by Cole McCade
Didn’t want to think about what Hart would have to endure if she ran away with his promise of eventual relief, her pocket full of the little pills that were both damnation and salvation.
She took these moments with his eyes closed to study him more frankly, without the pressure of his gaze skewering her. He lay with one arm stretched over his head, forearm draped across his face. Even quiescent, his musculature was drawn taut with the kind of hard, stark edges that said there was no give, no softness under that tight skin, his forearm ridged with veins. She’d thought seeing him brought low by pain, bedridden and helpless, would make him seem weaker—but instead he exuded a silent and caged tension, deep and violently virile, a promise that this agony could only test him so much before he went berserk and no pain could stop him from becoming the dangerously powerful beast he was. The killer in those cold silver eyes. A wounded predator was still a predator, and would still bite if she got too close.
She lingered on his lips, full and sensuously defined with such perfectly articulated dips and curves—only to flinch as those lips parted and his gritty, dryly mocking voice emerged.
“Not going to run again, little mouse?”
Correction: a wounded asshole was still an asshole, and she’d bite him if he wasn’t careful.
With a huff, Leigh slouched back against the chair and scowled. “I don’t know why you call me that.”
“You skitter and flinch and run away.” His lips twitched. “This small thing living on the fringes, never wanting to be seen.”
“I told you, you don’t know me.”
You don’t know that I’m a lioness.
He lifted his arm just enough for one eye to find her, watching her from the shadow cast by the limb like a hunter peering through the brush. “Enlighten me, then.”
“Why? So you can tell me I’m wrong about myself and you know so much better?” She snorted softly. “If I’m a mouse, do you think you’re a cat and we’re going to play some game of cat and mouse?”
“No.” His eyes closed once more, arm dropping back to shield them. “No, that’s not what I think at all.”
She said nothing. It didn’t matter what he thought. She wrinkled her nose at him and, just to be childish, stuck her tongue out before hunching deeper into the chair. He remained quiet for several minutes, before a low sound rolled past his lips—not quite a laugh, but rich with something sensuous and groaning that might almost be pleasure.
“You’re glaring at me.”
“You can tell that without looking?”
“You have a particularly forceful glare.” Again that tell-tale twitch of his lips, but nothing else. She’d never seen someone so averse to smiling—or so incapable. His arm fell away. Feral eyes flicked over her, dark with something that made her shiver; something that felt too much like hunger. Even sprawled in the bed, he took up too much space in the room, giving off a deep and vibrant heat that reached out to touch her. “I can smell your anger. And your fear.”
Her shoulders came up around her ears. Every fine hair on her body bristled fierce and stiff. “I’m not afraid.”
“You are.” He shifted his shoulders against the bed, then settled with a long, lazy sigh. “Of me, or something else?”
“Of nothing whatsoever.” She pulled the pills from her pocket and shook them until they rattled against the bottle. “You really want to keep pissing off the girl who’s got your pain relief?”
“The angrier you are, the less likely you are to give in.”
“So this is self-preservation.”
“And entertainment. You’re distracting me from the pain quite nicely, Leigh.”
No. She didn’t like the way he said her name. Like he could taste it on his sighing breaths, like it meant something to him. He didn’t know her, no matter what he liked to assume. He didn’t understand.
Everything about Leigh was meaningless, and she liked to keep it that way.
She curled up deeper in the chair and looked away. “Why don’t you just shut up and go to sleep or something?”
“Mm. That would make it easier for you, wouldn’t it? Since I’m already inconveniencing you so terribly.”
“I…” She winced. “…yeah. Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know.”
She could feel him looking at her. Feel the warm weight of expectation in his gaze—and worse, feel his forgiveness. She didn’t want him to forgive her. Didn’t want even a breath of kindness from him, when it was so much easier to hate him.
Pressing her lips together, she stole a glance at him, refusing to look any higher than his clenched fingers. The denim over his thigh was still creased in ridges, as if he’d permanently carved furrows in it trying to dig through to unearth the wound underneath. She eyed his leg, the careful way he held it, fighting her curiosity until it finally won and reluctant words crawled past her lips.
“What happened?”
He exhaled a cynically amused sound. “You’re suddenly curious? I thought you didn’t even want to know my name.”
“Yeah, well…a bit late for that.”
“You could tell I’m ex-military. I’m sure you can tell the story behind a war wound.”
“Maybe.” God, why was she doing this? Trying to talk to him? The more she knew—the more he knew—the more likely it was someone would get attached, and someone would get hurt. She swallowed hard, then forced out, “But it might distract you enough to fall asleep if you tell me the details.”
“No.” A single repressive word, cold and heavy. He turned his face away, fixing his gaze on the doorway. “It really wouldn’t.”
Leigh swore under her breath. She was no good at this. At being here for someone, at filling this low and anxious silence where she felt every second engraved on her lungs in struggling breaths. She thought of the little redheaded nanny, shepherding Elijah along with her sweet smiles and that wispy little voice. The nanny would be all soft hands and concern, coaxing Hart to relax, wrapping him up in the warmth of compassion and all those sweet tender things that sometimes Leigh felt like she’d been born without.
She’d been born all jagged edges and broken wires, sharp enough to cut, and she couldn’t sit here and give Hart anything resembling comfort when she didn’t even know what it looked like herself.
With a frustrated sound, she scowled down at her dirty kneecaps. “Gary was wrong, you know.”
“About?”
“About…about me being good for you.”
His brows rose. His gaze locked on her again with a sudden avid interest, keen and focused as a wild thing on the scent of prey.
“So you want to talk about that, now?” he rumbled huskily.
Stop it. Stop looking at me that way. Stop…all of this.
Leigh stood so quickly her knees knocked together and her ankles tangled. “I really don’t.” She backed away from the bed. She just…needed a few minutes of space from him. A few minutes breathing air that didn’t taste like him. It couldn’t hurt to leave him alone for that long, could it? “Okay, then…is…is there anything I can get for you?”
He watched her discerningly, lips parted. She glared, daring him to say something. But he only twitched his lips into that not-smile and focused his gaze on the doorway.
“I don’t suppose there’s a way to block out that racket.”
Loud music still thumped up from downstairs, but louder still was the din and rush of noise from clanking glasses, drunken people laughing and dancing and shouting to be heard over the music and the T.V. Once the blue-collar crowd had drowned their woes in grim undertones of quiet, the party crowd tended to find their way in and keep the house rocking and rolling until dawn. Leigh had slept through it more than once—but Leigh hadn’t been dealing with a crippling injury while haunted by the ghost of a woman who just wanted to move on.
She had no way to close the door to block out the noise when there was no door other than the one at the base of the stairs; just colored plastic beads
that had been out of style when they’d been made in the seventies. A quick glance of the clutter in the apartment gave no further options. She patted her pockets out of reflex, then paused on the thin candy-bar shape of her iPod. She tugged it out, untangled the mess of earbud cords, then swiped her thumb over the bulbs of the buds to clean them before shuffling closer to the bed, wariness prickling down her spine. Last time she’d been close to him, he’d snapped awake and dragged her on top of him, shifting against her until she’d nearly begged with wanting—only for him to rebuff her with cold indifference. She hated the way she reacted around him, like he held some secret code that unlocked access to her most wanton needs. But she hated even more how he treated her.
Like he wanted nothing to do with the very things he coaxed out of her.
“…here.”
She stopped at the bedside and dropped the iPod onto the pillow. Why she did what she did next, she didn’t know. He had two hands. She hadn’t broken his fingers. He didn’t need hers. But she reached up to nudge the earbuds into his ears; his hair fell over her fingers in a soft cool wash, his skin rough and hot under her touch. He fell still, holding himself with a quiet and burning tension, but kept his gaze trained on the door. She tucked the earbuds into place, then retreated with a quickly scrambling step, moving out of arm’s reach before he could grab her and do something awful.
“I…I just hope you don’t hate my music,” she stammered.
Hart reached up to touch the little knot of plastic in his ear as if he’d never felt anything like it before, then twisted his hand to catch the iPod, lifting it to where he could see the screen. But he wasn’t looking at the music player. He was looking at her, watching her with such focused intensity, yet when those pale silver eyes cut into her they didn’t feel quite so cold, the edges of that steel not so painfully sharp.
Which made it a million times worse, that he could still cut so deep and touch the vulnerable places insides her in a way so much softer than the pain and fury he’d left before.
“Thank you.” That rich edge of pleasure darkened his voice once more, deep and enticing and shivering to her core.
“Yeah,” Leigh croaked. “No problem. I’ll…I’ll be in the shower.”
She turned and fled into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and trying not to look at her reflection in the mirror—where a false Leigh stared back with hurt, vulnerable eyes above flushed and heated cheeks.
* * *
She took her time on a shower—something to clear her head, the needle-sharp fall of stinging hot water beating down to pummel the thoughts from her head and leave her quiet and calm. She was washing away Gabriel Hart. Washing away Gary. Washing away everything that made her feel like she was spiraling, rushing toward a crashing end. She loved the weightless feeling of a life in freefall, tumbling flight with no ground in sight.
It was only when the world came rushing up at her that the fall turned terrifying, and gravity dug its fingers deep into her soul.
She rinsed Gary’s shampoo out of her hair, leaving a strange creamy smell that made her smile a little. Even after all these years, Gary still used that mane and tail shampoo that had been originally designed for horses before someone got the clever idea to sell it to humans. Just another piece of Gary’s past, another little fragment of him, that would stay with her when she was gone, until it would be like she hadn’t left him behind at all. Just the obligations she didn’t want. Just false promises that would eventually be broken.
Is that what it’s down to, now? She closed her eyes, tilting her head back into the caressing fingers of shower spray. Is that how selfish and awful I’ve become?
Am I really that afraid?
She wasn’t even sure what she was afraid of anymore—and she shouldn’t be having these thoughts. She wouldn’t be having these thoughts if not for the infuriating man lying on the other side of that door. An infuriating man who should be asleep by now, or at least distracted trancing out to her music. Part of her wanted to rip the iPod out of his hands. Touching her music felt like touching a part of her body deeper than the hot needy hungry thing between her legs; a part that brushed her soul and sang it out in darkly aching, longing notes that whispered all her secrets in the words she never knew how to say.
She wrapped herself up in a towel so thick and large and fluffy it was almost a dress, swaddling her from just under her arms down to mid-thigh, then wrapped her hair in another towel, bundled her clothing against her chest, and peeked out, cracking the door. She half expected that wild animal to be standing right there, absolutely fine after playing possum with his leg. But he still lay in the bed, arm once more covering his eyes, his hand curled around the iPod, fingers lax. Asleep, maybe.
Leigh slipped out, edging along the wall and tiptoeing to Gary’s bureau to pull a drawer open. She filched a faded old T-shirt blazoned with garish Mardi Gras masks above a banner scrawled with Laissez le bon temps roulez!, and shrugged the shirt on over the towel; it fell to her knees, pulling off her shoulder on one side, but it kept her decently covered enough to abandon the towel. One eye on Hart always, she stuffed her clothes in the little compact washer-dryer tower Gary kept tucked in the corner next to the dishwasher, then skittered over to retrieve her backpack and empty the rest of her meager collection of clothing into the wash.
Still nothing.
Maybe he really was asleep.
She started the washer—then cursed, stopped it just as quickly, and yanked it open, her stomach turning over. Hart’s pills. She rummaged inside until she found her hoodie, already soaked, and thrust her hand into the pocket. The bottle was damp, but when she pried it open the pills inside were dry, protected by the waterproof seal. She slumped against the washer-dryer, elbowed the door closed, and hit the Start button again, curling the pills in her fist and scanning the label again.
Take two pills up to four times daily for pain as needed. Do not exceed more than eight in twenty-four hours.
If this was the same bottle she’d seen on his nightstand the other night, he’d been taking more than eight pills per day. That bottle had been almost full; this one was more than half empty. She estimated maybe twenty pills left, so in two days he’d probably taken over two dozen, maybe even three dozen.
What could hurt him that much?
Damn it. Damn it. She hated herself for being so curious, but… She stole another glance at him, then tucked the pills in the kitchen drawer and tiptoed closer to the bed. He gave no indication that he was aware of her presence. She watched the rise and fall of his breaths, just as steady and slow as when he’d been asleep the other night. Biting her lip, she waved a hand in front of his face. No response. With a careful touch, she brushed back the long, wild forelock of his hair, blackness stark as a starless night against her pale skin. His lashes barely fluttered, and she caught herself lingering, tracing the line of his brow. He radiated heat like a fever, wild and deeply burning, and she wondered how such a cold man could burn with such fire.
His brows knit. She jerked back, but he didn’t wake. She crept back, then slipped over to the cluttered table under the window, curled up in her previously abandoned chair, and dug Gary’s ill-used laptop out from under the mess.
It only took a few moments to power up; longer than that to struggle through connecting to the internet. Gary kept a wi-fi router in the stock room, offering free internet that the clients never used, but the laptop was running on an operating system at least fifteen years out of date; she was shocked it even had a wireless card at all. But she finally managed to drag Google up before, with one last furtive glance over her shoulder at Hart, she rattled off a few search queries.
Gabriel Hart turned up over four million results. She tried Gabriel Hart, Crow City and got nothing but mismatched results for different Gabriels and different Harts. Gabriel Hart, Blackbird Pond yielded only a BBB business listing and a few Yelp reviews; he didn’t even have a website for his little run-down barrio garage. She chewed on her lower lip un
til it hurt, then tried Gabriel Hart, U.S. Marines.
The results that came up made her suck in her breaths. Dozens of news articles, mostly in the Crow City Herald, but a few in statewide and national publications. She bit her lip, then hesitantly clicked one. She felt like she was treading on hallowed ground, and was too tainted and profane to stand in such a sacred place—but she’d jumped in now, and there was no backing out.
CROW CITY WELCOMES WOUNDED VETS
February 9th, 2010: The scene is one of joy and sorrow as families greet loved ones returning from Afghanistan, many wounded and scarred, some arriving home only to be laid to rest. As television crews mob the airport while tense, nervous friends and relatives fill the air with breathless excitement, the anticipation is so thick the terminal seems ready to shatter. Many haven’t seen their families in years. Some will return home to sons and daughters who’ve never known their fathers. Others will find familiar faces gone, passed away during the long, grueling years in the war-torn battlefields of Afghanistan.
“It’s just hard to believe it’s real,” says Sarah Almsley, whose husband, Corporal Mark Almsley, was wounded by friendly fire and had to be airlifted from Fallujah for life-saving surgery. “It’s hard to believe he’s really coming home. I’ve been staring at his photo every day, and I’m afraid. I’m afraid he won’t look the way I remember.”
Not all returning soldiers have family waiting. Many return to a home that holds nothing for them, least of all a warm welcome. Among them are Staff Sergeant Gabriel L. Hart, 34, one of two surviving members of his unit after an insurgent attack in Sangin. Staff Sergeant Hart’s last living relative, his sister, passed away from complications caused by cancer during his most recent tour of duty. At the time of this writing, Hart could not be reached for commentary. The Crow City VA Hospital, where both survivors were taken for treatment of injuries sustained in captivity, declined a request for an interview.
