Hold Me: Delos Series, 5B1 (10 page)

“
I’m
not, big guy. I love spending time with you. Do you want anything else?”

“Yeah, you.” He managed a weak, teasing smile, turning his right hand over resting it on the mattress. “Just you.”

“You have me,” she said. “Always. Meanwhile, are you warm enough, Beau? Do you want me to start a fire in the wood stove?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. Give me your hand,” he replied, stretching out his open palm.

Sliding her fingers into his, she stood above him and saw the exhaustion shadowing Beau’s face. “How’s the pain level in that lung?”

“Bearable.”

Shaking her head, she said, “Beau, you don’t have to tough this out. You know the doctor said you could take that pain med. You’ll heal up faster if you aren’t in pain all the time.”

She saw his eyes flicker with frustration and knew it had to do with his ego. Baylee had told her that men would always want to tough it out. She’d seen it as a combat medic again and again. Callie appreciated her wisdom and experience. It helped her understand why Beau was being so stubborn about admitting he was in pain. It was the “manly” thing to do, and it made her want to scream in frustration.

She had a sudden inspiration. “How about,” she posed, “if I give you
half
a pain pill? That way, it won’t knock you out for hours.” She saw him consider it. Sometimes, Callie felt like a horse trader with Beau. Knowing he wasn’t doing it on purpose, that he was still in recovery, and dealing with trauma, she could easily forgive him.

“Well . . . yeah . . . that would be okay, I guess . . .”

She smiled a little. “I’ll be right back.”

Returning from the bathroom, she put half the pill on his tongue and gave him water to wash it down.

“You’ll feel better now,” she soothed, setting the glass aside.

“I want you so damned badly beside me, Callie.”

“I know you do. But until that lung heals up more, I can’t do it. Every time I move beside you I’d be aggravating your wound. You’d never get any sleep, Beau.” She saw his brows draw down, frustration gleaming in his eyes.

“You didn’t sign on for this,” he muttered.

“No, but you didn’t either,” she reminded him. “You didn’t join the Army to get shot.”

“I knew as a Delta operator the potential was there, though.”

Her lips puckered. “Well, I knew when I fell in love with you that as a black ops man, you’d always be in harm’s way, and that you could get wounded, or worse, killed.” She leaned over and brushed his lips. Once she’d kissed him, she drew back, her lips a mere quarter of an inch from his, and added, “And I weighed all of that before I let all my love carry me away to you, Beau Gardner.”

She felt him relax even more. Maybe it was her kiss, her loving him from a distance, or maybe it was the meds. She wasn’t sure. He lifted his left hand slowly, because any movement of his rib cage inspired pain in his wound, his fingers sliding through her thick, crimson strands. She smiled, eyes closed. They both needed this intimacy with one another. It fed them, and kept their hope strong and bright with one another.

“I wish I could love you right now, Beau,” she whispered against his lips. She felt him smile a little beneath her mouth.

“Do you want the truth? I haven’t had one sexual thought since I got hit.”

Easing away, she laughed. “Well, I’m not surprised. Almost dying kind of takes precedence, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” he grumped. “I’m just not the man I used to be, Callie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I can’t love you. I can’t hold you. You pull down my trousers and briefs so I can pee or poop. There’s just a boxcar load of things I can’t do anymore by myself.”

“But in time, you’ll be able to pull down your jeans and briefs to go to the bathroom, Beau. You will be able to hold me and love me, and I’ll love you back.”

She saw the devastation and loss in his eyes. The meds were indeed starting to take over because he was far more willing to talk with her. She cherished these moments with him. They were too far and few between.

“I guess . . . I guess I didn’t see this coming, Callie.” He looked up into her eyes, worry in them.

Shrugging, she sighed. “My parents and grandparents taught me there was nothing fixed about a person’s life path, Beau. Things happen, both good and bad, to all of us, all the time. If you hadn’t been in the Army, if you hadn’t been protecting Hope Charity from that Taliban attack, you could have been a civilian instead and gotten into a car wreck.”

“Well, shit happens,” he muttered darkly, “for sure.” Beau didn’t usually curse around her, and she knew he was sinking into a heavy place.

“Hey,” she said, “we’ll work through this together. Like we’ve done everything else.” There was a question in his eyes and she wasn’t sure what that was about. He said the words,
I love you
, to her, but sometimes, she wondered if he was just saying it and not meaning it. That scared her as nothing else. She wanted to ask him more questions, but Callie knew he was exhausted from lost sleep and desperately needed to get some.

“We’ll tackle it all together,” she promised him softly, leaning over, kissing his brow. “I’m in this with you forever, Beau. I’m not leaving your side. I’m here for the long haul.” Callie’s family had taught her commitment, hanging in through the rough times, and being grateful for the good times. She’d grown up seeing that time and again with the family that surrounded her and Dara.

“That’s good to hear, sweetheart.”

Caressing his cheek, she whispered, “Go to sleep, Beau. I’ll stand here for a bit. Close your eyes, okay?”

And he did. Within a minute, Callie watched him drop off that invisible cliff, his body sag, all the tension draining from him. She slowly loosened her fingers from his and brought up the sheet to cover his chest.

Tiptoeing quietly out of his room, she went back to her couch bed and lay down. It was almost five a.m., but the skies around Black Mountain were still dark. As Callie snuggled down beneath the quilt and sheet, nestling into the goose down pillow, she pretended she was lying next to Beau.

*

May 15

Beau walked slowly,
Callie’s hand around his leather belt to catch him in case he fell. The May afternoon sunlight fell in shadows around the Gardner homestead that comprised ten acres of Black Mountain. They lived on the lower slope of the mountain, the area thick with elm, oak, poplar, and maple. The ground was uneven, sticks and sometimes rocks hidden by leaves here and there. Beau had to walk every hour he was up because it improved his lung function. Today, he wore a bright red t-shirt, his jeans, and hiking boots. On his head, as always, was his frayed Army green baseball cap. She smiled to herself, glad to have his left arm around her shoulders, walking so closely together.

“Someone had to do a lot of leveling out of this slope,” she said, gesturing with her left hand toward the huge five-acre garden, “to make it flat so water would stay in there and soak in.”

“That was my great-grandparents, Sally and Eli,” he told her. “They bought the land and Eli had a team of mules and a plow. It took him two years to take the slope off our homestead,” Beau told her, “and make it flat like we see it nowadays.”

“That had to be a lot of work.”

“It was. He also built the main cabin where my folks live and where we boys were born and grew up.”

“What about that little cabin we’re in?” She lifted her face, feeling the warmth of the sunlight falling upon it. The rain had cleared up in the early morning, the mid-morning temperature now in the high sixties.

“My pa engaged the three of us boys and we built it. He wanted to teach us how to build a log cabin and we learned.”

“What was the purpose of that cabin?” Callie wondered as she felt Beau slow to a halt. Every day he challenged himself to walk a little farther, making his lungs work, and open up to their full capacity to take oxygen into his body.

“My parents were hoping one of us boys would marry and want to come back here to live. He told us it was a ‘starter’ cabin, something we could build onto when we brought our brides home. There’s plenty of land to add on bedrooms or whatever else was needed later on.”

She looked up at him, seeing that same strength in his face, feeling her need of him, and enjoying time and space with Beau. Keeping her arm around his waist, she asked, “Did you want to be the one to come home?”

He turned, studying her. “I never knew what would happen to me in that regard, Callie. When I saw you, everything fell into place for me. You were the woman I wanted for my wife. Wanted forever.” He squeezed her gently against him, kissing the top of her head.

Warming to his intimate words, she reflected that only in the past few days had Beau once more reached out for her. He had told her that after a major wounding the intimacy they once shared would slowly return, that she would be giving him much more than he could give her at first. Now, just having him tall and strong against her felt so good, so right. She hungered for moments like this and was relieved that they were appearing more often.

“I’m glad you saw me belly dance,” she teased, smiling up at him. He’d taken her advice from that night weeks ago, using half of a pain med near noon. Callie had breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a good call because he was sleeping at night, and sleep was healing. When Beau was in pain, he was distracted and not available to her. He was being more amenable about taking half a med rather than none. Maybe it was the healing curve that Bay had talked about.

“Me too,” he replied softly, watching a robin sailing across the meadow surrounded by thick woods on all sides.

She felt a sadness within Beau despite the warm sunlight that felt so good. She could feel him absorbing the sun, drinking it in, and loved the fact that he was an outdoors lover as much as she was. Fresh air and sunlight were healing to everyone.

“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it, Beau? So why are you feeling so sad?”

He held her a little more tightly. “I don’t know. It just comes in waves, Callie. I wish I could control it, but I can’t.”

“It happened to me,” she admitted, meeting his darkening gray eyes. “After I nearly got raped in that ambush.”

“It did?” She could tell she had his attention now.

“I felt like I was flying apart inside, Beau. I couldn’t control my emotions, my fear of dying, or my fears that I’d never see you or my family again. I couldn’t cry enough. It would come and go at the oddest times. One moment I was up and giddy with happiness that I was alive, in the next I’d crash and burn.”

“When I came to visit you for Christmas, these were the feelings you were struggling with?

“Yes.” She gave him a painful look. “I was a hot mess.”

“Funny, that’s how I’ve felt since regaining consciousness in Germany at the medical center.”

“I still have it, Beau. It’s not as bad or as intense or as often, but I have hours when I wrestle with it.”

“This must be PTSD?”

“I don’t know. I was talking with Bay the other day about it after she finished checking your dressings. We went outside to the corral where the sheep are kept and just stood talking. I told her about my emotions. I thought they were PTSD and she said no, that they’re just plain old human emotional reaction to trauma and thinking I was going to die.”

“Huh,” Beau said, frowning. “Did Bay say how long it would last, because it sucks.”

Giving him a faint smile, Callie said, “Bay said it’s different for everyone.”

“I never knew you were struggling with things like that. Why didn’t you tell me this was how you were feeling, Callie?” he asked, searching her eyes.

Shrugging, she whispered, “I just felt so messed up, Beau, that I thought you’d see me as a whiner. That I wasn’t strong enough to gut through this.”

He stared at her and then grew frustrated. “And I never asked you how you felt, either. That’s on me. Dammit.”

He was upset. Callie smoothed her palm against his back. “Hey, don’t go there, okay? We led such stressful lives at that time, Beau. My grandpa tried to pull it out of me, but I wouldn’t talk, even to him.”

“You asked me just now about myself and my feelings, Callie.”

“Because I’ve been through what you’re going through, that’s why. I wanted to talk to you, Beau, but I was afraid you’d think less of me.”

He laughed, relief tinging his words. “Well, I guess I’m in the same boat that you are. I was afraid to say anything for the very same reasons. I felt you’d think less of me,” he admitted with an apologetic look.

“Geez Gardner, you know I think you’re a hero ten times over from the time I met you!” Callie released him, hand on his left elbow as she walked in front of him and then halted. “Beau, you saved my life. I’d already fallen for you before that ambush. I thought by my stupid decision to run I had exposed both of us to a life-and-death situation, and that you’d want me out of your life forever. You took a bullet in your calf for me.”

Her voice grew hoarse as she clung to his gaze. “I put your life in jeopardy. I still live with that to this day. There are times,” she choked, “that I don’t know why you continue to love me, Beau. I almost got you killed.”