Gifts of Honor: Starting from Scratch\Hero's Homecoming (15 page)

“I’ve only got the one bag,” he indicated the duffel on the floor. “Did you park in the lot or—”

She slapped him, hard and fast and utterly without mercy.

It was a good slap, he thought as he registered the hot, stinging pain across his cheek. It was full-palmed, decisive, strong and passionate, with excellent follow-through. It meant the fiery spark buried deep beneath her shy, reserved exterior hadn’t gone out in the past six months. And it meant she didn’t instantly pity him, not even a little bit. Despite himself, he smiled.

“Thanks for that.” He raised a hand to his jaw, ignoring the horrified gasps of the people around them. “There were still a few pieces of shrapnel lodged in the bone, but you’ve probably just sent them flying.”

“I thought you were dead,” she seethed. “I called Fort Riley, I called the Wounded in Action Branch hotline, I even called the damn Department of Defense. And what do I get for my trouble? A two-line email that says things aren’t going to work between us and I should move on. A
two-line email
, Chris?”

There were tears in her voice, which was growing in volume. He heard footsteps to his right, and then the deep male notes of what he assumed was a security guard asked, “Sir, is there a problem here?”

Chris shook his head. “Not at all, but thank you.” He turned toward the sound of Beth’s arms crossing over her coat. “We can talk about this in the car, okay?” He held out his hand to her.

She didn’t take it.

* * *

As the airport security staff member continued to glare at her, Beth realized exactly what she’d done—she had just slapped a visibly wounded member of the armed forces in the face, three days before Christmas, in a room packed with holiday travelers.

A hot flush rose in her cheeks. “Fine,” she muttered. “Get your bag and let’s go.”

He stooped and felt around briefly for the strap before pulling it over his shoulder, except when he straightened, he didn’t move.

Beth sighed, planting her hands on her hips. “Well?”

Chris’s jaw tightened. “You need to help me out to the car.”

“Isn’t that what the cane is for?” she replied testily. Did he think he could summon her at a moment’s notice after months of silence and then expect her to be his nurse as well as his chauffeur?

“I’m still a little new to the white cane navigation system,” he shot back acidly. “I can try, but if we want to get out of here sometime in the next hour I may need your help.”

She looked at him then—really looked at him, not the quick once-over she’d given him when he first turned around, not the evaluative up-and-down sweep of the first few minutes.

She’d seen straight away that he was blind—the white cane and the opaque cloudiness obscuring his once-bright blue eyes had given that away immediately. What she saw now, for the first time, was the puckered line of red scar tissue along one side of his jaw, the narrower but longer scar that cut from his temple to his cheekbone, running dangerously close beside his right eye, and the fine, almost filamentlike scars that spread down his neck from beneath his ear, fanning out like bristles on a paintbrush.

He shifted his weight, and she looked back up to the eyes that stared but saw nothing.

And she realized she had absolutely no idea what this man had been through.

“Okay,” she said more gently. “Tell me how to help you.”

“Just take my arm,” he said gruffly, as if he was somehow embarrassed or made uncomfortable by her softer tone. He proffered his elbow as though he was about to escort her to a dance. “And warn me if there’s a step or a door.”

Beth linked her arm through his and began to lead him toward the exit. It felt strange to be back beside his big, strong body after so long, and to be guiding his tall form as he took hesitant, cautious steps.

“We’re at the door. I’ll hold it open and you can follow me through, does that work?”

He nodded, and they carefully made their way across the increasingly snowy parking lot to her car. She led him to the passenger side and got him settled, threw his duffel in the back and then hurried into her own seat.

“Right,” she announced as she pulled the door shut. “Where to?”

“I’m not sure.” He took off his hat and placed it in his lap. “A hotel, I guess. Pick one, it doesn’t matter to me.”

She turned to look at him and caught a whiff of a scent she’d fantasized about for six months. Beneath the smell of the crisp, outdoor air that had followed them into the car and the slightly musty, woolen scent of his dress jacket, it was there—that fresh, slightly summery fragrance of clean cotton and new hay that was quintessentially, unmistakably his.

A lump formed in her throat. Could she bear to be this close to him—and only this close to him? She shouldn’t be here—she should’ve told him to take a taxi. She was nowhere near as ready to see him as she thought she was, and now she wasn’t at all sure she could get through the next half hour in one piece.

“How bad are the roads?” he asked, jolting her out of her reverie.

“Oh, um, not terrible, but not getting any better.” She turned the key in the ignition. “Would you rather I took you somewhere downtown, so you can get to all the stores and restaurants?”

He shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter—I’ll probably just order room service and flick through the television. I’m pretty tired.”

That sounded like a miserable way to spend the evening, but that was his problem, not hers. Beth pulled out of the parking lot, sparing a wondering thought at how callous and angry she’d become, and decided these probably weren’t traits she wanted to carry into the New Year.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. “Or was your idea just to get a lift and then go our separate ways? Tell me the truth—you owe me that, at least.”

Chris sighed, leaning back in his seat. “I should’ve given you more of an explanation. I admit that, and I apologize. But there’s not much else to say, Beth. I couldn’t see things working between us, and I thought I would give you the chance to move on with your life sooner rather than later.”

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Not much else to say,” she repeated. “We spend four of the most incredible days of my life together, you spend four months sending emails that seem to be written under the assumption that you were planning to pick up where we left off as soon as you could, then it all stops. After a few weeks you send me a couple of sentences to say it’s over, and now you’re sitting in my car, and you’re blind. Really, Chris? Not much else to say?”

He wasn’t looking at her, but he tilted his head toward the sound of her voice, and his lip curled in amusement. “Four of the most incredible days of your life?”

She pursed her lips, resisting the urge to give him another slap.

“I dropped everything to race to the airport and pick you up,” she told him tightly. “I think it’s time you explain yourself.”

For several seconds Chris was silent, thoughtfully running his thumb back and forth across the brim of his hat.

“It was a suicide bomber,” he said finally. “Dressed as an Afghani police officer. He killed the sentry at the gate to the camp, approached him like a police officer would, then stuck a nine-millimeter under his body armor and fired at close range. He ran into the camp and was intercepted by a couple of guys from my company, so someone yelled to get the captain. I was asleep—this was the middle of the night—so when I came out to see what was going on I wasn’t wearing any protective gear, just ACU trousers and a T-shirt. Long story short, he pressed a button, the whole place lit up and when I woke up in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany three days later, I couldn’t see a goddamn thing.”

Beth drew a steadying breath as she steered the car farther into the center of Manhattan. Chris delivered the story of these life-altering events with such devastating precision and neutrality, she wasn’t sure how he expected her to react—or if he even cared what she thought.

She recalled that last morning at her house—the warm, reliable solidity of his chest against her back as they lay in bed, his arm draped over her waist, his other hand trailing idle paths through her hair. She tried to imagine that sweet, tender man being shaken awake, running out into the middle of a moonlit desert compound, his expression alert and intent as he took in the last scene he would ever see.

The car’s heater was running full blast, but she shivered.

“Is it permanent? The blindness?” she asked tentatively, as if trying out the last word for the first time.

“Possibly,” he said flatly. “The burns are still healing, and they’re not sure how much of my sight will return. I can see shadows now, which is an improvement, but it’ll be months before I know for certain whether I’ll get some or any vision back.” He flashed a bitter smile in her direction. “Sorry to disappoint, in case you were hoping for a Christmas miracle.”

“Of course not,” she said softly. She bit her lip as she attempted to take everything in, from Chris’s altered state to the simple fact of his presence beside her. They were nearing the hotel—she had to decide what she really wanted from him, if anything, and quickly.

“And the last email, where you said it was impossible—that we were impossible—can I ask, was that before the explosion or after?”

Chris trained his sightless eyes on her so directly that for a moment, Beth almost believed he could see her after all.

“Does it matter?”

Beth pulled into a parking space. “I guess not,” she replied, praying that the sarcasm effectively hid the hurt that lanced through her so deeply she thought she might split in two. Sighted or blind, he didn’t want her—and why should he? She was incredulous at his attention in the first place, so to some extent this pain was her just reward for not being more guarded. She’d accepted long ago that she was too introverted and timid to be attractive to most men—it was foolish to think this time would be any different.

Beth cut the engine and yanked her keys from the ignition. “We’re here.”

“Where?”

“The Holiday Inn across from the campus. Is that okay?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fine. If you give me a hand to the front door, I can take it from there.”

Wordlessly they made their way across the lobby to the reception desk, where tinny speakers played “Little Drummer Boy.” The college-age girl behind the desk watched Chris approach with wide, attentive eyes, and Beth considered what a striking figure he cut, this tall, handsome officer in his dress uniform, being led around by a short, dishwater blonde in an oversized coat and thick-framed glasses with rapidly fogging lenses.

He was right. They just weren’t meant to be together.

When they reached the desk, she placed his hand on its burnished surface.

“Do you want me to stick around, to make sure they have a room available?”

“We definitely have availability,” the hotel staffer chirped, smiling broadly. “And we’d be very happy to offer you our military discount, sir.”

Chris inclined his head toward Beth. “I’ll let you get on with your evening. Thanks for the ride, I appreciate it.”

“Do you have my cell phone number? Just give me a ring if you need anything, or if you get stuck longer than you expect and you want to have dinner, or you need someone to run you to the supermarket or whatever.” Beth trailed off as she realized she was stalling. This was not turning out to be the dignified, head-held-high, better-off-without-you exit she’d planned.

Chris’s smile sat somewhere between endeared and patronizing, but there was no mistaking the cold finality in his tone. “It was nice to see you again, Beth. Have a good Christmas.”

He extended his hand, and she thought she might know how that slap had felt.

“Goodbye, Chris,” she said as icily as she could manage, ignoring his proffered hand. She turned on her heel and stomped out to her car. As soon as she was safely ensconced in the driver’s seat, she dissolved into racking, heartbroken tears.

“Stupid soldier.” She pounded her fist on the steering wheel, sniffing hard as she rode the wave of disappointment, regret and sheer anger. “Stupid man, and stupid me.”

She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand as she put the car into gear. She was a fool to fall so deeply, so quickly, but it wasn’t an error she would make again. Let him try his charms on the pretty receptionist or some lonely woman in the hotel bar—it didn’t matter to her. Chris may have broken her heart, but it was on the mend, and it would be a long, long time before she let anyone get near it again.

Chapter Two

Chris lay on his back on the hotel bed, not hearing the evening news report that blared on the TV. Instead he stared upward, focusing intently on what he could and couldn’t see and trying to determine, as he did several times every day, whether anything had improved.

When he’d first woken up in the hospital, his eyes had been bandaged. It was only when the doctors removed the bandages, he opened his eyes and discovered that his view was the same that he’d realized the extent of his injuries. He saw something worse than blackness, or darkness—he saw nothing.

As the weeks progressed, the visual void eventually gave way to the slightest perception of light and its changes. Soon he could tell the difference between having his bedside lamp on or off, or when one of the nurses opened the curtains to flood the room with bright sunlight. He started to see vague, shadowy objects, and could just make out a person moving across his central field of vision or if a large piece of furniture stood in his way.

While these developments certainly represented progress, Chris knew that functionally he was still as good as completely blind. The medical professionals perpetually danced around his prognosis, citing the unpredictability of ocular burns. He might recover enough ability to see color and depth that he could read books and drive in the daytime, they hypothesized, or he might have already reached his restorative peak and would need exhaustive occupational training in order to live independently. They encouraged him to focus on the present rather than the future, to take things one day at a time and to do the best he could with what limited vision he had.

Unfortunately, his best was still pretty terrible. Exasperated, he stood up from the bed and began to pace aimlessly around the room.

Knocking around a sterile hotel room was already high on Chris’s list of his least favorite ways to spend an evening, but not being able to read or properly watch TV or even look out the window made his feeling of confinement much worse. Although he would have to return to the hospital for another two weeks of rehab after Christmas, he’d been so excited to leave the medical compound for the first time since his admission in late October that for the past week he’d barely slept, unable to stop compiling his mental inventory of everything he wanted to do once he got home. Now he was finally here, back in Kansas, only he wasn’t out in his parents’ barn stroking the horses’ soft muzzles, or stretching out in front of the hearth and listening to the fire crackle, or sitting on the porch in the freezing air, enjoying the perfect silence of nighttime in the country. Instead he was in a claustrophobic hotel room with a scratchy duvet and a lingering smell of bathroom cleaning products.

He thought of Beth, as he had done every few minutes since they parted in the lobby. His expectation that their brief reunion might ease some of his marrow-deep longing for her couldn’t have been more wrong. It turned out she was every bit the woman he remembered and more, and there was no more assuring himself that he’d embellished their connection in his memory.

He pivoted on his heel, exhaling in disgust. Enough moping—he couldn’t spend all night brooding and feeling sorry for himself. He could go to the restaurant downstairs—wait, did the hotel have a restaurant? It must have a bar, surely—he could go there. Or to one of the bars down the road. The only upside to his military haircut was it meant he could usually count on a free drink—although coupled with being on his own and carrying a white cane, it might also invite some decidedly unwelcome, drunken attention by the kind of grizzled old alcoholics who were always delighted to find someone worse off than themselves. Maybe he’d stick to the hotel after all.

Chris was running his hand over what he hoped was the room service menu, wondering whether it might be easier just to starve, when the transformer on the street outside exploded with a crackle and a resonant boom.

Instinctively he dropped to his stomach on the floor, shielding his head with his hands. The television and the central heating audibly clicked off, plunging the room into silence.

“It’s just an electrical thing,” he said aloud, forcing himself up into a sitting position with his back against the bed. “It’s from the blizzard. Everything is absolutely fine. There’s no danger.”

But his heart pounded faster and faster, his skin had gone clammy and cold, and as he felt the dreaded, stomach-turning tug deep within his head, he knew what was coming—and that he couldn’t stop it.

“Breathe through it,” he coached himself, just as the psychologist had told him to, but his voice sounded far away and disembodied, and a sense of ominous, terrifying doom came over him like a dark cloud. He pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them, pressing his forehead into his knees in a futile attempt to brace himself against the violent trembling that overtook him.

He squeezed his eyes shut and then he was back in the desert—the heavy, stinking smell of charred flesh and singed metal and blood and smoke and dust filling his throat and choking him. His ears were ringing but he could make out strangled cries, infuriated but distant shouts, and very close by, the sound of hopeless weeping. He tried to gasp for air but the frantic expansion of his lungs sent searing, agonizing pain ripping through his side, like a trail of flame burning across his ribs, up his neck and scorching his face. He tried to open his eyes but it felt like his lids were glued shut—or, wait, were his eyes already open? He flailed in the darkness that wasn’t really dark, but a light so impossibly, glaringly, painfully bright that he couldn’t see anything. His hands touched the hard, cool ground, his fingers clawed at the dirt, coming away with a sticky substance covering his palms. He hauled himself onto his stomach, reached up to touch his face, felt something wet, warm, and then there was a rushing in his ears like a freight train, like the tornado he’d weathered in the basement as a young boy—

“Chris? Are you all right?”

Chris pulled his head from his knees, blinking uselessly. Where the hell was he? Who was calling him? There was coarse carpet beneath his bare feet, a metal bed frame digging into his spine, no sound except someone knocking on a door.

“Chris, it’s Beth. I’m coming in, okay?”

Beth. Soft, beautiful, sweet, lovely Beth, with skin like a ripe plum, whose hair smelled like tangerines. He was in the hotel in Kansas—Beth had driven him here. She’d answered his call despite everything he’d done. It was almost Christmas. He was safe. He was going to survive.

Chris covered his face with his hands and let out a single, grateful sob.

* * *

From the moment she heard the radio bulletin that a transformer explosion had caused a power cut in most of the area near the university, Beth had fought warring impulses to check on Chris and to ignore him completely. The latter won for about five minutes. The former compelled her to first phone the cell number from which he’d called her in the airport, then to try the hotel’s front desk when there was no answer and finally to get in her car and drive through the pummeling snow of a blizzard in full swing to the pitch-black downtown area, the argument that she should have stayed put in her cozy house and left him to his own devices hadn’t quite been defeated.

The area outside the hotel was cordoned off so she parked down the street and picked her way across the snowpacked sidewalks. The sun had been down for over an hour and its absence was keenly felt in the temperature, which had plummeted on its departure. Icy flakes stung her face as Beth hurried to the door of the hotel with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled down over her forehead.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered into the howling wind. Not only was Chris undeserving of her effort, it was likely he wouldn’t even appreciate it. Yet despite all he’d done to her, she couldn’t shake the concern that compelled her through the storm, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep at all that night if she couldn’t reassure herself that he was okay.

Emergency lighting cast an eerie glow in the reception area, where the same young woman from earlier was manning the desk amidst a mixed crowd of irritated patrons, police, safety personnel and hard-hatted workers from the energy company.

“I couldn’t get through on the phone so I wanted to check on someone who’s staying here, Captain Chris Walker?” Beth explained as she shouldered her way to the desk.

The girl’s face was blank—she clearly didn’t remember Beth’s earlier appearance in the lobby.

“He’s an army officer,” she expanded impatiently. “He’s blind, he was recently wounded in combat. Has no one been upstairs to let him know what’s going on?”

The girl’s expression twisted with guilt, and with a roll of her eyes Beth asked for his room number and then charged toward the stairs.

Now, as she used the key card she’d coaxed out of the receptionist and pushed open the door having had no response to her knocking, she wondered for the millionth time whether this was the right thing to do. Maybe Chris had found his own way out and to another hotel. And he hadn’t answered his phone when she called—could he make it any clearer that he didn’t want to be with her again?

Not that coming to his hotel meant she wanted to be with him either, she told herself defensively. She was just being a good citizen.

The emergency lighting in the hallway cast a widening sliver of illumination through the center of Chris’s room and reflected off the metal badge on the front of his hat, which was stowed in the open-faced closet just inside the entrance. His duffel bag was on the floor beside the television, with the zipper open, but otherwise the room looked as pristine and untouched as she imagined it had when he first walked in.

“Chris?” she called hesitantly, her shadow blocking out the light from the corridor.

“In here,” came a hoarse voice from the far side of the room. She heard him clear his throat. “By the bed.”

Beth hesitated in the doorway, waiting to see if he moved or gave any indication as to whether he wanted her there or not. When nothing happened, she propped the door open to let light in from the hall and carefully eased into the pitch-black room.

She found him in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, in jeans and a flannel shirt, with his knees pulled up to his chest. She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, but he flinched so violently at her touch that she snatched it back. That’s when she realized he was shaking.

Beth slid down to join him on the floor, careful not to touch him. “I heard about the blackout on TV. You didn’t answer your phone, so I thought I’d come by and make sure you weren’t stuck here with a dead battery and no way to contact your parents,” she lied, assuming from his stiff, defensive posture that he wasn’t overjoyed at her presence.

“Blackout,” he echoed, and Beth thought he sounded relieved. “Is it just the hotel? Or the whole street?”

“Most of the area, actually. A transformer exploded outside, from the blizzard.”

He nodded, exhaling heavily. “I heard it a few minutes ago. You got here quickly.”

Beth frowned. “The power’s been out for about a half hour. I don’t know why no one from the hotel came up to tell you.”

“A half hour?” Chris seemed to give himself a little shake, and Beth noticed that his trembling was subsiding, and his hold on his knees had eased slightly. She squinted to study him in the darkened room—he seemed preoccupied and maybe even disoriented, his brow furrowed with confusion. What was he doing on the floor like this, his body pulled into itself so tightly his knuckles were white? Was he having side effects from pain medication? Or maybe he sustained a brain injury in the field that gave him seizures?

She thought of the man who’d so cavalierly asked her to dinner that day in the archives, whose keen stare made her blush, whose confident, lingering touches made her feel cherished, whose strong, lean body stretched out next to hers had given her the sense that nothing bad could ever happen while he was at her side.

And now here he was, that imperturbable soldier, reduced to a quivering, bewildered mess.

“I’d be surprised if they’ll be able to get the power back on tonight,” she ventured. “Down in the lobby they were talking about transferring people to other hotels. You should probably head downstairs if you want to be moved—this close to Christmas, I’d be surprised if there’s enough availability elsewhere to accommodate everyone.”

“You’re right.” His voice was a little stronger. “I’ll go speak to someone.”

“Or,” she continued carefully, “You could stay with me. In the spare bedroom,” she added hastily.

He inclined his head toward her, which she understood with a sudden pang was as close as she’d now get to that piercing, approving gaze that sent her heart into overdrive.

“Beth, we talked about this,” he said quietly, and she put her hand on his forearm to silence him. This time he didn’t recoil, so she left it in place as she spoke.

“I’m not offering because I’m hoping to manipulate you into changing your mind. In fact, I’m still so angry at how you treated me that I’m not sure I’d even want to be with you again,” she told him, realizing as the words left her mouth that they were true. “But I can see that you’re struggling—”

“I’m not struggling,” he countered vehemently, yanking his arm from her grasp. “I was fine when you showed up. I just didn’t realize there was a blackout, for obvious reasons.”

Beth thought huddling on the floor in bare feet was a long way from fine, but this wasn’t the time to argue.

“I was going to say that you’re struggling to get any attention from the staff here,” she fibbed, “And I would hate to think of you being shunted off to some motel in Junction City because they can’t find a room for you in town. The roads will probably still be impassable tomorrow, and then you’ll be stuck in a crummy room in the middle of nowhere. If you come to my house, I can at least feed you dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow, and you can have a hot shower and sleep in clean sheets, and use my phone or internet or whatever you need to get yourself sorted out. What do you think?”

He ran his thumbs along the seams of his jeans as he thought it over. “You don’t have anyone coming in for Christmas? You’re not traveling?”