No Pain: Book 1

Chapter 26: Star

The water is cool when I step into it. I feel more exposed and more vulnerable than I have ever felt in my life. Najee steps in behind me and gasps.

"That's cold."

"I can't tell." I slip under the water. I swim towards the deep end and stay there. I haven't felt this in so long. I don't deserve to feel like this, I love the water, the way it curls around me completely free of bias. I recognize the feeling of my lungs wanting air but it doesn't hurt, I stay there, suspended in water just one more minute. Najee swims down to meet me after four minutes and forty-two seconds. He drags me to the surface. I can tell in his eyes and the tension in his jaw that he wants to be angry but he also doesn't want to yell.

"I was down there too long." I say feeling light headed.

"Yeah." Najee bites out closing his eyes for a second. I swim backwards to the shallow end until I can reach the ground.

"Star?" Najee finally opens his eyes. I wave at him, he rolls his eyes and swims toward me. He can reach the bottom much faster than I did. He strides toward me. Every inch of his body is a well-toned mass of muscle. He was recruited when he was nine years old. He'd been at the compound for ten years. I guess that would do it.

"Are you looking at me again?" He asks smiling.

"Why? Do you want me to look at you?" I lay on my back and float. His hand closes around my ankle and he pulls me toward him.

"What about this angle?" Najee asks standing over me. I laugh when he flexes.

"What?" Najee asks sounding less confident than I think I've ever heard him.

"Don't do that." I pull my feet back under me, tiptoeing in the water.

"Do what?" Najee's cheeks are red.

"Not be you." I say "if I wanted to hang out with some pec popping steroid I'd hang out with Marco. I'm extremely aware how strong you are." I laugh "the hundreds of sparing sessions; being thrown on the matts and pinned against walls, gives me a very good idea of how strong you are but you don't need to flex to impress me or make me see you in some other light."

"Is that what we're doing?" Najee asks, "hanging out?"

"Yeah, of course?" I say, "what else would it be?" Najee shifts around uncomfortably, maybe he doesn't feel as confident while standing half naked in front of me. Come to think of it he's one of the few guys that keeps his shirt on during training. He sleeps in a shirt and sweats too, even I rarely see any more skin than his face and arms.

"Do you like me, Star?" Najee sounds small, he reaches for my hands "and before you take it the wrong way I mean do you think we fit together?"

"Yeah, of course we do. We always have." I know where he's going with this. I knew what he meant when he first asked but I don't know the answer that he wants.

"Have you ever considered... us?" He asks. My hands are so small in his, I feel especially small next to him.

"Like, a thing?" I ask, "Like Kader and Keller are a thing?"

"No, not like Kader and Keller, like you and me." Najee rolls his eyes because, honestly Kader and Keller are not a traditional couple, they're just a pair. Everyone knows they're together because they're extremely protective of the other. They're always together and when they're not alone together, they spend their time on missions or with Najee and me

"I don't know." I say honestly because I don't know how to talk about this. "We're us, Najee." I say, "we've always been closer to each other than anyone else."

"John said he told you something you might not have reacted well to." Najee rubs circles into the back of my hands with his thumbs.

"The time I almost hit him?" I sigh and tug on my hands but Najee just holds them tighter.

"Yeah... what did you think?" Najee's voice breaks as if the stress of waiting for my answer is causing him physical pain.
"I don't know." I sigh "you were my trainer for the longest time, you protected me. You understand me better than anyone but I...." I shrug and drop my eyes. Najee cups my chin in his hand and lifts my face back up.

"but what?" Najee asks.

"but... but I don't deserve to feel things like that." My throat feels tight, I feel my knees shaking.

"What?" Najee's face contorts into a mask confusion.

"Najee." I swallow hard trying to thin out the saliva in my mouth. "The last people I loved, I killed." I try to pull on my hands but Najee doesn't let them go.

"That wasn't your fault." Najee insists. "You know that and it's different, I'm different, you're different now. When you lose it I can stop you, I can help you control yourself." Najee pulls me closer to him.

I shake my head "No, I've attacked you before too and you needed Kader and Keller to pull me off."

"And I've attacked you before and I still don't know what I did to you." Najee squeezes my hands. "If things were different. If we didn't have the abnormalities that we have. If we weren't part of this team."

"Najee, why does it matter now?" I yell at him ripping my hands out of his. His nails scratch me just slightly. "I'm never going to see you again after all this, why now?"

"Because I thought I'd have you forever." Najee yells back "I thought we'd be on the team forever, go on missions and when we got back we'd go to sleep in the same quarter." Najee grabs my arms and yanks me out of the water "that's how it was supposed to be, if you just did what you were supposed to do, that's how it would have happened."

"I'm not arguing about this." I say firmly "it doesn't matter, Najee."

"It matters to me." Najee says.

"Why?" I demand. Najee looks at me, he's itching to say something

"because..." Najee's mouth is open as if he's trying to force something to come out but he can't quite manage.

"Why." I say again a little more gently.

"Because..." he wants to say it, he wants to tell me but he can't. I wait because when I needed it, he was patient with me. Najee's holding me there, trying to force the words out, conflict in his eyes, tension in his body. Finally, the fight in his eyes settles into resolve and he pulls me against him.

"Because I love you, Star." Najee presses his lips to mine and for the first time in my life, everything in my brain quiets. There's only one thought Najee is kissing me.

Najee's arms circle around me, I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around him. I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm not the leader here.

"Finally." I recognize Kader's voice immediately. Najee breaks the kiss but we're still wrapped around each other when we turn to look at them.

"All you had to do was be quiet for two minutes." Keller punches Kader in the arm. "and let them have their moment." Keller's hands are fisted on her hips as she scolds Kader. Her long black braid swaying with her motions.