Secret Maneuvers (31 page)
“Does that mean you forgive me about not telling you about Seth?”
“No.”
It was out before I could stop it and I would have given anything to stop it. Anything at all, as I watched that precious light of love and hope she’d shined on me just seconds before distinguish as her face crumbled in despair. If she weren’t lying in a hospital bed, she would have recoiled from me bodily, but she was stuck and couldn’t move away. It didn’t stop her from shrinking back into that thin, hospital mattress just as far as she could to get away from me. It also didn’t stop her from pulling her hand free from my own, where I’d kept it trapped against my body this whole time. I’d literally shocked myself stupid because I couldn’t find the words to say in order to fix what I’d just done.
She covered her face with her hands as sobs started to rock her body. She turned herself bodily away, as far as she could get from me. Her broken gasps and wailing cries grew louder as I sat there numbly, in a mental fog of stupor, trying to figure out what the hell I’d just done to us. A shrill alarm started to blare in the room, but it didn’t register that something was wrong until hands clamped down on my shoulders and wrenched me from my chair.
Suddenly, Sheriff Jenkins’s angry face came into view and he shoved me across the room towards the door that nurses were currently rushing through. All I could hear was the woosh woosh woosh of my blood pounding in my ears while the Sheriff continued to push me out of Belle’s room and into the hallway. I finally became cognizant that something was wrong when I looked up to see the nurses surrounding her bed. One was injecting something into her IV while the other nurse had ripped off her bandages covering the stitches across her chest and was using clean ones to stop the fresh flow of blood. They were both crooning to her in soothing tones, encouraging her to try and take a deep breath and calm down.
So preoccupied with what was happening at Belle’s bed, I completely missed the fist that came flying at my face until the punch landed and, the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on my ass in the middle of the floor. A shadow fell over me and I looked up to find Declan leaning down to grab my hand before hauling me up. The pounding in my ears turned into a manageable buzz after I shook my head a few times. Voices started to make sense again around me, and I heard Declan yelling at the Sheriff, who was now being bodily detained by Boyd.
Jenkins’s face was mottled red as he roared back at Declan, “You get that motherfucker out of here right now or, I swear to God, I’m gonna kill him. Belle’s recovering from a gunshot wound that damn near killed her and that fuckhead went and said something that caused her to have an anxiety attack so bad she ripped her stitches open, and is bleeding out all over the place again, and she can’t even fucking breathe.”
Jenkins tried to lunge for me again, but Boyd held him tightly in his straining arms. The look he was giving me was nothing less than a murderous rage, mixed with loathing and I deserved it all.
“I heard what you said to her, you piece of shit, and I promise you that if you don’t get out of this hospital right this minute, the hospital security will be the last thing you have to worry about.”
I glanced back to Belle’s room, which was the only one situated at the very end of the hall, as Declan began to tug me backwards. My eye was already starting to swell shut, but I was still able to see the nurses prepping a tray of sterile instruments so that they could stitch her wounds closed again. Her face was mostly slack from being knocked out by the medication, but I could still see the strained lines around her eyes and mouth that conveyed her pain and devastation. Bloody bandages littered the bed around her body as the nurse continued to clean up the devastating damage to her that, once again, I had caused.
Declan tugged me further away down the hall as I watched the doctor scramble into the room. What had I done? I’d
practically stabbed myself in the back while damn near killing—emotionally and physically—the love of my life and it was all my unforgiving brain’s fault.
Teagan was right, I didn’t deserve her.
Bobby
Two months later in Woodbridge, Virginia…
“Yeah, suck it. That’s right. Suck. It. Suck it all up real good. Don’t miss a drop. Come on, come on, baby, you can do it, suck it dry already.”
I instantly regretted letting myself into Declan’s house after no one answered the door. ‘Cause that kind of commentary was not generally something you wanted to hear coming out of another guy’s mouth as you were walking into the room where they were giving those kind of explicit instructions. Especially, when it was the home of one of the biggest manwhores I’d ever had the pleasure of knowing. My buddy’s only saving grace was the fact that: A) I could hear the buzz of the shop vac. B) I’d received a phone call from Declan, begging me to help with the clean-up from a flood on the main floor of his house. And C) upon coming into the occupied room where the shop vac buzzed in Declan’s hands, I was also able to witness the dumbass making ridiculous looking pelvic thrusts while giving his porno like instructions to an inanimate object all while listening to his IPod.
Quickly whipping out my cell phone, I started video recording the big dummy before he noticed I was there. A few minutes later I had several more exaggerated pelvic thrusts coupled with the kind of lines you heard in cheesy porno movies saved for what would certainly be a laugh fest at the next meeting the Ex Ops team had. I felt my lips twitch in what was almost my first genuine grin in several weeks, as I pocketed my phone.
Life had been pretty fucking miserable since coming home to Virginia, which was nobody’s fault but my own. The sad truth was, the only semi-good moment I’d had since coming home was the day Jaxon had called to let me know that Belle had identified her three kidnappers and Rivera in our pictures of the dead from the rescue in Mexico. The good part, not being that she’d managed to ID them, or that their deaths had officially closed her case, but knowing that her tormentors were dead and she was no longer in danger. I could care less that we’d temporarily managed to shut down a leg of the black market arms trade. Some other asshole would eventually pop up to take Rivera’s place. It was all about the knowledge that the woman I loved was safe. Belle was all that mattered.
The movement of my lips finally caught numb nut’s attention and I watched my buddy study me like I was mold under a microscope. “Are you smiling? Holy shit. What finally broke you out of that self-inflicted funk of yours?”
My lip twitch grew a little bigger. “Nothing.”
Declan arched an eyebrow. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Much. Just you acting like a first class moron and the fact that I get to post it on YouTube, I silently added in my head.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever, man. It’s good to see you smile anyways. Thanks for coming out to help me. You see this fuckin’ mess? It’s crazy. That’s what I get for letting some blonde babe with knockers the size of watermelons tell me she was an experienced plumber. The pipes under the kitchen sink blew out and this is what I came home to.”
“Well, maybe if you picked up a phonebook and called a real plumber instead of trying to beg off a date using the pipes under your kitchen sink as an excuse, shit like this wouldn’t happen.”
“Come on, man, give me a break. I was trying to get her out of my hair, but the minute she told me she would ‘fix my pipes’ my brain went into overdrive. That didn’t count all the things she said she would do to my ‘wrench’.” He gave a lascivious smile with his air quotes.
“Yeah, well, I hope it was a helluva pipe cleaning because now you’ve got this mess.” I waved my hand around to encompass the soggy carpets.
Declan sighed wistfully. “It most definitely was one bad ass pipe cleaning; nothing that could compare to Teagan, though. Damn, man, I think I could fall in love with that woman if I ever got to have round two with her. There was this thing she did with her—”
Throwing my hands up in the air in front of me, I yelled, “Oh, hell, no! Nope, don’t want to hear it. I played football with that girl. She went through freshman football’s high school hazing with me. She was one of the guys to me, not to mention, she’s my son’s godmother, so I sure as shit do not want to hear about what she can or cannot do. Ever.”
Declan groused, “You take all my fun away.”
Pointing back to the soggy carpet, I said, “Yeah, well, if this is an example of your kind of fun, then I’ll definitely pass on it, bro.”
“Yeah, well, I’d pass on your version of fun, too. It involves a future prescription of Prozac.”
Glowering back at Declan, I snapped, “What’s that supposed to mean, dipshit?”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “You’re calling me a dipshit? You’re the man that had the American dream handed to him on a silver platter and managed to fuck it all up! All because you couldn’t pull your head out of your ass long enough to forgive a woman who you dicked over in the first place. If anyone’s the dipshit here, it’s you.”
Unbelievable. Talk about kicking a man when he’s already down. Instead of saying something I would regret later, or doing something stupid like giving him a fist to his face, I turned towards the front door and started to walk away.
“That’s right, Bobby. Just run away from the problem and go back to licking your self-inflicted wounds. If I hadn’t been with you in the jungle and Afghanistan, then I’d start thinking you were a pussy with all this chicken shit you’ve been pulling lately.”
Who needed a best friend? A punching bag was more therapeutic anyways and I had a living, breathing version of one, fifteen feet behind me that I was going to beat the ever living shit out of.
Whipping around to face him again, I roared, “Fuck you, man! You have no idea what this situation has been like for me! I don’t see any long, lost loves falling into your lap after hiding a teenage son from you. So, until that happens to you, keep your judgmental bullshit to yourself. You have no goddamn idea what I’ve been going through! If you think I’m over here, loving life, when really I’ve left everything that ever fucking mattered to me halfway across the goddamn country, then you can take that shop vac hose and you can shove it up your own ass!”
“Oh,” he sneered, sarcastically. “I can tell how you’re living life up since Texas, Bobby. Even if you hadn’t spent the last few weeks moping around like an idiot, it’s written all over your face. You’re not eating or sleeping, you’ve lost weight and you look like shit. You’re so out of it that half the guys on the team wouldn’t want you to watch their six because they’re afraid your head wouldn’t be on straight during any mission we go on. You’re shooting your life down the shitter.”
Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I thought your friends were supposed to be there for you when you were down on your luck. I lunged at him. Barely refraining myself from throwing that punch that I wanted to knock him out with so badly. We were nose to nose now as we yelled at each other.
“I know I’m struggling, asshole! I don’t need you to tell me that. I live and breathe it every second, of every minute, of every fucking day that I have to live without them. So why don’t you be an understanding friend, know that I’m doing the best that I can do right now, and just be there for me instead of giving me grief I don’t need.”
He used both of his hands to grab my shirt and shake me with it. “How about, instead of being an understanding friend, I act like a good friend by telling you to pull your head out of your ass? How about, instead of you walking around like a zombie, you get your shit together and fix your fucking life? It’s not like the woman you love died in Mexico! She’s living and breathing in Texas with your son. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that, if you’d just get over your own fucking self, you’d realize that you could make this right with your family.”
“And how do you expect me to do that after what I said in her hospital room? You got some kind of magic wand shoved up your ass that you can pull out, wave around, and give me the perfect way to make it alright?”
Throwing his hands up in the air in frustration, he turned and started to walk away from me towards his kitchen. He made it five steps before he turned around and pointed a finger in my direction. “Maybe I expect you to act like a fucking man, get down on your goddamn knees, and beg the woman that you claim to love for forgiveness for being such a self-righteous jackass. I know it’s a radical idea, but perhaps, if you apologized, she might forgive you.”
The hole in my heart that had been throbbing since getting thrown out of Belle’s hospital room in Texas started to throb in agony again. My eyes pricked with oncoming tears, instead of letting Declan see me emotionally defenseless, I dropped my chin to my chest, bringing my boots into view, and blinked my eyes a few times to clear them away.
He made it sound so easy. Like I could just waltz back down to Texas and do a little groveling to win my girl back. The half of me that had wanted to do just that, weeks ago, swelled with hope. The other half of me, the part that was scared shitless of both being hurt again and hurting her again, tried to pop that bubble of hope with a savage stab of my metaphorical KA-BAR.
I never wanted to hurt Belle like that again in my life. The look of utter devastation on her face as she sobbed so hard that she tore her stitches open and started to bleed out in her hospital bed would haunt me until the day they put me six feet under. It was because of that horrific scene that I’d convinced myself that she was better off without me. If I wasn’t around, then I couldn’t hurt her anymore.