there to talk. Her change of clothes into a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved top let him know she was leaving. The roar of a car pulling into the drive confirmed his suspicion. Maggie got out before Sera could descend the steps. Worried that their conversation had finally pushed her over the edge, he stood.

“Hey, Tyler.” Maggie waved graciously.

He threw his head up in her direction, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. It wasn’t until Sera was in the yard that he finally forced his mouth open. “Sera.”

She turned with her glorious warm eyes staring right back at him. The glimmer of moisture puddled in the corners let him know she was as much bothered by their talk as he.

“Ya’ll going to Merv’s?” It was the only thing he could think to say.

She looked at him, her face straight, lacking any sort of emotion. “I have an appointment. I’ll be back later.”

Tyler heard the shower running when he came home. Knowing she’d come back like she’d promised she would strengthened his trust that they might be able to work this through. However, he was happy for the few moments alone so he could better prepare his lingering thoughts.

The bomb she’d dropped that morning was still heavy on his mind. He’d carried the blame and guilt of losing his temper and letting her go for years and now he was trying to wrap his head around the fact that Sera had known she was brewing trouble between them, whether purposely or not. Sometimes it was hard to understand what went through her head. He’d spent the day driving around the back roads of Cobb City, trying to tame his anger. He visited all the places he and Sera used to go, and ended up sitting at the railroad crossing just before the turn down the road to Roy’s. He thought about the night he’d asked her to marry him. She’d been home on leave after graduating from basic training. They were barely twenty and thought they knew it all. Boy, they’d been wrong about a lot of stuff, but one thing he was still sure of: He loved her just as much now as he’d loved her then, and he was fairly confident after thinking more clearly about everything she’d said that morning that she felt the same. He just wasn’t sure how any of it could work out when the problems of the past were weighted down with what she was going through in the present.