Hold Me: Delos Series, 5B1 (9 page)

Snorting softly, Graham started the car and backed out. “If loving or not loving someone hinged on a bullet, then it wasn’t love to begin with.” He drove down the long row slowly until they were at a crossroads. Looking both ways, he eased out into the rush hour traffic around the medical center, which was bumper to bumper.

“I feel like he still loves me, but I’m scared, Grandpa. Scared that somehow, this changes how he sees me. Sees us . . .”

Drawing in a breath, Graham said, “His healing is going to take time, Callie. He almost died, and believe me, almost dying will change us. He’s going to have nightmares about this and PTSD symptoms, for sure. He’s going to go up and down like a barometer emotionally for months to come.”

“You went through this.”

“Yes, I did. And your grandmother was at her wits end sometimes with me because I was swinging emotionally back and forth like a yoyo,” he said. “I never doubted for a moment that I didn’t love her, but she had a man she thought she knew come home to her very changed, and unlike the person she used to know. She thought for the longest time I no longer loved her. It was a very hard time for both of us.”

Clasping her hands in her lap, Callie stared at the traffic all around them. “Did you ever want to split up? Quit?”

He held her gaze. “Yes, several times. I won’t lie to you, Callie, this is going to be a rough road for you both. But you have McKinley genes and you’re strong as titanium. What you have to do is be there for him when he needs you. Listen to him. Ask a lot of questions. Don’t assume anything because if you do, you’ll probably be wrong and that’s going to create all kinds of stress and anxiety between the two of you.

He’s going to connect you with other events and people in his past he can depend on when he’s tired, stressed, hurting, and feeling death stalking him again. He’ll know that you are there, steady, and strong for him. It’s not an easy hurdle to leap. Nor is it easy to appear to be strong all the time, because you won’t be. No one can do that. So, it’s a lot of ups and downs. The best thing you can do is talk a lot. If you don’t? It could split any couple apart.”

“Was Grandma the one who wanted to give up?”

“No, it was me, Callie. I was so deep into my own pig wallow, so blinded by all that I’d seen and lived through, that I was lost for a good year or more. I was black ops just like Beau. And he’s seen just as much as I have. This wound he nearly died from is going to rake him over Hell itself. And you’re going to have to be there for him. But it’s hard, honey. So damned hard.”

April 17

B
eau listened to
the plop, plop, plop of raindrops falling from the mid-April sky on the cabin sitting on Black Mountain. The cedar shakes on the roof were absorbing most of the sound. He lay partially sitting up, each breath painful. Closing his eyes, feeling the utter exhaustion of the last two weeks, he was glad to finally be home. It had taken his parents driving him home to get here, four days after being released from the military hospital. This small guest cabin had one bedroom and was about a thousand square feet, all told. His father had built it when he was in his late teens.

The old brass bed where he was laying was surrounded with goose-down pillows to support him. He reached out with his left hand, moving it across the old, thin bedspread. His grandmother, Bess Gardner, had made it fifty years ago, and it showed its age. He’d grown up with in on his bed at his parents’ cabin, and on nights when he had nightmares, which wasn’t very often, he’d bundled himself up in it, pulling into a fetal position, clutching the warm, colorful quilt around him like a shield. Then feeling secure, he’d promptly fallen asleep.

He fondly remembered his grandmother. She’d lived to be a hundred and two, with lively blue eyes like his father’s, her black hair streaked with silver. And she’d loved her three grandsons, always giving them big, smacking kisses on the cheek and forehead whenever they came close to her. His mother now had every one of Bess’s quilts. They were heirlooms, precious mementos of an earlier time that Amber wanted passed down through the generations, along with the colorful stories about Gram Bess.

Now, Beau moved his fingers across the thinning cotton, still strong after so many decades. He could remember as a boy when electricity still hadn’t been strung across Black Mountain. Then, they’d used a washboard, washing one section of the big quilt at a time on it.

The rain soothed his rattled mind, his fingers splayed out against the quilt. The cabin was cool, with only a wood stove for heating. Although the April weather was above freezing, the cabin was usually chilly if the wood stove hadn’t been fired up.

In the other room, Callie slept on a couch his father had made for Gram Bess decades earlier. It was a good, long couch, hardly showing any age. The black walnut wood shining from being oiled by hand. Amber had made the comfortable cushions placed across the sofa and had sewn them on a special Singer machine that handled heavy fabric. All was quiet, and he hoped Callie was sleeping well.

Even sighing caused a stabbing pain in his lung. The VA doc told him it was from where the drain had been inserted. In time, the pain would disappear as the wound healed. He looked down at the thick, white dressing across the right side of his ribcage. Callie changed it daily, but it was Poppy Thorn, a Black Mountain hill doctor, who had met them when they’d arrived home, who would provide medical assistance. Her daughter, Baylee Ann Thorn-Griffin, a former 18 Delta Navy corpsman, was also helpful.

The women taught Amber and Callie how to change his dressing daily and how to look for redness, heat, or swelling, which could indicate infection. They also took his temperature several times a day. If infection occurred, they would have to rush him down to the VA hospital in Dunmore to get him emergency treatment. And this happened, Amber was to call Baylee immediately. She and her husband, Gabe, an ex-SEAL, would drive down to the cabin and drive Beau to the hospital. Just knowing this gave them all more confidence that they could handle whatever came up.

Beau pulled his left arm across his eyes, feeling lost. He wasn’t alone, and for that, he was grateful. But the last two weeks had twisted him into a knot. Everyone, since he had come home, walked on eggs around him. Beau could see the anxiety in them, the fear that something might go wrong, throwing him into another life-and-death battle. He ached to have Callie lying next to him, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm across his torso, naked and warm against the hard length of his body. His mouth tightened and he felt hot tears well up, but fought them back.

Beau knew his father was a big believer in men crying. He had taught his sons it was okay to let go. He’d seen his father cry. Tears leaked beneath his short, spiky lashes, trailing down his recently shaved face. Earlier tonight, Callie had shaved him, and he had looked forward to it so much—her tender touch, her smile.

But there was no manual on how to act or feel after you’d survived a near-lethal attack. These days, Beau’s moods were up and down. One hour, he was higher than a damned kite, feeling lucky to be alive and surrounded by so many people that he loved. The next hour, he felt as if he’d stepped off a cliff into a deep black hole. It was those “down times” that Nurse Evans had warned him about. How he hated these moments of deep depression. Beau had never dealt with anything like this before. He had always been a mellow, happy guy, known for his optimistic outlook. Until now.

Anger and frustration thrummed through him. Callie had repeatedly tried to talk to him about how he was doing, but he clammed up. No one knew what combat was like, but she did, having gone through that ambush and escape from the Taliban last November.

A few minutes later, exhausted by his memories of the past and his frustrations in the present, Beau dropped off to sleep.

*

Callie nearly jumped
off the couch when she heard Beau cry out. She hurried into his room and saw that the clock on his dresser read four a.m. There was a small night light plugged into the wall, and Beau was barely visible. But she could see that his skin was glistening with sweat and he’d torn off his covers. He wore a set of pajama trousers and his feet stuck out between the rumpled covers. Beau was breathing hard, a moan of pain tearing from between his tightened lips. And he was awake.

“Beau? It’s Callie. You’re okay,” she whispered, moving to his right side, her gaze dropping to the dressing. Bay Griffin had told her to watch for any new, fresh blood stains on that white gauze dressing. If there were any, she was to call her on her cell phone and she’d quickly come down to see what had been torn apart. To her relief, the dressing was white, not red. Reaching out, she saw the agony in his shadowed eyes. She slid her fingertips across his sweaty brow, placing the damp strands back into place. “Nightmare?” she guessed.

“Yes,” he gritted out, shutting his eyes, tensing because the pain was sharp and jabbing in the area of his lung.

“What can I do?” She’d learned from Bay what kind of questions to ask Beau. Otherwise, she’d feel panic instead. She continued to slide her hand over his hair in light, gentle caresses. Her touch always soothed him. She waited. Right now, his eyes were tightly shut as he wrestled with the pain of breathing deeply. His flesh was pasty and she knew that was a sign of deep pain. She’d learned not to blurt out a fix for it, but it was hard not to ask if he wanted medication to dull it.

“Just . . . nothing,” he rasped, his breath still ragged, his chest heaving.

“Okay,” she soothed. Leaving his side, she pulled up the blankets, settling them over him to his waist, wanting to keep him warm. The cabin was deeply chilled and felt damp. She needed to make a fire in the wood stove to drive it away. Bay had worried about Beau catching pneumonia if he wasn’t in a warm, dry environment and these cabins were poorly insulated.

She smoothed her hand down his right arm, feeling the sweat. He gripped her fingers in his, feeling his anxiety. What had he been dreaming about? The firefight where he got wounded? Most likely, but Callie said nothing except to place her other hand on his naked shoulder to stabilize him.

Beau didn’t want anything atop his skin but a lightweight sheet across his wound area. The weight of blankets bothered him and he couldn’t stand it, pulling them away from his chest. Callie badly wanted to lean over and hold Beau because she knew that’s what he needed, but with that chest wound, she couldn’t. Instead, she continued to move her hand lightly across his shoulder, some of the sweat dissipating, his breathing beginning to slow down. Beau lay against the wall of pillows that kept him upright. She knew better than to try to rearrange them when he was enmeshed in an emotional storm. Bay had urged her to simply be there, remain quiet, and keep her touch and connection with him. That was what Gabe, her husband, had done for her when she’d had flashbacks of her rape and capture by the Taliban. Just his closeness to her, someone she considered safe, helped her reorient and come out of those horrifying memories.

Callie wished she could say or do something, but she knew by now that words didn’t always carry the weight that her touch did. She had never realized just how important it was until now. Beau responded quickly to her hand on his shoulder and he collapsed against the pillows, eyes shut, his breathing slowing down.

How like animals we all are
, Callie thought. She was raised on a ranch, and had helped birth the calves, foals, puppies, and kittens. All of them reacted positively to touch, people were no different, she realized. She felt Beau’s fingers grow stronger around hers, giving them a squeeze. She smiled a little into his shadowy, tense face. “What can I do for you, Beau?” she asked again.

He frowned, barely opening his eyes. Rolling his head toward her, he rasped, “I’d give
anything
for you to lie beside me. I need you, Callie.”

Her heart tore open as she remembered their time together, body-to-body, skin-on-skin, holding him in her bed. “I know, it seems like a dream from the past, doesn’t it?”

Grimacing, Beau rasped, “Yeah, a beautiful dream . . .”

“Is there anything you’d like that I can bring you, besides me?” she shot him a grin to help lighten the mood. “A drink of water?” Callie knew from past nightmares that he was now grounded and back here with her.

“Yeah. Water, please?”

She retrieved a glass of water with a straw, brought it over to him, and pressed the straw between his lips. He drank in gulps, emptying the glass.

“More?” she asked gently.

He nodded, wiping his mouth with his left hand. Following her with his eyes, he watched her pour another glass of water from a nearby plastic pitcher. “I don’t know what I’d do without your help, Callie. Thank you.”

“I want to be right here beside you, Beau. I love you, and I want to help you as much as I can.” Turning, she held the glass for him and allowed him to drink until he was sated. Color was slowly starting to return to his cheeks, and she felt tiny tendrils of relief.

“Thanks,” he whispered. He watched her set the glass down on the bed stand. “I’m sorry I woke you.”