Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 6

casual sex thing, I've done enough of that." He turned in his seat so that he was looking me directly in the eye. "So no, it's not my decision. I need to hear from you what you want."
    Fuck. My body slumped back in my seat, and I felt like a deflated balloon. As much as I hated to admit it, everything he had just said was true. I had never done a real relationship. I'd never had any reason to. And I hadn't really thought much about us, beyond wanting Chase so bad it hurt. I mean we were best friends and we now admitted we wanted to be with each other, so—? I just expected we were "together" now. Period. I had never termed it in the actual words like "relationship" though. But I guess that's what it was right?
    "You are right Chase, I've never really been in a relationship. The life of a Marine— a gay Marine— isn't exactly conducive to relationships. I get moved around a lot and deployed. And then pile on the fact that I can't exactly be open about who I want to be with. So it's like, why bother?"
    Chase started to remove his hand but I grabbed his wrist in mine this time before he could get far. "But I've also never met anyone before who I wanted to be with, like really be with. So yeah, I don't have experience with relationships. I have no idea what I'm doing, which means I'm probably gonna screw it up. And if you're the one I'm gonna screw it up with, that scares me even more. But I never, ever saw last night as a one-time deal. I expected to wake up in your arms this morning and do it all over again. And then maybe again in the shower. Okay, so now it still sounds like I'm talking about just sex but I'm not, I swear. So yeah, I guess I was expecting more. But I still have to put the ball back in your court. 'Cause I'm willing to try. But like I said, the Marine shit is a lot to deal with, and add in that I'm probably going to fuck up a lot. I won't force any of that on you. If you ran away right now, I wouldn't blame you."
    My breath caught as I waited to hear what his reaction would be. This could be it. I might lose him and our friendship. He pulled his hand from my grasp and unbuckled his seat belt and jumped out of the car, while my heart sunk like a stone.
    And then suddenly my door was thrown open and he was grabbing my face and crushing our lips together, restraining himself from climbing all over me.
    Now it was my turn to ask. "Are you sure?" I whispered.
    "Absolutely. It'll be okay baby. I got you, I got you."
    ****
    I drove back to base that night, my lips still stinging from being very thoroughly kissed before I left. And I couldn't stop smiling from the memory of Chase calling me baby. Christ, maybe I was thirteen again, I felt a little like a giggly schoolgirl. The difference was all of the adult concerns— mostly about being able to keep this a secret— were lying in wait in the back of my mind. But for tonight I chose to ignore them and just be happy.
    ****
    The workweek was a heck of a lot harder to get through, now that I knew what I had waiting at the end of it. That first week after the wedding we texted back and forth like crazy. He had a bad habit of dirty talk that often left me hard and with a bad case of blue balls. I deleted his sexy texts almost immediately after I read them and I changed his name in my phone to just "C," so that if anyone ever happened to see a message from him on my phone, I could say it was a girl. Gotta say, it killed me a little to do that, but I just had to keep reminding myself it was more important to do whatever needed to be done to keep Chase and me safe.
    When that Friday came, I was flying down the road to San Diego, and when I got to Chase's we didn't even make it to the bedroom, we fucked right there in his hallway. In fact we pretty much stayed in the whole weekend, only getting out of bed for food and showers.
    Of course, come Monday my dick was sore, my ass was even more sore, and I was fucking exhausted. I considered it a success to make it through the whole day with only two reprimands from my commanding officer. Of course my CO was not the only person who noticed my depleted state. Kowalski of course, was right on my ass.
    "Wow, Shepherd. You must have had a rough weekend. What kind of hell raisin' were you up to?"
    I gritted my teeth. "A real man never kisses and tells, Kowalski."
    "Holy shit! Do you actually have a girl Shepherd? Alert the presses! Does she know what she's getting herself into?" His look was shrewd.
    "It was just one