Sweet Affliction [Sweet Awakenings 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) (7 page)

He was coming to expect her to be there, like she was his personal nurse. The thought brought him back to reality as he wasn’t in a hospital, and the people who cared for him were not medical staff. It perplexed him why the few times he’d been awake and asking questions that it never dawned on him to ask the biggest one of all. Why the hell wasn’t he in a damn hospital? Even though he didn’t admit to being a SEAL, clearly her father was not a stupid man. Hell, it sounded like he was one brave son of a bitch. He needed answers. Ready to demand them, he was surprised with which question he whispered first.

“What’s your name?” With his eyes barely open he found himself confused by his question.
Really, Nick? Of all the shit you’re in and you want to know her name? Hey, next ask her if she likes Italian food, and maybe you two can grab a bite later. What the fuck?

“Good morning, Commander Slater.”

So she knew his name and rank. He sure as hell didn’t remember giving it to her. The idea that she knew that about him while he had so many holes in the cluster fuck of what his past two days had become pissed him off more than he’d expected.

He didn’t confirm nor deny that he was Commander Slater. Instead he asked stoically, “Your name?”

“AJ. Well really it’s Alyssa Jo, but everyone calls me AJ.”

AJ
. It was an oddly tomboyish name for someone that seemed so delicate and whose voice was so serene. He stared at her for a moment before he asked her anymore. The knowledge of her name was a surprise. He had expected to her something completely girly and princess-like. Granted, he wasn’t sure what a princess-like name sounded like, but “AJ” just didn’t seem to fit the bill.

“How are you feeling?”

A vague recollection of lying in his own vomit flashed across his foggy memory. He looked down to see he was lying in clean sheets and smelled of soap. New bandages covered his bullet wound, and gauze was wrapped around his bicep. He lifted his arm in confusion. He didn’t remember being shot in his arm.

As if reading his thoughts she spoke, “You didn’t have a bullet there. Well, not one to remove anyway. Dad said it was a…” She looked up for a minute as she tried to recall what was told to her.

He wondered why the man always seemed to disappear whenever he was awake and coherent. Not really seeing this man, and knowing nothing about him other than what his daughter told him, made him uneasy to the core. Regardless, he knew what she was talking about.

“Was it a through and through?”

“Yes!”

He was surprised by her glee that he’d found the words to finish her sentence. Something about her confused the hell out of him. She was manic. Up, down, smiling, frowning. Woman or not, she was riding the emotional rollercoaster of mood swings and making it harder than hell for him to read her.

Enough of this shit, he needed answers!

“All right, AJ. Mind telling me just what the fuck is going on here?”

He tried not to wince as he watched her visibly jump back from his words as though he had shoved her. Damn it, but he didn’t want to scare her. He just wanted…No, fuck that, he needed answers! One of his best friends, a brother, a team member, had been killed right in front of him. Too many things were happening that just didn’t make a damn bit of sense.

“Well?” he asked her again when she just stared at him.

“I…don’t know what you mean.”

Despite the soreness of his arm, he brought it against his chest and crossed it with the other as he gave her a mocking glare.

“Really? Your father, a veterinarian, removed my bullet and sounds like saved my life. All this after he tells you that I’m a United States Navy SEAL. Neither one of you appears to have medical training, other than his extensive knowledge on deworming of dogs and cats, but yet here I lie in what seems to be a dirty makeshift clinic, which I’m told is in the basement of your home.”

He watched her as the words sunk in. He was purposely adding sarcasm to everything he said in hopes she wouldn’t fuck with him. He was in no mood for it. Whatever pain and nausea he felt before he was now feeling stronger. Resolving to not succumb to exhaustion again, he stared her down and waited for her to respond.

“Cat got your tongue, AJ?” He purposely emphasized her name. Hell, how did he know that was her name? She could have lied. He knew nothing about this woman.

“No. I just…I don’t know what you want me to say.”

He wanted to scream when he heard her voice crack. She better not cry. Fuck it all, if she cried he didn’t know if he’d be able to be this intimidating with her. He didn’t know why. Maybe because despite not knowing anything about her or her father or having a damn clue about what was going on, she had been caring for him.

Despite his hesitance he refused to relent his line of questioning. “How about telling me why I’m not in a hospital. I was ambushed. That much I remember. My friend is dead. I’m still active-duty military. Surely they’re looking for me. I mean if my time is right I’ve been here for at most three days, right? So why the fuck isn’t anyone looking for me?”

He shouted the last sentence, and much to his dismay she burst into tears.
Fuck!

Okay, Nick you can do this
. He took several calming breaths, reminding himself that when it came to the female species, sweet words got you much further than shouting.

“Don’t cry.”

She looked up at him then. She was making no sounds, but tears continued to trickle from her eyes.

“I’m sorry I yelled. I’m just very confused and have no clue what is going on. You must understand what that’s like to be completely in the dark about where you are or why you’re even there.”

His voice was calm and soothing as he pleaded with her to understand. Surprisingly though, it wasn’t a rouse. He was being sincere.

“He’s a good man.”

Okay. Huh?

“I’m sorry? Who is a good man?”

“My father. I told you before. He’s a good man. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. That’s the last thing he would ever do.”

As a moment of “oh my God, what the fuck” consumed him, he chose to not react and pray she had an actual point to her sudden change in subject.

“I already told you I believed you.”

“Do you though? He thinks he did, no…he still thinks what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”

My lord
, but he wanted to rip the words from her. She explained things like a child who made no sense.

“Please, I don’t understand. What are you doing that he thinks is the right thing?”

She shook her head emphatically. “No. You’ll think he’s crazy. You’ll be angry and…” Her voice trailed off into a whisper, and she stopped her thought.

Enough was enough. He was getting nowhere with her. Nothing she said made any sense, and she was wearing what small thread of patience he had very thin.

“With all due respect, ma’am, how do you know what I think? You don’t know me at all. What little you have told me I’ve taken at face value, which is something that goes against everything I believe in. You could be lying about everything you’ve told me. I’m only assuming you’ve been truthful. I haven’t even technically seen the man. Sure, I’ve heard his voice, but every time I wake he is resting and you are here.”

He put a finger to his mouth to shush her before he continued. “I know you’ve cared for me, but come on…even you have to admit that something in what you’ve fed me makes no sense. You and your father”— he made mocking quotation marks in the air with his fingers at the mention of her dad—“have been caring for me. Your father tackled a man and removed my bullet. Your father is a good man. Your father is not crazy. I mean, shit. Where is this father of yours? For all I know
you
are the crazy one. For all I know you are the one who removed my bullet. For all I know you are disguising your voice to sound like a man every time to lend to the reality you’ve created that you live here with a father.”

He was now fired up and on a roll.

“Hell, for all I know, you have your dead father in the next room dressed up in one of his old suits as you mimic the voice he once had as you live out this deranged fantasy of him still being alive. Hello? Psycho? Should I be afraid to take a shower in here? If I wander upstairs will I really see a motel?”

For every possible reaction he’d expected to get from her, he hadn’t been prepared for the one she gave.

She lurched at him with a fire in her eyes. He hunched over in pain as she began pounding on him with her fists and managed to get a good blow in his side where the bullet hole was still trying to heal.

Shouts of disgust and anger tore from her as she called him every name in the book. Curse words he was surprised that she even knew rolled off her lips. He grabbed onto her arms and tried to fight her off, but damn she was strong for a little thing.

Her hair was flailing about as she continued to scream at him. Wetness trickled on his chest, and at first he thought she’d spit on him. Then he felt her body shake as her motions slowed.

Still holding her wrists, not sure if it was a trick, he studied her for a minute, waiting for her to react. She was trembling in his grips.

“AJ?”

Slowly she looked up at him. Her hair was tangled across her face, but he could still see her eyes. They were flooded with pain, deep, gut-wrenching sorrow that came from somewhere deep within her soul. His heart squeezed so tight he thought it would stop beating.

“Soon.” She choked out the word.

Never before had he been so confused. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted her, but he released the tight grip that was holding her. He expected her to bolt from the room and come back with any type of weapon she could find to finish the job of beating the shit out of him.

Surprisingly she sank to the bed and sat beside him. Her head went down to stare at the sheets. He wanted to say something, anything. Shit, he wanted to say sorry for making her cry. Why the hell he felt that way he had no damn idea. He wrote it off to the physical trauma his body had been under, even though he knew it was bullshit.

They sat there for minutes. Neither of them spoke. Her breathing, which was erratic, was now slowing. An urge to stroke her arm pulled at him, but he refused to give in, telling himself that if he was patient enough she would soon say something.

He breathed a sigh of relief when his patience proved him right. She ran her hands through her hair, pulling it off of and away from her face. Her eyes looked haunted, and she had the look of someone who was all alone. His jaw clenched at the sight and he ignored how badly he wanted to reach out and touch her.

“He’s dying.” She closed her eyes tightly for a moment before she continued, “Pancreatic cancer. We just arrived last week to spend his last days here where he met my mother.”

She looked to him then. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled from them like a faucet. “It’s why he’s always resting. I don’t know where he got the strength to attack the man who held the gun on you, but in that brief moment I saw the man I once knew before he got sick.”

Nick watched her as tears continued to come. There was no sound in her cries, just a never-ending waterfall of grief and sadness. He needed to touch her, but his reach proved to be too late. She got up from the bed and walked out of the room.

Nick had been lying there for at least an hour, maybe longer. Hell, he didn’t really know. It felt like a long damn time though, while he waited for her to return. Completely still, he cocked his head to one side at the slightest sound. Each time he heard the slightest creak in the floor he braced himself for her to enter. He wanted to apologize to her. The pain he’d saw in her eyes still was fresh in his mind. Her father was dying and used what little strength he had to save his life, twice. First with the mercenary and second when he removed the bullet and stitched him up. Despite all of her father’s heroics, though, all he could offer her were insensitive jokes about her dead father.

He wanted to kick himself. “You’re such a shit, Slater.”

“Should I come back when you’re done telling yourself off?”

His gaze shot up to the doorway. She stood there carrying a tray, which held a bowl and a bottle of water. Both items promised pure enjoyment to his stomach, but for some reason that was the furthest thing from his mind.

“No, please come in.”

Her hair was damp and held in a high ponytail atop her head. The T-shirt she wore was faded, but he could see the slight hint of the USC Trojans mascot. He wondered if she was from the area.

She set the tray down on the bedside table. “It’s just some chicken soup. Actually it’s more broth then anything, but Dad said I shouldn’t give you anything too heavy. You could get sick.”

“AJ.” He placed a hand on her wrist before she turned away.

Her wrists were slim and delicate. The memory of her pounding against his torso with fury seemed unbelievable as he felt her soft skin and wondered how such strength came from something so small.

“I need to get back upstairs. I don’t want to leave him alone long.”

“I understand. I just want to apologize for the things I said earlier.”

He thought she was pulling away from him to leave, but she surprised him by sitting beside him on the bed. One of her hands touched his side where his bandage was.