I sat down in the chair next to him. “No matter what happens here, after we leave this place, we’re getting barbecue for dinner.”
Jackson chuckled. I could see the gratitude in his eyes. “Fuck, yeah. That sounds amazing. We had food a couple hours before re-entry, but that’s long gone.”
“I hear you. My breakfast put in its duty and has fucked off to greener pastures.” I offered him a smile and said, in my gentlest voice, “Still have doubts?”
His head fell back so he could stare at the ceiling. “God, Bastian. It’s- Yes. And no. That’s why this is so damn hard. I said what I said, you know? You’ve never had any kind of relationship with a man. When I put in for a match, I did it because I want a relationship that willlast. I want the whole enchilada. The man waiting for me to come home. Three tours I’ve done now, and today’s the first time I’ve had someone who wasn’t my parents waiting for me when I got off the transport. It’s been lonely deployment after lonely deployment, and I’mdonewith that. I want the letters. The care packages. The welcome on the tarmac. The kids. The forever.”
It would have hurt less if he’d stabbed me through the heart with a ballpoint pen. Loss of adrenaline and lack of energy had left him raw, vulnerable, and I wanted so much to wrap my arms around him so I could help hold him together.
“I understand why you’re hesitant, you know,” I said.
“And you,” he said, picking his head up again to look at me. “You don’t make it easy. Because you’reperfect.You’re everything I want, at least on the surface. I know you’ve got secrets. So do I. My instincts say you were hurt, too, and you keep secrets to protect yourself. Those instincts say those secrets won’t hurt me, even if my lizard brain just screams when anyone gets close.”
I shifted my weight forward so I could put my elbows on my knees and dangle my hands between my legs. My back and hip protested. I told them to fuck off. “Lizard brains are assholes.”
He huffed a chuckle. “The thing that makes it hardest, though, is what you did before. With your folks. You were willing to end life as you knew it because you weren’t willing to lie. You wereso certainof what you wanted. You’ve never had a relationship with a man, but maybe that’s just because you were gunshy and you happened to meet a girl you liked first. It would be stupid as cow shit to throw you away just because no one had given you a chance. You included. I fuckingadmirewhat you did. I want someone like that at my six.”
“I want to be all those things for you,” I said, and I pushed as much sincerity as I could into the statement. “You need time to believe that. And you don’t have to decide today. We could take a week or two with it, I’m sure.”
“No.” Jackson shook his head. “No. I can’t draw this out. It’ll eat me alive. I told my friends I’d have a husband waiting, and they’ll be messaging any time to ask how it’s going. I don’t want to put them off. I told myparentsI had a match, and now I’ve left my dad on read about it. Ireallycan’t putthemoff, and I don’t want to tell them I’m hemming and hawing over it. This will work, or it won’t. No sense delaying it.”
Social pressure is a bitch. Familial pressure is worse. I got it. I also understood the feeling that an unresolved relationship would gnaw at the both of us. Would waiting have been smarter? Maybe. A few days to rest, eat, and talk might have helped. But he’d come home with hopes and expectations, and a part of him needed those resolved. Part of me did, too.
I stared down at my hands as I turned the problem over in my mind. He needed a safety net. A door through which he could flee if this turned into the nightmare his ex had taught him to fear. Jackson had a justifiable dread of committing to a partner whose tastes might change, and while I felt in my very soul they wouldn’t, this also felt like my issue to solve.
“For a decade, I’ve longed for another kiss like the one I had at that party. The kiss that changed my life. I want another kiss to change my life, and now that I’ve met you, I know whose lips I’ll find it on.” I looked up from my hands to his eyes.
A jolt of electric emotion passed through us both as our eyes met. He hitched in a sharp breath and said, voice rough, “Do you even know what you’re asking for?”
“Show me,” I said. “Show me what I’ve been missing. Please. I promise, I will do all I can to be the best accidental husband you could hope for. And if youeverfeel like I’m not what you want, or I’m not good enough, or that you have doubts about me? All you have to say is that it isn’t working. That’s it. Say the word, and I will go down and file the papers to dissolve the marriage. I’ll take the blame. No fighting. No bullshit. Just over.”
His chair groaned as he sat forward, posture a mirror of mine. Our faces were closer then than they had ever been. It felt like a challenge. A dare. A plea. “You’ve only had a kiss. What ifmykiss comes with more?”
I smirked to answer that challenge. “I hope it does.”
He countered by leaning farther forward. “And what if I like to take the top, Bastian? You ready for that?”
Even the words set my nerves on fire. He hadn’t touched me, but my senses burned and my pants had stopped fitting. I ran the tip of my tongue over my suddenly dry lips. “Let’s find out. Teach me how to take you, and I promise, you’ll never think of anything else in your bunk again.”
His pupils had dilated and turned his green eyes darker. A slow, hungry smirk curled over his lips. An invisible tether of desire gripped us, pulled us hard towards each other, but neither of us moved.
That kiss would bind us together. It was our event horizon, our point of no return. This conference room tucked away in the wildlands of our own personal Purgatory was not the place.
He reached out to take my hand. The touch of his skin against mine startled me, a shock of sensation that wove the taboo of contact with a stranger into the caress of a lover. Never in my life have I wanted someone more than I wanted him in that moment.
No. Not wanted.Needed.
“Then let’s go get married, Sebastian Sadler,” he said. “We’ve got celebration barbecue to eat, and a whole wedding night in front of us.”
My soon-to-be husband only needed words to have me begging for more. My cock throbbed behind the denim of my jeans, my heart exploded into emotional confetti, and my hands shook as the wordsSebastian Sadlerechoed through my mind.
As we rose, hand in hand, to find Elaine Prise to ask for use of her chapel and priest, I knew M4-CH+M4-KR had understated it. !!!* was just the beginning of how I felt in the face of my wedding.
* * *
Of course Mail Call Mates had an on-site chapel. The discreet, engraved sign informed us that they had a non-denominational chaplain available from seven in the morning until nine in the evening, and that specific denominations of clergy, as well as Old and Young Elvis, were available with forty-eight hours’ notice.
“Though our Old Elvis is in the building right now,” Elaine said as we paused by the sign. “If you want Old Elvis, we could do that for you.”