Читать книгу Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover - Catherine Mann, Merline Lovelace - Страница 20
ОглавлениеWhile Connie was gone, Ethan stepped outside to walk around the house again. His training had built a restlessness into him, and he still struggled to realize that war no longer surrounded him. The thing with Sophie was keeping him on his toes, which he supposed was delaying his readjustment a bit.
Not that he blamed anyone for that. He actually felt good about having something useful to do, something he’d been lacking since he’d been shipped home on a stretcher from Afghanistan. He didn’t remember much about being wounded, and the pain that plagued him had become a background noise to his days.
He still didn’t fully understand why he was receiving a discharge. People with worse injuries returned to combat or took support positions of some kind. But somehow, because of the decision of some review board, he was out.
He struggled with that. He worried about his unit all the time. A sense of failure pervaded his every waking moment, just as nightmares haunted his dreams. He didn’t feel as if he had a problem of that magnitude, but apparently others thought differently.
You have inoperable shrapnel embedded near your spine. It hadn’t affected him yet, other than to cause pain, but one of the doctors had said that it would be years, if ever, before the body’s protective mechanisms immobilized it or even ejected it. Until then, the wrong move could paralyze him.
And maybe that was all it was. Maybe they felt he could endanger his unit. One wrong move and he could become an instant paraplegic. Yeah, that could be a problem, all right, but no more of a problem than if it happened because of a wound on the spot.
He paused, looking up at the stars, noting that here in town he couldn’t see very many. Not nearly as many as he had seen at night in Afghanistan. Most people in this country probably had almost no idea anymore of how many stars were up there, how many could be seen in the inky blackness of true night. He knew he’d been amazed when he’d looked up from the mountains of Afghanistan the first few times.
Sighing, he continued his perimeter check. He wondered if the good memories would ever begin to replace the bad. These days, his brain functioned like a bad TV show, with almost subliminal flashes of people being torn apart, buddies dying, and all the rest of it. It was as if no matter what he was doing or thinking about, some nasty director would flash up an image so fast he almost didn’t catch it.
Except he knew what they were. He didn’t have to wonder what had just zipped past his mind’s eye. Some things were burned too deeply into memory to escape awareness that easily.
Time, they said. It would just take time, and maybe some therapy. He’d tried the therapy while he recuperated but found it pointless. The guy he had talked to didn’t have any direct experience. Oh, he tried, even offering medication, but how could you discuss something worse than the worst horror movie with someone who hadn’t even seen The Exorcist?
Smiling grimly, he finished his circumnavigation of the house, aware that if this were his post, he would be ripping out a lot of concealing shrubbery and cutting down a few trees that came way too close to the roof.
But this wasn’t a military post, and he wasn’t preparing for a Taliban incursion. Drawing that distinction seemed to be getting a little easier, and for that he gave thanks.
Inside again, he glanced at his watch. Connie had been gone more than ten minutes. A man who had learned that tardiness could be a sign of catastrophe found it hard to remember that she had probably just stopped to talk with Jody’s mother for a few minutes.
God, this living in two worlds was going to drive him nuts.
The phone rang, and he hesitated only a moment before answering it.
“Hi, Ethan, this is Julia. Is my daughter there?”
He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth as he heard laughter in the background. “Sorry, ma’am, she took Sophie over to spend the night at Jody’s. She should be back any minute. Do you want her to call?”
“Oh, that’s not necessary. Just tell her I won’t be home tonight. The girls have decided to have an old-fashioned pajama party.”
“Hey, that’s great,” he said with as much warmth as he could muster. “Have fun.”
“I will. Sally will bring me home in the morning.” Then Julia paused, her voice taking on a different note. “Take care of my girls for me, Ethan. Please.”
“I intend to.”
When he hung up, he felt oddly revitalized. As if he had his orders now and knew what to do.
He heard Connie pull into the driveway and come through the kitchen door. He heard the lock click behind her; then she returned to the darkened living room.
“Ethan?”
“I just realized something,” he said without preamble.
“What’s that?”
“That someone else has been organizing my life for so long, I don’t know how to get on without orders.”
She came farther into the room but didn’t switch on a light. “That must stink.”
“In a way it does. In another way it’s good.”
“How so?”
He turned toward her. “It’s another challenge. I need challenge.”
“I see.” Leaning over, she switched on a light at the end of the sofa. It wasn’t terribly bright, but it blocked all view of the world beyond the windows and revealed them to one another.
“Your mother called. She said she and her friends are going to have a pajama party. She’ll be back in the morning.”
At that Connie laughed. “Those women. They’re in their second childhood. It’s so neat.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes came back to him, searching his face. “Didn’t you have decisions to make in the service?”
“Plenty. But they were always directed at completing my assignment. My orders.”
She nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that. And you’ve been feeling at loose ends without an assignment.”
“Basically, yes.”
He made a conscious effort to relax and sat on the couch again. “That’s probably part of the reason I feel so out of it. I’ve lived one lifestyle since I was eighteen, and now it’s gone.”
“That’s gotta be tough, Ethan.”
“No. I just needed to understand what was happening. Part of it, at least.”
“Is that why you were so ready to step in and help with Sophie?”
“Partly. But most of it is that nothing makes me madder than a guy who wants to hurt children.” His hands clenched on his lap, and he let them. “But don’t think this is some kind of therapy for me.”
“I didn’t think it was. If anything, I thought it might make your reentry more difficult.”
That surprised him. He looked at her and felt an unexpected surge of something so primal and elemental that it shocked him. Urges he hadn’t had time or room for since the war began, not even when he came home on leave, because even then he was too busy just coping with what now seemed like an alternative universe.
Despite his preference for silence, for dealing with things in the privacy of his own mind, he started talking.
“Coming home doesn’t feel like coming home anymore.”
She nodded encouragingly.
“I don’t know if you can understand, but I walk around feeling naked because I don’t have an M-16 in my arms. It’s as if I’m exposed to every danger in the world, and I don’t even have a knife to pull.”
“Oh, Ethan...”
He made a slight gesture, asking her to just let him continue.
“I know it’s wrong. I know it’s a kind of mental instability, but there it is. I come home, and I feel adrift. Purposeless. Naked. Being at home...it’s like visiting another planet. I felt less out of place the first time I was shipped overseas.”
“They say that Peace Corps volunteers adjust to their new countries more easily than they adjust to their return here. There must be a reason for it.”
He sighed. “Sorry, I’m dumping.”
“Dump away.”
He rose and began pacing the living room slowly. He paused just once to draw the heavy curtains closed over the sheers. “It’s like I know things other people can’t understand. Some folks I know think that makes them better. Hell, I know a SEAL who’s so full of his own superiority because he’s been through life-and-death situations, because he knows things...he scorns civilians.”
“Do you?”
“No. That’s the thing. I took on this job because I had the stupid idea that I’d be protecting other people from having to know, not because it would make me special. But now I can’t come home.”
He hated showing his weakness the instant the words escaped him. He wanted to snatch them back and rip them to shreds with his bare hands, because he had no business whining about this shit. No business at all.
But before self-disgust could conquer him, he had a warm, soft woman in his arms, holding him tightly as if she wanted to anchor him in the storm.
“Oh, Ethan... Ethan...”
Her voice seemed to call to him from across an abyss, the abyss that separated him from his current reality. The yawning abyss of places he had been, horrors he had seen, evils he had done.
I’m not worthy.
The words had been rattling around in his head for a long time, but now they rang loud with a truth he couldn’t ignore. He’d bloodied his hands, whether for good or ill he no longer knew. How could he know? Clausewitz had written that war was politics by other means. He couldn’t judge the politics. And after he got to Afghanistan, he couldn’t even tell any longer if the cost of chasing the Taliban and al Qaeda was worth it. Because he saw the cost day in and day out. The cost in innocent lives, which hadn’t stopped on 9/11.
His job over there had been to win hearts and minds while pushing back the forces of darkness. He wished he could be sure that was all he had done.
But in a war without uniforms, how could you always tell?
You couldn’t. So you had to live with the stain and wonder forever.
His hands weren’t clean, might never be clean, but he wrapped them around Connie and held her as tight as he would a lifeline. He needed the affirmation as much as he’d ever needed anything.
Odd, he’d wanted it from Micah, but he found, instead, that it mattered more coming from this woman, an innocent who had never sullied herself. It didn’t make logical sense, but emotionally he felt as if she was offering forgiveness.
He just didn’t know if he could accept it. Didn’t know if he deserved it.
Soon, even that question began to slip away, replaced by deepening awareness of the body pressed against his. Sexual desire, long held at bay by the need for survival that could be lost in a moment’s inattention, began to pace within him like too-long-caged wolf.
Nor was it simply desire for any woman. No. He desired this woman and no other. Her warmth, her curves, awakened him. It would have been so easy just to give in and carry her to the floor, but conscience rose, reminding him of her vulnerability.
Just as he would have released her, she lifted her head and her lips found his. The brush of a butterfly wing, so light he barely felt it, but it sent an electric jolt to the farthest cells of his body.
He almost swore. Like Frankenstein’s monster, lightning was bringing him to life. She deserved so much better.
But the thought never fully formed, because she moved against him, just a little, a soft murmur escaping her as she sought deeper contact with his mouth.
He couldn’t resist. He needed this kiss more than he had needed anything in his life. He lowered his head, pressing his mouth to hers, gently at first, then more deeply, as she welcomed him.
His groin throbbed with forgotten longing as his body woke to new possibilities that seemed to offer salvation of some kind.
He ached deeply, needing...needing...
“Ethan...”
His name sounded like a prayer as she whispered it. Buried parts of his very being burst free of their bonds, reminding him that he was a living, breathing man like any other.
It would have been less painful to rip off his own skin, but he pulled away, conscience piercing him like a dagger.
She looked at him from sleepy, worried eyes. “Ethan?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, and I’m afraid I might. I can’t even trust myself, Connie. How can I ask anyone else to trust me?”
A wounded look pinched her eyes, and finally she nodded. “You’re right,” she said thickly. “I can’t trust myself, either. I’ve been avoiding men since Leo because I know I’m not a decent judge, and...” She turned and fled.
He listened to her feet pound as she ran upstairs to her bedroom, and he hated himself.
Not hurt her? He just had.
