Can't Hold Back (2 page)

T
WO
Y
EARS
L
ATER

“Come off the foam roller and take a moment to lie on your back,” Alia told her class.

Four soldiers slid to their yoga mats in the dim studio.

“How does it feel?”

She held her breath, because she wanted so badly for this class to be a success, and now all she could do was cross her fingers and hope that her best had been good enough.

A few sighs and a moan answered her. The tall redheaded former comm officer said, “Like I’m lying in a trench.”

“That’s right,” she teased. “While you were on the roller, I went around and dug trenches for all of you.”

The sensation was an illusion, created because they’d been resting for so long on their backs on the foam roller, letting their shoulder blades sink toward the floor, opening the muscles along their spines. Now that they were on the floor, their brains were sending them the message that the ground was indented.

They’d all started class today with chips on their shoulders. Three of the four had shown up as a favor to Jake, who ran the R&R veterans’ retreat and was Alia’s new, temporary boss. The fourth had come willingly but tried to leave once he discovered that they weren’t going to be using the Reformer machines, which resembled medieval torture devices more than exercise equipment. All of them had grumbled and sulked, and she’d indulged in a moment of worry that maybe this whole thing had been a bad idea.

Then she’d taken a deep breath, cracked her mental knuckles, and bulled through it. She’d jollied and teased them, leading them through stretching and strengthening and breathing exercises, until the starch had gone out of their attitudes, one by one. Big, tough, ripped men; men who’d shot and killed, fought for their survival, their countries, their buddies; men who were scarred, in chronic pain, struggling to learn to move with prostheses—limp as rags on their mats.

Now, finally, she let herself relax and savor her success—and their comfort. None of them showed the slightest sign of wanting to move, ever.

“Rest as long as you want,” she told them. “No one’s coming in for another hour. Raise your hand if you want me to bring a blanket to cover you.”

They all raised their hands, and her smile broadened. She brought them blankets and covered them. And they let her, like they’d accepted her as Mama Bear.

These were not men who frequently let down their guards, not men who slept well at night—or ever. She’d given them something they needed desperately, and,
God,
she loved that.

She heard a tap on the studio’s window and looked up to see Jake.

“I’ll be right outside, guys.”

She went to the door and slipped out. “Hey.”

“You won them over.”

She grinned, pleased with herself. “And you said movement therapy would be a tough sell for guys who got a little light exercise by running up mountains with a hundred pounds on their backs.”

“I stand corrected.”

The admiration was plain in his voice.
Excellent.
Because if she did a good job here during her two-week temporary gig, there was a chance he’d hire her on permanently. And that meant—

That meant not having to go back
there.

At the thought of her old job, the tension crept back into her neck and shoulders.
Sigh.

“So, hey,” Jake said, more serious. “I screwed up. And I need you to not hate me for it.”

Uh-oh.

“I could never hate you,” she hazarded.

The hesitation in her voice made them both laugh, but he quickly got serious. “I’m taking off in an hour, but something’s…come up.”

Jake was headed to the airport to take a five-year-anniversary trip to Hawaii with his wife, Mira, which was why he’d asked Alia to come to R&R for two weeks, to fill in for him during his absence.

“I totally forgot you knew him.”

“Knew
who
?”

“Mira reminded me. That you guys knew each other.”

“Jake, what are you
talking
about?”

She wouldn’t yap that way at just any boss, but Jake was a good friend. They’d been at PT school together, not only study and drinking buddies but also deep admirers of each other’s work and perspective, which was why Jake had called her when he’d needed someone to fill in.

“Nate Riordan’s here.”

All the air went out of her lungs.

“I know it might be weird, since he was with Becca—”

Oh, if only that had been all of it. Nate had indeed dated Becca, and that alone—given that the relationship had ended badly—might have been awkward enough, but Jake didn’t know the half of it. Or she hoped he didn’t.

Jake sighed. Her wariness must have been all over her face.

“He was discharged—medical—a couple months ago and I tried to get him to come then, but he wasn’t having it. He’s been living in an apartment in Portland with his cousin, but his cousin met a woman he’s serious about, so that’s not happening anymore. Basically, all I know is that he had low-level blast injuries, moderate traumatic brain injury, some memory loss and cognitive impairment at first, but big improvements on that front. But it sounds like he also has some mystery pain. He’s been back a couple months and he’s been taking a lot of painkillers, but he quit a few days ago—”

“Cold turkey?”

“Just un-cold-turkey enough not to kill himself, I think,” Jake said. “He’s in pretty bad shape now. Out of the worst of it, but you know what that’s like.”

She did. There was no worse pain than the pain unmasked when an opiate haze lifted.

“Why’d he do that? Quit taking the pills?” She couldn’t judge, without seeing and talking to him, whether quitting painkillers was the right choice for him, but going nearly cold turkey was brutal.

“All he told me is he has something important to do and he needs to be clearheaded. You’ll have to ask him. He wasn’t very forthcoming about anything. He mainly said he needed a place to go, and wanted to know if my offer of him coming here was still open. I said, ‘Hell, yeah.’ And then Mira reminded me about his history with Becca. So, look, if it’s going to be too weird, we can figure something out.”

She did
not
want to tell Jake she couldn’t hack this. He was supposed to be on an airplane in an hour, and she was supposed to be the woman who could handle anything that came up while he was gone. In their phone conversation, when he’d called to ask if he could fill in for her, he’d made it clear that he thought the toughest part of the job was the emotional burden of dealing with psychically and physically injured soldiers. She had to show him she had enough strength and perspective to do this. She couldn’t afford to be high-maintenance now over some guy her sister had dated. Even if—

Even if he wasn’t just
some guy her sister had dated.

But for all intents and purposes, that was all he’d been. Right?

And she did
not
want to go back to Elijah Bay Rehab.

The day before Jake’s call had been a pretty typical day at Elijah Bay. Her last appointment of the day had been with seventy-two-year-old Mrs. Stenno, who’d arrived buoyant. She’d washed her own hair that morning for the first time since the stroke, and had gotten it squeaky clean. Her daughter had declared her capable of taking care of herself and was planning to move back home.

I get my house back
, she’d said giddily.

Alia lived for those moments.

But then, after Alia ushered Mrs. Stenno out, her supervisor had called her into his office, in his ironside battleship voice.

“This isn’t a yoga retreat, Alia. Chris Price says you were using some kind of tapping technique on Mrs. Stenno? And when I had to take Elisabeth Toole for you last week, she wanted to do ‘the visualization stuff I do with Alia.’ You’re wasting patient time. You’re wasting
my
time.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m getting results.”

She had proof, and not just anecdotal proof. She had better recovery times than the other PTs. She had better recovery times than her supervisor.

And that, she knew, was at the heart of this.

“I’ve told you before how I feel about the earthy-crunchy-granola stuff.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d confronted her, and her pent-up frustration threatened to break from its bonds. She made herself take a few deep breaths. “Tapping and visualization aren’t earthy-crunchy. They’re pain-management best practices.”

“You don’t decide what’s best practices at Elijah Bay,” her supervisor said darkly. “
I
decide what’s best practices at Elijah Bay. And if I hear anything else about this kind of bullshit, you can find yourself another job.”

She made up her mind then that she would. But it had to be a certain
kind
of opportunity. Because physical therapy wasn’t just a job for her. Relieving other people’s pain, helping them to live full, active lives despite setbacks or permanent disabilities—it was her passion. And she wanted to do it in a setting where she could really make a difference.

That was why she’d been so thrilled the next day when Jake had called her with the temporary offer. R&R was the perfect opportunity.

Some women her age—twenty-six—might not love the idea of going to live in the woods in the middle of nowhere. Not exactly the best place to build a social life or meet a mate. But Alia was different. She knew she didn’t need romance to be happy. Friendship, yes; human love and kindness and companionship, yes—all of which she had in spades from her Seattle buddies and her amazing sister—but romantic love, not so much. It had a way of going awry for her, leaving her out in the cold. She wanted to walk a different path, a path of service and purpose. She wanted to be where she was needed.

She wanted to give something back to these men who had given so much themselves.

So, yeah, no way she was going to refuse to help Nate, regardless of history. She was a professional, a big girl with a mission that didn’t include fussing over an old crush. If the cost of working for Jake at R&R was that she had to be in close quarters with Nate, she could handle that. Besides, she owed Nate. If she could give him some peace, some relief, maybe it would help compensate for—for what she’d done.

“Of course I’ll work with him. The thing with Becca isn’t an issue.”

That for sure was a lie wrapped in the truth. Nate’s relationship with Becca might have been short-lived—maybe even doomed from the start—but there was nothing small or simple about the tangle Alia had managed to make of it.

Jake exhaled deeply, and Alia realized he’d been prepared for her to say no. “Well, good. I’ll run past Sibby’s desk and schedule Nate in today or tomorrow. Can’t imagine anyone I’d trust more with his well-being. And can’t imagine any hands I’d feel more comfortable leaving my patients in. This means a lot to me
and
to Mira.”

She shoved him lightly. “Go on. Get out of here. Enjoy your trip. Don’t give any of this another thought.”

He saluted her, turned sharply on one foot, and marched off. She laughed.

But she wasn’t laughing as she turned back toward the studio, where her relaxed soldiers were snoring in stereo.

I hope your trust in me is justified
,
Jake.

Because she’d been a fool more than once before, where Nate Riordan was concerned.

Nate lifted a kayak off the rack, and a spasm of pain in his shoulder caught him off guard. The kayak tilted, and he righted it quickly and lowered it to the ground. Cracking the resort’s kayak wouldn’t be a good way to return the favor Jake had done by taking him in.

He was damn grateful to Jake. For inviting him to stay at R&R, and for keeping the offer open even after Nate had stubbornly refused it the first time. And he was grateful to Braden and his grandparents, for giving him a project. A reason to get clean and stay that way, something to hold on to as he’d flushed the last oxys down the toilet. A purpose to cling to as he’d picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s number and on the long drive down from Seattle, when the pain in his head and neck had filled his mind and almost drowned out the Mariners game on the radio.

But somehow he’d kept his eyes on the road and his foot on the gas.

I got this, J.J.

He rubbed his shoulder, shrugged it a few times, but that only made things worse. He was going to have to bull through it today. And tomorrow. And the next day.

He crossed to the shed for a life jacket and a paddle.

The pain was mysterious and ever-changing. Sometimes it was a stab behind his eyes or a wave of nausea, the migraines he’d been told to expect in a wake of the blast. More frequently, it was his neck, his shoulders, his back, all of which had taken a beating when the blast had thrown him. That made sense. But sometimes the pain obeyed no logic. It started in one place and spread, lighting up points all over his body until he felt patched together out of signal flares of pain.
Here!
And
Here!
And
Here again!
Or it was everywhere at once, like the flu, an ache that told him where he began and the rest of the world ended.

It had definitely been worse since he’d watched his pain meds spin in the water funnel.

He’d seriously contemplated snatching them back up. He knew what that meant. You only thought about putting your hands in the toilet to recover melting tablets if you were an addict. And of course he’d known, long before he’d flushed, that he was. But there was nothing like having it spelled out.
This drug owns you.

This pain owns you.

But he didn’t care about that right now. He was going to do this, keep moving forward, haul himself bodily over every obstacle, and cling to the incline with bleeding fingertips if necessary.

With effort, he slid the kayak to the edge of the dock and into the water. He wedged his paddle behind the seat and slipped in. He’d kayaked a ton as a kid, so he knew the ropes, including self-rescue. Still, he’d forgotten the particular gravity of a slim boat like this one, and as he pushed off, he almost capsized. The effort of stabilizing sent arrows of pain up the right side of his back.
Damn.

“Nate.”

There was a woman standing on the dock.

Alia Drake.

“We had an appointment.” She frowned across the small but growing span of water between them, her arms crossed.

He didn’t bother asking how she’d known to look for him here. When he’d headed this way, he’d walked past a group of guys sitting on the back porch. If she was hunting for him, she would have asked them if they’d seen him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. Only he wasn’t. He’d deliberately blown off the appointment, because—well, for a lot of reasons. Because he’d had enough physical therapy to be sure that whatever was wrong with him, PT wasn’t going to fix it. Because he hated medical offices and doctors and nurses and PTs. And most of all, because the last thing he needed right now was Alia Drake.

The space between them was widening. The temptation to start paddling full speed away from her was strong, and the only thing that kept him from doing it was the fact that pain still had his neck in a death grip. He took a deep breath and waited for it to subside.

She turned away from him, and for a moment he thought she’d given up, but then she came toward him with a life jacket and paddle in her hands. He watched as she lifted a kayak from the rack and dropped it effortlessly into the water.

Fuck.

She slid neatly in, surprisingly graceful for such a tall woman, and pushed off.

“I don’t want company.”

“Tough. I told Jake I’d help you.”

“And this is helping me how?” He was mad enough to look her full in the face, and that was a big mistake.

She looked right back at him, utterly uncowed, and her gray-green eyes were generously fringed with sooty lashes. Her cheeks were pink with anger.

She was startlingly pretty. He’d privately thought her the more beautiful of the two sisters, even though Becca’s beauty was more conventional. When Alia had made it clear that she wasn’t interested—that her sister was the available one—Nate had given only one backward, regretful glance—metaphorically—before turning his appreciation on Becca.

But now he admired the thick, glossy strands of Alia’s straight, medium-length dark hair. She wore no makeup, and he was charmed—against his will—by the freckles scattered over her nose and cheekbones. She was tall for a woman, and strong. On the dock, when her legs had been level with his eyes, he’d surprised himself with the impulse to run his hands over the muscle in her legging-clad thighs and strong bare calves. And yet—he’d noted, before the life jacket and spray skirt had covered most of her—she had curves, too. Nothing showy. Everything in proportion. She looked…real. That was it. As if she were built for
purpose,
not for any man’s entertainment.

Especially not his.

“Why didn’t you come to your appointment?”

“Because I don’t need PT.” He turned his boat and paddled out toward the center of the lake.

She pulled alongside him and kept pace. Every stroke sent pain shooting up the back of his neck.

“You’re hurting.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“I can see it on your face. The way you’re holding your upper body.”

“It’s not that bad.”

That was a lie, and this was making it worse. The kayak, the paddling, Alia’s scrutiny, fierce on his face.

He wasn’t going to do Suzy and Jim and Braden any good if he couldn’t even paddle into the middle of a goddamn lake.

He wanted to howl his frustration to the sky, but Alia was there, watching him, and he couldn’t.

“Jake said you were taking oxycodone, and then you quit. Why’d you do that?”

He had to admire her style—not giving him a chance to deny the assertion before she threw the question at him—and the way she was barely breathless from the effort of paddling. She was
tough,
one of the things he remembered liking about her. If there was a person on earth who would understand why he had flushed those pills down the toilet, it was her. “I felt like they were the boss of me, not the other way around.”

She nodded.

“I need to take a kid on a kayaking trip in three weeks. Can’t be popping pills the whole time.”

“But this is okay? You think the kid’s not going to notice that you’re in pain?”

Her meaning was harsh, but her voice was kind. Firm. Not a challenge so much as a real question.

Their paddles dipped into the water. They had quietly come into synchrony, skimming over the water alongside each other, nearly silent.

“Most people don’t notice.”

But she’d seen it right away. In his face, she said. In the way he held his upper body.

He remembered that she was a good observer. She’d seen him, seen through him, as early as their first meeting at the picnic. Later, she’d written about the world so clearly in her emails and letters—though of course back then he’d thought they were Becca’s.

“Why is it so important to go on this kayaking trip?”

They were almost across the lake now. The flat expanse of gray-blue water was surrounded by forest. The only civilization visible was the retreat itself, where he could see people moving around, as small and busy as insects. He wished he hadn’t come out here. He’d hated the idea of her office, but this was worse, the two of them out here and her question dangling, as if she had a right to know the answer.

He chose a partial truth. “The kid, Braden. I served with his dad. He’s…gone. He and Braden were supposed to do a kayaking trip this summer.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

Strange how easily voices carried out here, how you could hear a whisper spoken several feet away.

“Yeah, well.”

“Let me help you.”

The pain carved a channel down his back, as if in protest of all the times people had said that to him. All the times it had given him hope, and all the times that hope had turned out to be false. The pain got under his ribs, the way it so often did, and made him mean.

“Like you helped Becca?”