Page 57 of Break Me Open
Bits of last night keep ambushing me between tasks. It’s the stupid, sensory details that won’t let go. The scratch of his stubble against my face, the way his knees hit the floor, and the sound he made when he came. I keep expecting the guilt to win. To roll over everything else and flatten it. That’s how it usually works: want something, panic, shove it down until it stops twitching. But guilt and wanting it are just sitting next to each other, glaring. And layered over both is fear.
If anyone had opened that cupboard door, if anyone sees the way my eyes keep scanning rooms just to confirm where he is — shit. I catch myself doing it in the mess hall and want to bang my head off the table.
At lunch, he isn’t there, but Niko is. He plonks his tray down opposite me with the tired grace of a man who’s been awake since before dawn and intends to stay upright through spite alone. “Eat,” he orders.
“Yes, sir,” I say, obediently, forking some unidentifiable starch into my mouth.
“You look better,” he says, eyeing me for a second.
Better than when? Yesterday? Last week? Before I started letting his brother unmake my entire sense of self in dark rooms? “Drills helped,” I lie.
He hums noncommittally. “You’re still too in your head.”
“That’s where my brain lives, sir.”
“You know what I mean.” He tears bread, dips it into whatever passes for stew today. “You think too much.”
“Thought that was why you liked me,” I say, before my own brain catches up.
He smiles. “I like you because when I say ‘jump,’ you ask, ‘how high’ and then go higher just to prove a point.” Flattering, in a masochistic sort of way. We talk about training blocks, comms updates, and boring, necessary things. After a while, he gets pulled away by another officer, and I’m left staring at my tray.
I silently ask myself where Ari is, as if the answer matters. It’s probably somewhere on this base, deciding whether last night was a mistake.
The first time I actually see him up close is mid-afternoon. I’m on my way from the comms room back to Admin to grab a file. Paperwork shoved under one arm, head down, rehearsing in my head how I’m going to phrase something in a report so it doesn’t sound like ‘your antenna is held together with tape and hope.’ I turn a corner, and he’s there, walking the other way down the corridor with a folder in his hand and his baseball cap on backwards.
We both stop abruptly when we see each other.
It’s a narrow corridor, and two people can pass without touching if they really try. For a second, neither of us moves. I realise, with a strange, embarrassed jolt, that I was braced for him to smirk — or say something filthy under his breath. Then silently, half hoping he would pin me to the wall and pick up where we left off.
Instead, he just stares at me with that flat, evaluating look. “Lance Corporal,” he says.
His tone is exactly professional enough to make me want to hit something. “Sergeant,” I manage. My voice soundsrougher than I’d like. We stand there like idiots staring at each other for what feels like five minutes. I break it first, stepping sideways, muttering, “Excuse me.”
He mirrors the move so we don’t shoulder-check each other, but our arms brush anyway. It’s a whisper of contact, but my whole body reacts like he’s grabbed me. I don’t look back as I go past, and force myself to walk at a normal pace. Halfway down the corridor, I hear him move on. There’s no footsteps hurrying to catch up, or hand on my shoulder, just the usual noises of a busy base.
I take a detour into the barracks storeroom, shut the door harder than necessary behind me, and lean back against it for a second, with my heart trying to escape through my ribs.
Right. Okay. So that’s how it’s going to be.
Distance, professionalism, and pretend the cupboard was a one-off and never speak of it again. It’s safer, smarter, and exactly what I told myself I wanted. So why does it feel like someone’s yanked the floor out from under me?
By evening, I’ve run out of places to hide from my own head. The training is over, the reports are done, Niko’s tied up in another briefing, and the lads are drifting toward the mess or their bunks.
I end up in the quietest corner of the rec room with a dog-eared manual open on my lap, staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes straight. The words might as well be in Latin. Every time I blink, my brain supplies images that I've been trying to keep at bay all day. His mouth, his dick, the way he said my name when he—
I snap the book shut. Enough!
If he can act like nothing happened, so can I. I’m not some lovesick teenager, I’m a grown man, a trained soldier, and ifArseny Zakirov wants to pretend the fact we nearly fucked in a cupboard is no big deal, I can match that level of denial.
But underneath all the bravado, swearing, and self-pep talks, something small and relentless keeps whispering,“you liked it, you liked him, you want more.”And the worst part is, some ugly, stubborn part of me wants him to prove he didn’t just use me to take the edge off and then move on. I don’t know what that makes me. Needy? Stupid? Pathetic? Probably all three.
I sit there until the light in the room goes from grey to yellow. People drift in, and the low hum of conversation starts up, then it feels weird for me to be in a corner on my own. I put the book away, stand up, and go to find some food. Because whatever else is happening, I still have to show up tomorrow and do my job. I still have to drag myself out in the cold, follow orders, run, hit, and repeat. I still have to stand in the same rooms as him and pretend my heart rate doesn’t kick every time he walks through a door.
The broom cupboard happened, the base didn’t explode. No one died and life goes on.
It’s just that now, going through the motions feels like I’m trying to act normal after stepping on a land mine.
Twenty-Two
