Ask Me Again

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Synopsis

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by E. J. Noyes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bella Books

  Synopsis

  What do you do when the source of all your problems is the one thing you don’t know how to fix?

  With Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell nothing more than an unpleasant memory, US Army surgeon Sabine Fleischer is ready to move on with her life—if she can just figure out how to move past her PTSD. Fresh from her first deployment since surviving a vehicle attack in Afghanistan, Sabine is finding the things she’s tried so hard to push aside aren’t as easy to ignore as she’d hoped.

  Sabine’s girlfriend and ex-commanding officer Rebecca Keane is happily settled into her new job running a trauma department in a civilian hospital. Life with Sabine is everything Rebecca ever wanted. But when Sabine’s PTSD reappears worse than before, she’s left struggling with her own guilt.

  There’s no doubt that both Sabine and Rebecca want the same thing. But how do you help the most important person in your life when they don’t want to need your help?

  Copyright © 2018 by E. J. Noyes

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  First Bella Books Edition 2018

  eBook released 2018

  Editor: Cath Walker

  Cover Designer: Sandy Knowles

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-612-8

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other Bella Books by E. J. Noyes

  Ask, Tell

  Gold

  Turbulence

  Acknowledgments

  Whenever I try to write acknowledgements, it gets harder to think of new and exciting ways to say thank you to everyone who’s helped me. So…

  Thank you (sticking with old faithful here) to BFF Kate who has some great ideas. Even if I don’t agree with them. Come on, read THAT BOOK for me.

  Christina, I owe you big time for curing my raging case of firstdraftitis. Thanks so much for your patience and ideas throughout the early stages and then beyond. I can’t express how helpful our “antagonist” chat was when I was totally stuck and wanted to throw the whole thing out the window.

  Rebecca—if not for you, this would still be called “Sequel Dealio.” Lifesaver.

  Other Kate, you have the best leaning shoulder and beta eyes. I’m sorry I complained so much during this one. Writing is hard.

  Other Christina—you’re a great Joe go-between. Thanks for your D.C. knowledge, though I still don’t understand why it’s not The Metro. I owe you a round of 11 p.m. beer and nachos.

  Andy, I’m so grateful for your thoughtful insights, for seeing those hidden things I couldn’t, and nudging me to do the thing I needed to. Okay, I guess it’s technically an epilogue…kinda…grumble.

  Massive thanks to the wonderful crew at Bella who work so hard to make things so easy for me.

  Cath, you rock! But since we met, I feel like I spend all my editing time whispering to myself, “Dammit, but it made sense to me!” I promise I’ll try harder next time. Or try to try harder.

  And last but not least (I have to say that even though she probably won’t read this for a few years) masses of gratitude to my wife, Phoebe, who has taken to my word hobby with such delight. Thanks for not making me feel like an idiot when I text you to double-check that an adjective means it’s a describing word. Darling, you turn all my dark places to light.

  About the Author

  E. J. Noyes lives in Australia with her wife, a needy cat, aloof chickens and too many horses. When not indulging in her love of reading and writing, E. J. argues with her hair and pretends to be good at clay target shooting.

  Chapter One

  Sabine

  The closer the Army C-17 flew me back toward the States, the greater my unease became until I wasn’t sure if the sickening dread was true anxiety, or anxiety about having anxiety. Who the hell gets anxiety about going home from deployment? Apparently me, Queen of the Ridiculous.

  I nudged Mitch with my knee. “Scoot out of the way.”

  He huffed another exasperated sigh, dog-eared his page and unbuckled so he could stand up to let me pass. Captain Mitchell Boyd’s Texan drawl became even more drawn out as he tried—and failed—to sound like he didn’t want to throttle me for being so annoying. “Sabine, if I’da known you were gonna be up’n down this much, I wouldn’ta let you have a middle seat. Take some goddamned Imodium.”

  “I already told you twice, I do not have diarrhea!” Midway through my loudly indignant rebuttal, the cabin went silent, leaving that last word to echo through the interior of the massive cargo plane. Perfect. The awkward silence was quickly covered by the sound of laughter and merciless teasing all around.

  I raised a hand to acknowledge my socially inept outburst, then turned back to my best friend. “But you know what, Mitch? Your bitching would give anyone the shits.” I squeezed past him for the seventh time in the last four hours.

  As I picked my way around prone bodies sleeping on all available floor space, I passed my good friend and deployment roommate, Captain Amy Peterson, who slept sprawled across the three seats she’d managed to wrangle. Lucky bitch. Even in this inelegant pose she somehow looked graceful, her honey-blond hair still contained in a perfect bun and beautiful features serene with sleep.

  It was an illusion.

  The moment her eyes opened, with her mouth following milliseconds after, the Sleeping-Beauty spell would break. Housed in that body, which wouldn’t look out of place in a Parisian couture house, was one hell of a surgeon with a filthy mind and filthier mouth. Amy came up with new and creative versions of expletives even I couldn’t imagine, chewed with her mouth open—usually because she was talking—and voiced her
opinions loudly and without a single care as to who might be offended. I adored her and in all honesty, probably wouldn’t have survived the last few deployments without her, and Mitch.

  Of course the bathroom was occupied. I fidgeted outside the door, wiggling my toes inside my boots, and glanced down the back to see if the second bathroom was free. Nope. Someone waiting outside that one too. A lifetime later, the door opened and I rushed into the tiny closet of a lavatory and yanked my pants down. Nothing but a trickle, just like the time before and the time before that. Get a grip, you idiot.

  I leaned over to rest my forehead against the wall. What the hell was wrong with me? This wasn’t my first post-deployment rodeo, but instead of turning excited cartwheels, I felt like I was heading to the gallows. I’d been waiting for this moment for over ten months and now that it was here, I felt suddenly cast adrift.

  My extended pity-party was cut short by tapping on the door, and a mumbled, “Kinda desperate to pee here, Fleischer…”

  I finished up, flashed an apologetic smile at Major John Auger, another Med Corps surgeon in our team, who was jiggling outside the bathroom and made my way back to my seat. I had to squeeze around Amy’s feet which hung over the edge of the seats, boots still on but laces loosened and dangling and begging for mischief. It lacked flair but was too easy to pass up.

  There was sniggering behind me as I carefully knotted the laces of her left and right boots together, my eyes on her face the whole time to make sure she was still sleeping. She was, snoring as usual. After rooming with her for two and a half deployments, I found it hard to sleep if she wasn’t in the small, plywood-lined room with me. Her glottal vibrations were a gross kind of white noise, helping to block some of the persistent, unpleasant sounds of living at a Forward Operating Base hospital in Afghanistan.

  I shimmied past Mitch and buckled myself in, yanking the belt so tightly it hurt. He glanced at me. “You done? We’ll be landin’ in an hour, think you can hold it ’til we’re on the ground?”

  On the ground. An invisible hand grabbed the back of my neck, squeezing already tense muscle until it felt like it was burning. In six hours or so I would see Bec, in person, for the first time in over ten months. Three hundred and fourteen days since I’d touched my girlfriend. Kissed her. Made love to her. Felt her talented, knowing fingers—uh, really not the time or place, Sabine.

  I closed my eyes and conjured up the mental picture that I’d kept coming back to whenever I thought of her. The PG-rated one, that is. The night before I left, Bec had leaned on the kitchen counter, watching me use my laptop at the table. Blond hair loose around her shoulders, begging to be twirled around my fingers. Those ocean-blue eyes creased with laughter. Dimples a mile deep.

  That memory triggered the one of what came after—the very much not PG version—where I ducked around the counter into the kitchen, then without a word pulled Bec’s shirt over her head. The memory bloomed, replaying whispered pleas and loud moans as she lay spread for me on the kitchen floor, and then segued into the hours in bed where we made love until we were so satiated we could do nothing more than just exist together.

  You have the most inappropriate mental timing, Sabine.

  I forced my thoughts back to those more appropriate in public. Like…family. Judging by the nonstop emails my younger sister, Jana, was over-the-top excited about my coming home. Mom’s constant emails in the last month had laid out detailed plans for the five days Bec and I would spend at my parents’ house in Ohio once I’d completed my post-deployment processing. Even Dad, hater of electronic communication, had added a few lines at the bottom of Mom’s latest message.

  Everyone would be excited. So why wasn’t I? Why was I so afraid? More to the point, what was I so afraid of? The irrational panic bubbled up again, and the windowless, cavernous space was suddenly so claustrophobic I wanted to tear off my seatbelt and sprint away. But there was nowhere to go.

  My nervous bladder sent another false, yet insistent message. This was getting absurd. I loosened my seatbelt and leaned down to where my backpack was stuffed under the seat in front, with Mitch’s boot covering it. “Move your hoof.”

  He obliged and I rummaged in the bag, keeping it half-closed to hide what I was doing as I tapped five milligrams of diazepam from the bottle. Ever nosy, Mitch asked, “What’s that?”

  The lie fell off my tongue. “Midol.” I palmed the Valium into my mouth and swallowed it with a gulp of disgustingly warm bottled water. “…Mom.”

  “Mhmm, sure.” Mitch lowered his voice. “Sabs? You’re sweatin’.”

  “Am I? That’s because it’s fucking hot in here.”

  “You’re also shakin’, angel.”

  “Well, it’s…cold too.” Nice comeback, Sabine. I wrapped my arms around my waist and faced forward again.

  “How’s your stomach?” His concern was part friend, part physician and part someone who’s greatest source of panic had always been someone puking near him.

  I wasn’t going to puke. Not yet anyway. “It’s fine,” I said forcefully.

  “Sabs, I—”

  “Please just let it go.” I spared him a pleading look. “I said it’s fine, Mitch, honestly.”

  His mouth pressed into a thin line but he nodded and did as I’d asked. A few moments later, a large rough-skinned hand came to rest on my knee. I grabbed it, squeezed firmly and kept holding on. We’d been best friends for almost twenty years and I felt awful for cutting him off. For lying. For shutting him out this time.

  But this wasn’t the place to discuss my stupid anxiety. And even if it was the place, what was the point? Mitch knew what was wrong, especially after dealing with me and my PTSD that had recurred within the first month back in Afghanistan. Recurred was a stupid term, implying it’d actually gone away in the first place. But…the way I was feeling now had nothing to do with PTSD. Did it? Maybe it really was just the deployment.

  I closed my eyes and willed myself to leave the front behind, to forget about all the soul-draining surgeries and the men and women I couldn’t save or put back into one whole body again. I begged myself to shed the constant undercurrent of fear I’d had ever since leaving Bec at home. If I couldn’t set it all aside, it would slowly eat at me until I was nothing more than a hollowed-out shell. Of course, knowing that’s what I needed to do and actually being able to do it were two different things.

  The plane ride home should have been a transformation of sorts, shifting my emotions and worries into a hidden place so I could interact with regular people again. Even as I tried to reason with myself, I wondered if I even needed to force myself to be normal. Did I really need to draw a curtain over my feelings? Bec wouldn’t expect that of me, and she certainly didn’t need me to make some magical metamorphosis from Deployment Sabine to Back-Home Sabine.

  She knew as well as anyone what it was like over there, what it was like to come back. My girlfriend, Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Keane, had been an Army surgeon for over eighteen years. She’d even been my boss during her final three years before she’d retired after The Incident.

  The Incident.

  I hated the way we all called it that, but I suppose “The time Sabine was in a Humvee which was hit by an explosive device that literally cut a man in half, then she and the driver also got shot and it really sucked” was a bit of a mouthful.

  Bec knew how I’d been affected. But I so did not want our reunion to be full of How are you? and Are you okay? and that unspoken, underlying question that now seemed to overshadow everything. How is your PTSD?

  Over two years later and post-traumatic stress disorder is still present for duty, Colonel Keane! I mean…honey.

  I scrubbed both hands over my face, trying to dispel the feeling that had settled under my skin. Instead of the borderline arousal I’d felt five minutes earlier when thinking about making love with my girlfriend, my body now felt strange, almost weightless, as though it wasn’t really mine. An unpleasant sensation, but unfortunately not a new one. It had r
ecurred intermittently since The Incident. Staring at my hands, touching my forearms, tapping my molars together usually helped bring me back to myself, but the undercurrent could linger for hours. Sometimes days. How was I supposed to be Bec’s life partner and equal if I didn’t even feel like myself?

  For the rest of the flight I curled up with my eyes closed, leaning on Mitch’s shoulder while he read. The movement of his arm as he turned pages gave me something to focus on and I found myself counting the seconds between each flip. Mitch was a slow reader and after twenty-four pages lasting one thousand, nine hundred and thirty-eight seconds, I felt the Valium kick in.

  My panic was blunted at the edges, making the anxiety at least tolerable. Its gnawing was like rats nibbling my bones, but I no longer felt like I was about to run screaming down the aisle of the plane. Good enough.

  When we began our descent, the sounds of people moving rose to match the drone of the engines. I opened my eyes again, blinking away the sudden brightness. Mitch squeezed my hand then let it go. “You good?”

  “Mhmm.” I straightened up and stretched as best I could with two tall men either side of me and the row of seats in front brushing my shins.

  Mitch carefully folded down the edge of his page and set the book in his backpack. “Who’s meetin’ you? Jana or Rebecca?”

  Sister or girlfriend. Neither. I massaged the back of my neck. “I haven’t told them. They still think we’re back the day after tomorrow.”

  Mitch spluttered and pushed out a strangled, “The fuck?”

  I raised my hands to forestall his rant. “I thought it’d be kinda cool. You know, be settled on the couch with dinner on the stove when Bec comes home from work tonight.”

  Mitch had been like a puppy the whole time we’d been prepping to come home, and the fact I wasn’t doing backflips was foreign to him. He harrumphed. “She’s gonna be madder’n a wet hen when she comes home and sees you already there without tellin’ her we were coming back.”