Page 38 of Protecting Olivia

“Because hearing you say cock makes me want to fuck you, and we have things to talk about first.”

He wanted to fuck me? I didn’t think he even liked me. Not that that always mattered for a guy, but I figured it did for Leo.

“First, I’m a man, not a boy. I don’t need to test you, nor would I ever. I showered with you because the second I met you I felt a protectiveness I have never felt wash over me. Not with my sister and not with my ma. Which scared me shitless. I’m an Italian American, and we are notorious for being mama’s boys. I love my ma. That brings me to why I was silent. I was trying my hardest not to get close to you. I thought it was better if I kept my distance because I have an irrational draw to you. And it’s not only physical. Though, I won’t lie that is part of it. When I buckled your seatbelt in Maryland and your nipples puckered when my arm brushed against you, I wanted to lay you out on the hood of my truck and take you right then and there. What scares me is the emotional attachment I feel. I’ve dated women for months and not felt an ounce for them what I feel for you, a woman I know very little about. For a man like me, that’s enough to make me crazy.” Sweet baby Jesus he felt the same way I did. Only he wasn’t smiling anymore. I felt a but coming. “There is one more reason I kept my distance. You’re twenty-five and still wet behind the ears. I’ve been places and done bad things – I still do them. I’m fucked up, I have enough boxes nailed up tight to fill a cargo ship. And I don’t do slow. I have one speed when I want something: Mach one and full steam ahead. That’s who I am, and there’s no use pretending I’m not.”

I didn’t appreciate the wet behind the ears statement, but I could work with all the rest.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Thirty-two.”

“How many siblings?”

Leo smiled catching on to what I was doing.

“Marco, he’s a cop; Luca, he works in IT; and Arabella.”

“I’m an only child. Er…I think. How many tours did you do?”

His smile faded. Now we were getting into personal territory. I waited a few seconds and when he still hadn’t answered when I decided to give him some of my truths.

“I graduated the University of Maryland at twenty-one. I was a good, straight-laced student. I started Georgetown Law studying constitutional law. I hated every minute of it. I thought I was doing what was expected of me. Following in my mother’s footsteps, making her proud.” I blew out a breath and prepared myself for his judgment. “I lost my virginity while at UM, I was twenty-one. It was with a frat boy. I just wanted to cash in my V-card. I wasn’t forced, and it wasn’t unpleasant, though it wasn’t satisfying either. It was merely, okay. I had no real want to have sex again, so I didn’t, until about nine months ago. I woke up one day and realized how much I hated my life. After that thought, I felt like a guilty asshole. I’d graduated from a top university, and it was paid for. I was in law school, again it was being paid for. I had a nice apartment, all paid for. Yet, I hated every part of it.

“I started going out more and studying less. My grades slipped, and when they did, I didn’t care. I only wanted to have fun. I had sex with more guys than I can remember. Most of them drunken one-night stands. About three months before I was taken, I woke up in a stranger’s bed and was disgusted with myself that I didn’t know his name. I stopped sleeping around but didn’t stop partying. The night I was taken, I was at a club drunk. A man was flirting with me at the bar, bought me a drink. After I drank it, I started to feel sick. I went to the bathroom, and the last thing I remembered was him catching me before I passed out. Me being kidnapped? That was my fault. I was alone and drunk. I’ll have to live with the knowledge that my stupidity almost got me killed.”

“I went through BUD/s when I was eighteen. After graduation, I was assigned to Group ONE Team Three in Coronado. After I finished that six-year enlistment contract, I reenlisted and transferred to Group TWO Team Eight. I finished my career with the Eightballers. I’ve been on more tours than I want to remember. I decided not to reenlist when my second contract came up because my second to last tour I had to kill three ten-year-old kids. After that, I was done. Having to put a bullet in a kid’s forehead fundamentally changes a man. And the change was not that I felt remorse over having to kill a child, it was because I had none. Pulling the trigger that time felt no different than any other time. That’s when I knew I was done.”

“What was BUD/s like?”

I had watched the documentaries on cable, even had met a few SEALs while visiting my mom or Mr. Anderson at the White House. However, I had never actually known one.

“Unexplainable. Every day the instructors beat you down physically and mentally to see how far you can go before you ring out. And every time the bell is rung signaling another man has quit makes your ass pucker thinking you’re next. And anyone who tells you differently is either full of shit or wasn’t really there. There is not a man who has completed Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL school that didn’t at one-point question why he was there and ringing the bell for the beer the instructor promised. That is the point of mentally beating you down, to see if you’ll break. When every single part of you hurts and you don’t think you can push on, what then? The movies and TV shows will tell you that SEALs are the physically strongest men in the military. That’s good drama but not true. My height and weight hindered me. It was the shorter, lean guys who had less trouble on the run and swim quals. SEALs are mentally tough. We are trained to think around a problem. We don’t shove a square peg in a round hole with brute strength we figure out, on the fly, how to make our peg round.”

I had never thought about the mental aspect of being a SEAL. The movies show them all as supermen, with super-human abilities. None of them mention that they are really MacGyver’s on steroids.

“Do you miss being a SEAL?”

“I am a SEAL. There is no such thing as an ex-SEAL. Do I miss active duty? No. I think I do more good now than I ever did while enlisted.”

“When you learn to trust me, will you ever talk to me about your cargo ship of boxes?” That was the question that was weighing on my mind.

We had both admitted we were attracted to each other. I wasn’t naive enough to think we’d get married or anything, but I was interested in seeing where this could go, at whatever speed he wanted to go. However, I knew myself well enough to know I could never be with someone that shut me out of the important parts of their life.

“I do trust you, but probably not. Some things are better left put away. You know more about me than any woman I have ever been with. Hell, my brothers don’t even know the story about why I left the Navy.”

“I asked if you would talk to me about your boxes, not let me help you unpack them. Those boxes are yours. If you need to keep them stacked in the corner, I’ll make room in my closet. What I don’t want is to have to navigate around them. Without knowing where they are, I will inadvertently knock one over. I get why you keep things locked up. I won’t push the issue.”

As the seconds ticked on, my heart sank. I thought I’d pushed too far and lost him. As much as I wanted to get to know Leo better, to use his words, this was non-negotiable for me.

“Okay, tesorino. But on my time,” he conceded.

He agreed. I couldn’t believe he actually said okay. My heart pounded in my chest and butterflies fluttered in my belly.

What now?

Chapter Fifteen

Leo