by Jordan, Skye
Dylan was relieved to turn his mind in another direction. “This is a sweet setup.”
“I love it here. Miranda built this home for Cooper and me. Wait till you see it. But we can do that tomorrow. I know you’re tired.”
She parked in front of a rectangular metal home with a sleek design and extensive porch complete with a swing. As soon as the car stopped moving, Cooper started fussing.
“Would you mind if I chill on the porch with Cooper for a while?” Dylan asked. “I think he’ll help me relax.”
Gypsy shut the Jeep down and smiled at Dylan. “Be my guest. I’ve got some work to do. He loves the swing.” She reached over and squeezed his arm. “It’s good to have you home.”
Dylan had to wait for Gypsy to extricate Cooper from the car seat, then he took the baby into his arms. The sweet, light, warm weight of the baby against Dylan’s chest lowered his anxiety down a few notches.
He settled on the swing, and Gypsy brought out an extra blanket and a warm bottle.
“Sure you’re good?” she asked.
“I’ve put my share of babies to bed.”
“Huh. There’s a story there.”
“Maybe for another time.”
Cooper sputtered a raspberry and cooed.
“Okay.” Gypsy turned for the house. “Yell if you need me.”
When Gypsy disappeared inside, the night closed in around Dylan. So dark and cool. So quiet. But this was a good quiet, one filled with rustling leaves and singing cicadas.
The silence was both nerve-racking and soothing.
Dylan blew out a breath and focused on slowing his darting mind. Cradling Cooper in one arm, he spoke quietly to the boy and tried like hell to enjoy the moment. But there was no way to keep from worrying about Amir’s family. It didn’t take long for the memories to flood in, trying to drown Dylan.
He was thinking about returning Cooper to Gypsy’s arms and going for a long run. It would ease some of the aches from traveling and maybe even set Dylan’s brain right.
The door of another trailer across the property opened. The silhouette filling the doorway—a man in cargo shorts with one human leg and one machine-made prosthetic—could only be Marty’s.
The sight of the missing leg jolted Dylan again. Pain slammed his chest like a fist, an ugly blend of regret, loss, fury, guilt.
Marty started Dylan’s direction, and he pulled on his experience to corral all his crazy emotions into one tightly controlled package.
Once Marty stood at the base of the stairs to the porch, he smiled at Dylan. “Doubt you’ll remember me, but I dated your mom for a while.”
“And lived to tell about it.”
Marty chuckled and moved up the steps with the ease of someone who’d owned that prosthetic for decades. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, with heavily threaded gray hair pulled into a man bun. “Marty Birch.”
Dylan shook the man’s extended hand. “I wish I could say I do remember you, but my memories of my time with my mom are grayed out.”
“Based on how she neglected Miranda, I’d say you didn’t miss out on much. Mind if I sit?”
“Not at all.”
Marty eased to the swing’s seat and poked Cooper’s stomach playfully. “Hey there, Coop.” Then he looked out over the property and sighed. “Beautiful night.”
“A little quiet for me,” Dylan admitted. “Still getting used to being back in the States.”
“No artillery falling from the sky,” Marty said, his voice even and matter-of-fact. “No running, no screaming, no blood flowing in the streets.”
“Exactly.” Dylan felt instantly comfortable with the man.
“I know. Took me a damn long time to get used to it when I got home.”
“Hey,” Dylan said, “thanks for letting me stay. I really appreciate it.”
Marty made a careless gesture. “You’re welcome as long as you need a place.”
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help out around here.”
Marty smiled down at Cooper, who was sucking on his fist. “You’re already doing it.” He glanced toward the front door, then lowered his voice. “Gypsy would take a beer bottle to my head if she heard me saying this, but between the bar and the baby, that girl is running on fumes.”
“I kinda figured.”
“So, what brought you home?” Marty asked. “I know this little guy is cute, but after being overseas all these years, I’m guessing it was more than a baby that brought you back.”
The question made Dylan focus on the rock where his heart should be, and he let out a long breath.
“Listen, don’t feel like you have to tell me anything,” Marty said. “I just lost my dad young like you did, and there were countless times when I wished I’d had his perspective on the world. I’m here if you want to talk.”
“Thank you. This trip is going to be messy. I may take you up on that offer.”
“Maybe not as messy as you think. Gypsy loves you to death. And between Gypsy and Jack, Miranda’s rough edges have all smoothed out. She’s just as happy you’re home as Gypsy is.”
“Really?
Marty smiled. “Really.”
“That’s great news.”
“Then why do you still have that concerned crease in your forehead?”
“Because while I know I have bridges to rebuild with Miranda and Gypsy, they aren’t going to be the hardest people to face.”
“Emma?” Marty asked.
Dylan’s attention focused on the older man. “How do you know about Emma?”
“Gypsy pointed her out at the bar once. Pretty little thing.”
“Yeah,” Dylan said on an exhale. Just the thought of all he’d lost, all the trouble he’d caused, made him feel fifty pounds heavier. “She sure is.”
“You’ll be fine,” Marty told him with the kind of confidence he shouldn’t have when Dylan had just met the man. “You’ve interviewed more influential people than most folks would ever talk to in a lifetime. Seen more devastation than many men in combat. It changes you. Seasons you. Gives you the ability to talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time. When the time comes, you’ll find the right words for Emma.”
The acknowledgment softened some of Dylan’s self-recrimination. “Thanks. I’m glad someone has confidence in me.”
Marty pushed to his feet. “You know where I am if you need anything. Welcome home, son.”
Marty was across the property by the time Cooper’s cry changed pitch. Dylan laid the baby back in one arm, offering the bottle with the other. Cooper took it easily and contentedly sucked down his dinner. At least this was familiar. He’d helped with all three of Amir’s babies, and Cooper brought back bittersweet memories for Dylan.
He stroked the perfect soft skin of Cooper’s cheek. “Don’t worry, buddy. This is one thing I won’t screw up.”
2
Emma should probably give herself a dose of Ativan before she signed out of the emergency room.
Nick Drummond, one of Emma’s fellow emergency medicine residents, was taking over for her after three twelve-hour shifts, back-to-back. They stood together in front of the monitor where a floorplan of the emergency department was color coded according to treating doctor. The same age as Emma, Nick had creamy mocha skin, light eyes, and the best sense of humor in the entire department.
“In psych room one,” she told Nick, “we’ve got a twenty-three-year-old bipolar male, brought in by police for psych eval. He was found in a stranger’s house taking a bath and making threats.”
Nick burst out laughing. “What?”
“He’s combative and definitely a flight risk. Nurses have gone hands-on with him three times in the last two hours. We ended up giving him a B-52.” Emma rubbed her temple. “I’m wishing I could get one of those cocktails right about now.”
Ativan alone, she realized, wouldn’t calm the chaos reigning inside her right now. But the added spritz of Haldol and pinch of Benadryl in a B-52 might just do the tric
k.
“And even with the room stripped down and the cabinets zip-tied shut,” she told him, “he managed to pull several hooks out of the walls, screws and all. Luckily, he only wanted to go deep-sea diving with them, not stab the jugular of the nurse’s assistant.”
“Damn,” Nick said. “You just can’t make this shit up.”
“Oh, it gets better.” Emma pointed to the monitor. “Room six is a fifty-two-year-old male who came in drunk off his ass, covered in blood. He was in an altercation at a bar, and the other guy bit off the end of our patient’s nose. But, not to worry, he brought us his nose in a Ziplock bag. He’s scheduled for surgery in about half an hour.”
Nick shook his head. “I fuckin’ love this place.”
Emma held up her index finger. “Not done yet. In room nine, we have an eighty-year-old female who had a ground-level fall and hit her head on—I kid you not—a pooper scooper.”
Nick barked a laugh, then covered his mouth.
“She’s got an eight-inch laceration from front to back. The woman seriously scalped herself. After her CT, I put in one hundred-thirty-six stitches and seven staples. She is currently getting all the dried blood combed from her hair and should be ready to leave soon. Her granddaughter is here to take her home.”
Emma sighed and pointed to another room. “And the last of the wild ones, but definitely not least, we have a seventy-two-year-old male who stuck a coat hanger up his urethra.”
Nick grimaced and reflexively covered his crotch. “Day-um.”
“Part of it broke off, and he’s also waiting for surgery. Whatever you do, do not give the guy your pen. Evidently, he’s got creative uses for those too.”
She slid out of her white lab jacket. “On the lighter side, I’ve got a seventy-seven-year-old female with confirmed gallstones and a blocked bile duct. She’s in room twelve. Surgery will come for her when the other two are done. Her husband is with her.”
She patted Nick’s shoulder on her way out from behind the nurse’s station. “It’s all yours. Good luck.”
After checking in with her higher-maintenance patients, Emma slipped into Mrs. Baxter’s room. She and her husband were asleep—Mrs. on the bed and Mr. on the chair beside her, his hand curled around hers. They were in their early seventies, been married forty years, and so damn sweet together.
Emma had once thought she’d found that kind of love. Now she knew no matter how strong the connection between two people, love alone wasn’t enough to make a relationship work.
She turned off the light and waited to see if either would wake. The television mounted on the wall flickered across their sleeping faces, but they didn’t stir.
She picked up the remote from the bed and lifted it toward the television. The Baxters had been watching a mainstream network news station, and the screen showed an anchorman on the left and a map of Syria on the right.
Her breath caught. One part of her yelled Turn it off!, another whispered, Watch, just for a minute.
Sure enough, a still image of Dylan’s face appeared in a little square beneath the map with a tag that read, Reporting from Syria, Senior Correspondent Dylan Wright.
Emma’s air left her lungs in a slow stream. And ache as old as time bloomed beneath her ribs, and she crossed her arms over the pain.
“Dylan,” the anchorman said, “while we’re trying to get a live feed, can you give us the latest update from northern Syria?”
“Sure, Dennis.”
Those two words tied a noose around Emma’s heart. Oh, that voice. It always threatened to drop her to her knees.
“A Russian air strike killed thirty today,” Dylan said, “including twenty children, when bombs hit a school in the Raqqa province of Manbij.”
Emma’s stomach folded. “Jesus.”
The screen flickered, and in the next instant, a live image of Dylan filled the screen, and Emma’s breathing hitched.
He wore an olive-green flak jacket with PRESS emblazoned on the chest, and his face was scraped and bruised, reminding Emma of just how much danger he put himself in every day. After what he’d been through, she’d never understand how he could run straight at danger on a regular basis.
In the background, flashes of light marked where bombs connected with the land. Underneath the image, the words “recorded earlier” indicated this wasn’t a live feed, but Emma still tightened her arms around herself.
His dark hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him on air, his jaw covered in stubble. She barely saw the boy she’d once known. He was a full-fledged man now, intelligent, talented, sexy. So sexy. She had no doubt the combination of his balls-to-the-wall profession, his looks, and his charm had women falling all over him.
Emotions eddied through her—longing, love, hurt, anger.
So much hurt. So much anger.
Even after all this time.
“Our intelligence sources say they are within days of a full-scale military assault here.”
There was a hollowness to him that hadn’t been there a month ago. One she’d never be able to explain to anyone. It was something she sensed more than saw. A spark missing in his eyes, a lift missing from his tone. He seemed subdued. Detached.
“I can tell you firsthand that the cease-fire reported by the Syrian regime and Russian government is absolutely false,” Dylan reported. “They claim to be targeting terrorists, but after weeks of investigation in this region, we’ve encountered no terrorist cells, only civilians simply trying to survive.”
Despite whatever was going on inside him, Dylan’s voice was hypnotic, a deep, smooth, sophisticated timbre. His broadcasting experience had taught him how to project emotion into his tone, and Emma heard the grief he surely suffered while covering this story, just one of so many equally devastating stories coming out of Syria.
It was one more illustration of how much help people needed all over the globe. One more reminder that while Dylan was out living his dream, Emma was saddled with the kind of debt that would keep her from living her own.
The asshole had promised her the world, then pulled the rug out from under her and turned his back.
She’d stayed in Germany after his accident, where they’d met, married, and lived after their military fathers were deployed to other areas. An entire year passed after he’d told her to go back to the States. She’d buried her pain beneath her studies, hoping against hope he’d come to his senses and let her in again.
But that never happened.
Once she’d returned home to Tennessee, Dylan had remained off the radar, and she’d spent years with no idea whether he was dead or alive. Then, four years ago, he showed up on news channels as a foreign correspondent.
The last time she’d seen him in person, he’d been furious at the world, despondent over his situation, hopeless about the future. Having him turn up successfully living his dream left her with mixed feelings. Relief that he’d healed. Heartbroken that he’d moved on without her. Fury over his lack of communication. Disgusted that he’d broken his commitment to her. To them.
“Dylan,” the anchor said, “can you respond to statements made by the Syrian foreign minister saying the images of the injured and dead coming out of the area are fictionalized?”
“You can’t fake this kind of devastation.” Anger leaked into his voice, his passion shining through. “That’s just a sample of the blanket denial from a dictatorship that has suppressed the country for the last fifty years. The only difference between this regime and the Nazis is that the Syrian regime has learned the art of deception.”
Emma had mixed feelings about how together he seemed. He always appeared on air as a healthy, vibrant, passionate correspondent. He was everything he’d been before the accident. Before half a dozen specialists had told them both he would never be the same. Specialists he’d believed even if she hadn’t.
Now, Dylan was a prime example of how the human spirit persevered. How passion could turn a life around.
Too bad that conviction ha
dn’t extended to their marriage.
“They’re utilizing indiscriminate weapons,” Dylan was saying, “including Sarin, chlorine, mustard, and phosphorus gases. Barrel bombs and suicide bombers are killing civilians by the thousands. For many people here, there is no memory of life without war. This strife and devastation has become part of their everyday routine, and they’ve grown numb to it. These people have come to know only war, only oppression. They often turn to prayer, asking God to save them, because they have no faith in the international community to witness their struggle and render aid.”
The anchor thanked Dylan for his report and urged him to stay safe. Then he was gone. Vanished, the same way he’d vanished from her life eight years ago.
She turned off the television and stood in the dark for a moment with envy coursing through her veins. She and Dylan should have been living their dreams together. She should be out there helping people too.
And there, in the dark, with her heart stirring, longing and hurting over the sight of him, Emma wondered, as she had countless times over the last eight years, if she’d ever be able to put Dylan behind her. Really put him behind her.
With her eyes closed, she recentered, reminding herself of all she had in her life now—her family, her work, her fiancé.
That thought reminded her of the dinner plans she and Liam had with his parents. She’d never met them, and they’d flown in from California for the weekend to talk about the wedding.
But she was exhausted. She really didn’t feel like she could face all three of them, knowing they were going to push her for a date.
Emma slipped from the emergency room and wandered through the halls toward surgery. Liam turned a corner, headed toward her.
“Hey, I was just coming to find you,” she said, stopping in front of him and running her hands down his navy sport jacket. With blue eyes and blond hair, he always looked great in blue. “You look handsome.”
