Bo (5 page)

“Are you okay?”

Veronica.

I reached for a bottle of water and guzzled it down to the bottom.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She sat beside me, carefully not touching me.

Good move.

I usually came awake with my KA-BAR in hand when this shit happened at home, which was nearly every night. I couldn’t shake the feeling of unknown, unseen threats from my head. At night, they followed me to bed.

“Did I say anything?”
Scream anything?

“Do you usually?” she asked.

“Dunno.” Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I swiped it over my face, gathering the cold sweat. “Haven’t slept with anyone, or bunked with anyone, since I got out.”

“You weren’t talking English.”

Oh, nice to know. I dream in Pashto too. Fucking ace.

I crumpled the water bottle in my fist. “It’s the same one every time.”

“How often?”

“Most nights. But when I’m really on a roll, more than once a night. I’ve stopped trying to go back to sleep.”

“Do you want to think about a prescription? Because that could help.”

I frowned at Veronica. “No. I shouldn’t need one. I should be able to deal with this. It’s not like I’m unique with this shit. Other people survive, other soldiers.”

“You can’t compare yourself to anyone else, Bo.”

“Don’t head-shrink me.”

“After the past two times you’ve been with me, do really think I’d try that?”

“I don’t know.” My voice deepened. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened. I won’t say a word.”

“I’ve never spoken about it, outside of giving reports and debriefings.”

Her hand lightly fell on top of mine and she squeezed.

“I don’t think I can look at you when I’m talking about it.” I swallowed the tough raw feeling in my throat.

“You can close your eyes. You’re safe. I’m here with you.”

I lay down, stretching out, trying not to feel like a man on the torture rack. “Will you keep holding my hand?” I flipped my palm over and curled my fingers around hers.

Her eyebrows arched. “Nice ploy.” She laced her fingers through mine. “I won’t go anywhere.”

“IT WAS LAST MAY. Helmand Province. One of the last efforts to force out the insurgents before the troop withdrawal.”

That day had been endless. Waiting for the green light to move out.

A fleeting smile spread my lips. “I remember Jameson fucking around as usual. Big country boy, we called him Texas. Sometimes he wore his Stetson on top of his helmet just to make us laugh. He was doing a fucking square dance and lip syncing to that pop song . . . what was it? ‘Call Me Maybe’?” I laughed. “Said he’d be the new YouTube star.”

V snickered.

“Then Slade told him he’d have better luck getting his hick ass on Porn Tube.” Slade, my first sergeant. One of the best guys in the world. I wouldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for him. “Anyway. We got the go to head out. Outside the Green Zone—as if there was any such thing in Helmand. Should’ve been called Hell Land.”

Behind my closed eyelids, I saw non-bullet-proof Nasir. That kid. He should’ve been back at home working in an office. “We had a new leatherneck with us that op. A PowerPoint ranger, he was practically fresh out of Boot. Shouldn’t have even been out from behind a desk but too many troops had been shipped home already. He was crapping his BDUs, but I told him”—my voice stuck like dry dirt in my throat—“told him no one bites it their first time out.

“Goddamn farmland and villages. Just as dangerous as cities. There’d been a report of new Taliban activity. We had to root it out.”

Late evening. Would’ve been a pretty night too—sometimes the sky was so dark blue, the stars so bright. “Insurgents. Murder holes cut into mud huts. Mortars. Happened so fast. One minute no activity, all clear, and the next second fire coming from all directions. And the shouting. Everything gets faster but time stops. Running. Shooting. Ducking. Trying to keep my men alive. Stay on target. No falling back.”

I jolted suddenly upright, yanking my hand from V’s. “Not that there was any fallback option. Surrounded. They had us. Then—” my eyes rolling shut, I shook my head. “Right next to me, right fucking next to me, Nasir was shot!” I opened bleak eyes, staring at Veronica but seeing
him
drop to the ground at my feet, instantly dead.

“They captured us. Rounded us up like animals. Transported us even farther away from camp.” I pressed my knuckles to my mouth. “I can’t tell you what happened next. I can’t. I can’t.”

The brutal torture. Days when no help arrived. Starvation. Thirst. Forced to drink your own piss, if you had enough liquid left in your bladder to make urine. When they got tired of the one-on-one they paired us up to make us watch our friends, our teammates, worked over, flayed open in the hot sun, open wounds rubbed with salt just to make them scream awake so a new brand of hell could be delivered to them.

To me.

“You were held and tortured.” Veronica’s voice sounded far away.

I nodded.

“For how long?”

“Ten days.” I rocked forward until I crouched on my heels. “In the end everyone was dead except me, Slade, and Texas. Then they killed Texas too. The day before we were rescued.” That dark pain, the uselessness of it all, welled up. “Everyday I think it should’ve been me.”

“How can you blame yourself?” V’s hair flared around her shoulders as she whipped her head toward me.

“Good men died! Fathers, sons, husbands . . .
good men
. But not me. I don’t deserve this life.”

“Of course you do. You were a leader and a soldier and it was a
war
.”

“I visited Texas’s family when I returned stateside. They gave me a hero’s welcome.” I turned my head away, looking out over the far-reaching ocean. “I’ve never been more ashamed, felt more useless, and his mother and father acted like I was something special when I’m not.
I’m not
. They cried when I gave them his dog tags, and I couldn’t tell them it would be okay, because their son died instead of me.” Bending my head to my knees, I whispered, “They thanked me for my service and for looking out for their son even though I let him die.”

“Oh, Bo.” Veronica scooted over and ran her arms around me. “Don’t you understand? You gave them part of their son back. You cared so much you wanted to lay him to rest properly. Do you think a bad man would do that? A worthless man?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know.”

We sat together, the late afternoon sun slanting from a low angle, shimmering like glass across the water.

“I though I’d be a thirty-year man in the Corps, but I couldn’t hack it after that last time. My end of service came up, and I got out.” My throat bobbed as I swallowed. “I was too weak.”

“Weak?” She took my face between her hands and shifted me around to her. “It takes a strong man to realize his limits. It takes a
damn
strong man to walk away from something he’d dreamed would be his life when he figured out it just wasn’t right anymore.”

Her words lifted some of the weight from my shoulders.

I reclined on my side, and she followed suit, several discernible inches between our bodies. “Now I just play with knives for fun.”

“I noticed that.”

“I do have other dreams though,” I mentioned.

“I heard about that.” Her smile widened. “Dreams plural?”

“Oh yeah. About you.” My fingertip lazily coiled on the blanket between us, drawing her gaze. “Hot dreams. I wake up sweating and hard.”

“You’re my patient.” Her voice lowered to that breathy quality of a woman who was interested.

“Yeah. You keep saying that.” I moved a little bit closer, not touching her but raising the heat beating off both our bodies. “Doesn’t feel like it when you’re like this with me.”

She reclined on the blanket as I crawled over her.

“So, tell me, Veronica . . .” I lowered down, almost closing the space between us.

“Oh, here we go again.” She moaned dramatically, her smile still shining.

“Are you as hungry as I am because I feel like I’m starving to death.” Pushing off the blanket, I held my hand down to her.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” I helped her to her feet. “Let’s go grab some grub, Doc.”

We found a little mom and pop restaurant on one of the many seaside inlets and dined on succulent calabash seafood that was a specialty of the area. The conversation remained light. We didn’t let the discussion fall into the dangerous territory of me being all fucked in the head or me wanting to fuck
her
all over a bed. Any bed. Maybe a table.

We might not have mentioned the attraction but I sure as hell felt it.

The woman didn’t do dainty or delicate, not in the way she approached me or my moods, or even something as simple as sitting down to enjoy a meal of excellent food.

She could definitely give me a run for my money.

By the time I stopped outside her house and helped her off the motorcycle, I was rip-roaring hard in my jeans once again.

Unbelievable
. Anyone would think I was the new poster boy for Cialis.

I held her elbow and walked her up the steps to her front door. Taking her key, I unlocked the door, but before I opened it, I spun her to face me, crowding her against it.

Bracketing my hands on either side of her head, I leaned down until her lips were a mere brush away from mine.

She placed her hands on my shoulders. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Jesus, Veronica. I need you. I just want to kiss you.” My breath chopped in and out of my chest and my face was probably torn up with lust.

“No.” Dropping her hands away, she stared up at me.

“Why won’t you just give me a shot?”

“Besides the reasons you already know, you are not ready for me or any other woman!”

“I beg to differ. My cock’s so hard right now I’m definitely ready for a woman.” I stared down at her. “But I guess I’ll just go find someone else to fuck.”

I stepped off as hurt slammed across her features before she quickly contained it. I felt immediately sorry but
goddamn
. So what if I wasn’t all the way ready?

I was ready for her.

Veronica turned the doorknob and walked inside. “Why don’t you just do that then?”

Door. Closed in my face and locked in place just like that.

So it was official. I was a confirmed bastard.

I didn’t go in search of a stray woman to bed for the night. I’d only be thinking about Veronica if I did.

Talk about unhealthy.

Further confirmation of my undisputed assholishness came when I tried to make an appointment with Veronica the next day.

“Doctor Hartley has referred your case to a colleague who specializes in war trauma,” her receptionist informed me.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Do you have a pen and paper, Captain Maverick, so you can write this down?”

I stared at the phone clutched in my hand for a moment before placing it back at my ear. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”

I didn’t need a pen and paper. My brain almost always worked on hyperdrive, so used to being in situations requiring constant vigilance. Just another reason why
transitioning
to civilian life was so fucking hard.

I memorized the phone digits, listening as the receptionist said, “Doctor Cartwright is expecting your call, Captain Maverick.”

The final realization set in. Asshole? No. I’d been nothing short of Major Dickhead to Veronica. She’d been right of course. I wasn’t relationship ready, and I didn’t just want to stick my dick in it anymore.

Now I’d lost any sort of contact with the one woman I’d decided I wanted to try long-term with.

****

No sooner had I walked into Retribution a few nights later than Tail called out, “
Sooo
, whazzup with the doc?”

That shit was only funny when I said it, and it definitely wasn’t funny at all anymore.

Kinkaid slid a beer toward me. “Why don’t you just carve him up?”

“I would, but I’m strictly not allowed to kill now that I’m out of the Marines.” I glared at Tail over the lip of my beer bottle. “Bummer though.”

Tucker ambled over, resting an elbow on the bar. “Pay no never mind to him, or any of them, in fact. They all got their own crap to deal with, or did. Least your pain was caused by doing something honorable for your country.”

The old man with the rotund stomach and wise words immediately earned my respect.

He kicked back a shot of tequila and wiped two fingers across his twisty curly mustache. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with asking for help, either.”

I hadn’t asked for help so much as had it shoved in my face. And instead of accepting said help from Veronica, I’d tried to help myself to her.

I grunted at Tuck then groaned when Hunter plopped down next to me. Kinkaid and Grandfather MC made themselves scarce.

“So about Doc Ronnie?” Hunter asked, snaking a hand across the bar to snag an expensive bottle of single malt kept on hand only for him.

“Not talkin’ about it. Again.”

“That good, huh?”

Hunter wasn’t like the other MC brothers. He’d been in much deeper shit than me, I was sure of it. His unique background corresponded to mine so he understood all about the deep well of crapola I was trying to pull myself out of.

We’d survived a couple warzone scrapes together, but whereas he’d had enough time to get copacetic, I still hovered somewhere near the edge of Shitville on a daily basis.

Things had changed for the man, all in the positive column. Just last month he and JB had officially tied the knot. A big white wedding/black leather affair to culminate the
spiritual
wedding that had been conducted pre-Christmas in the clubhouse.

“Veronica pawned me off on another doc.” I tapped a finger against the neck of my beer bottle.

Hunter whistled low but made no comment.

We drank in silence for a bit. I faked interest inventorying all the booze bottles behind the bar, Hunter’s gaze roamed between the windows, the doors, and the back hallway.

“Still cutting it close.” Hunter nodded at me eventually, those topaz eyes as knowing as ever.

The man had been called Ghost, but that was because he could disappear in an instant. Not because he wasn’t all there in the head, and you fucking knew he was taking a deeper look inside
your
head all the time.

That shit used to make me uncomfortable around him, and tonight
he
was cutting it close.

“You talking about my life choices or the hair?” I rubbed a hand over my military cut.

I’d tried to grow that shit out. Tried to cultivate a beard, too. Just because this was my body, and my will once more. Couldn’t do it. The Marines were far too deeply ingrained in me. So much so I woke up in a puddle of sweat, dreaming of men dying, my soldiers crying when the last hope had been snuffed out.