Only Love

by Garrett Leigh

  “Is this from the same injury?”

  Jed swallowed hard. “Yeah, they had to put some pins in the bone and repair a bunch of nerves, but….”

  “It’ll never be quite the same?”

  “Something like that.”

  Max withdrew his hand and grinned. “You say that a lot.” When Jed failed to answer, Max gently pried his clothes from his fingers and pulled his sweatpants back up his leg. “Are you okay getting around?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “Nope.” Jed fingered his waistband. Did he really just do that? “I just have to get back on my feet. Rehab, eat well. The usual shit.”

  Max slipped out from under Jed’s arm and returned to his own seat. “Well, I can probably help you with that. I don’t eat meat, or junk food. Sugar makes me loopy, and additives make my seizures worse.”

  “Is that why you grow your own food?”

  “Mostly. It saves money too. The boat shed only covers the rent.”

  Jed picked up his cup and carefully maneuvered himself to place it in the sink. “I can pay the rent.”

  “I don’t need you to pay the rent.”

  Jed hid his grin. He’d learned over the last few days that Max was fiercely independent and belligerent when he felt that was threatened. “I know that, but I need to pay my way. How about I pay the rent and you pay the bills?”

  “How about you pay your own bills?”

  “I’m a crippled veteran, babe. I don’t have any.” Jed winced. The casual endearment had slipped out like he’d said it a thousand times. He hadn’t. He couldn’t recall referring to anyone as babe, let alone another man. Damn fucking tramadol.

  Max seemed taken aback too, but he recovered quickly. “Let’s talk about it another day. Want to watch a movie?”

  “Don’t you have boat shit to do?” Jed shot back, eager to steer the conversation away from himself.

  “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. Besides, watch this.” Max walked to the back door and whistled for Flo. She followed him halfway, looked back at Jed, and whined. “See? You’re giving off bad vibes. She doesn’t want to leave you alone.”

  Jed wasn’t pleased that even the dog saw through him, but he didn’t have the energy to argue. Lacking any better ideas, he followed Max into the living room, watched him build a fire, and promptly fell asleep on the couch.

  He woke sometime later to a dim room that told him he’d been asleep for a good few hours. He shifted carefully, testing himself, but all things considered, he felt pretty good. The comforting smell of wood smoke reached him. He let his eyes close again, but despite the soothing warmth of the fire, his mind drifted, led astray by the lingering narcotics, to the most memorable Thanksgiving he’d had in years.

  Somewhere beneath lingering exhaustion and nausea, Jed could still feel the rage he’d felt when Nick had handed him the phone and he’d heard his ailing father’s slurred voice.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, son. It’s good to have you home.”

  Jed clenched his fists. Was the old bastard fucking kidding? It didn’t meld well with the parting words of the last conversation they’d had.

  “Get your faggot ass out of my house. You’re no son of mine.”

  It was the culmination of years of conflict. He had more than a decade of real war to compare it to, but his childhood home was still the worst battleground he’d ever endured. Years later, after an evening spent watching Nick tear his own family apart in much the same way, hearing Frank Cooper’s voice was too much.

  Perhaps it was a twisted sense of nostalgia that had driven him to put himself between Nick and Kim. Max seemed so certain Nick wasn’t violent, but there was something about the way he spoke to Kim, something horribly familiar. Kim was a firecracker—tough and brave—but when the time came, she’d be no match for a man twice her size. Jed had spent his whole childhood watching how that panned out.

  Once outside, it hadn’t taken long to defuse Nick’s belligerence. Jed had honed that skill over the years. Border crossings, guerrilla roadblocks, a besieged city marketplace. The scenery changed, but the method remained the same. He was good at it, always had been, and when the fight in Nick had descended into self-loathing, he’d had to swallow his disgust.

  Movement brought Jed back to the present. He shifted and propped himself up on one elbow.

  Max looked over his shoulder as he stoked the fire. “I thought you were asleep.”

  Jed tested his body again, surprised to find the ache in his abdomen had faded to a dull roar. His head felt clearer too. For the first time in days, the room didn’t spin. “Nah. Resting my eyes.”

  “That old chestnut, eh?”

  Max made his way back to the sofa and hovered, like he was considering helping Jed up, but thought better of it before Jed could wave him away and dropped back to his position on the floor.

  Jed followed Max’s concentrated gaze to the coffee table. It was strewn with tools and what appeared to be a boat engine. He watched Max work for a while. Kim had told him Max shared Tess’s inability to sit still. She said he had two gears—manic and sleep—but as Jed watched him methodically reconstruct the engine, he was inclined to disagree. Jed didn’t have much interest in boats, but he knew the workings of an engine. As far as he could tell, Max was about done. Whatever his issues, he was clearly good with his hands.

  Exhausted, Jed let his head drop back to the arm of the couch. The smell of oil and gasoline was comforting. If he closed his eyes, he could almost convince himself he was somewhere else, but the warmth of Max’s body just inches away kept him in the present. He’d lived in close quarters with other men for most of his adult life, but something about Max felt different. Jed drifted back to sleep with a strange sensation in his bones.

  Chapter Seven

  MAX THREW a dead branch into the shallower waters of the lake. Flo charged after it, submerging herself up to her chest. Max laughed. He’d regret letting her get so wet later but couldn’t bring himself to care. It had been a strange week, and the sight of Flo bounding through the shimmering water was just what he needed to see.

  The brutal scars on Jed’s leg haunted him. He was all too aware he’d caught Jed at a rare moment—that it was unlikely he’d find him so forthcoming again—but he couldn’t get the devastating injuries out of his head. He hadn’t known Jed long, and yet somehow, the quiet, brooding soldier had gotten under his skin.

  Maybe it was the shock of discovering their shared sexuality. Max’s gaydar had always been crap, but he’d never been so blindsided before. He’d had no idea, and now it was all he could think about. Jed had been on Max’s mind since the moment he’d met him, but now that he knew… bloody hell. He couldn’t close his eyes without Jed’s rugged, unshaven jaw and shrewd gaze dancing behind his eyelids. The fact that Jed seemed to be under the weather only made it worse.

  Not that Jed had admitted as much. He’d spent his first few days at the cabin crashed out on the couch, but aside from the first night at the cabin, and the conversation they’d had the day before, he hadn’t said much at all.

  The sun disappeared below the horizon. Max called Flo and made his way inside the cabin. He hadn’t seen much of Jed in the past week or so. He seemed to have recovered from whatever had laid him low after Thanksgiving. He’d bought a truck from Dan Valesco and disappeared in it every other day. The days Jed was at home, he spent at the kitchen table absorbed in official-looking paperwork, and that was exactly how Max found him as he drifted into the kitchen in search of some supper.

  Out of habit, he swiped the cooled, untouched mug of tea from the table and tipped it down the sink. Jed seemed to like the rooibos tea Max favored, but he often let his mugs go undrunk, like he forgot they were there. Max had taken to replacing them whenever he noticed. He drank the tea himself because it reminded him of his mother, Makemba. Even the smell of it soothed him, and took him back to a time he could sometimes barely remember.

&n
bsp; Jed glanced up as Max set a fresh mug on the table. “Thanks. When did you get back?”

  “A while ago.” Max stole a glance at the paperwork stacked on the table. A military ID card was partially hidden by an official-looking form. He forced himself to look away. “Flo wanted to play in the water.”

  “Six-mile hike not enough for her?”

  “We caught a lift back from Kim,” Max said. “She was going to come in and say hi, but she had to get Belle from a friend’s house.”

  Jed opened his mouth to speak, but paused, catching sight of the reflective jacket Max set on the table beside him. “Is that yours or the dog’s?”

  “Seriously? You think I’d wear purple? It’s Flo’s. She has to wear it when she comes into stores and stuff with me. The girls chose the color.”

  “Hey, I like purple.”

  Max scowled. He was all too aware that Jed oozed masculinity. He probably could wear purple and pull it off.

  Jed set his pen down and picked up the light jacket. “On duty medical alert dog,” he read aloud. “That’s pretty cool.”

  “If you say so.” Max thought it sucked that he had to broadcast his life story on the back of his dog. Bad enough he was stuck with a medical ID bracelet. “If you ever take her out without me, she still needs to wear it. She won’t stand for being tied up outside or left in the truck.”

  “Why would I take her out without you? She never leaves your side.”

  “Exactly. Sometimes I leave her with a friend and go stay with Kim to give her a break. It gives her a chance to be a normal dog. I could leave her here with you, right?”

  Jed nodded. “Sure, but she keeps me on a pretty tight leash too. I’m not sure how much downtime she’d get.”

  Max snorted, but it was true. Every moment Flo wasn’t watching him, she’d taken to standing guard over Jed. She didn’t hover to the extent she did with Max—didn’t follow his every step—but if Max was occupied with someone else, she naturally gravitated toward Jed.

  Not that I blame her. Though Max hadn’t spent much time with Jed, on days like today, when Jed’s eyes twinkled and his grin was easy, Max found himself inexplicably drawn to him.

  He cast another wary glance over Jed’s pile of paperwork. “What’s all this?”

  “Insurance bullshit.”

  Jed’s tone was curt. Max considered it a dismissal until Jed sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I should’ve done it weeks ago, but I couldn’t find the right time at Nick’s place. It was too, uh….”

  “Chaotic?”

  “I guess,” Jed said wryly. “I’ve been putting it off for ages, but I’m a decrepit old man now. I need to get the last of my veterans’ crap in order. Don’t suppose you want to be my next of kin, do you?”

  “What about Nick?”

  Jed’s silence said it all.

  “You’d better write me down, then.” Max didn’t look to see if Jed took him seriously. Instead, he decided to be brave and cut to the chase of something he’d been pondering all the way home. “How old are you?”

  “How old do I look?”

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “Your mood, I guess. You look young when you smile, but older when you… um, don’t.”

  Jed seemed amused by the awkward observation. “How old do I look today?”

  Max considered the question. Jed looked better today than he had since Max met him, and certainly since he’d moved into the cabin. He had color in his cheeks and his eyes were sharp. “Twenty-eight?”

  Jed snorted. “Fat chance. I’m thirty-two.”

  Of course he was. Max felt like a fool. Nick had told him years ago that his brother was hardly a year older than him. Trouble was, Max’s memory was occasionally unreliable. Put together with Jed’s rakish good looks… after a long day, it was enough to leave him dizzy.

  “You know, I can drive you into town anytime you want,” Jed said. “Or to the city. You don’t have to ask Kim.”

  Max opened the refrigerator. “I might take you up on that. Carrying grocery bags in the rain is a pain in the neck, and Kim’s not always around.”

  “Anytime. Say the word. Was it softball practice today?”

  “Nope.” Max shut the uninspiring fridge with a bang. “That’s on Wednesdays. Dan said he was going to ask you to help him sometime. Tess would love that. She gets lairy when I have to stay with Belle, and she takes up a lot of Dan’s time.”

  Jed hummed, his gaze on his work. “Lairy, huh? I don’t know that word. Dan mentioned the softball team, but I need to figure my PT schedule out first. Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the deal with you and Tess? I can see you’re close, but you seem to back right off when she’s super crazy.”

  Is there anything he doesn’t see? Max pondered his answer. No one, save Kim, had ever noticed the difficulty he had dealing with Tess when she was hypermanic. “It gets under my skin, like I can feel it, like I’m absorbing it, you know? She makes me feel crazy, and she feeds off that, so I guess it feels like I make it worse.”

  “You feel guilty because you think she inherited ADHD from you?”

  “Sometimes, especially when she’s tearing the place up.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” Jed said shortly. “Genes are genes. You can’t help the bullshit you got stuck with any more than she can.”

  Jed turned his attention back to his work, and Max took the conversation to be over, but with the children on his mind, he remembered something he’d been meaning to ask for days.

  Max was confused by the spark in Jed’s eyes when he cautiously broached the idea of Belle and Tess spending the night at the cabin. Despite Jed’s obvious bond with his nieces, Max had worried he wouldn’t go for the idea of his peace and quiet being disrupted.

  “I figured I wouldn’t get to see them much,” Jed explained. “I know you see them all the time, but I’m kinda caught up with PT and all this shit during the day.”

  His real point was left unsaid but it wasn’t lost on Max. Visiting the Cooper house at night meant dealing with Nick.

  Max retrieved a jar of homemade spaghetti sauce and held it up for Jed to approve. Jed nodded, and Max resumed his search for noodles. A book on the countertop caught his eye. He squinted at it, taking in the delicate, foreign script. He was getting used to the random books Jed left around the cabin. For a tough guy, Jed seemed to be a closet nerd, and he owned more books than the rest of his possessions combined, especially now Anna Valesco had given him the two whole boxes she’d rescued from Frank Cooper’s attic when Nick had moved him to a nursing home.

  “Max?”

  “Hmm?”

  Strong hands grasped Max’s shoulders, and Jed regarded him for a moment. “Give me that pasta. I’ll make dinner.”

  Max had learned long ago to ignore his frequent absence seizures. With Flo sleeping contentedly in her bed, he knew he hadn’t been gone for long, but he wasn’t going to pass up the offer of having someone else cook for him. He relinquished the packet of spaghetti and retreated to the table.

  It was oddly relaxing to watch Jed move around the kitchen. Max studiously ignored the neatly stacked paperwork in front of him and lost himself in the expert way Jed maneuvered his body to use his damaged left side as little as possible. It was mesmerizing and it felt like no time had passed at all before a steaming bowl of food appeared in front of him.

  Max drew the bowl toward him and took a bite. “This is good,” he said with his mouth full. “What else can you cook?”

  Jed took a tentative bite of his own food and chewed slowly. “Don’t get excited. I can cook eggs, spaghetti, and a-hundred-and-one ways with rice.”

  “Eggs and spaghetti, huh?”

  “Yep. It was all my mom could cook. Nick and I didn’t know there was anything else until we met Anna.”

  “What was your favorite food when you were a kid?”

  “Really?”

  Max shrugged. �
�Humor me.”

  “Peanut butter sandwiches, but I never grew out of it. If any of my crew pissed me off, they used to hide a jar of Skippy in my pack.”

  Max smiled as Jed seemed to realize he’d revealed far more than he’d intended. “Hold that thought.”

  He rose from the table, deposited his bowl in the sink, and opened a cabinet. He rummaged around and retrieved a dusty jar from the health food store. “That’s as good as it gets in this house.”

  Jed took the jar and scrutinized it. “What is it?”

  “Natural peanut butter. You’ll have to stir it. I’ve got jelly too. It’s not grape, though. Strawberry, I think.”

  Jed made a face that made him look half his age. “Strawberries are the devil’s food. That shit smells like ass. You know how my crew put Skippy in my pack if they wanted to play nice?” Max nodded. “Yeah, well, they replaced all my stuff with strawberry crap if they wanted to piss me off. Sunblock, toothpaste. One of them even put strawberry lube in my gun-grease tin.”

  Max laughed, but it cut off as he realized Jed had slipped away. Not physically, of course. He was at the table, fork in hand, but it was obvious by the vacant stare in his eyes that he’d stolen a trick from Max and dropped off the edge of the earth.

  Max pried the jar from Jed’s clenched fingers. The motion seemed to rouse him. Max forced a grin. “Damn. You’re picking up my bad habits already. Your brother’s gonna send the lynch mob for sure.”

  There was a beat of silence, before Jed seemed to recover his senses, but this time the easy warmth was gone and the flat, hollow look in his eyes chilled Max to the bone.

  Chapter Eight

  THE NEXT couple of weeks passed Jed by in a blur of painful physical therapy. Carla Valesco kept her promise to push him hard, and her sessions were tough—tougher than he’d ever imagined. He spent four days a week pushing his body to its absolute limits and the rest of his time putting it back together. His muscles burned and his bones ached, but he didn’t mind. For the first time in months, his pain was productive.