Still (28 page)

The old men around them hooted with laughter as Clive turned nine different shades of red. “Sorry, ma’am.”

She grinned, the haughty look dropping from her face. “No worries. If no one ever salutes me again I’ll die a happy woman.”

Lilly slid two pops across the bar. “Why don’t you guys go rhapsodize about your glory days over at one of the tables? Michelle and I are going to talk dogs.”

Michelle gave him a questioning look, but he ignored it. “Sure, come on, Clive. Let’s go talk about all the women we’ve done.”

He managed to dodge Michelle’s kick enough that it hit him in the back of his thigh rather than his ass. “Behave.”

Grinning, he popped the top on his soda and took a seat with Clive at one of the battered tables near the big screen TVs. Moving his chair so he could keep an eye on his woman, and the randy old sailor flirting with her and Lilly, he smiled at Clive. “So what have you been up to since you got out?”

“Right now I’m working at a car dealership. Nothing special, but it pays the bills. What about you?”

“Kinda still figuring out what I want to do.” He sighed and stretched his legs out. “I’m playing around with the idea of making custom furniture.”

“Oh yeah? You any good at it.”

He thought back to Michelle’s reaction to his creation and grinned. “Not too bad.”

Clive glanced over at Michelle. “Pretty lady. Did you meet her after you got out?”

“No. We served together over in Afghanistan.”

Clive’s eyes widened. “Were you together then?”

“No, not at all. Nothing happened until we both got out.”

“Man…that sure is something. What’d she do over there?”

“She’s a doctor so she…” His stomach clenched memories of the comrades they'd lost and those she'd saved. “She saved a lot of men.”

His skin prickled and a hot then cold sensation flashed over his body as if he’d been roasted in the sun and frozen in ice at the same time. The conflicting sensations made him shiver, made his muscles tense, and made the frightened animal of PTSD roar inside of his fucked up head.

No, not here, not now in front of all these people.

Please, God.

Clive gave him an odd look. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to pry.”

The can he held gave a metallic crinkle as Wyatt struggled to regain control of himself. Fuck, one mention of Afghanistan and his mind slipped right back into insisting that he was in danger. For a moment he could smell the blood, hear the moans of the dying. What many people didn’t realize is that if someone is well enough to scream, they’ll probably live. It was the men that could only moan incoherent, soft sounds of anguish, or worse, those who remained silent who were in real trouble.

“Callahan.”

He closed his eyes, struggling to take a steady breath. “One sec.”

“You got it too, huh? PTSD?”

The sorrow, the understanding in Clive’s words reached out to Wyatt like a lifeline. He took a deep breath then choked down a mouthful of soda, chasing away the lingering phantom flavors of gun smoke and blood from his mouth. “Yeah.”

Clive let out a low sigh and moved his chair closer. He grabbed Wyatt’s hand in his own beneath the table and squeezed hard. “I’m here with you, Callahan. We’re in the United States, at the VFW hall in Austin, Texas. Right now you’re sitting at a beat to shit table with an uncomfortable chair under your ass in a place that smells like old people. Your lady is looking pretty worried, so unless you want her coming over here you better snap your shit back to the present.”

He opened his eyes enough to confirm that Michelle indeed was watching him with a very worried look. Using up all the energy he had left, he shook his head. She stared at him for a moment longer, then nodded. While she talked to Lilly, she continued to keep an eye on him.

“Unless you’re gonna try to get in my panties, Mercer, you can let go of my hand now.”

“Thank God. One more second and I wouldn’t have been able to hold myself back from jumping you and dry humping your leg.”

The mental image startled a harsh laugh out of him. “Thanks. Sorry I got weird on you.”

Clive shook his head. “Like I said, you’re not alone. This shit is like the fucking plague sweeping through the military. You never know who it’s going to hit and how hard. Shit, I have to deal with the fucking bullshit of PTSD as well. I don’t want to go into details and trigger a freak-out, but most of the people here struggle with it in their own way.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I’ve talked with the old timers about it, and man they had it way rougher than we do. When they came back from Korea and Vietnam there was no diagnosis for it back then. It was something that got swept under the rug and ignored. Shell shock was the term most often used, but there wasn’t any treatment for it.”

Rubbing his forehead, Wyatt looked at the old men at the bar and tried to imagine what it was like for them to come back home to a country that didn’t support the war they’d fought or value the sacrifices they’d made. “How did they deal with it? How do you deal with it?”

Clive let out a low breath. “I was in a real dark place for a while, but refused to admit it. You know, all that leftover mental bullshit from the military that if you go seek help for anything you’ll end up killing your career or will be labeled as a head case. My wife suffered with me, in some ways I think more. She saw me slipping away but didn’t know how to help. Luckily she had a good support system from the Ladies Auxiliary here at the VFW. She talked to them about the problems I was having and convinced me to seek treatment. That thing I did with you? Pulling you back to the present? She’s the one that taught me that.” The admiration and love Clive felt for his wife was evident in the way he talked about her.

Wyatt’s gaze fixed on Michelle and his heart let go of some of the grief. “A good woman makes all the difference, huh?”

“I wish it was that simple, but my wife helped. No one, absolutely no one, wants to live with the bullshit of PTSD, but it never really goes away. One day I had kind of an epiphany. While I couldn’t be strong for me, I had to be strong for my wife. She needed me, and then when she got pregnant I knew that I couldn’t let my kid grow up with a fucked up father. I couldn’t let the war screw up another generation of my family.” He took a drink and set the can back down, rolling it on the table’s surface. “Does that make any sense?”

He thought about Michelle, and how in their relationship they were both trying to be strong for each other. Each had their own demons, their own version of PTSD that might have eaten them alive if they were alone, but together they had to be strong enough for each other.

“Yeah, I understand perfectly.” He gave himself a mental shake, flinging off the nasty remains of his barely averted panic attack. “So coming here helps?”

“Fuck yeah. Despite what some people think we don’t just come here to talk about the war. In fact, most people don’t talk about it. Instead we talk about the good times, the bullshit that we went through and the bullshit we put other people through. We were all there, we all lived it, and we’ll never forget it. We talk about what the Cowboys are going to do, what politician is an asshole, what movie star we’d like to screw. Normal stuff.” He leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Man, did we do some fucked up stuff in boot camp together or what?”

Wyatt smiled back at him. “You mean like the bullshit we put Drill Sergeant Hump through?”

Clive barked out a loud laugh and smacked the table hard enough to rattle the cans. “Oh man, I haven’t thought about that motherfucker in years! God, that man had a hard-on for your ass, Callahan. I’ve never seen someone do as many pushups as you.”

They talked for another hour or so before Michelle came to collect Wyatt and head home. Walking out of the VFW Hall, she looped her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder.

“You did good in there.”

He placed a kiss on top of her head. “Thanks to you.” She flushed and tried to pull away but he held her close. “I mean it, Michelle. You give me the strength to fight it off, to keep it from overwhelming me. At the risk of sounding cheesy, you’re like my candle in the darkness.” Embarrassed, he cleared his throat. “Now I’m going to stop complimenting you before you get a swelled head.”

She looked away, but he caught the small smile curving her lips. “Funny, I like it when your head swells.”

He chuckled and resumed walking to the truck. “I think I might come back here sometime.”

“Me too. If you turn out to be a dud I have a whole list of handsome silver foxes that want to sweep me off my feet.”

“Kinda hard to do when they use a walker.”

She giggled and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Well, there is that.”

Looking down at her, he thanked God for bringing her into his life and hoped that he could be everything she wanted, needed, so that she would never leave him alone in the dark.

Chapter 13

After five blessedly normal, well as normal as they got around Michelle, days Wyatt found himself shoveling one of Yuki’s amazing omelets into his mouth, letting out sighs of appreciation. He’d only had a few small, manageable panic attacks and Michelle had been with him every time, letting him fight for himself, but providing her strength and support if he needed it. “Man, I forgot how hungry you get when you work at a ranch.”

James held up one of his sausage links in a toast. “It was nice having an extra pair of hands for a change. God knows I don’t get any help from...err...from the horses.”

Yuki snorted and snatched his sausage out of his hand, bit off the tip, and handed it back to him. “Keep that up and I’ll be doing a Shibari demonstration on you at the Connie’s wedding reception. If you really piss me off I’ll hang weighted clamps from your balls and hang
you
from the ceiling in a rope harness.”

Wyatt paused in his chewing and looked over at Michelle. “I thought you said this was an old friend’s wedding in Chicago that we were going to?”

Michelle swallowed hard and dropped her gaze, one of her avoidance techniques he noticed she used when something really bothered her. “There is a collaring ceremony afterwards, during the reception. It will be held at a BDSM club in the area. I-I thought maybe we would leave before that so you wouldn’t be uncomfortable.”

He chewed slowly, noticing the minute tremble of her lower lip. “Why would I be uncomfortable?”

She set her fork down. “Because all of these people were Owen’s friends and they probably won’t want you there.”

Yuki stared at Michelle. “What are you talking about?”

Michelle flinched, but kept her gaze on her half empty plate. When she spoke, her voice had a fragile, almost childish quality that he wasn’t used to hearing from his strong and brave Mistress. “I don’t want anyone being mean to Wyatt for taking Owen’s place.”

Yuki started to speak, but James put his hand over hers. “Honey, they are your friends, and more than anything they want you to be happy. All of them. Wyatt makes you happy; anyone with a brain can see it, and no one will think of it as anything but a long overdue blessing that you richly deserve. Owen’s dead, Wyatt is alive and so are you. Wherever Owen is he wants you to be happy.”

Michelle made a pained, choked sound before she finally looked up at Wyatt and her eyes shimmered with tears. “I have to go feed the horses.”

Her chair scraped roughly over the floor as she stood and walked quickly out the back door.

Yuki smacked James in the back of the head. “Way to go.”

“What? We can’t keep coddling her, Yuki. She has to move on and we are not helping by letting her avoid any mention of Owen, ever.” He scooted back his chair and set his napkin on the table. “You ever heard that phrase, ‘You have to be cruel to be kind’, Mistress? You know we aren’t going to stay here forever. At some point we will leave and she will be alone with her ghosts.”

“Not alone,” Wyatt spoke up, cradling his coffee in his hands. “I don’t plan on going anywhere.”

Yuki tossed her braid over her shoulder, trying affect a cool expression that was ruined by the strained lines around her eyes and mouth. “Shit, I’m sorry, Wyatt, but you two haven’t been together long enough to know if things will work, regardless of the issues you both bring to the table.”

He shook his head. “No. I know. I’m not going anywhere, ever. I’ll chase her to the ends of the earth if need be.” He took a sip of the bitter brew, choosing his words carefully. “I feel like my whole life has been leading up to this point, that everything that has happened to me had to happen so I would be ready for her. I love her.”

Yuki placed her hand against her mouth while James gave him a shrewd look. “Does she know that?”

“You mean did I tell her outright?” He gave a rough laugh. “She was sitting at the breakfast table this morning, wasn’t she?”

Yuki’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “Do you think she knows?”

“Absolutely.” He looked Yuki in the eye, willing her to see his sincerity. “I will be whatever she needs, whenever she needs it. And I don’t just mean as her submissive. I’ll be there to guard her when she needs a protector, to hold her when she wants to be held.” He ran a hand over his short hair. “I’d marry her today if I didn’t know the mere thought of it would send her screaming off into the night.”

James laughed and pulled his chair back up to the table. “Good, we wanted to make sure you were aware of the…unique obstacles you will have to overcome with Michelle.”

“Don’t get us wrong,” Yuki added. “Michelle is an amazing woman, if I was gay I would have married her a long time ago, but she is a difficult, high maintenance bitch even in the best of times. You’ve done a great job of not letting her push you away, but I think going to this wedding in Chicago might stir up some shit. You need to be ready for the breakdown that both James and I think she’ll have once she’s back on her old stomping grounds. This will be the first time she’s been to the club since Own died.”

Wyatt frowned. “The club?”

“Owen wasn’t just her submissive, he was also big in the Chicago BDSM community. He co-owned a fetish club called the Velvet Fist with Petrov, who is one of Michelle’s best friends. I’m sure she’s told you about him.”