When the last note died away, Carey and Layla burst into loud applause.
“That was amazing!” she exclaimed. “So, so good.”
Despite the smiles, all four of the band members’ expressions looked haunted, and then Quinn strode over and pulled Pete into a tight embrace. “I miss him, too, brother. I miss him, too.”
Carey made his way over to Jase. “Your talent blows me away,” he said quietly. “There are no words. No fuckin’ words.”
“Thank you.” Jase was still smiling, although his eyes held an emptiness, a pain, that made Carey reach out and touch his shoulder in alarm.
Before he could say anything more, Rusty cleared his throat. “Okay. Let’s run it again, fellas.”
Jase nodded briskly, his face shuttering. Carey dropped his hand, concern still pulsing its way through him.
“C’mon.” Layla jerked her head toward the patio. “Let’s leave them alone for a bit.”
With no other choice, Carey turned away, and once outside, he and Layla sprawled into some chairs with an identical sigh. She glanced at his prosthetic. “Was it hard learning to walk again?”
Linking his fingers over his stomach, he stared up at the ceiling fan, which turned lazily in the breeze. “Not hard as much as requiring patience, and time.” He patted his thigh. “I had around fifteen surgeries on this thing.”
“What?” She choked on her sip of beer. “Why?”
“Well, I was lying in the dirt for a while with open wounds. Plus, a blast injury means even more dirt and debris driven into the wound. They had to operate every other day just to stay ahead of the infection.”
Covering her mouth with her hand, Layla stared at him.
“I also had a vacuum thing attached to my stump that sucked all the pus out of it. A catheter in me. Enough pain meds to take down an elephant. That was how I spent the first couple of months.” He pulled out his phone. “Wanna see?”
She came to perch next to him as he scrolled through his pictures. He enlarged one and turned the screen to show her, waiting for her to catch her breath. She did. “Oh, honey.”
He didn’t have to look at the photo to know what it showed. In it, he lay in a hospital bed, naked, a sheet draped over his lap. Wires and tubes bristled around him and protruded from him, his stump swollen and wrapped. Flexing his biceps, he was smiling for Adele, who’d snapped the picture.
“I was so whacked out on ketamine, I don’t even remember my PT taking this,” he said. “They did that periodically, so we could look back someday and see how far we’d come.”
“Can I…?” She made a swiping motion. Carey nodded, watching her silently as she scrolled through all the photos in his Recovery album.
“When did Jase get there?” She turned the phone to show him one of Jase standing next to Carey’s bed flashing a hang loose sign.
“Right around the time of my final surgery,” he replied, smiling. “He’s the one who took those stitches out, which is kind of a big deal. Getting your final stitches out means you’re ready to see a prosthetist.”
“Wow.” Layla’s eyes reflected the glow from the phone as she gazed down at it. “It’s cool he was able to be with you.”
“Yep. Once the platoon got back from deployment, he flew straight to Walter Reed and applied to be my paid attendant, since I didn’t have any family who could do it.”
“No family?” Her voice was soft.
Carey shrugged. “I’m a foster kid. Never knew my dad, and my mom died when I was twelve. The military wants someone to be with the injured serviceperson while they’re at Walter Reed, if possible, so if there’s no spouse or family, they’ll pay friends or battle buddies to do it. Jase got our command to agree to it, so he just showed up there one day.”
“You must’ve been happy to see him.”
Carey grunted. “Since I basically fell into his arms and started crying, yeah, I’d say I was happy to see him.”
Memories washed over him, of being cradled against Jase’s broad chest, his trembling hand stroking the back of Carey’s head as he whispered, “I got you, bud. I got you.”
He dug his nails into his thighs, aware of Layla’s sympathetic gaze.
“So he was able to stay with you? Where did he live?”
“After I was discharged as an inpatient a few weeks later, we moved into a hospital apartment next to the physical therapy center. Jase’s job was to get me to and from my appointments, help me with my medications, all that.”
“How long did y’all live there?”
“About four months.” Carey shook his head. “Because we were both still active duty, we had to muster every morning in the courtyard with everyone else. It was surreal. There were men and women in wheelchairs, on crutches, some missing three limbs, four limbs…”
He blew out a ragged breath as she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Carey tucked his phone away. “Those memories just make me realize how blessed I am all over again.”
“To have Jase, especially, right?”
Carey glanced over his shoulder into the house just as Jase craned his neck in his direction. Their gazes caught and held, then Jase winked at him and turned away.
“Right,” he whispered, that strange heat surging once again through his veins. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.”
“How’d you end up in the Navy?”
Jase glanced at Carey, who was sipping a mug of tea, his right foot propped on the railing of the patio. After they’d gotten home from Quinn’s, he’d taken off his prosthetic and changed into a T-shirt and a pair of knit drawstring shorts.
He tore his eyes from Carey’s scarred thigh. “What?”
Carey repeated his question. “Even after everything we’ve gone through together, there’s still a lot I don’t know about you. It hit me tonight when I saw you playing that guitar.”
“Okay, well…” Jase stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankle. “Right after high school, I’d enrolled in a nursing program.”
“Really? You were gonna be a nurse?”
“Shit, I’d been a caretaker my whole life. Why not get paid for it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m the oldest of seven, so…” He chuckled at the shock on Carey’s face. “Four sisters and two brothers.”
“Holy shit,” Carey breathed. “Why didn’t I know that? I can’t even imagine.”
A pang shot through Jase. He knew of Carey’s own background, his years in foster care.
As if reading his mind, Carey said, “I mean, the various foster homes I lived in had a lot of kids, but I never once considered them my ‘siblings.’” He paused. “Were you all close?”
“Oh, super close. In fact, my sister Sami is the one who sent me all those amazing care packages when we were in Afghanistan.”
Carey grinned. “Those were pretty awesome.”
Jase’s chest tightened. Carey had never gotten anything during mail call. He’d stand off to the side, his face carefully blank, as other members of their platoon snatched up their letters and boxes, whooping as they ran off with them. Every now and then there’d be something addressed to “Any Marine,” so Carey would raise his hand to claim it. Usually they were letters from elementary school classrooms accompanied by a sheaf of childish drawings. He’d sit in a quiet spot and go through each one carefully, his lips quirked in a faint smile.
Vaguely embarrassed by his own largesse, Jase had started inviting Carey to help him open the boxes and distribute the excess to the guys. Carey had been reluctant to take anything for himself, though, and only did after Jase insisted.
“I’m used to going without,” was all he’d said.
Jase cleared his throat. “So anyway, I was in nursing school. One day I was working out in the gym when some dude walked up to me and asked if I’d ever considered the military.”
Carey choked on his sip of tea. “A fucking recruiter scouted you at
the gym?”
“Yep. I should’ve told him to get lost, but he was smokin’ hot, so…”
Carey rolled his eyes. “Can’t not talk to a hot guy, right?”
“Right.” Jase grinned. “‘Cause I mean hot. Built, early thirties, tatted up. Goddamn.”
“Are you telling me you joined the Navy just ‘cause you got revved up over some dude?”
“Nah. But it did get him in the door.” Shrugging, Jase stood and propped his butt against the railing, the faint echoes of remembered lust pooling in his belly. “Hey, I’m a shallow bitch. What can I say?”
“You’re not shallow.” Carey’s voice was quiet, yet firm. “You are many, many things, Jase, but shallow isn’t one of them.”
It was on the tip of Jase’s tongue to ask what those “things” were, but he refrained. “We chatted a few times, and he ended up convincing me.”
“How?” Carey put his mug down and leaned forward, elbows propped on his thighs. “What’d he say?”
Jase tilted his head back toward the night sky, the recruiter’s steady gaze as fresh in his mind’s eye as the day it happened. “He told me I had the chance to make a difference, to which I countered that I didn’t need the military to do that, and that every day, nurses made a difference in people’s lives.”
“Which is true.”
“So to that, he said, ‘And how many of those people will you ever see again? In civilian medicine, it’s boom—done and gone. But as a combat medic, you’ll be part of a brotherhood, where your job will be to take care of the people you love and do your best to get them home alive.’”
Suddenly Jase’s eyes began to sting, the emotions that had surfaced during rehearsal threatening to break free again. Whirling around, he gripped the railing and stared unseeingly at the street two stories below. Behind him, he heard Carey grunt, then the sound of him struggling to stand. Digging his fingers into the metal, he forced himself not to turn and help; Carey had made it clear more than once that he wouldn’t accept it.
When Carey finally got himself balanced next to him, he murmured, “Hold me up?”
His heart leaping at the chance to touch him, Jase wrapped his arm around his waist and anchored him to his side. “How’s that?”
“Perfect.” With a sigh, he draped his arm around Jase’s waist in return. They stood like that for long minutes, gazing out at the streetlights reflecting off the marine haze in the air.
“I could kiss that recruiter,” Carey said.
Shocked into a beat of silence, Jase managed to sputter, “What?”
“Mm-hmm. I could give him a big ol’ smack on the lips.”
Shaking with laughter, Jase gasped out, “Why?”
“For convincing you to sign on that dotted line.” Carey squeezed him gently. “You saved my life. If it wasn’t for you, I—” He shook his head. “—I don’t know what would’ve happened.”
Tightening his arm, Jase started to say, “You saved yourself—” when Carey squeezed him again.
“I’m not talking about the injury, I’m talking about every day after that. When you walked into that hospital room, I knew in an instant it was going to be okay. Until then, I wasn’t sure. Because I was alone.”
Jase would never forget his first sight of stoic, fiercely proud Carey struggling just to sit up in bed, his physical therapist hovering close, encouraging him. Seeing Jase, his face had reflected shock, then he had crumpled into tears as Jase hurried across the room to pull him close.
“I got you, bud. I got you.”
“So yeah,” Carey said softly. “I owe that recruiter a lot.”
“Well…” Jase cleared the lump in his throat. “I have a feeling he’d appreciate a beer from you more than a kiss, sorry to say.”
Carey barked out a laugh. “Probably.” He hugged him one more time, then asked, “Help me sit down?”
As he settled himself, he let out a hiss. Concerned, Jase crouched in front of him. “Hurting?”
“Yeah.” Carey rubbed his thigh. “Phantom pain is always worse at night, for some reason.”
Jase winced. An amputee’s brain had no idea a limb was missing. After all, the nerve endings mapped to that limb were still intact, and as they searched for input and didn’t receive it, they sometimes just filled in the blanks themselves.
Carey’s jaw clenched. “Fuck, my foot tingles and itches so bad.” They both glanced down at the empty space where his lower leg used to be. No shin, no calf, no ankle, and certainly no foot. But the pinch of Carey’s lips told Jase the pain was definitely real.
“What helps?” he asked. “Do you want to put your prosthetic back on? Or can I get you a mirror?”
Adele had taught Carey some tricks for managing phantom pain. Besides wearing his prosthetic and giving his brain an actual leg to focus on, sometimes reflecting his remaining limb in a mirror fooled his brain into thinking the missing one was still there.
Carey blew out a breath. “A mirror usually works faster. And a distraction.”
Jase sprang to his feet. “Both coming right up.” He ran into the hallway and lifted the round mirror off the wall, the only thing he had that would be large enough. Tucking it under his arm, he grabbed up his guitar case and headed back to the porch.
There, he dragged over a small side table and positioned it under Carey’s stump, then propped the mirror against it facing his intact leg. “How’s that?”
“Perfect.” Carey stared into the reflection. “See, brain? Two legs. Two feet.” He wiggled his toes. “It’s all good.”
Hurriedly, Jase unpacked his guitar and sat down. He strummed a few chords. “What do you want to hear?”
Not moving his gaze from the mirror, Carey said, “That song you played at Quinn’s.”
As Jase sang, Carey gradually relaxed back into his chair, the tension on his face easing. When the last notes died away, he whispered, “Thank you. It’s better now. How did you guys come up with the name for the band?”
“Oh, God.” Jase continued to play softly as he chuckled. “We had so many fights about that, what to call ourselves. We’d almost decided on some vet-bro bullshit like Cleared Hot, when Pete came in after having a really bad day.” He paused. “It was the anniversary of an ambush where his best friend died.”
He’d been angry, tight-lipped. After the third time he’d snapped at someone, Quinn had knelt in front of him. “You’re not alone, brother. We’re here. We get it.”
The simple words opened the floodgates, and for hours, the four of them talked about their deployments. The theme that emerged was one of loneliness, and fear—not of dying, but of not being enough, of letting their teammates down, of not getting to say goodbye.
“Afterward, Pete joked he’d never heard Quinn speak so eloquently, so that’s how we got the name—Eloquent Isolation. Speaking through the loneliness.”
“It’s perfect.”
“It is, isn’t it? We’re all proud of it.” Jase hesitated, then asked, “You want to hear what I’ve been working on? Totally on my own, I haven’t even told the other guys about it yet.”
“Oh, wow. Of course.” Carey nodded, his face lighting up. “I’d be honored.”
Closing his eyes, Jase reached for the melody, letting it flow out of his fingers into the guitar. It started out gentle, plaintive, then reached a crescendo, the chords almost dissonant and jarring, before easing off into softness once again.
When he finished, Jase looked at Carey, who seemed spellbound, frozen in place. Then he blinked.
“That reminded me of combat. Periods of slowness, even beauty, then suddenly everything’s jumbled and chaotic, and finally relief, when it’s over. Do you have a title for it, or lyrics?”
“Not yet.”
Idly strumming, Jase bit his lip. How could he explain to him that the song wasn’t about combat, but the noise in Jase’s head? And how could he burden his friend with that noise when Carey was sitting there, in pain and missing a leg, for fuck’s sake?
So
he pasted a jaunty smile on his face. “It’s a work in progress. I appreciate you listening to it, though.”
“Anytime.” Leaning forward, Carey said, “I really need to do less talking with you, and more listening. This is a good reminder.”
“What?” Jase set his guitar aside and crouched once again in front of him, careful to avoid jostling the mirror. “I love being the one you talk to.”
I love being the one you trust, especially since I know trust doesn’t come easily to you.
“You can always talk to me,” Jase went on earnestly, breaking off when Carey laid a gentle hand on his cheek.
“I know,” Carey said softly. “And I will. But it works both ways. Talk to me. Please.”
Carey’s touch and his steady gaze made words crowd up in Jase’s throat, words he’d vowed never to say. He swallowed against them, forced them down, his pulse throbbing painfully in his ears.
“Okay,” he whispered.
Carey’s fingertips trailed along his jaw for the briefest of seconds, leaving tingles in their wake. Then he dropped his hands lightly to his shoulders. “Help me up?”
Jase stood with him, the tingles morphing into waves of heat as Carey’s body brushed his. Helplessly, Jase’s eyes fell to the fullness of his lips and clung there for one breathless second.
What was he doing?
Forcing himself to look away, he pivoted slightly to retrieve Carey’s crutches, which were leaning against the railing. When he turned to face him again, Jase thought he caught a trace of disappointment there. Had Carey been…hoping for a kiss?
In the next instant, dismissing the idea as ridiculous, Jase handed him the crutches and followed him down the hall to his bedroom. Before Carey went inside, he glanced over his shoulder. “Thanks.”
Jase raised a quizzical eyebrow. “For what?”
Carey smiled. “For just, I don’t know, being you. I’ve been counting my blessings today, and you’re at the top of the list. G’night.”
Long after he’d closed the door, Jase lingered in the hallway. A blessing? A small kernel of warmth sprouted in his chest, even as the voice of reason whispered in his ear: Don’t let how you feel about him make you read things into his actions that aren’t there.
Everything Changes Page 5
