DISARM (DISARM Series #1) by June Gray Page B

should know about Henry and me: we never meant to live together.
He and my brother, Jason, met in high school and attended college together. For
as long as I could remember, Jason had always intended on joining the Air
Force—it was kind of a given as my father and grandfather were both
retired pilots. My guess was that Henry hung out with Jason enough that he too
became convinced the military life was for him. So they had gone through ROTC
together and eventually were sworn in to the Air Force, Jason as an Intelligence
officer and Henry as a Security Forces officer. Not surprisingly, they were
both sent to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, and of course, lived together
in an apartment on the south side of the city.
    I was
always the outsider, the third wheel. I was two years younger and was a bit of
a pest, always asking to join them in their adventures. Besides that, I was a girl and had cooties, so I was almost always left behind, rejected and heartbroken.
Very early on, even before his braces came off, I was convinced that Henry and
I would get married. In my Disney years, I pictured him as my Prince Charming.
Then in my rebellious years, he was my imagined bad boy who would whisk me off
in his motorcycle. But they were nothing but the daydreams of a girl who then grew
up to realize that the boy of her dreams was far from perfect. The sobering
reality was that Henry was a flawed guy who oftentimes tiptoed into jerk
territory, as all men are wont to do.
    After
graduating from college, I accepted a web design job in Oklahoma and crashed on
their couch for a few months while I saved up enough money for an apartment.
Henry was not keen on the idea and, in fact, tried his hardest to find me
another place to live. I still remembered coming to the table on Sunday
mornings and finding the newspaper opened to the classifieds with some listings
already highlighted, his not-so-subtle way of telling me to stop cramping his
bachelor pad.
    Henry
inspired me to find a place faster, but then Jason was deployed to Afghanistan
and asked me stay in his room for the six months that he was gone. To save
money, I jumped on the offer.
    Little did
I know that my brother would never come back.
    He was
gathering intel, walking around a Kabul neighborhood talking to the nationals,
when someone started shooting out of nowhere. Jason never even had a chance.
Even now, his death makes no sense to me, and I still hold onto the hope that,
one day, they’ll find him somewhere in the Afghan mountains, roughed up but
still alive.
    It’s a long
shot, but the ability to fool myself is one of my best talents.
    So it was
with a smile that I walked out of my room the next morning, pretending that
nothing happened at Tapwerks the night before. I shuffled to the kitchen in my
flannel pajamas and turned on the coffee maker. Henry came out of his room,
still committed to that sullen persona, and reached for the coffee mugs. I
started frying some eggs and he put the bread in the toaster. When the coffee
was done, he poured and fixed mine the way I like it and took our mugs to the
table. I slid the eggs onto two plates, placed a piece of buttered toast on
each one, and joined him at the table.
    We ate
quietly, hiding in our own thoughts to avoid talking about last night. I wasn’t
sure if it was even worth talking about, if maybe he had just been playing
around to teach my nosy ass a lesson. But my, what a long, hard lesson it was.
    I had to
gulp down coffee when the toast stuck in my throat, chalking my impure thoughts
of Henry down to sex deprivation. I just needed a good lay, that was all.
    The last
time I’d had sex was over a year ago, when my relationship with a guy from work
fell apart a few months after Jason’s death. I hadn’t been able to cope with
the grief and Brian had been inept at offering comfort, so the relationship ended.
Still, even though Brian hadn’t been the best lover, he’d been a step up from
The Rabbit.
    That was
around the time