Page 3 of Leave

Chapter 3

Riley

November on Okinawa meant the air was slightly cooler than usual, but still warm enough for shorts and T-shirts. Maybe a light jacket if the wind was really coming in off the Pacific, but this evening it was the usual comfortable breeze that kept the humidity bearable.

Walking along the palm-tree-lined road to the taco rice place, I was more off-balance than I usually was after we’d exchanged orgasms. Nolan always made me come hard—especially when he sucked me off like he had this evening—but it was when I’d gone down on him that left me… uneasy.

It had taken him a while to come. There were a couple of brief moments where he’d even started to lose his hard-on, which was really unusual unless he’d been drinking.

Both times, I’d been about to stop and ask if he was okay, but then he’d moaned and begged me to keep going, so I had. I’d done everything I knew he liked, and eventually, about the time I’d started losing feeling in my jaw and tongue, he’d come. Afterward, he’d seemed relieved, but not in the way he usually was after an orgasm. It was closer to what I’d expect from someone who’d been anticipating bad news but received the opposite. That bone-deep relief that something terrible wasn’t happening, rather than the pleasant afterglow of an orgasm.

I was curious, and also deeply concerned. Though our relationship was as casual as could be, I did care about him, and something was obviously going on. Something related to what had come in the mail.

As we walked, passing walled homes with ceramic ShiShi dogs guarding the gates, I stole glances at him and tried to read him. His expression was as closed off as it ever was; I was pretty good at reading people most of the time, but Nolan didn’t send up many signals. His cats could get him to crack smiles and let out his inner softie. When we were fooling around, he was passionate and vocal. Selfless, too; my God did that man enjoy giving head.

But most of the time, he embodied the stoic Marine persona. He rarely raised his voice. He didn’t react much to things we saw on TV or heard on the news. About the only thing that could make some real emotion shine through was if one of the cats was doing something that concerned him, like when Arrow had been sick recently. Then he’d worn his worry on his sleeve until he was sure his baby was okay.

Nolan had more walls up than anyone I’d ever known, and he rarely if ever let any emotions out or let anyone see in. Even when we fooled around, he kept the walls in place. We’d never kissed. We never took off more clothes than needed to get access to each other’s dicks. We sure as hell never cuddled or exchanged affectionate touches. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t particularly intimate .

So I was used to Nolan being closed off and reserved. Tonight, though…

Tonight, something had shaken him enough to go right past all those defenses.

What is going on inside that head of yours, Staff Sergeant?

We reached the end of our street and turned. Half a block later was the tiny café, its sliding glass door guarded by a comically huge pair of brightly painted ShiShis. As soon as we stepped inside, we were met with the familiar aroma that could only be a taco spice blend. My mouth watered; I fucking loved this place.

Though the café was always densely packed on the weekends when people were pregaming before hitting the bars, it was quiet during the week, including tonight. We found a table outside, and the owner—a sweet old lady who spoke just a tiny bit of English—handed us the weathered, laminated menus. They were, as were most menus on Okinawa, printed in both Japanese and English with pictures of the various dishes.

Not that either of us even needed to look at the menu anymore, and the owner gave a knowing little laugh as we ordered our usual—taco rice entrees with Orion beer for him and orange Fanta for me.

The food came almost as quickly as the drinks, and we dug in. Taco rice was basically a taco salad over rice. I’d been skeptical of it when I’d first come to the island; what the fuck was so special about that? Turned out it was seriously good, though, and it was always exactly enough to be filling without leaving me overstuffed. I even made it at home some nights when I didn’t feel like going out; as inept as I was in the kitchen, I could handle taco rice.

Nolan didn’t seem too interested in his tonight, which had even more klaxons blaring in my head. If there was one thing this man could eat even when he felt like shit, it was taco rice. Tonight, he just sort of picked at it.

I took a drink of my soda. “Listen, I really don’t want to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but… is everything okay?”

He bristled like he wanted to lash out and tell me to mind my business. After a moment, though, and what seemed like a brief internal struggle, he exhaled. He picked at his dinner, then lay his chopsticks down beside it. With a heavy sigh, he pressed his elbows onto the table beside his abandoned plate. “I got an invite to my brother’s wedding.”

I stiffened. “Oh.” I almost asked, “That’s it?” But that would’ve been a dickish thing to say. Obviously it was a big deal for him, even if I couldn’t imagine why. “Is… Is that not a good thing?”

“No, it is,” he murmured. “He asked me to be his best man a while ago, and of course I’m going to. I’d never say no.” His brow pinched as he stared intently into his mostly abandoned food. “The issue is going home. I love my family, but there are some… complicated things.” He shuddered. “People I could handle never seeing again for as long as I live.”

More alarm bells clanged in the back of my mind. “Yeah?”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate.

I debated how much I wanted to press. I was worried, and there were certain messy family situations that people just did not need to subject themselves to.

“Whatever’s going on back home…” I studied him. “I mean, is this like, a sibling or something you don’t get along with? Or…” I hesitated, then cautiously asked, “Like, ‘creepy uncle who shouldn’t be alone with the kids’ kind of thing?”

Nolan’s flinch said it all. “Something like that.”

“Shit. But you’re still going to go?”

“I have to,” he said almost soundlessly, and he met my gaze with unusually vulnerable eyes. “It’s my little brother’s wedding.”

My mouth had gone dry, and I took another swallow of soda. I suddenly wasn’t any more interested in my dinner than he was. “Does… Does your family know?”

He shook his head, and his voice sounded hollow as he whispered, “No one does.”

My stomach clenched. Holy shit…

Nolan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, then reluctantly picked up his chopsticks again. “I have to go to the wedding. I want to. I’m just… trying to psych myself up to deal with the rest, I guess.”

“And there’s really no one there who knows? No one who can have your back?”

“I can’t tell anyone,” he said. “It would… the damage it would do to my family…”

My breath lodged in my throat along with the words, what about the damage it’s obviously done to you?

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted, and he loaded some more meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and rice onto his chopsticks. “Just not looking forward to a few things. That’s all.”

Something about the way he said it held weight. Finality.

Drop it, he wasn’t saying out loud, because I’m done talking about it.

I hesitated, but I didn’t want to push him. Not about this subject.

So, I picked up my own chopsticks, and like him, I continued eating.

To say the conversation bothered me would be an understatement.

Sitting alone in my bedroom after we’d come back from dinner, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to pull my thoughts into order.

The card he’d shown put everything we’d done in bed earlier into very uncomfortable perspective. I’d thought maybe he was just distracted or not really in the mood. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that he might have an ugly past like that. He hadn’t elaborated on what had happened to him—no details about how old he’d been, who’d done it, what had happened—so I had no idea if we’d been brushing up against that dark history. I’d thought we were just exchanging blowjobs to relieve some tension, but…

“Jesus Christ.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. Now it suddenly made sense why had had so many rigid boundaries when it came to sex. I’d sucked him off more times than I could count, but I’d never seen the man naked. He didn’t even walk around the apartment without a shirt on. He insisted he didn’t mind when I did—he made no effort to hide when he was checking me out—but he never followed suit. Not even when we were out on the balcony or our weapons grade air conditioning wasn’t enough to stave off the tropical heat.

He didn’t kiss. He didn’t want to sleep in the same bed. Mostly-dressed handjobs and blowjobs were the extent of our hookups and had been from the start. As much as I’d craved more, he’d made it clear that was all he wanted. I’d always thought an orgasm was better than no orgasm, so whatever, but it hadn’t occurred to me…

Fucking hell. Especially with the cop training that had been pounded into my head, I should’ve known there was more to his backstory. That he wasn’t just the quiet, stoic type who was shy about taking off his clothes. Not that he’d given me any reason to think one way or the other, but most people weren’t that closed off for no reason. Most people didn’t keep the rest of the world at a very firm distance just for kicks.

Least of all people who were as selfless and kindhearted as Nolan. Hell, take the way we ended up living together.

I’d been out on patrol when my partner and I were summoned to the hospital on Camp Foster. Turned out a patient had been the victim of some serious domestic violence, and she was terrified. She wanted to leave her husband, but it would take time for her to recover from her injuries and arrange travel back to the States.

In the meantime, she had nowhere to go, and no one could find him. He controlled all the money, he’d taken her passport, and he knew where all of her (very few) friends lived. She was scared to stay anywhere on any of the bases because she was convinced he’d find her. Even staying at the hospital felt too risky for her. No matter how much we assured her that he’d be apprehended the moment he showed his ID at any base’s gate, she was terrified. With as many domestics as we responded to, neither of us blamed her.

That was when my partner had come up with an idea, and he’d stepped out to make a call. Not two minutes later, he’d returned and declared that he’d found a place off-base where the husband would never find her. Even if he did, he’d have to contend with a Marine who was built like a brick shithouse and didn’t have any patience for abusive partners. Bonus, he was gay as the day was long, and every one of his friends’ wives felt completely safe around him.

That Marine had said yes without hesitation. He didn’t want any money. He didn’t even need anyone to buy him a beer or something to make up for it. She could have the spare bedroom in his apartment, free of charge, for as long as she needed. His only requirements were that she was nice to his cats and that there was someone else in the apartment at all times while she was there, whether he was at work or not.

“I know she might not be comfortable with a guy with her all the time,” Nolan had said. “Given what happened. But I’m not comfortable with just me and her in the apartment. Either a cop stays here too, or I’ll pitch in to get her a hotel room off-base.”

I’d been one of the cops who’d volunteered to stay in rotating shifts, trading off with some of the other MAs from my command whenever one of us had to be at work. Not that we had any jurisdiction off base, and our security officer hadn’t been thrilled about it, but we’d made it work and both Nolan and the woman had been happy with the arrangement.

After the asshole husband had finally been arrested and she’d safely left the island, I’d gone back to let Nolan know everything was resolved, to thank him for helping us out, and to pick up a few items some of us had forgotten. As I was leaving, I’d commented that his place was nice; it was going to be tough transitioning back to the barracks after this.

He’d casually offered to let me rent the spare bedroom for a song. Sounded like a sweet deal to me, so here I was, crashing in this sick apartment with the quiet, impossible-to-read Marine who’d opened his home to a battered spouse.

Not long after that, we’d commiserated one night about how hard it was to date or even hook up in a small, isolated place like Okinawa. One thing led to another, and my dick ended up down his throat, and we’d been getting each other off ever since.

For a long time I’d felt weird about how we did things. Only handjobs and blowjobs? Clothes on? No kissing? No fucking? Sleeping separately? It was always hot, but it always felt like something was missing. Like I was barely an upgrade from his own hand.

Turned out, all along, he’d been hiding one of those dark, ugly secrets that could ruin someone’s life and cleave a family apart. Someone had hurt him, and that someone would be at the wedding he couldn’t avoid.

Fuck. Knowing what little I did, it was a genuine miracle he was willing to do as much as we did.

And I’d thought going back to my hometown was complicated and messy. My family loved me, and there wasn’t anything dark or horrible that I knew of. There was just the issue of them being painfully weird about my sexuality. They didn’t reject me per se, but they didn’t accept me as a gay man. I still had a seat at the table. I was still invited to everything. They still hugged me and said they were proud of me.

They just… refused to get their heads around the fact that I was also gay. They’d never thrown me out or torn into me about it. It wasn’t something they could—or would—understand. It was almost like they were waiting for me to say, “Never mind, it really was just a phase.” They’d even asked me straight-up the last time I saw them if I was still in this “gay phase.”

I was thirty-two. Pretty sure most “phases” didn’t last this long.

I closed my eyes and sighed. One of these days, I needed to just bring home a boyfriend and tell them, “Look! A real boyfriend! Now do you believe me?”

My own thought made me jump.

I’d had it a million times, but tonight it hit different.

I let my gaze slide toward my bedroom door.

What if…

My heart sped up. No, that was crazy. Nolan would never go for it, and it would never work.

But…

What if he did go for it? And what if it did work?

Without another thought, I got up and headed into the living room.