His Road Home (11 page)

What she wanted was to bring his man into the light and look, and that was mighty fine too. She licked her lips, and that armed more than his imagination. Medical literature claimed men didn’t pass out from natural erections, but it seemed unlikely that much blood could go one place and not make a guy dizzy. His crazy brain filled with images, her mouth front and center.

As if she knew his mind, she lowered her head. When her lips encircled his cock, he thought he’d died again, this time with no pain. Her mouth was wet and hot, not tight and balls-deep like fucking her pussy, but so wet, and the pop of her lips on the tip of his cock was heaven. The little wet slurp as she bobbed on him was a sound he heard in dreams.

She went up and down and simultaneously gyrated her tits on his pants. He got the hint—
touch them too.
His hands reached for her nipples and rolled them the way he already knew she liked. His moves sent her faster, lower, and the harder he tugged, the deeper she opened her throat until he swore he was never returning from the pleasure zone.

“Now.” He warned her it was coming. She could pull off, but she didn’t, so he thrust while her mouth slid down his rod until his ears buzzed with pressure. Then the explosion, brighter, redder, hotter than the rest of his body, all of the pain and pleasure poured out as he let go and called her name.

Maybe he said more, but she was flat on his chest and silent, so maybe he hadn’t said he loved her. They could stay like this—

A single shot jack-knifed him upright, and he flipped out of the sled, fumbling with his fly and hunting for his boots. “Stay down. Now.” His rifle and tactical vest should be—

“Was that a shot?”

Her question pulled him from Afghanistan to crash into the world of the no-legged man.

She peeked through the flap. “It’s a flare.”

A flare meant distress, a rescue plea, not a threat. Alongside him, she donned her gear with the speed of a woman who wore arctic survival suits. It took both of them, but it wasn’t impossible to crawl-hop to the door and with Grace’s help clamber into the chair.

The emergency was obvious as soon as they exited. Where blown snow had drifted at one edge of the fishing area, it must have concealed thinner ice. The farthest tent was tilting, half-submerged.

“Damn.” Today his post-coitus speech didn’t linger.

Snow clogged his wheels closer to the slushy pile-up, and Grace added her strength to move the chair. A big guy, maybe two-fifty, was trying to throw a rope to someone hanging on an orange cooler in the water beyond the tent. Ice creaked, and two other men had boards they pushed from positions on their knees, but they looked unstable. A light rescuer had a better chance of making it to the water’s edge. He pointed to the man with the rope. “Take me. There.”

She understood and pushed him closer until he said stop
.

“Stay here.”

“But I can—” She must have understood his expression. “Right.”

The way he waddled off-kilter on his short stub and his bent knee, trailing the legs of his pants, probably resembled a freaky penguin crossing the ice to the man with the rope. The stranger was trembling, and Rey realized the person in the water was a kid, maybe a teenager. Ah, shit, a kid wasn’t going to have the strength to pull himself out, even if the rope miraculously lassoed the cooler.

“Tie me. I...light.” He made crawling motions, and the man understood.

The rope harness crisscrossed from armpit to opposite shoulder in a figure eight, and after his first attempts he had a rhythm that distributed his weight between his two hands, knee and stump as he scrambled. Dragging a hundred feet of rope wasn’t as heavy as a fire hose and wasn’t nearly as heavy as the gear he used to wear. Last year he could have added this rope to his load and still run two miles under fire.

This wasn’t last year.

He should have covered the distance by now, squishy shifting ice slowing him or not. He should be with that kid, who was failing faster than Rey could move. Talk, that was what rescuers did when someone needed help to stay conscious and motivation to save themselves. “Hey. Kid.”

The dam in his mind blocked other reassurances. He had to find something to help this kid hang on while he inched forward.

“Ooo-ooo-ooo,” he sang. “Staying alive. Ooo-ooo-ooo.” Water had sloshed through enough ice cracks that his path was a puddle. Maybe only snow glued these chunks together, but he was getting close. “Kid!”

“Y-y-y-yes.” The voice was thin, and Rey saw less of the body on the cooler, as if the weight of his wet snow suit was slowing sinking him, or his arms were conceding.

“Help you.”

He couldn’t reach the teen from here, and there was no fucking way after this long in the water that the boy was going to be able to kick himself closer.

“Sing. Ooo-ooo-ooo.” He had one shot. On his stomach, Rey coaxed him to make noise to build energy and body warmth while he yanked an extra twenty feet of rope across the ice. Whatever happened, Grace and the others could pull him home. The afterlife didn’t seem interested in him yet, but could he grab the kid?

“Ooo—” the plunge into frigid water locked other words in his chest. This was where training mattered. His arms pulled through the water, his legs nonexistent and his pants dead wet weight. How many times had his captain made him shed gear in the cold pool to a stopwatch, or thrown him from a boat while zip-tied, just to tweak the SEAL Team Six commander?

He reached the floating cooler, looped one arm under the boy’s armpits to hold him firmly on the floating plastic and grabbed a handle. “Pull in!” he yelled.

The men on shore heard, and he felt tension on the line and they moved. Too slow. Kid was blue.

“Sing!” He put his deepest command in his voice. “Ooo-ooo.”

“Don’t know...” the boy’s voice was a thread, thinner than spider silk, “...that one.”

What the heck did teenagers know? “Op-op-op.”

“Eh...sexy...”

The ice was closer, almost at them, and then the front of the cooler bumped. Now for the hard part. The tug of the rope harness pulled him sideways, bringing his shoulder and the boy’s next to a solid piece.

“Let go.”

“I c-c-can’t,” he whimpered.

“Trust.”

“S-s-s-scared.”

“On three. One. Two. Three.” He heaved the kid’s waist, and the equal and opposite reaction dunked him below the cooler. The liquid roof closed over his head, but he’d float in a second, now that his arms were free to pull.

For an instant the ice was on top of him—that was near-panic, to be entombed in blue without an impossible spy gun to shoot an air hole—but then he surfaced at the cracked edge. Air seared his lungs, good and lifesaving and cold and killing at the same time. With his hands as far along the rope as he could reach, he yelled for a pull and porpoised like one of Grace’s marine mammals, and there he was, flopped and panting on the ice.

The boy had made it five feet, nowhere near dry blankets and heaters.

No way could he drag even this skinny teen. Plan B. With his arms crossing the kid’s torso, he ordered him to roll and threw his weight over at the same time, landing on his back and cradling his charge. “Pull!”

First the line jerked, then they started to slide. His head dug into the snow and bounced on the ice, and he bit his tongue. He was so giving Grace shit about not buying helmets for ice-fishing. Right after he took a hot bath. With her.

To keep his spine rounded enough to glide, he had to maintain a crunch with his shoulders high. The Marquis would love this workout. Rub his hands together and send vets to be dragged behind sled dogs, but damn, he’d text the man thanks tomorrow.

Then they reached the crowd. Other people took the boy. Grace hugged him, kissed his face, which would be nicer if he could feel it but he was too iced. Someone wrapped him in a blanket while Grace kept kissing the wrong parts, like his forehead, which wasn’t half as cold as his lips and nose.

“Don’t you even think...what you did...”

“You saved my son.” The big man was shaky and crying too. “Thank you, thank you.”

They recovered in a warm truck cab, clutching heat packs. He couldn’t help Grace strip his wet clothing because his fingers weren’t working yet, but she managed fine. When she started to work on his innermost thermal shirt, she was close enough that he could hear what she muttered.

“And it’s ‘ahh-ahh-ahh, staying alive,’ dammit. Not ooo-ooo. No wonder. If you ever.”

“Shhh.” He reached a finger to her lips. “Roped. Don’t worry.”

“Worry? I’m furious! I’m so mad, I could... Do you have any clue what I thought when you jumped in?” Her face was splotchy red and her nose dripped. “Do you?”

“But why...mad?” Even superhero penguins obviously didn’t understand women.

“Because I love you!” She threw herself at his chest, mashed him into the seat, and this time he could feel her lips, but he couldn’t hear past the roar those words had started in his heart.

“I love you too.” Easiest sentence he’d ever say.

Chapter Nine

They stayed in Rapid City and pushed to make up time Saturday by driving as far as Bozeman. An easy six hours in the car Sunday found them at Spokane, and they agreed without discussion to stop. This would be their last night together on the road.

His last chance to hold her through the night, smell her hair and feel it in his fingers as he fell asleep. Tomorrow she’d be in her parents’ home, and he’d be at his mother’s trailer until he made decisions about his future. He hoped Grace would be happy with his choices.

* * *

Through the front curtain, Grace saw Rey’s sister drop him in front of her family’s house at exactly six twenty-eight, on time for the six-thirty dinner invitation her parents had issued. He used one cane and carried a poinsettia wrapped in glossy foil.

She broke protocol and beat her mother to the door. This was America, not the old country, and she could stand beside Rey in front of her parents.

A bobbing silver-glitter reindeer on a stick poked out of the plant. Her eyes flicked from his, dark brown and amused, to the glowing display of illuminated carolers and reindeer in the yard. “You know they like decorations.”

“Expert recon,” he whispered for her ears only.

“How are you at interrogation?”

“Trained. To resist.”

Maybe if she slipped the poinsettia on the end table she could find a reason to step to the porch for a minute and give him a quick kiss for luck.

“Sergeant Cruz.” Her mother appeared behind her, leaving her no choice but to hold the door wider.

“Ma’am.” He bowed enough to be culturally correct, and Grace remembered he’d been to Korea with the Army more times than she’d visited. “For you.”

When her mother turned, Grace didn’t have to mouth
suck up.
Rey puckered at her first.

Her father was deep in Korean
abeoji
-dad mode, almost to the extent of self-parody. “Sergeant Reynaldo Cruz.” He sat on the couch, hands planted on each thigh like a samurai, even though that was Japanese, elbows out to control the space. “Welcome to our home.”

Rey bowed his head and shoulders. “Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Kim.” The words flowed slowly, but evenly, as if he’d practiced.

Jenni rolled her eyes from the doorway behind Dad.

“Please sit and we have tea together.”

“Thank you.” He lowered himself to the opposite chair, like a witness on television.

Perched on the next seat, she wanted to hold his hand, but
no touching boyfriends
was the first, second and third rule of making a good impression with Korean parents.

“What do you do now you are not in the army?”

She’d been raised not to interrupt, but—”Dad!”

Rey nodded agreeably. “School first. You—Dub.” He said the abbreviation for University of Washington, her alma mater in Seattle. The two short words fluttered in her stomach. “Finish my degree.” A folded paper slid across the coffee table toward her father.

He opened it. Studied it.

Grace squirmed to know what that page contained.

Her father nodded, let a smile break his face and called out to her mother in Korean, probably because he knew neither daughter understood much of what he said.

Gasping, her mother hustled in, wiping her hands on her apron, and grabbed the letter.

Grace nudged Rey’s shoulder to get his attention, but he merely shrugged.

Jenni had nothing to lose by bad behavior, so her sister snatched the paper and read out loud. “University of Washington, admission to Medical Anthropology and Global Health major.” She looked at Rey. “That’s like pre-med, isn’t it?”

“Dental, I hope. Less talk.”

Since her sister’s back was to their parents, Grace had to watch as Jenni eyed her boyfriend with the frank assessment of a single woman living in a small town. “Doctor, lawyer, dentist. You bagged one of the big three, and he pumps iron, too. Congrats.”

“He can also hear,” Grace pointed out to her sister. “You could talk to him instead of about him.”

Rey didn’t appear to mind Jenni’s admiration, given how his arms and chest seemed to expand under his collared shirt.

“Quit flexing,” she whispered. “It only encourages her.” At least the diversion of Jenni’s perusal offered Grace a moment to recover from the news that Rey would be relocating to Seattle. Instead of texting during the week and driving across the mountains on Fridays, she could come home at the end of the day and see him, sleep beside him, wake up curled with him. Jumping into his lap would not win over the older members of her family, although her sister would probably cheer.

Her parents’ delight and Rey’s thoughtful charm carried the dinner while Grace processed the news that Rey would be in Seattle by January, or sooner. By the last cup of tea, she knew one thing. She wanted to see him every day. When they were alone, maybe her next question would surprise him as much as his news had thrilled her.

Bundled in padded coats, they walked to the end of the driveway and her father’s car. Her heart pounded. She’d offered to drive him home and hoped he’d be interested in a detour to look at the river from someplace dark, but first she had to ask. “It’s true? You’re going to the U?”

“Yes.”

She took a deep breath and plunged. “My place is close. The Metro bus goes right to campus. You could—”

He put his finger over her lips, and her heart shuddered in her chest. “Independent.”

He’d told her he loved her a dozen times since the ice rescue and spent an hour and a half being nice to her family, neither of which seemed like a man who wanted to dump her, but that word confused her. “Of course. I didn’t intend—” the noise of her ragged breathing was loud in the country winter, “—to assume that you and I—”

“Don’t mean no.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and first finger. “Don’t want alone.” His fluidity was failing, and she felt to blame. “Want...parents’ respect.”

That was something she understood, so she started to both listen and hear again. In front of the passenger door, insulated from each other’s bodies by their coats, she leaned toward him until her forehead rested on the padded fabric covering his shoulder.

“U-housing. Disabled.” Their breath wrapped them in a steamy world. “Easy start.”

“I understand.” Almost. She looked up at him. “I just thought... “

“My lease.” His mouth came closer.

Her eyes nearly crossed as she stared at his lips. Could they kiss in the driveway, surrounded by white-light reindeer and possibly half of Pateros?

“Month to month,” he said.

“Ohhh.” Until the next quarter started, her parents were definitely going to have to get used to her coming across the mountains on the weekend.

* * *

One week wasn’t long enough to revise all of her misconceptions about her parents, especially a week filled with catch-up at work and obsessively checking weather conditions in the pass for her drive Friday, so the news that her mother and father were throwing a town-wide celebration for Rey at the restaurant was a shock. How much they relished the chance to host everyone in Pateros and Brewster who wanted to shake Rey’s hand was an earthquake.

Standing in the dining room, she studied the familiar restaurant. The red and gold wallpaper had seen better days, but it highlighted the fresh Christmas tree centered in the window and the garlands tied across the booths. An American flag, a Washington state flag and an army flag—where had they unearthed that?—clustered in front of the register. No one would pay for today’s buffet of Chinese food sitting next to tamales and empanadas from Rey’s family.

Her phone chimed with the signal that meant him.

On
the
way.
Have
a
surprise
for
you.

What?
she texted in reply.

Have
to
wait
until
we’re
alone.

Best
kind!

“Grace, Grace,” her mother called. “You hung the award, didn’t you?”

“Yes, already.” The mayor had proclaimed today an official celebration in honor of Reynaldo Cruz.

The distinctive red hanbok her mother wore for celebrations had a full-length A-shaped skirt in the Korean style and was at risk of catching in the swinging doors as she carried food to the steam table.

“Mom, let me take that.” Grace held out her arms for the tray of fried noodles.

“No, no. You are also guest of honor.”

Then she understood. In her parents’ minds this was also an engagement celebration. By her silence, she’d permitted the status quo to continue since the news had originally announced the engagement. Whatever people thought in Pateros hadn’t affected her in Seattle, and now that Rey was home and had satisfied her father’s career interrogation, they must assume wedding plans would move forward. If her offer of living together had made him need independence, her parents’ expectations might make him freeze. Or disappear.

Her stomach churned while she rolled napkins around silverware, greeted people she’d known since childhood and waited for Rey to arrive. He entered the restaurant after his mother, sister, brother-in-law and nieces, wearing a sport coat that molded to his shoulders and upper arms. This afternoon he’d opted for his C-legs and khaki cargo shorts, which in theory should look unusual in December paired with a blazer, but the transformer legs were so striking that the shorts were perfect. They were Rey.

Watching him across the tables was all she managed to do for the first hour while people jostled to reach him. Eventually she recognized the hyper-focused squint that meant his words had faded.

“Excuse me.” She extricated herself from a parent of one of her sister’s students, someone who had been behind her in school who she ought to remember better, but right now she wanted to rescue Rey.

She slipped her hand around his arm, and he squeezed it to his side until her fingers were sandwiched between his elbow and his ribs as naturally as if they really were engaged.

“Can you excuse us for a minute?” She smiled at Mrs. Sandoval, the mayor, postmistress, municipal judge and hardware store owner in Pateros. “I need Rey in the back for a surprise.”

His eyes met hers and she saw, as if she’d been born able to read his expressions, relief, the beginnings of anxiety and a hunger to breathe air that wasn’t filled with pine and people and garlic bean stir-fry.

They managed to sidestep greetings and slip through the doors into the tight kitchen. Here there was only the scent of cooking oil. Past the range and stainless steel sink, she opened the broom closet. The hiding spot was tight but well-organized, with supplies hung on walls or arranged on shelves. Nothing would trip him. “In here.”

He reached over her head to the string of the ceiling bulb, plunging them into darkness.

“Better.” That was all he said before his head lowered.

After her week in Seattle, the warm welcome of his kiss promised that they wouldn’t lose the closeness they’d found on the road home.

“Tiny hands.” He brought her palm to his face, pressed his lips to each finger, and the dark focused her senses on his touch and the spice of his skin. That was how she knew he was doing something to her finger, but at first she didn’t understand what.

Her stomach understood first, because it lurched like a rollercoaster. Her heart figured it out next, because it thumpity-thumped to a sprint, and that must have pushed enough oxygen to her head that her brain comprehended: he’d put metal on her third left finger.

“What is...” she didn’t know how to finish her question. It was a ring. But she didn’t know if he was making their engagement real.

“Shrapnel.”

“What?” She knew shrapnel meant the metal debris from a bomb but didn’t understand what that had to do with a ring.

“Lost legs.” He cradled her face in his hands. “Found you.” He pulled her close, fitting her head under his chin and encircling her with his arms.

The breath she’d been holding escaped in a whoosh as understanding drove a fist into her stomach. The ring. Was his shrapnel. From his wound.

“Damn good deal.” His declaration was clear and urgent.

He couldn’t think that.

“Tears.” It was pitch black and he didn’t have fancy army gear, but somehow he knew she was crying. He bent to kiss her cheeks. “Why?”

“I’m not worth your legs. Or your speech. You lost so much.”

“Still me.” He cupped the hand with his ring, kissed her palm and then slid it over his chest. “Still me here.” Then he moved her hand lower, and she brushed his hardness. “Same me.” She heard the smile, but this wasn’t a joke.

“There’s more to you than that.”

“I know. Now.”

“Any woman would be happy to be with you. Don’t think because of this party that you have to—”

“I want you.” His voice rang with strength. “Grace Kim. Marry me?”

She wasn’t an idiot to argue more. “Yes. Yes.” She clutched his shoulders and kissed him, missed his mouth in the dark, aimed again. Both of them were laughing, but she was also trying not to cry on his nice jacket.

The door behind Grace rattled, and her sister said her name. “Okay, this passed cute and entered embarrassing ten minutes ago. Get back out here.”

“We’re coming.”

Rey pulled the light string so they could arrange themselves, and she looked at the dull gleam of the band on her finger.

“Like it?”

She curled her hands over her heart. “I love it.”

In the dining room, her father formally welcomed the crowd, Rey’s sister thanked people in both Spanish and English, then the mayor read the proclamation of Staff Sergeant Reynaldo Cruz Day. Children were restless by the time her father offered her the microphone.

“Hi everyone.
Buenas dias.
Rey wanted me to say a few words on his behalf. He has a brain injury that limits his speech, but he understands everything. More than I do half the time.” She checked her notes while the audience dutifully laughed. “First, thank you for the gifts you sent to Walter Reed.” She looked at the crowd. “I personally hung the Billiegoats and Nannies banner in his room, and if you look at the lower left—” she pointed to its place on the wall, “—you’ll see the president’s autograph with all of yours.”