Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) (16 page)

“So did someone at least end up in the hospital?” she asked. He could see her choosing her words carefully.

“Hell no,” the bartender rasped through a gap in her front teeth. “That would require Jenkins to talk to the cops. And he’s not really what you might call a fan of the
authorities.” She set a glass down on a towel to dry. “But if you don’t get your buddy out of here soon, I’m not going to be able to stop the cops from dragging him off to jail.”

Evan glanced at Claire, who was scanning the bar for any signs of trouble. Her hair fell forward, dusting along her temple. He reached for it, stroking it behind her ear before she could stop him. She tensed but didn’t pull away. He smiled. Progress, he thought. Maybe she wasn’t still mad at him. He could hope.

He shifted again and angled his body toward the woman behind the bar. “Thanks for not calling the cops,” he said simply. “I’ll make sure he takes care of the damages.”

“Well, thanks for your service.” The woman sniffed and focused on wiping down the glass in her hand. Her smile looked like a tear in cracked leather. “Get your friend some help before you bury him. A man shouldn’t be able to drink like that.”

He fisted one hand on the bar, bracing the other against the worn oak as he prepared to stand. Ignoring the burning questions in Claire’s eyes, he pulled a twenty out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter.

“Sure.” He pushed the stool closer to the bar and stood. “Ready?”

The silence between Claire and Evan was awkward and heavy, the kind of silence that sucked the air from his lungs. He hadn’t wanted to call her, but there hadn’t really been a lot of options. He wasn’t even entirely sure how they’d ended up here. He’d gone downstairs to the bar in the lobby. Of course Iaconelli had been there. And Evan had been too wound up to care that he was drinking with his former platoon sergeant. The next thing he knew, he and Iaconelli were pounding shots at The Greasy Tube. Then the local dickheads had succeeded in ruining a perfectly good time. Evan had already started sobering up by the time he called Claire. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as Iaconelli, but he’d never get behind the wheel of a car after drinking. Never again, anyway. He drank because it was a way to deaden the pain, to stop the bleeding. But he’d never drink and drive.

He was glad she had come. The last thing he wanted to do was try to drag
Iaconelli out of here by himself. And regardless of whatever this was between them, she’d never leave Iaconelli. That much he knew with absolute certainty.

He tried not to be jealous. He failed. He was jealous of their trust, their easy friendship. The way she relaxed around Iaconelli but not with him.

They managed to get Iaconelli strapped in the backseat of the rented SUV without any significant injuries. He had no idea how much Steel Reserve Reza had pounded before blacking out, but it had been a hell of a ride prior to that.

“How much was the damage?” Claire asked softly as she started the truck and pulled out onto the main road.

He slammed the door shut and buckled his seat belt automatically. “Close to a thousand bucks,” he mumbled, dragging a hand over his face.

“Lovely.” Beside him, Claire maneuvered the big truck out of the parking spot. “Hope he has some deployment money saved up.”

Evan snorted and slammed his head back against the headrest. “Tell me about it.”

They rode in silence for a long time. Evan wished he could find some pleasure in the moment—in being with Claire, even under these circumstances—but all he felt was a rising sense of doom that the person he’d worked his ass off to become was one thread away from unraveling. It had nothing to do with Iaconelli sleeping off his latest bender in the backseat. It was much more subtle, like a nagging sense of foreboding tickling at the base of his skull that his control was slipping away.

“So you’re not going to ask what prompted my drunken escapade?”

“I don’t think you’re nearly as drunk as you want me to think you are.” Claire glanced over at him, then turned her attention back to the road. Her fingers tensed on the steering wheel. “Want to talk about it?” she asked after a long moment.

He sniffed and stared out the window, scrubbing his hand over his jaw and trying to figure out what to say next. They drove in silence for a few minutes, the neon signs occasionally lighting up the inside of the car as they passed tiny hamlets of civilization.
Iaconelli mumbled in the backseat and then promptly began snoring again.

“Stop the car up here,” he said quietly.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no place to pull off the road.”

“There’s a turnoff.” One he knew all too well.

He hadn’t planned this. Hadn’t left the lodge with this in mind. But as much as he’d tried to avoid the pain of coming home, part of him needed this tonight.

He glanced at her as she pulled into the barely plowed turnoff. The tires crunched through the snow. A hundred feet from the road, bathed in the soft glow of the headlights, stood a gnarled, twisted oak. He heard Claire’s hiss of breath the moment she made the connection.

Grinding his teeth, he stepped into the bitter cold of his memories.

* * *

Evan stood in front of the old oak, hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded jacket. His cheeks were red from the cold but Claire doubted he could feel it.

The old tree was more misshapen than the tattoo on his back. More bent and twisted with time. She thought she saw a glint of metal gleaming from the bark, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Casey was always a bit wild.” He sniffed, rubbing his jaw briefly before stuffing his hand back in his pocket. “My dad worked a lot. Which left me to look after her. Mom didn’t really know what to do with her. I guess Mom’s answer was to do nothing at all.”

He released a shuddering breath. It froze, glittering on the night air. “Is it weird that I don’t hate her for that?”

Claire could barely speak past the knot in her throat. She shook her head, mute. Listening. Just listening.

“I’d snuck out to a party a week before Halloween. I thought Casey was at home.
She wasn’t. She,” his voice wavered and broke and he sucked in a long, hard breath, “she’d gone out with a couple of seniors from another high school.”

“Oh, Evan.” Her words were a whisper, a caress of sympathy.

“I got to her before anything happened.” He smiled, but the smile was carved with sadness, raw and uncut. “I thought I was some kind of badass, and that I was going to get my little sister home safe.” His breath caught again and he bowed his head. “Except that I’d had a couple of beers.”

Claire placed her hand on his shoulder, right over the scar that had ripped Casey Loehr’s name from his skin.

“I thought I was sober enough to drive. We were hit by a tractor trailer. He drifted into my lane and I jerked the wheel into his lane to try and avoid him.” The muscles on his back clenched and knotted beneath her touch. “Casey died before the airlift helo could get her to the hospital.”

She heard the recrimination, the self-loathing in those whispered words. The memories twisting into him. “I killed my little sister.”

He bowed his head, looking away from the tree. Avoiding her gaze until she stepped in front of him, cupping his face gently in her palms, his skin frigid cold beneath her touch. Waiting until he met her gaze. “Evan,” she whispered, knowing her words were useless.

There was nothing she could say that would erase the thirteen years of guilt he’d carried with him. She traced her fingers across his forehead, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes.

It terrified her, seeing this side of a man she thought of as a rock. Steadfast. Reliable.

But tonight he was shaken, his grief so real and raw, he might have been standing at the scene of the accident after it just happened instead of in a field of snow-covered memories.

“Look at me,” she said. He turned to her with dark eyes filled with sadness. She brushed her lips against his. “Evan. You can’t keep punishing yourself.”

His breath froze against her skin. Slowly, so slowly, the memories retreated.

“Evan,” she repeated, her breath mingling with his. She brushed her lips against his again, hoping to chase away the demons that danced at the edge of his soul.

A ragged breath rushed from him and he buried his face against her neck. She wrapped her arms around him. “I can’t go home. My parents can’t even look at me.” He lifted his face from her neck, stroking her hair from her face. He smiled weakly. “So much for Captain America, huh?”

Claire cupped his face in her hands. “I call you Captain America because you’re such an honorable man. But now I know why you work so hard to be perfect.” She stroked her thumb over his cheek.

He was lost. Adrift in a field of memories. And he might have been looking at Claire, but he was speaking to the memory of his dead sister, who hadn’t lived long enough for him to make his apology.

“You can’t change what happened,” she whispered. “You’re a good man, Evan.”

He closed his eyes, lowering his forehead to hers. “How can you look at me and say that knowing what I did?”

She shifted, pressing her lips to his closed eyes. “Because I know all about making mistakes that will haunt you for a lifetime.”

“Iaconelli is going to ruin his career with his drinking.” Evan’s voice was rough as Claire pulled into the parking lot of the lodge a short while later. It was close to four
A
.
M
. Dawn was not far off, but he doubted they’d be able to sleep. It would not be the first time that either of them had pulled more than a twenty-four-hour shift. The war was funny that way. Got you so used to working such long hours that when you came home, you felt like you were slacking off if you worked only ten- or twelve-hour days.

“He’s getting worse.” It hurt Claire to say the words—she’d tried to keep them inside of her for so long. “And I don’t think he can stop.”

“If he doesn’t get himself under control, someone’s going to get hurt,” Evan said. He stared out into the darkness. “Before we came up here, I found out the sergeant major caught him with Everclear downrange.” Claire said nothing, and Evan turned his face to peer at her in the darkness. “I don’t know why he didn’t report him, but he didn’t.”

Claire met his gaze, a warm sadness filling her eyes in the unlit cab of the truck. “I can guess,” she said quietly. “He needed Reza in the fight more than he needed to make an example of him for drinking downrange. It might not have been the right tradeoff, but it’s one that anyone who has served in combat can understand.”

Evan sighed quietly. “He doesn’t talk about it. About anything, for that matter. He just drinks and screws and drinks and screws. Only good thing I can say is that at least he loads up on condoms, so there hopefully aren’t dozens of little Iaconellis running around.”

Evan caught the edge of her smile in the dark and he frowned. “What?”

“It’s funny. Reza is passed out in the backseat and oh, by the way, you’re breaking all kinds of rules to keep him off any police reports, and the only thing you’re
concerned about is his ability to put a condom on when he’s shit-faced drunk?”

Evan laughed quietly. “Well, that is actually heroic, if you think about it.”

“Only in your world,” she said with a wry grin. “In the rest of the world, it’s kind of tragic.”

Silence hung over them once more, and Claire killed the ignition.

“I’ll help you get him upstairs,” Evan said softly.

She glanced over her shoulder, then back at him, an odd smile on her lips. “You don’t have to. I’ll deal with him. I’ve done it a hundred times before.” Iaconelli shifted behind them and threw his arm over his eyes with a rough sigh. Claire was the type of woman who would come through for her friends no matter what. It hurt, knowing that no matter what happened between them, he could never garner that kind of loyalty from her.

He slid his hand over hers, her skin cold and soft beneath his palm. “Maybe it’s time we both stopped trying to deal with everything alone.”

* * *

They put Reza to bed. Getting Reza out of the car was no easier than getting him into the backseat of the car, but it was accomplished in much the same way. With much swearing and grunting.

Evan paused outside Reza’s door. Claire stood with him for a moment, then threaded her fingers through his, guiding him past his door and into her own. The door closed with a quiet click behind them and a hush fell over the suite. The snow covered the outside world in a heavy white blanket, obscuring the dark.

Kneeling next to the fireplace, Claire stacked a few pieces of kindling on top of newspaper and waited until they were crackling and snapping before she added a small log. All the while, she felt Evan’s gaze on her back. The warmth of it slid beneath her skin, sidling up to her heart and nestling close.

She shifted and sighed, settling on the floor near the fire and wrapping her arms around her knees. The awkwardness between them had to balance out sometime. They could not go the rest of this mission alternating between fighting and not speaking to each other and kissing at really awkward moments.

Evan moved to sit on the floor in front of the fire and said nothing for a long moment. The space between them was warmer now, heated by more than the flames in front of them.

“What’s going on in that brain of yours?” she asked quietly.

It was tempting, so tempting, to inch across the floor and sit near him. Such a simple gesture, but one that would hold too much significance. She watched as he searched for a way to put whatever was eating at him into words.

He’d long ago convinced her that he was nowhere near as intoxicated as she’d originally thought. Either he hadn’t had as much to drink as Reza or he’d processed it out of his system faster. One thing was clear: the man sitting on the floor of her suite was sober.

His next words, much more so.

“Today when we were at the shoot house, I started thinking about our mission out in Hamamiyat.” He looked up at her, his eyes glittering darkly.

“You mean the mission where you pissed your pants?” she said, dancing around a memory. It was one of the few times they’d actually worked together without ripping each other’s heads off.