Hi. **runs and hides**
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Wastelands
I remember our first time.
She was wearing yellow underwear and no bra. I easily recall to memory the scent of her body spray from the Bath and Body Works she dragged me to that morning. She probably tried on a hundred scent before falling back on what she called "an old favorite"—cucumber melon. I didn't understand its appeal until it mixed with the smell of her.
We parked in a field overlooking the Forks High football field in her dad's red Ford. We sat there, eating ham sandwiches and drinking too-sour lemonade. We drove out there that night to watch the lunar eclipse, but it ended up watching us make love in the bed of that pickup instead.
She was strong for a girl without experience; she only flinched a little when I entered her—just a little pained cry escaped her lips. But then she was right there with me in that moment. And there was no one else.
She was the best I ever had. My very own wilderness to be free and wild in.
And now she's grown up—I'm grown up—and I want to give her all I've got. She's got our kid and my heart tied up in a bitter package. I went from hating to loving her in two-and-a-half seconds. But she's my hemlock, and what I want and what I'll get may be two different things.
"Cullen, bogies, twelve o'clock." I respond with a shower of gun fire and see the enemy drop. I need to focus or I'm going to be back in that fucking hospital, or worse. And I want to see my Reny again.
She's my new light, shining and smiling at me from the end of the tunnel. Our moments together in person, and now on video chatting, have been accentuated by her quick acceptance of me and easily-given admiration. I wish I was with her, but she's at school and I'm hell. Only a desert and a world away.
Away from protecting her and her mom.
I'd tear my hair out by the roots if it was long enough. I can't stand this, but she says she'll deal with it. We argued—yelled and screamed for three hours the morning she and Reny left the beach house—about the fact that she was going home to … him. I can't force her to go forward with the abuse accusations, but I see how terrified she is of him. She's scared of what he'll do to the kids if she tries to leave with them.
I've learned his money and his power reach farther and farther than I could have imagined.
They reach into the White House, which I have a sneaking suspicion is the reason for my very specific assignment to the coming assault on Fallujah. He knows who I am and what I am to his wife and our daughter. I only pray he doesn't know the depth of what we are, because then she'll never be safe and I'll be dead before I can get to her.
Everyday, another of my buddies comes back with bullet holes or a blown off leg or worse. It's fucking hell, but I wish I were walking through the hell she's in now for her. I need to get out. Get the fuck out. There's nothing I can do from here.
The election back home is tomorrow, and I've been following the polls. Black is two points behind in his Senate bid. It's not much, and he may not win, but it's going to be close. And the only way I'm getting back to her is if Kerry wins the national election, but I really don't know if that's going to happen.
When my platoon gets back to base, we're weathered and in much need of rest. But there'll be no sleep for me tonight.
The guys are watching news from home, and all I see is her face on the screen with video of a sheet-covered body on a gurney being wheeled from a New York mansion. And I'm sick in the sand, throwing up everything inside of me, but I can hear each word from the television.
"New York Republican candidate for Senate Jacob Henry Black II was pronounced dead at his Manhattan home of a gunshot wound to the head."
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A/N: Are you still with me?