by Zoe York
“Good morning,” Grace said quietly from the kitchen behind her. Jenna turned around and waved gingerly as Alex silently held up a carafe of coffee.
“Yes, I need that, please.” She dug out her phone. No messages, not that she’d been expecting any.
As Alex poured her a cup, she checked the bus schedule and then squinted at the time. “There’s a bus I can catch in ninety minutes.”
“Perfect,” Grace said. “I can drop you at the bus station when I head uptown to check on a client this afternoon.”
They didn’t talk about Sean again, and Jenna was grateful for that, too. She’d appreciated Grace’s listening—and advice—more than she could say, but there was something lovely about the normalcy of just drinking coffee and making small talk with an old friend.
But her husband wasn’t far from her mind—nor was the fact that, since she’d slept over in the city and the bus home was the milk run that stopped in every small town, dropping off packages at the same time as they picked up people, it would take eight hours to get back to Pine Harbour. She wouldn’t get in until ten o’clock at night, and Sean would be passed out for hours by that point.
She didn’t know why she felt guilty about missing a day of visiting. He probably didn’t care in the least.
SEAN’S TRUCK sat out front all day, but Jenna didn’t show up.
That burned at him, even though he knew he deserved it. So he was an asshole to Dean and Liana, who didn’t deserve it. Especially not Liana, but not Dean either.
His older brother pushed him up against the wall and told him to be nice to his wife or else. Sean understood. He may have only had a wife for two months, but she’d been his everything. And now he couldn’t be anything to her.
He went back to bed.
When he woke up in the morning, nauseous and seeing auras from a migraine, he realized he’d forgotten to take his medication the night before. After he threw up, he told Dean Jenna couldn’t come over.
She did anyway, and he pretended to be asleep. She lay down on the couch in his room, and at some point, he drifted off for real.
When he woke up, she was gone.
He ignored the ache in his gut.
The next day she brought him breakfast, and he couldn’t bring himself to be a jerk again. It was exhausting.
“Driving a truck is interesting,” she said.
As far as conversations went, it was deliberately benign. He didn’t miss that. She wasn’t pushing him—as he’d requested.
He still bristled. “How so?”
She took a long sip of coffee before answering. “Well,” she said dryly. “I’m much higher up.”
“And that surprised you?”
“Jesus, Sean,” she snapped. “It wasn’t a serious statement.”
He blinked at her.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. Because he knew she was.
Something he’d noticed since the accident was that his voice didn’t sound right to his own ear. Nobody else had said anything about it, but he always felt a weird distance when he spoke. Like he was listening to someone else.
She gave him a tight smile. “Want more coffee?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s your head?”
“Better today.” He tried to make himself stick to the two word answers. They were safer.
“I’m going to Owen Sound. Could I pick anything up for you while I’m there?”
“No.” He hesitated. “Watch the speedometer. It sticks right around the speed limit.”
Eight extra words to an answer and her face softened. “Thanks.”
Damn it. She was unrelentingly sweet to him. Even when she’d just snapped at him, it hadn’t lasted.
He hated that her pity overrode everything else.
Hated that she didn’t look at him the way she had in Spain.
God. He missed that desperate way she’d needed him. The way her gaze had gone lusty and hazy. Horny Jenna was the most beautiful vision in the world.
But he’d never get that look from her. At some point, the sweetness would fade, and in its place would be resentment. And he couldn’t handle that.
What a selfish thought, jackass.
Although, it wasn’t selfish to want more for Jenna than brittle conversations about cars and coffee. He could give her a little more. It was the least she deserved.
“I’m…” He swallowed. “My brothers are forcing me outside today.”
She lifted one eyebrow. Oh?
He sighed. “Jake’s coming to pick me up. They’re trying to trick me into walking more,” he grumbled, “by making me needlessly get in and out of his truck and push my walker to his front porch.”
Her eyes crinkled as she laughed. “I’m sorry.”
“Gotta give them something.” He refused to go to outpatient physio, which was an ongoing bone of contention, with his brothers and his family doctor. And he’d liked sitting outside with Jenna.
Fresh air was as much of a compromise as he felt like giving them this week.
“That’s the spirit.” She winked. “And I really do think it’s a good plan. You’re putting up with a lot today. Pushy brothers, me snapping at you.”
“You’re entitled to a bit of snapping with all of this.”
She shook her head and gave him another smile. “Okay, I’m off. Good luck with the sunlight and the overbearing brothers.”
Getting downstairs was a chore. He went down on his ass, but there was something about his visual field changing so quickly as he descended that made his head spin. So he took his time, even though he was painfully aware that Jake was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, baby Calvin fussing in his baby carrier.
Jesus, Sean had more crap than the baby did. Walker, medications, a neck brace for the car ride.
Jake didn’t have time for this shit. Between juggling a full time business and a young family, the second-oldest Foster brother had the least amount of spare time of any of them.
“Sorry you got stuck with me today,” Sean muttered.
Jake shrugged it off. “We’ve got all day. I don’t have anything to do today but hang out with my boy and you.”
They made an odd trio as they slowly made their way out to Jake’s truck, Calvin fussing, Jake bobbing up and down to sooth him back to sleep, and Sean slowly plodding along beside with his walker, which he hated so fucking much.
When they arrived at Jake’s place, Tom Minelli was waiting on the front step. If it had been anyone else, Sean wouldn’t have immediately gone on guard. But Jake and Tom, out of all of their two-family band of brothers, had something uniquely in common. They, too, had been overseas, in Afghanistan. An ugly, messy tour that had seen many casualties.
Ah, fuck. Well he couldn’t just sit in the damn truck. Jake had already hopped out, and had carried Calvin, sleeping in his portable car seat, inside.
When he returned and hauled Sean’s walker out of the back of the truck, Sean accepted that whatever awkward conversation they were about to have might as well happen in a more comfortable seat.
He carefully slid out of the truck and made his way to the porch. His shoulders burned by the time he got there. From leaning. He was a mess.
Tom had been watching him patiently.
Sean sat and gave his friend a mock-jovial grin. “So. What’s going on?”
Jake stood in front of him and crossed his arms. “What do you think is going on? I love you—we all do—but you’re being an asshole. This is an intervention.”
So they weren’t beating around the bush. Fine.
“You were already a pain in Dean’s ass before Jenna arrived, and this last week has been even worse. Maybe we should have done this sooner, but it’s clear we can’t wait any longer. It’s time to talk about what happened.”
“Says you.”
Jake swore. “Yes, says me, you ungrateful shithead.”
Sean gave him a deliberately bland look. “You have a way with words.”
Tom stood and held out his hands. “Guys, let’s do the intervention first before you beat each other up.”
“I couldn’t beat him up even if I wanted to,” Sean muttered under his breath.
Jake leaned in and shoved his shoulder hard. “That right there. That’s the fucking problem. You should want to beat me up, and you could if you wanted to.”
“You don’t fucking understand.”
“Yes, I do.” He gestured to Tom. “Both of us do. We’ve been there, remember? We’ve done our tours overseas. We’ve been in the sandbox when everything was going to shit. We’ve been in the middle of firefights, and we’ve seen guys die. And when we came back, we put our lives back together and got on with fucking living.”
“You weren’t injured, though.”
“Not physically. But nobody comes out of that unscathed. For fucks sake, you have a wife. We all thought when she showed up that it would be a turning point for you, but not a negative one.”
“I didn’t ask her to come.”
“Yeah, we’re all figuring that out. What the actual fuck, man? You made vows to her.”
“That wasn’t me!” Sean’s voice cracked, but something else cracked, too, and he finally heard himself.
For the first time since the explosion that had torn his world apart, he heard himself and he recognized his own voice.
Jesus Christ.
He sounded desperate. Pathetic. Angry.
He hung his head.
“What do you mean, that wasn’t you?” Jake said slowly, dropping to a squat in front of Sean.
“I don’t know.” A lie. He knew. He just didn’t want to say it again.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Tom interjected. “Sean, where do you see yourself landing? You can’t stay at Dean’s forever.”
He knew that. He didn’t want to be dependent on his brothers. But he didn’t have an answer to that question. He couldn’t see into the future. He couldn’t imagine a future now.
When he didn’t answer, Jake threw his hands in the air and again muttered something about having a wife. That word sliced through him like a hot blade.
Tom looked at Sean. “Look, your brothers have their own perspectives. But I’m telling you — you gotta commit to a rehab plan for yourself. Get healthy for yourself. You can’t do this for Jenna. But you gotta ask yourself, what do you want? Because right now, you’re just driving a wedge between you and everyone who loves you.”
“I just want to be left the fuck alone. It’s all that I want.” That rang hollow. It wasn’t all he wanted. But what he wanted wasn’t possible. What he wanted had been stolen from him. In a single, awful, life-ripping moment. His universe had literally exploded, and how dare they expect him to already be trying to put the pieces back together?
It was the worst kind of jigsaw puzzle. There were pieces missing. Pieces torn in half. Pieces crushed into a pile of dust.
It would always be incomplete.
Tom and Jake had no idea what that was like, because their lives were whole again. They may have experienced some of the same fracturing reality, but their pieces hadn’t been blown apart in the same way.
“I don’t know what you guys were trying to accomplish here. What I know is that no two circumstances are the same. Before I was injured, I thought I was invincible. I bet Jenna’s life on it. I hitched her wagon to mine on the cocky-as-fuck belief that I’d see her on the other side, a war hero with legit swagger. Instead I’m half a man with a fucked-up brain.”
Jake stared at him. “And yet she’s here, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know why.”
“Then you’re an idiot, because she doesn’t act like she thinks you made a bad bet.”
Tom cleared his throat. “Or you need us to help you see that even though you’ve done your level best to be an asshole, she’s stuck around. She knows what she’s up against, too.”
She didn’t, though. She didn’t know how broken he was inside his head.
“I see what you’re doing, Sean,” Tom said, giving him a sober look.
Did he? Because Sean wasn’t completely sure. He felt like he was flailing out in some uncoordinated attempt to fight the world, to fight his new reality. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“You’re trying to isolate yourself.”
Maybe he was. He kicked at his walker.
“It’s not a plan, though. It’s a sign of depression.”
“I’m not depressed. I’m angry.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.”
Sean looked at Jake. “Tell him I’m not depressed.”
Jake gave him a pained look. “You’re not yourself.”
Jesus. He knew that. He’d never be that guy again. It wasn’t a temporary thing. “Traumatic brain injuries will do that to a guy,” he muttered.
“That’s not what I’m saying.” His brother sighed and sat down beside him. “Sean, you’re so angry about what happened to you that you’re forgetting it could have been so much worse.”
“How the hell could it—”
“We could have lost you.” Jake turned his head and gave him a hard look, his eyes glittering dangerously. “You could have died. And we are all so fucking grateful that you didn’t. Your wife is, too. When are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself and be glad you’re alive?”
Sean stared at his brother. He would have preferred a punch in the face. “Fuck,” he finally said.
“Yeah.”
Tom sat on the other side of him. “It’s okay to miss your old life. But you have a new life that’s going to stretch in front of you for decades. Make it count.”
Because others had lost that chance.
He was an asshole.
He needed to do something. Fix this, somehow. Enough leaning on others. Fucking hell, enough leaning, period.
He couldn’t cling to the memory of what had once been. It was time to move forward. It was time for a plan.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
February
Gibraltar
“WE’RE MARRIED.” No matter how many times Jenna said it, that sentence felt foreign and unexpected. Yet oddly right. She squeezed Sean’s hand as they walked back to the hotel. “At some point will this feel less surreal?”
“Probably not. But it’ll be an awesome story to tell our grandkids.” He stopped in his tracks and hauled her in for another quick kiss. “My wife. God, that sounds good.”
“How do you want to celebrate?”
He skated his hand up her back, pressing her against him. Maybe she wasn’t the only one reeling from what they’d just done, and he needed to hold on tight. “Horizontally?”
“Obviously.” She gave him a dopey smile. She wanted him like crazy, constantly, and she knew that was probably painted all over her face. “But what about after that?”
“Whatever you want to do.” He nuzzled his nose into her hair. “We haven’t gone out for dinner in a few nights. Maybe we could go someplace nice.”
They stopped at the front desk of the hotel and got a recommendation, and a reservation for that evening.
Once in their room, Jenna kicked off her shoes as Sean unbuttoned his shirt. This was easy now. This was sweet and wonderful and familiar, and the fact they were married didn’t change that at all.
Except it could.
Jenna twisted her arms in front of her body. “So…we’re married.”
“You keep saying that.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Yes, but this time it isn’t because of the surreal thing. More of an…administrative detail.”
“Oh?”
She swayed closer to him. “So the thing is…I have an IUD. If you’ve been tested recently, we could ditch the condoms…”
He held out his arms, and she went to him, letting him pull her close. He threaded his fingers into her hair, his eyes hot as he searched her face. “I have. And I haven’t had any activity in that regard in a while.”
“Same.” She swall
owed. “I figured our wedding night might be a good reason to bring that up.”
“I love you.” His hands tightened in her hair and he leaned in. “So much it scares me.”
He hadn’t admitted that before, and it made her racing heart slow down. She caressed his cheek. “We’re still us. This is a promise, not a chain. Nothing’s going to change.”
He leaned into her touch. “Since we’re covering administrative details, we should talk about that—what’s going to change, and what won’t.”
She nodded. It had been bouncing around in her head, too. “I thought some of that might sort itself out once we were home in the summer. I’m not tied down anywhere, and you travel a lot. We can figure out a new normal that keeps us together as much as we want.”
“I can move out west.”
She shrugged. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. I’ve never lived out east.”
“I can’t wait to show you my hometown.” He kissed her gently, his lips soft and coaxing.
She’d follow him anywhere, she was sure of it.
“We should also talk about the next of kin thing.” His voice got rougher as he said that. He twisted his head and kissed the palm of her hand. His jaw tightened, and she let him sort out his thoughts. It didn’t matter. She didn’t say her vows to get listed on his life insurance.
Finally he dragged in a deep breath and turned back, pressing his forehead against hers. “The thing is,” he said quietly. “You could be in danger. You work twenty clicks from the Syrian border. The camp has armed guards for a reason. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you could be targeted as a valuable asset if anyone knew that you were married to a Canadian army officer.”
Her heart stopped cold. Oh. He wasn’t worried about his life insurance. He was worried about her life. “What?”
“I know that sounds like crazy worst-case scenario talk, but it’s part of what I do. I run all the possibilities and plan to avoid the ones that don’t work for my goals.”
“And your goal here is…”
“Getting my wife back to Canada in one glorious, gorgeous piece. Safe and sound.”
Her heart slammed back into gear. She nodded shakily. “Good goal.”
