I handed her the small med kit that Hunter had given me so I could replace my bandages. I watched as she bit her lip with a small smile and inwardly groaned. I was going to have to kick her out. She had that look like she was going to take care of me and make sure that I was healing properly, which was ironic since she was the one that injured me.
“Lay back,” she grinned, pushing lightly on my shoulder. I did as she asked, mostly so I could get this shit over with. I just wanted her gone so I could go to sleep. She quickly pulled off the bandage and checked me over, then replaced it with a new one.
I sat up and grinned at her. “Thanks, baby.” I got up and pulled her to her feet, kissing her hard. “Thanks for the orgasm. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Her face turned first to confusion and then anger. Shit.
“Thanks for the orgasm?” She stepped back, scoffing at me as she shook her head. “I can’t believe you.”
“Hey, you came to my door.”
“Because you invited me.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it wasn’t an invitation for marriage.”
“I wasn’t asking for that, asshole.”
“Then what were you expecting?”
“How about something more than a thank you and you’re excused?”
I sighed, irritated that I had chosen a woman yet again that expected more. I just wasn’t equipped to deal with women. After getting kicked out of the military, there wasn’t a single fucking woman on this earth that I trusted, and that included the sexy woman in front of me. Especially not after she threw me through a fucking window.
“Look, it was fun, but it’s just sex. It’s not like I took you out on a fucking date or anything.”
“God, I had no idea you were such an asshole.”
“Hey, let’s not forget how all this shit started. It wasn’t exactly romantic.”
“You came into my room!”
“You didn’t say no,” I reminded her, feeling my temper flare. There was no fucking way I was going down this road with her. “Look, we’ll just go our separate ways. I don’t need this bullshit. If you feel so terrible about all this, I’ll just stay out of your way.”
“Fine by me,” she snarled, stomping to my door and slamming it closed behind her. I shrugged it off and laid down on my bed. I had no time for women that wanted to be dramatic. I could have understood her feeling angry if I had taken her out a few times and then kicked her ass to the curb, but that wasn’t what happened. If she was expecting me to feel all gooey and shit with her, she was looking in the wrong fucking direction.
I still felt the burn of betrayal, even three years later. Kiera and I had been serving together for nearly two years when she accused me of rape. I still didn’t understand it. I didn’t have any answers from her, any idea of why she would accuse me. I hadn’t even seen her that night, not after chow. I had made a call to my parents around the time that she had accusing me of raping her. But the phone records didn’t prove that, and I couldn’t figure out how the fuck an entire phone call could disappear.
I could still see her up on the stand, refusing to look at me as tears ran down her face. She fucking believed that I had raped her. But she knew me, and I couldn’t figure out how she had gone from trusting me with her life to thinking I could do something so terrible to her. Maybe it was someone that looked like me or had the same timber to their voice. Either way, she was adamant that it had been me. Of course, the court couldn’t prove it was me. There was no semen, no evidence whatsoever that it had been me. Still, the military just couldn’t let it go, they couldn’t let it get out that a woman had been assaulted and they weren’t convicting anyone. So, they did the next best thing for them and had me dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming a marine.
I still felt the pain deep inside. I wasn’t sure what was worse, being accused of rape, knowing that it came from someone that was supposed to trust me with her life, or being kicked out of the military. I had given my life to the military. I had been wounded several times, almost dying once for my country when I stepped in front of a bullet for one of my brothers. I had gotten lucky, and once I recovered, I returned to my unit to continue serving, because I felt that deeply in what I was doing. I would have died for my country, but now I was perceived as a stain on the military. I was nothing to them. All of the men and women I served with were shocked at first, but once my sentence was handed down, I was nothing to them. I tried to contact them. I wanted to explain and tell my side of things, but no one wanted to hear it. They didn’t believe me.
So, I spent the next few years trying to find work. Most places looked at me like I was a piece of shit. As soon as they ran a background check on me, I knew I was fucked. A dishonorable discharge was as good as a felony conviction to a civilian. I had gotten a few minimum wage jobs, but nothing that I could live off of. And the employers always treated me like shit. They would eventually find a reason to fire me, citing some bullshit about me being late
