Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,46

guy who’d been stressing me out for a year had become the lighthouse in the storm?

Or maybe I just needed some sleep and maybe a drink and—

“Hey.” MA2 Colby waved her hand in front of my face. “You here?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I shook myself. “Sorry. Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

She groaned. “We’re on day shift. No one gets enough sleep.”

“Ugh, isn’t that the truth?”

She dropped into the chair behind the other desk and fussed with her mask. “Has Tristan had any luck finding a job?” She made a face. “Doesn’t seem like anyone is hiring right now.”

“They’re not. He’s looking, but we’ve both pretty much made peace with the idea that he’s not going to be working until this is over.”

“Ouch. Are you guys gonna be okay?”

I eyed her. “Huh?”

“You’re down a paycheck. I’m sure he wasn’t making a whole lot, and you said he’s not eligible for unemployment.” She inclined her head. “Is that going to hurt you guys?”

“Oh. Oh.” I laughed quietly, relieved she was asking if we’d be okay financially, rather than if our marriage would be okay. Because that second thing was not a subject I wanted to get into with anyone. “Money’s going to be tight, but it’s not like we’re going out all that much. The VA is covering Tristan’s tuition and books.” I shrugged. “We’ll be fine.”

She studied me, an odd expression on her face.

“What?” I asked.

“Just…” She shook her head. “You guys were having so many problems there for a while. And usually a crisis would make that worse. Plus financial stress never helps anything. But it seems like this has… I don’t know. It’s almost like this whole debacle has actually been good for you two.”

I chewed on the idea, and finally shrugged. “Maybe? I mean, we’re both pretty calm in a crisis.” With a quiet laugh, I added, “And it probably helps that rank isn’t an issue anymore. Being on equal footing during a crisis helps.”

Colby smiled. “Or maybe you guys just needed things to get really tough so you could see that all the problems you had before weren’t such a big deal.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but hesitated. “That’s… I mean, we did have problems. We still do. Just… This doesn’t seem like the time to worry about them, you know?”

“Right. So maybe they weren’t as big as they seemed.”

It wasn’t that simple. It couldn’t be. And there was no way I could explain to her why it wasn’t that simple, because then I’d have to tell her the truth about our marriage. If we were a real couple, then, fine, maybe I could say this crisis had shown us which of our problems were worth fighting over. But we weren’t a real couple. The problems Tristan and I had weren’t relationship problems. They were what happened when two people made a stupid decision with the best of intentions and then wound up stuck with the consequences for the foreseeable future. And like reasonable adults, we’d put those problems on the back burner while we dealt with a bigger crisis. That didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Or that this crisis made them magically go away, temporarily or permanently.

The fact that last night had been one of the most enjoyable evenings I’d had in recent memory, or that the orgasm that had finally put me to sleep had been one of the most intense in ages…

None of that meant anything.

Did it?

I cleared my throat. “I’m, um, going to go heat up my lunch and get some more coffee. You need a refill?”

Colby looked at me with a knowing smile, but then she said, “Could you grab me a Monster out of the fridge?”

“Those things are going to kill you, you know.”

“Says the guy mainlining Five Hours like they’re going out of style.” She rolled her eyes. “Just get me a damn Monster.”

I eyed her.

She huffed. “Get me a damn Monster, MA1.”

“That’s more like it.” I chuckled and headed for the door. “Be right back.”

“’kay.”

I left the guard shack and went into the other building. When I came back, I gave her the can of Monster, then sat down with my food. The instant I opened up the container from last night, my stomach started grumbling.

Colby inhaled deeply through her nose. “Is that… Is that Olive Garden?”

I chuckled as I sat down at the other desk. “You can identify Olive Garden by the smell?”

“Uh, yeah? When the hell did you go?”

“Tristan was getting stir crazy last night.”