Instantly, her thin red brows plummeted. Her lips pursed. She gave him a level, assessing look. “What kind of question is that, Beau?”
Hearing the edge in her smoky voice, he said, “I try to put myself in your shoes. If I was gone for months, I’d be pining for home, that’s all.”
Her scowl grew as she studied him. “There’s more to that question than you’re letting on. What’s really bothering you, Beau?”
Hearing the frustration in her tone, he knew he could never lie to her. Not ever. “I’m waking you up every other night. You lose a lot of sleep because of my flashbacks and nightmares. I see the shadows under your eyes. I worry for you, Callie. I wonder if going home might be a vacation of sorts for you.”
She snorted and her eyes flashed. “In your dreams, Gardner.” Jabbing her finger down at the table, she bit out, “I don’t want to be anywhere else but here, with you.”
“You’d get more sleep.” Desperation wound through him. This wasn’t going the way he wanted. The anger leaped to her eyes and he felt it.
“Okay,” she said roughly, pushing the chair back and standing up, “what’s
really
going on here? What aren’t you saying to me?”
Beau swallowed hard, seeing the fear and anxiety in her eyes. Dammit! He wasn’t dealing with this well at all. “Don’t be angry, Callie. Please? Sit down,” he gestured to the chair behind her. “I’m not saying things well. I guess I’m not used to revealing my soul.”
Her mouth twitched and she grabbed the chair, sitting down, and squaring off with him. “I get it, Beau. I really do. You may be black ops but you cannot hide behind that with me! That’s not going to work.” Her voice became tight with emotions. “I love you! That means you have to come clean with me. I’ll deal with whatever you tell me, but don’t keep hiding stuff from me. God, for the last month I’ve felt you building this wall between us. It’s scared the hell out of me. I wonder if I’m doing it, or if I’m causing it by something I’m doing wrong.” She looked away, a sheen of tears in her eyes, her mouth tight, trying to fight them back.
“No . . . it’s nothing like that, Callie. It isn’t. I love you, too. You’ve
got
to know that.”
“How? When you close up and go away from me, Beau? When you hide? Do you know how that makes me feel?” She punched her thumb into her chest. “I feel like you’re leaving me. Like I’m making you run away from me, but I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. It’s driving me crazy!”
Jesus! He stared at her, his mouth open, seeing the anguish in her eyes, hearing the hurt in her low, husky voice. Stumbling, he said, “You are not chasing me away, Callie.”
“Well, then,” she said, pain in her tone, “you won’t kiss me. We haven’t made love since you arrived here. I know at first you couldn’t. But the doctor has said your lung injury is healed. I so badly want to sleep at your side again, Beau. I felt if I could, those nightmares might go away. I don’t know what’s going on inside you. I can’t get into your head.”
Crumpling inward, Beau was at a loss for words. He felt those walls around himself, and wanted to hide behind them, avoiding Callie’s concerns. “You’ve got this all wrong,” he began. “Whatever is going on is with me, Callie, not you. Stop blaming yourself for this, will you?”
“Well, hell! If you won’t communicate with me, Beau, what am I to think? Really! What am I to think about you? About us?” Her voice grew hoarse.
Beau didn’t want her to cry. He just didn’t. Opening his hands, he said, “I’m trying, Callie. But it’s hard. I’m not used to spilling my guts about how I really feel.”
“Like that’s an excuse, Beau? Not in my world.” She angrily took a swipe at her eyes. “I wonder if you really love me.”
It felt as if another bullet had slammed into him. Frozen by her blurted words, all he could do was feel pain roaring through him, nonstop. “No . . .,” he rasped, “no . . . that’s not true at all, Callie. I DO love you!” Feeling as if his whole world had suddenly shattered, Beau winced as he saw tears spill out of her eyes, seeing the anger and hurt in them. “This is coming out all wrong,” he said swiftly, holding up his hands.
She stared at him, her lower lip trembling until she compressed them. “I’m going for a walk. I need to clear my head.”
She got up to leave, a devastated expression on her face. Then, she marched out and firmly closed the door to the cabin. She was gone.
That went well, didn’t it?
He sat there, hands clasped on the table, staring into nothingness, his emotions churning and filled with frustration. His mind raced and he kept going over their heated, defensive conversation with one another. Callie had taken everything he said the wrong way, but he didn’t blame her. He blamed himself. Women talked on several levels. His best friend, Matt Culver, and he had often commented that women were like a bunch of bus stations at a thousand different stops. They could easily hop from one station to another in a split second. And men, Matt had said, were like communication satellites circling Earth. They knew where they were and talked from one satellite to another, in a linear order. They didn’t hop around from one satellite to another across the planet.
Wearily, he rubbed his face, trying to sort out why their talk had gone spinning out of control. He’d wanted to make sure Callie was okay staying with him. Was it getting to be too much of a burden on her shoulders? Beau knew she was still working through her active PTSD. Things like that did not just go away overnight, or even in a few months. It took years.
Years . . .
Resting his jaw against his clasped hands, he closed his eyes, trying to sort through everything. It wounded him to think that Callie thought he didn’t want to make love to her. And then, he had a bolt of insight. They were both laboring beneath the burden of PTSD. Both had nearly died. Callie’s daily struggle to deal with her own near-death experience was no less intense than his was for him.
Opening his eyes, he cursed softly beneath his breath and pushed the chair away, rising. That was the key—well, one of them. The other was learning how to talk “women speak” with her, a subject in which he had no training.
Would Callie give him a chance, despite him bungling their dinnertime conversation? Pacing the cabin, he wondered where she was now. Beau knew she loved to walk the trails through the woodlands around the property. She also loved the barn, where she had made friends with the ewes that provided his ma with wool.
The June dusk was deep as he left the cabin, walking across the huge gravel area between all the buildings and the garden. He saw a light inside the barn, and figured Callie was inside. Sure enough, as he opened the door, he saw Callie over at the feed trough, petting all six of the ewes, which adored human attention. They were spoiled rotten by his ma, and they were gentle beings, but Beau had always loved all animals. He saw Callie lift her head and twist around. When she saw him, she frowned. He halted.
“I wanted to come and talk with you, Callie.” Her hesitant look unsettled him, but he also saw her need for him in her eyes. Opening his hands, he said, “I need to sit and talk with you. We need to try and hash this out and make sense of it all, sweetheart.”
The moment he’d spoken the endearment, Callie’s whole face changed and he saw her raw love for him. Heartened, he stepped forward. Right now, Beau would rather face a firefight than try to unwind the snarled ball of emotions between them.
Sitting down on the wooden bench in front of the feed trough that was now empty, he gave her a hopeful look.
“I’m sorry I left like that,” Callie admitted quietly. “That was childish. You deserve better from me.”
Beau reached for her hand in her lap, curving his fingers around hers, giving her a long look, seeing the uncertainty in her gaze. “I screwed things up royally with you back in the cabin and I’m sorry too, Callie.” He saw her face sag with so many emotions. “I need your help,” he began, earnestly holding her gaze. “I don’t know how to talk to a woman. It’s not an excuse. I need you to teach me how to stay on whatever topic we start to talk about. Could you do that for me?”
Gulping, Callie nodded. “I get flustered, Beau, and I sometimes blow things out of proportion, like I did tonight.”
“No, you didn’t.” He cupped her hand between his, turning it over, sliding his thumb lightly across her palm, feeling her react. “Here’s what I see and you tell me if I’m on the money or not?”
“Go ahead . . .”
“First, we both have PTSD. We both had a life-and-death experience. That’s what is beneath the surface, fueling us, and making us feel unbalanced.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
Heartened, he added, “It’s like an animal that lives in us, Callie. And sometimes it awakens me and I get these God-awful nightmares or flashbacks.”
“And mine makes me irritable, short tempered, and then I feel defensive and threatened,” Callie said, nodding.
“It attacks us differently, but we both get clawed, and we take it out on others around us whether we want to or not.”
“Yes . . . you’re right. I got angry at you, Beau.”
“Rightfully so,” he sighed. “I never expected you to ask me if I loved you or not.” He touched the engagement ring on her left hand. “It caught me off guard, stunned me, I guess.”
Wincing, Callie whispered, “I shouldn’t have asked that, Beau. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
“It’s okay. I think I’ve figured it out, but you let me know.” She bobbed her head, and he could see her holding back a lot of feelings. Moving his thumb across each of her fingers, he rasped, “After I got the okay from the doc that I was ready for normal experiences, I didn’t ask you to go to bed with me. You took it the wrong way and I don’t blame you. Callie, I was afraid if I asked you back to bed with me, with all my tossing and turning, you’d
never
get any sleep. I was trying to protect you from me,” he said, holding her luminous gaze. “I knew you were struggling too. I knew you needed your sleep. But you saw it as me pushing you away, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. And I didn’t understand why, Beau. You never told me any of this, so what was I to think?”
“I was afraid to tell you, Callie.” It took everything he had to admit that to her.
“Why? I love you, Beau. My God, we’ve gone through so much together already.”
Shaking his head, he muttered, “How about the monster called ‘male ego?’ Or the other one called ‘pride?’ I was afraid you’d see me as weak, less than the man you fell in love with.” He released her hand. “What it comes down to is that I love you, whatever happens, forever. Never ever doubt that again. I’m sorry I’ve messed up with you, Callie. I don’t mean to, but I’m going through my own hell and everything is distorted. I’m the one not thinking clearly right now. I remember back in November, in that ER at Bagram, when you sat there on the gurney after we were rescued. You looked wild-eyed, like a hunted, captured animal. I stood there feeling helpless, not knowing what to do or say. I wanted to hold you, but I was afraid to, because I thought you might have been raped.”
“It was a terrible time for both of us,” Callie choked. “You were standing guard over me and you’d been shot in the leg.” She reached out, caressing his stubbled jaw. “Beau, I feel we have to give each other space and room. And I agree, our PTSD pattern is playing hell on us emotionally, as well as, mentally. It’s not easy. Nothing is right now, for either of us.”
Giving her a searching look, he asked, “What do you want to do about it?” He’d said the words heavily, slowly, because he was afraid Callie would walk out on him and leave him forever. Another part of his mind said that was foolish, he knew that Callie loved him and would be fiercely loyal to him until her last breath. He’d seen it in Afghanistan as they ran for their lives for days and nights. Never once had she whined, quit, or even asked to quit. No, Callie had gumption. She gave, and gave, and gave, until she had nothing more to give.
“I want to stay with you, Beau. I want to sleep at your side. I don’t care how many times a night you wake me up. I have a feeling if you’ll let me stay with you, you won’t have as many nightmares. I could be wrong,” she said, shrugging, “but I’m lonely for you.”
Her words melted his heart and fed his soul. “Okay, we’ll do that. I want it, too. Now, as to the fact that I haven’t made a move to love you . . .”
Callie grimaced. “Yes?”
“I was afraid,” Beau said. “My head is wrapped up in anxiety all the time, Callie. In a good moment, I feel like my old self before this lung wound happened. Now, I’m always questioning myself, wondering if I can perform or not.” He looked away.
“Okay, then let’s take it a step at a time,” Callie began. “You can touch me, kiss me, hold me when you want. You can also tell me when you don’t feel like making love. At least then, I won’t take it personally. I’ll understand that the PTSD has a hold of you. There are times when I’m so wrapped up in anxiety, Beau, the last thing on my mind is sex. We can deal with that if we let each other know what’s going on inside our heads.”
“Does it strike you like that?”
“No, it’s different for me, Beau. I have high anxiety buzzing around me 24/7. I’m getting so I know when the cortisol is screwing me over, so I wait to make decisions or statements after it lets me go. At first, when we brought you home, I accepted your wall as just that: anxiety that had you in its grip.”
“No, I don’t get much anxiety. But I get irritable and hot-tempered. I’m not normally that kind of person, Callie.”
“No, you’re easygoing and laid back.”
“I hate this PTSD,” he muttered.
“I’ll join you on that one. At least we have one thing in our favor, Beau.”
“What’s that?”
“We have a common enemy: PTSD. We understand it because we live with it. Once we can straighten out our communication with one another, it should become an advantage. If you’re getting crabby, I’ll understand. If I’m getting impatient, I know you’ll give me space.”
Giving her a thoughtful glance, he said, “I hadn’t looked at it in that way, but you’re right.”
“We have to devise keywords, or a sign of some kind to let the other know what’s happening inside us. That can prevent a lot of misunderstanding.”