by Gina Azzi
“I fucking hope so.”
I reach out, placing my hand on his. “I’m sorry Graham.”
“I also got orders."
I close my eyes, hoping that he says anywhere but a war zone.
"Where?"
"Germany."
I open my eyes. "Well, that's not bad."
Graham tosses a balled-up napkin at me. "No. It's pretty awesome actually."
"When do you PCS?"
"One month. So, can I crash with you until then?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course!"
“I was planning on it anyway but your excitement is reassuring.” He smirks, taking another enormous bite of his cinnamon roll.
I pick at mine, my thoughts still caught on Hunter. I hope he doesn’t lose his sight. I hope he’s okay. But then the image in my mind transforms from Hunter to Jax and I close my eyes, relieved that he made it home, that he came back, even if he didn’t come back to me.
"It will give us some time to hang out. Bond," Graham continues and I open my eyes at the sound of his voice.
"Yeah."
"Not that I want to cramp your style or anything. I won't kill your social life."
"What social life?"
Graham sighs, finishing off his second cup of coffee. Mine's turned cold.
"Evie?"
"Hmm?"
"We have a month to sort you out. I'm not leaving you here to rot away and become a crazy cat lady."
"I don't even like cats."
"Small miracles. This month you're getting back out there. I don't know what's been going on with you these past few years," he says, holding up his hand to silence me before I can fill the air between us with lies, "and you don't have to tell me. But you do need to start moving forward. Find things that fulfill you. Date." He fixes me with a stern, older brother look. "You need to get a life."
"Gee, thanks."
"I'm serious."
"I know." I pick at the pastry icing. "I actually have something new going on."
He raises his eyebrows at me, waiting.
"I haven’t told anyone yet."
"What is it?"
"I've started shadowing Staff-Sergeant Peters at Morris. I'm thinking about applying to PT programs."
An ecstatic smile splits Graham's lips, and some of the worry always lurking in the shadows of his face when he looks at me seems to lessen. "Evie, that's incredible. When did this happen?"
"Just recently. I'm not a hundred percent yet. I mean, I am. I just… it’s still new."
"Okay. Well... wow. That's really great. I'm proud of you, Noodle." He references a nickname from my childhood that he hasn't called me in years.
I roll my eyes, heat traveling up my neck and fanning out into my cheeks at his praise. "Let's see if I can get in anywhere before we start with all the excitement."
"Are you serious? Any program would be lucky to have you."
"Spoken like a true brother."
"I’m proud of you.”
“Stop with all the compliments. You’re making me blush.”
“Good. I know I haven’t been around a lot the past few years, Evie. Between deployment and getting my head straight when I got back, I haven’t been here for you the way I want to be. I’m looking forward to hanging out this month. We can catch up on all the stuff I missed the past few years.” His voice is gentle but the look he levels at me is serious.
I swallow a sip of my coffee, nodding at his words. It isn’t lost on me that he’s the second person to look at me with concern and sympathy this week.
9
Jax
"That's full set." Marco, one of the civilian physical therapists at Morris, taps the bar, indicating I should place it back on the rack.
Squeezing my shoulder blades together, a tight soreness pulls against my back. A slow throb already builds in my shoulder.
"Nice work, Kane. I'll see ya around." Marco tosses me a towel, walking over to a woman doing deadlifts in the corner.
I sit up on the bench and mop the sweat from my face. My left arm feels like spaghetti. Apparently, this is progress. Pushing up off the bench, I walk to the locker room, dropping my towel in a bin on the way in.
I’m cranky. Partly because I’m hungry as shit. Partly because my shoulder is throbbing. And partly because I barely saw Evie today. Peters had an emergency so Marco is covering his appointments. Since Evie only shadows Peters, she spent my session answering phones and filing while I spent it thinking about her.
"She looks good, better than usual." A voice from behind a row of lockers says.
A locker clicks shut as another voice asks, "You think it's because Kane's back?"
I stop in my tracks, staring at the space the voices are coming from.
"Nah, he’s been gone too long to affect her."
Silence.
"You never know, man. They could get back together.”
A nasty laugh. “No way. Trust me, Kane’s moved on.”
“I guess so.”
What the hell? This conversation would be funny if I didn’t hear my name dropped into it. Ripping open my locker, I let the door bang against the locker beside it. The voices stop abruptly. Shouldering my gym bag, I'm about to go confront the two assholes and tell them to knock it off. To stop dropping my name and referencing Evie like they know anything about us, when Marco pops his head through the locker room door.
"Kane? Got a minute."
A sharpness infuses the heavy silence as the two dipshits realize I'm in here, too. I can't even hear them breathing. Who the hell are they? And what the fuck did they mean that I couldn’t affect her anymore?
"Kane?"
"Yeah. Coming." I close my locker harder than necessary and follow Marco out as he hands me a paper with a new exercise list and explains the tweaks Peters is making to my PT. I cock my head to the side, pretending to listen to him as my eyes latch onto the beautiful girl updating schedules.
"Got it?"
"Yep, thanks." I stuff the paper into my bag. "Catch you later, Marco."
Desperately wanting to turn back into the locker room and knock the two guys gossiping like high school girls out, I stop myself and focus on controlling the anger swirling in my chest. I can't get in a fight at the Morris locker room. If I face disciplinary action, I’ll never get to see Evie. Plus, I need to straighten out my shoulder so if I don’t re-up when my contract runs out, I’ll at least have other career options. A bad arm isn’t going to get me anywhere in the private security field.
Walking over to the receptionist desk faster than normal, I lean across it into Evie's space and watch as her eyes widen in alarm before dimming to surprise. Shit. I back up just as quickly, biting down on my tongue to keep from confronting her, straight out asking her why two dicks in the locker room would be running their mouths about her. About us.
"Jax."
"How's it going?"
"Okay. How are you? How's your shoulder today?"
“It’s all right. Peters made some adjustments to my PT. I just wish it were coming along faster."
"You're frustrated."
"Exactly."
"I see a lot of soldiers go through this. It's all part of the process. If you're frustrated, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It means you expect more of yourself."
"And that's a good thing? Expecting more of myself?"
"Absolutely. You should always want more for yourself, Jax. You'll get there."
"So go to dinner with me." The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and I don't even care. I've wanted to ask her out since the night I saw her again at Raf's, and the two guys in the locker room just gave me the ammo I needed to make my move.
"What?" Her mouth drops open, confusion rippling across her face.
"You just said I should always want more for myself. I do. I want to take you to dinner. I want you back in my life."
"Jax." She rolls back a half step in her chair, even though the desk is separating us.
"Evie. I
've always wanted you." The words reverberate in the air between us, ringing with a truthfulness that I could never pretend.
"I, um, Jax." She looks around nervously, her eyes suddenly narrowing as her arms wrap across her middle.
"What's up, Kane?" A guy I graduated with, Gary Reitter, thumps me on the back. "Hey, Evie."
"How's it going, man?" I ask to be polite, but my eyes are still glued to Evie.
"All good. See you around. 'Bye Evie." He tosses her a smile, but her eyes have glazed over, and she's not looking at either one of us anymore.
Gary leaves Morris as I wait for Evie to respond.
"Evie?"
Her eyes jump back to me, startled. "Huh?"
"Go to dinner with me."
Panic and pain burn the blue of her eyes. She shakes her head. "I can't, Jax. I can't do that. I have to get back to work. Have a good weekend." She stands up, swaying as she grabs a stack of folders off her desk and walks away stiffly, dismissing me.
I watch the unsure steps of her departure, confused by her reaction but not ready to give up on her just yet. Evie Maywood, while forever out of my league, is still meant to be in my world. And dinner isn't a marriage proposal. Why the hell can't I still be friends with her, even if I can't fix the mess between us?
"Remember when we were kids, and we would come back here and pretend to shoot robbers?" Carter's voice startles me as I turn to look at him.
I nod at the memory, a thousand hot summer days and sticky breezes coming back to me. "Yeah. You always got to be the sheriff."
Carter snorts, taking a seat beside me and passing me a beer. "How far is that from the truth?"
"Still better than Denver."
Carter chuckles in his easy-going way, leaning back in his deck chair and taking a long swig of his beer. "Guess so."
I turn to him, bringing the bottle to my lips and letting the bitter taste sweep down my throat. I was never attracted to beer for the taste... rather for the social aspect it's always provided. A link between my brothers and I, a bond between the guys I've served with, a familiarity with anyone sitting around when I step up to the bar at Raf's. It's reliable like that. "What do you mean? You've always been a natural charmer, a bit of wise ass, but legit. With Denver getting sent away and me enlisting, it was always you holding shit down here for us, keeping an eye out for Daisy."
He chews the corner of his mouth, looking out to the edge of our property. It's lifeless, patches of dried grass and dying shrubbery. "Mm-hmm," he comments before chuckling again and punching me in the shoulder with his fist. "I could have killed you fuckers the day Daisy got her period, and I was all alone, left to deal with that shit by myself."
I cringe at the thought, imagining how awful it must have been for Carter. And even more so for Daisy. "What'd you do?"
He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. "You mean after I assured her she wasn't dying? Jesus, what the hell are they even teaching in Sex Ed these days? I called Lori Filton. Remember her?"
At the sound of her name, an image of Lori Filton, a cheerleader that graduated the year between Carter and me, pops into my head. "She was pretty."
"Yeah. Still is." The corners of Carter's lips turn up. "Anyway, she and I were messing around at the time and so I hit her up, had her come over, explain things to Daisy. She even volunteered to take her to the pharmacy. In that moment, I could have married the girl."
"What happened?"
"Eh, you know. Daisy was all embarrassed and moody for a few days but after that, she was fine."
"No, I mean what happened with Lori?"
"Nothing,” he shrugs, “we still kick it sometimes."
I chuckle, raising the bottle to my lips again and mulling that over. Carter has never been serious about a girl. There have always been girls. Always. Ever since he was a little kid and Janie Monroe followed him around on the playground. But there has never been the girl. Even Denver has had two serious girlfriends that we all thought could end up a permanent fixture in the Kane family. It didn't work out that way, but it could have. I had Evie. Well, I hope to still have Evie.
But Carter's always been just Carter.
"You see Evie around?" he asks.
"Yup."
"How's she doing?"
"What do you mean?"
"She's quiet these days."
"Do you see her often?" I pick at the label on my beer bottle, a strange heat burning in my stomach. Why does Carter know more about my girl than I do? And why didn't he ever tell me that she passed on West Point?
"Not really."
"Then how do you know she's quiet?"
"Why are you getting pissed at me?"
"I'm not."
He blows out a deep breath. "You left, Jax. You picked up and never looked back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What?” Surprise flashes across Carter’s features, his mouth dropping open.
“What you said that night at Raf’s, about me being selfish, about still having my family,” I take a swig of the beer, swallowing back remorse along with the Corona, “you were right. I sucked at keeping in touch with you guys. Random phone calls and meeting up sporadically in New York or DC wasn’t enough and I let you down. I get why you’re pissed at me and –”
Carter holds up his hand, cutting me off. “I’m not pissed at you.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Fine.” He mumbles, drinking some of his beer. “I’m a little pissed.”
I grin and he chuckles, reaching over to punch my shoulder again.
“Everyone was gone. And I did the best I could with what I had to work with. Sometimes it seems like that wasn’t enough." He admits, draining his beer.
"What do you mean? Stop talking in all these riddles, Carter. What gives?”
My brother watches the edge of our property line but when he turns toward me, his expression deepens into the greatest grief I've ever witnessed from him. He appears sorrowful, even more so than on the morning we buried our mother. He shakes his head, "Forget it. I'm sorry too, Jax. I wish things with Evie turned out the way you wanted them to.” He pushes out of the chair then, grabbing his empty beer bottle. I hear the bottle hit the recycling bin and clang loudly against the other glass. The back door slams shut and I stay, listening to the sounds of dusk and staring at the depressing yard.
I finish my beer slowly, thinking over Carter’s apology. Carter and I were always close growing up but now that I’m back, things between us have shifted and I’m still trying to sort out my footing. I know I’ve hurt him; I understand why he’s pissed at me. But it’s more than that. He wants to lay into me and unload all of the shit he’s grappling with but he also wants to protect me from it too. Why would he ever feel like anything he did wasn’t enough for us Kane kids?
My shoulder aches, a deep burn that spreads up the column of my neck and down to the center of my spine. Peters is working me hard and while I'm grateful for his expertise, I hate that Evie sees me in such rough shape, grimacing and grunting and working up a sweat over the simplest exercises. I hate that she's witnessing me in a position where I can't hold it together.
Having her shadow Peters on my PT does bring some benefits, though, like the fact that I get to see her more often. Observe her in her element. She's a natural at the PT, asks intelligent questions, and adds her own opinions into the mix when Peters questions her. Her observations are always carefully crafted, pertinent, and smart.
"How's Graham?" I break the ice during an easy round of bicep curls.
Evie smiles at the mention of her brother. "He's doing well. Back in town actually, at least for the next month before his PCS."
"Yeah? That's nice y'all are getting to spend some time together."
She rolls her eyes, even though she's grinning. "He's killing me. He's got me running with him every morning, and now he wants to throw conditioning into the mix."
I chuckle, recalling how excited Evie would be whenever Graham was coming back to town. They al
ways worked out together. She idolized her big brother and wanted to be exactly like him. Follow in his footsteps.
"Where's he PCSing to?"
"Germany."
I let out a whistle. Germany is cushy. "Sweet."
"He seems pretty excited about it." She hands me a bottle of water as I drop the dumbbell and take a breather before my next set.
"He’s crashing with you?"
“Yeah.”
"That's good."
"Why?"
"So you're not by yourself," I blurt out before I realize how patronizing the words sound. "You know, so he can keep an eye out for you." I cringe internally, shoving my foot farther down my throat. I know Evie is capable of taking care of herself but seeing how different she is, how thin and fragile she looks, makes me worry about her in new ways.
She surprises me, though. Instead of the shoulder shrug or eye roll I’m expecting, a flash of color spreads across her cheeks and her eyes narrow. For a brief glimpse, she’s my Maywood again. “Trust me, I’ve been taking care of myself just fine for the last seven years. Start your next set.” She demands, and I have to swallow back the relief I feel at finally witnessing a reaction from her.
I pick up a heavier set of dumbbells and begin to curl. "I’m sure you’ve been managing fine on your own. Are you still crazy idealistic and think everyone is inherently good?" I taunt her, not ready to lose sight of the old Evie she’s finally showing me.
She stills next to me, and I watch her through the mirror before us as her body stiffens, her gaze turning downwards. Shit. I thought she’d come back at me with a witty comment, not shut down. I finish the set and drop the dumbbells, bending down to snatch up my water bottle.
"Evie, I'm just joking with you, giving you shit. You know I always admired how much you cared about other people, how you saw the world."
She nods her head, the movement jerky. "Sure. I see Gabrielle getting swamped at the front desk." She peers over my shoulder. "Are you okay to work through the rest of the exercises on your own?"
I narrow my eyes at her, fully aware that she's blowing me off, although I have no idea why. "Yeah."
