by Jayton Young
He helped me down from the loft and we headed back to my house.
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It only took a fifteen minute drive to get to the airport in Rock Hill. When we pulled up, I noticed about ten cars in the parking lot. That didn’t seem like too many people, but it still made me nervous. I was very self-conscience about the scars all over my body. Even if I was fully covered, like now with my jeans, LSU sweatshirt, and my Timberlands, I still felt like everyone was watching me. My neck and face w ere still uncovered; I felt hideous. When we got out, Toby took my and walked closely beside me. I looked down the whole time, so no one could see my face, but I was looking out the corner of my eyes, trying to see who was around. I felt like I wa s being followed and watched; m ore so than my normal paranoia. I looked around, only noticing a couple of people milling around outside of the few workers. Then I saw a flash of red hair going into the men’s room.
I stopped dead in my tracks, jerking Toby to a stop as well. My breathing was speeding up to the point of hyperventilation.
Toby stepped in front of me grabbing my shoulders. “Breath with me.” He said. “Come on, Pea, calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”
Maybe I had just imagined it. Even if he was following me, he wouldn’t have had time to get in here, would he?
Toby put his hand on my cheek to guide my face up to him, so I was looking into his eyes.
“What happened, Marti? You were doing fine.”
I shook my head and signed, ‘It was just a panic attack. I’m ok ay now.’
He just looked at me for a moment before he nodded. I could tell he really didn’t believe me, but he dropped it, put his arm around my neck where his forearm and hand were hanging off my shoulder, and we headed towards the door to airfield where Troy would enter. There was a little waiting area, but I pulled Toby out the door so I would be able to see Troy get off the plane.
“There’s the plane now.” He said, squeezing my neck. “He’ll be out in a second. He has to wait for the engine to die down.”
I held my breath for a minute in anticipation, when finally the pilot finally opened the door. As soon as I saw him, I couldn’t contain myself. I ran to him. When he saw me, he dropped his bags and ran to meet me in the middle. He grabbed me up around the thighs and picked me up as I put my arms around his neck. I was laughing and crying at the same time, but of course he couldn’t tell that since I was silent . I didn’t know what all Toby told him when he called last night, so I didn’t know if he knew I was mute or not.
He set me down, put his hands on each side of my face, and gave me a big kiss. “God, I’ve missed y…” He stopped when he got a good look at my face. I immediately looked down so he couldn’t see, but he wasn’t having that. He lifted my chin to see my face more clearly, and then he looked down to my neck. He got a hard look in his eyes, and I knew he was angry. He looked back to Toby. I couldn’t see what Toby did, but Troy tried to calm himself down. He finally smiled at me and said sincerely how good I looked. I started crying and buried my face in his chest right underneath his chin. I knew he meant it was good I was alive.
We made our way inside after retrieving Troy’s bags. He told us that there was no change in Tory’s condition , but they were getting ready for the transport in three days. Toby said that everything should be set up and ready at their house, and started getting his bags together to be able to leave. The plane had had time to refuel and the pilot informed us that he was ready when Toby was.
We all walked back out the terminal door, but after a man hug, Troy hung back.
“I’ll only be gone a few days, but I’ll miss you, Pea.” He said as we walked closer to the plane. He turned to me after giving his bags to the pilot and said, “I love you, Marti. I won’t ever be willing to leaving you again, after this.”
A tear escaped my eye and rolled down my cheek. ‘I love you too, Toby. I love all of you.’ I signed and looked down. He probably thought I was a slut for that .
He lifted my chin. “You have got to quit looking down like you’re ashamed of everything, Pea. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are beautiful.” He kissed me again. “We all know you love us, just as all of us love you. When we get Tory back up and around, we will all sit down and have a serious talk, ok?”
I nodded, Got up to my tip-toes, and gave him a kiss. It surprised him because I had never initiated a kiss before. I had always felt like I was betraying one of them to do that, but since it was finally said, and he seemed to accept it, I couldn’t help myself.
“See ya!” He said as he walked up the steps to the plane. As the pilot closed the door, I walked back over to where Troy was, and grabbed his hand. He squeezed back as we watched the plane taxi down the runway and take off.
On the way out, I couldn’t help myself, I looked around as I had on the way in, just to see if I caught sight of the red hair again, but I didn’t.
Once we were in the car, Troy leaned over to kiss me again. “You know I want to know what the hell happened to you. Toby wants me to wait until you’re ready to tell us about it, but if there is any chance this bastard is still harassing you, I’m gonna take care of it. You are not alone anymore, you need to lean on us like you used to.”
‘Toby said you know ASL?’ I signed.
“Yeah, our uncle was deaf, so we learned it for him.” He answered.
I nodded. ‘Good. I have a keyboard Jordan made for me that speaks anything I type, but he’s making some adjustments to it , so this is my only f orm of communication right now.’
He sighed. “Alright, that’s fine, but I still want you to tell me about him and what happened to you.”
‘I’ll tell you some of it when we get home, but I stil l can’t talk about the details.’ I signed. ‘Please don’t force me to.’
“I won’t, Cupcake, but I do want a name.”
Chapter 9
Troy drove us back to my house. When we got there, Jordan and James came out to greet him and see how I was holding up. We went inside and the guys all grabbed beers and sat in the den to catch up. I just listened to them all laughing about different things, and it really lifted my spirits, but all of a sudden I had a flashback to the man with the red hair.
I knew there were millions of red-headed men in this country, but it was just the feeling I had when I saw him. Even before I saw him, it had felt like I was being followed. I knew if he ever caught me again, I’d not make it back alive.
I had to get my mind off of Blain or I end up making myself sick, so I thought about the trips. Just thinking about them always made me feel bet ter. I had to have faith that Tory would wake up soon. Maybe it was cliché, but I was hoping that hearing my voice would bring him back. I knew the reality though. If his brothers talking to him didn’t do it, then what made me think I could?
I wanted to stay at their house once the transfer was done. That way I could cook for the boys, and I’d be there if Tory woke up. No, not if…WHEN. When he woke up I wanted to be right beside him. I truly believed that nothing would ever keep these boys down.
But, who would cook for my brothers? If Toby and Troy agree to me staying there, then I’d just have to have them over for meals. I knew we could work it out.
Toby said they all loved me, but was it the same as what I felt, or was it more just the best friends that we’ve always been? They both did kiss me. There was no tongue involved, just lip to lip, so could I be reading more into it just because of how I feel? If that was the case, why would Toby say we would have a serious talk when Tory woke up?
“You still with us, Cupcake?”
I looked over and all of them were watching me with concern on their faces.
“You zoned out for a few, Sissy.” James said.
I sighed. ‘Sorry, just thinking.’
“About what?” Troy asked.
‘Different things.’
“Like what?” Troy asked again. He always was the most annoying of the
three trips. He always had to know everything.
I huffed out a breath. ‘Just stuff.’ I signed then I got up and went to the kitchen to see what I could cook for supper.
He got up and followed me in there. I heard James whisper to Jordan something about almost being glad he wouldn’t have to hear my screaming. I thought that was a bit insensitive, but I guessed I could understand it. Troy and I used to get into so me pretty loud shouting matches, but we’d always end up forgetting what we were shouting about . By the end we’d both be laughing. We were just too much alike. Both of being strong willed and hard headed.
“You still need to tell me everything.” He said, sitting on a stool at the island in the kitchen.
I finished taking out the stuff to make chicken alfredo and put it on the counter before I turned to him. ‘I’m sorry, but my hands will be tied for a while, so I won’t be able to talk to you .’ I smirked when I saw how red his face was getting. I bet steam would’ve come out of his ears if we were cartoons. “You’re not going to get out of this, Marti.”
Shit! I thought. He only used my name when he was seriously angry. I knew I needed to try to calm him down. I took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Look,’ I signed. ‘I told you that I would, please just be patient. I would like to have a good evening with you and my brothers to welcome you home. Can we please do that? I promi se I’ll tell you about it later’
He let out a huge breath and said, “Sorry, Cupcake. I just wish that there was something for me to be able to do, and I won’t be able to do anything until I know what happened, and who hurt you.”
My eyes started to tear up like they normally did when I thought about it. I turned so he wouldn’t see. A minute later , I felt his arms come around my waist.
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard everything has been for you.” He whispered as he kissed the top of my head.
I wiped my eyes and turned back to him. ‘So, tell me about being a Green Beret. What did you do?’ I signed.
“Well, I specialized in surveillance.” He said as he sat back down on the stool. I went back to the counter to prep the food, while I listened to him describe what he did. I could tell he loved it. “My team worked the special reconnaissance missions. We had to go in undetected. I won’t go into detail of the things we did, but I liked it. You could say I fulfilled my ambition of being a super-secret spy.”
I turned to him and huffed out a silent laugh. He had always said he was going to be a spy when he got older. What had made that funny is that, at the time, he couldn’t sneak up on a deaf person without getting caught. He had had no stealth and was usually the reason we four got caught d oing the things we did . Like I said before though, they never let me take the fall with them.
“Yeah, I know. They trained me up right nice though. I bet I could sneak up on you and watch you for hours without you knowing, now.” That sent a chill down my spine. Not because he scared me, but because that’s what I thought Blain was doing to me. I always felt like he was watching me. Luckily, Troy didn’t notice my reaction and continued. “The Berets aren’t spies, technically, but what we did was basically the same thing. I’ve been stateside for a while now, though. I had gotten injured and came back to recuperate, but before I could come here, Toby got injured and had to go through his rehab. Damn if he didn’t get better and we find out about Tory. I think it was fate telling us it was time to come home, and now I can see why. If we can just get Tory to wake up…”
I turned to him, wiping my hands on a dish cloth and then signed, ‘I told Toby, and I’ll tell you that once he gets home, he’ll get better. Toby said he still has his brain function. That tells me that he’s just waiting for something. Maybe he just needs to stay asleep long enough for his body to heal up, I don’t know, but I have a feeling that once he gets home, he’ll wake up. I have fa ith in him. He won’t leave us.’
“You are an amazing woman, you know that?” I looked down, blushed, and then turned back to the pasta I was making. “You truly are. It’s like you ’re ‘the glass is half full’ type person, even with everything going on. I wish I could be more like you, sometimes.”
I finished cooking and we decided to pop a movie in and eat in the den. We ended up having a ‘Dusk Til Dawn’ movie marathon, though I wasn’t really into them after the first one. If it didn’t have George Clooney in it, I didn’t care about it, but I watched anyway.
I went to the kitchen during the second movie to take my pills and get some Red Bull to be able to stay awake. Troy came in as I was doing this, and questioned me about it in sign language so my brothers would not hear.
‘I don’t like to sleep.’ I explained for what felt like the millionth time. ‘I have nightmares every time I close my eyes, so I stay awake as long as possible.’
“Don’t you think that just wears you out to the point that it’s harder for you to wake up when you do have a nightmare? And did you think that maybe the nightmares would decrease if you slept more often?” He sighed. “I don’t mean to lecture, but it’s probably your fear of sleep making you have the dreams in the first place.”
‘How would you know? You can’t imagine what I go through every time I just close my eyes. It’s been almost two years, but when I close my eyes, it seems like it just happened. When I actually sleep, I can feel everything he did, all the pain is fresh, and it takes a few minut es after waking for it to fade.’
“I do know, Cupcake. I went through it after my injury until I had some counseling .” He answered back.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked.
“We were checking out a village that another team had just cleared of guerrillas. It was cleared from what we gathered, but we weren’t to have any interaction with the locals. A boy, who couldn’t have been older than fourteen, caught sight of us and thought we were part of the guerrilla group that had been there. He had a gun and opened fire on us. I was the only one hit. He g ot me in the side of the head; if he’d been a better shot, I’d have been dead.” He shook his head of the memory and took a deep breath. “Anyway, when I woke up I had problem with my sight. I have no peripheral vision, and I get shaky when I’ve been too active. I got an honorable discharge due to my injuries, so I won’t be going back.”
‘I wish I’d been there for all of you.’ I looked down. So many things could have been avoided if I just waited on them, and had been there for them when they called or came home on leave. They probably thought I had left them. In a way, I did. I had given up on them after my dad died. I looked back up to him and knew I owed it to him to tell him the truth. ‘After you all took the extended tour, when you had the option of quitting and coming home, I thought that you didn’t care for me anymore. I had just lost Daddy, and I was so lonely. I started school, but didn’t really socialize that much. I joined an online book readers club just to have someone to talk to . I figured that I didn’t really know them, and we were just talking about book s we’d read or wanted to read. That’s where I met Blain Robinson. We chatted back and forth, just about books at first, but then somehow we started telling about our lives. He said he’s just lost his brother in a drunk driving accident, and had turned to books as an escape. After about six months of chatting online, and speaking on the phone, I finally agreed to meet him. It was good at first, but he started trying to rush it. He was trying to talk me into the S &M lifestyle, but I knew that wasn’t for me, so I politely refused him. After a couple of time s of him trying to get me to do more than I was willing, I told him if he couldn’t wait then he’d have to find someone else, that I wasn’t ready for th at. He apologized and said he’d wait for as long as I needed to, but then, on the next date we had, he kidnapped me. He said he was a seasoned Master and knew what was best for me.’ By this point, I had tears coming down my face, and my hands were shaking.
Troy took me in his arms, hugging me tightly. After I had calmed down some, he asked, “How’d you get away?” He must have realized that the time Blain had me was the details I couldn’t talk
about.
‘After the last time he lost control, which is when this happened to my face and neck, he unchained me a s I was out of it, and he left.’ I stared at a point on the other side of the kitchen, not being able to meet his eyes. ‘He had given me morphine for the pain, so I was able to walk to some degree. It took a while because I was still moving slowly, but I was able to make my way out of the house. When I made it to the street, I collapsed. I woke in the hospital after two days with both Jordan and James with me. They had been searching for me and had the police involved. I ended up writing a statement to the police of the whole thing. They told me later that Blain Robinson didn’t exist. The house I’d been held at was an estate house, the owners having had died, it just hadn’t been sold at that point. They never found the person who I knew as Blain.’
“And now you think he’s back?”
I nodded. ‘I know he is.’ I grabbed his hand and took him to my room. I got out copies of the letters he’d sent; the police had the real copies. I didn’t have to look. I had them all memorized, especially the last one from two weeks ago .
You will lose everyone you love.
If I can’t have you, then no one will.
Blain
Chapter 10
Troy had suggested exorcising our horses this morning to help get my mind off everything else. I think it was more to help him. He just about lost it last night when I had shown him the letters. I should have guessed what his reaction would be, but I hadn’t thought about it before I showed him. He calmed down as soon as I started to hyperventilate. I had started panicking when Troy was yelling at Ja m es and Jordan about what needed to be done. My panic attack wasn’t really Troy’s fault , i t happened any time I heard yelling, but he still felt really bad about it. We had spent the night in the den watching TV. Well, I did. Troy had fallen asleep.
I was saddling Nosey up for a ride, while Troy got Moe ready. We were working in silence, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. I was actually enjoying being with someone who didn’t feel the need to talk just to fill the silence, l ike Jordan and James normally did . They always felt the need to talk when they were around me. Usually it was about nothing, like they just felt the need to make up for me not being able to talk. Between the three of us, I had always been the most talkative. They would just listen to my rambling most of the time, so since they suffered through me back then, I did it gladly for them now .
