Her Perfect Life

by Hinze, Vicki

  Not that she’d let him shield her anyway. She never had. But she was vulnerable now in ways she hadn’t ever been, and all things considered, he’d sure try. “What can I do to make it easier for her?”

  Ashley walked around the bed and stopped beside him. Tears welled in her eyes and her voice cracked. “Hold her while she cries.”

  * * *

  “You worthless, miserable jerk.” Katie looked at C.D., sitting on a chair beside her and bent double, his head resting on her thigh. His black hair had gone gray at the temples, but his face was the same familiar mix of strong angles and slopes that blended together to form one gorgeous man. “Wake up so I can kick your lousy backside.”

  “Katie.” C.D. startled awake. “You woke up? Ashley said you’d sleep through the night.”

  “Get off me, C.D.” She whacked his shoulder. “I’m going to slug you and I don’t want your blood messing up my new dress.”

  “Left or right jaw?” He straightened up, pivoted his face. “Either or both is fine. I just need to know which way to turn my head.”

  “Don’t you dare be smug with me. Don’t you dare.” Her voice elevated. “You left me!”

  “I was injured. I didn’t even see you, and I couldn’t walk to look for you.” He pointed to his cane, leaning against her bedside table. “I blew out my knee.”

  “You should have crawled.” She tossed back the covers and then whacked him in the shoulder again. “If I hadn’t been in a coma, I would have crawled across that desert to find you.” She reared back to hit him a third time.

  He caught her arm midair. “I’m sorry, Katie.” His voice broke. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

  She stared at him, feeling his fingertips on her wrist. Gentle even now. “I hate you for leaving me.”

  “I know.” He let her see that he had suffered, too. “But I’ll tell you a secret, Angel,” he reverted to his pet name for her, too. “No matter how much you hate me, I hate myself more. I have every minute for six years, two months, one week and one day.”

  She stilled. Sam hadn’t known exactly how long she’d been gone. C.D. knew precisely. Staring deeply into his eyes, she knew he was telling her the truth, that he had suffered and felt guilty, but she was too angry to care. Too full of her own pain to have to room inside her for any compassion for his. “Why didn’t you come back for me?”

  “Home Base said you were dead.” He leaned forward. “Your satellite tracker showed no signs of life.”

  “They cut it out of my neck and planted it in a dead chicken.”

  He blew out a long, shaky breath. “Intel also confirmed and verified you died in the crash with human resources on the ground.” He let go of her arm and cupped her chin in his hand. “Katie, if I’d had any idea, if I’d considered you being alive even a remote possibility, forget the desert. Honey, I’d have crawled through hell for you.” He blinked fast, but tears rolled down his cheeks anyway. “I’d have done anything. But everything and everyone agreed that you were gone.”

  “I wasn’t gone. I wasn’t… gone.” Her chest heaving, she felt torn between anger and a despondency that ran so deep she didn’t know where it started or stopped only that it smothered everything else inside her. “I survived. And I kept on surviving, day by day, minute by minute, because I wanted to get home. All I could think about was getting home.” She talked fast and let the words tumble from mind to mouth unchecked, hoping that in releasing them the tight grip on her chest would loosen and the gripping pain would ease. “I thought, if I can just live today, just make it until dusk, or dawn, or through the next hour—the next minute—then I’ll get home. One day, I’ll get home.” The reality of Sam’s second marriage hit her and stole her breath.

  “Katie?” C.D. stood up. “What is it?”

  “I can’t breathe. I—I can’t . . . breathe, C.D.”

  “You can. Ashley warned me about this,” he said, stepping closer. “It’s an anxiety attack, Katie. Just calm down.”

  “Calm down?” She struck out at him again.

  He ducked. Her fingertips grazed his ear and air rushed over his skin. “That one would have hurt.”

  “I hoped to knock your block off.”

  “Katie, you adore me.” He smiled and stepped closer still. “Did you forget that?”

  Sobered, she stilled on her knees on the hospital bed and stared him in the eyes. They were such beautiful eyes. Smoky blue and rimmed in silver. Gentle. Teasing. Serious. But not innocent anymore. Now they carried regret and remorse. And she knew it was she who had put both there. “I didn’t forget,” she admitted. “I mourned you, C.D. I thought you’d died in the desert, and I mourned you until the moment I found out you were alive.”

  “Then you wanted to kill me.”

  “Yes.” She lifted her chin, unapologetic and not hiding it. “Absolutely.”

  “I mourned you, too.” He let his hands slide over her shoulders, pulled her into a hug and buried his face at her neck. “Oh, God, Angel, I mourned you, too.”

  She fell against him, wrapped her arms around him and held on for dear life. “C.D.” Her voice cracked. “Just because I’m talking to you that doesn’t mean I don’t hate you.”

  “I know.” He rubbed a soothing circle on her shoulder. “You need to raise the roof a little and I need to grovel a lot to get us back on our usual ground. So go ahead. You first. Let’s get started so we can get it done.”

  He was right, and that irritated her. “I don’t want to raise the roof,” she said. “I don’t want you to grovel, either.”

  C.D. looked her in the eye. “Then what do you want?”

  She thought about it for a long moment, then answered the only way she could. “I don’t know now.” She sat back on her haunches. “I did know. I wanted to come home more than anything in the world. I thought about it all the time and it kept me strong. They were right about that in survival training, C.D. You do need a reason to keep fighting to live. Even with one, you honestly do still get to a point where you just don’t care anymore, you just want it to end and be over.”

  “That is what they say.”

  But…” Her voice broke, and she paused, trying to sort through her feelings and shove them behind the shutters she could close. That proved impossible. She felt too much, and it overwhelmed and confused her.

  “But what?” He smoothed a hand over her face.

  No answer. She couldn’t—and when she could answer, she didn’t dare. She was too close to losing it.

  “Tell me, Katie.” He urged her, stroking soothing circles on her shoulder. “We’ve always told each other things we’d never share with anyone else.”

  “I know, but this is…”

  “It’s not different,” he whispered close to her ear. “Tell me.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Home’s not here anymore, C.D.” And as the words left her mouth, the dam inside her burst, and heart-wrenching sobs ripped loose from the seat of her soul. “They took that from me, too. Oh, God.” She folded forward, face to his chest, hands over her eyes. “Oh, God. Home’s not… here anymore…”

  And weeping with her, C.D. held her while she cried.

  * * *

  “Katie, I talked with your dad. He and your mom are waiting for you to call,” C.D. said from beside her hospital bed. “But before you do, you need to know that your mom…, well, your dad says she’s getting forgetful.” C.D. looked down, avoiding her eyes. “Dr. Muldoon spoke to her doctor, Katie. It’s dementia.”

  Katie felt the blow and let it ripple through her. “How bad is it?” she finally said.

  “It depends. Some days are better than others. Your dad just wanted you prepared, so it didn’t blindside you.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed. Yet another enormous change. Yet another one. “Will she know me?”

  “If it’s a good day.”

  Katie let that news settle, then dialed her parents’ number, imagining the phone on the table in the living room between their recliners ring
ing.

  “Hello?” Her mother answered.

  A knot so huge it blocked her air settled in her throat. It took three swallows to clear it. “Hi, Mom. It’s me, Katie.”

  “Katie—Frank,” she said to Katie’s father. “Katie’s on the phone.”

  Shuffling sounded in the background. “How are you, Mom?”

  “I’m fine, honey. Are you sick? Do you need Daddy to come get you from school?”

  Had she caused this, too? Her mother always knew everything when it came to her. If she saw what had happened . . . Tears filled Katie’s eyes. “No, Mom. I’m okay. You sound wonderful.”

  “Why are you calling, darling?”

  It was not a good day.

  “You’re not cutting class, are you?”

  “No. No, I’m not cutting class.” She locked gazes with C.D., and he clasped her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Can I talk with Dad for a second?”

  “Of course. He’s right here.”

  A pause, then, “Katie.”

  The same beloved voice that had chastised and comforted her. Her eyes stung. She blinked hard. “Daddy.” A little gasp escaped from her, and for a second, she was once again a little girl eager to run to her father for protection and safety and reassurance that no matter how bad things looked, her world would stop spinning and she’d be all right again.

  “Are you okay, baby?”

  “I’m . . . fine.” Pull it together! Pull it together! “A little skinny, C.D. says, but fine.”

  “Well,” he cleared the gruff from his voice, “you tell him I said to feed you, and bring you to us.”

  He needed to see her the same way she needed to see Molly and Jake. She sniffed. C.D. had told her that her parents were still outside New Orleans, in the house where she’d grown up. Her dad hadn’t been able to travel for over a decade due to his heart and crippling arthritis. Now, with her mother’s complications, it was even more impossible for them to come to her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she promised. “Right now, I’m, um, trying to get things straightened out with Sam and the children. It’s been… difficult.”

  “I know.” The tremble in his voice proved he knew exactly. “Sam hasn’t been here since you died—you know what I mean. But Blair brings the kids to see us every three months. She’s called every day since you were rescued to let us know how you’re doing.”

  Surprised, Katie wasn’t sure what to say. Yet another kindness Blair had done for Katie. One there was no reason for her to do; she had nothing to gain. Nothing. “She’s obviously a good woman.”

  “Yes, she is,” Katie’s dad said. “We’re grateful to see the kids. Your mom can’t always remember them from time to time, but the visits with them mean a lot to me. Somehow Blair knows that.”

  Katie’s dad owed Blair, too. “I’ll be sure to thank her.” Loud crashes and bangs and high-pitched grating sounds came through the phone. Katie winced. “What’s all that racket? Is the house coming down?”

  “Your mother’s rearranging the furniture again. I don’t know why. She does it a lot on bad days.”

  “I’d better let you go then.” Katie resisted the urge to hold tight to the connection. “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  Her throat went thick. “Tell Mom.”

  “I will.” He paused, his voice cracking. “Katie girl, you come home to me soon.”

  Katie girl. His pet nickname for her; one she’d thought to never hear from his lips again. Her nose stinging, the backs of her eyes burning like fire, she mumbled a noise she hoped resembled a reassurance that she would, hung up the phone, and then launched herself at C.D. Hugging him, she cried her heart out.

  When she dredged up enough of a voice to speak, she still couldn’t verbalize all the emotions churning inside her. The pain ran too deep, had too many tentacles. But the strongest of bonds released, anguish-ridden and raw. “Mom’s gone, too.”

  Katie curled her fingers and sank them into his shoulders, doing her best to hold on and not even sure why. “Oh, C.D. Doesn’t it end? When is the bad news going to ever end? Did I do that to her, too? She knew, I know she did. Did what was happening to me drive her out of her mind?”

  She asked the questions but didn’t wait for answers; he had none. Instead, she wept out her anger against the injury inflicted to the bond she’d brought with her from the womb—and she worried with near certainty that her mother’s grief over her “death” had caused her dementia. She saw too much. She knew what Katie was enduring; she’d always known everything. And futile and helpless, she could do nothing to stop it, not even convince anyone Katie was alive. The authorities had verified and confirmed her death. The file was closed, and she’d been forgotten. And her mother could do nothing.

  Nothing except watch the horrors envisioned in her mind be executed. Horrors of her child being abused.

  * * *

  The nightmare was familiar, frightening.

  Her plane clipped by a ground-to-air missile. Fire. Ejecting. The chute jerking, the wind rushing through her ears. Hitting the ground at an odd angle. Pain slamming through her body. And then darkness.

  She groaned in her sleep, aware she was sleeping, but unable to wake up. Don’t put me through this again. Please. Please…

  But the dream didn’t stop. After the crash, she came to in so much pain it hurt unbearably to draw in breaths. She couldn’t move; strapped into a hospital bed.

  You’ve been in a coma. Four days. The nurse’s voice was clinical, crisp and heavily accented.

  Katie wanted to ask what was wrong with her, but she couldn’t summon the strength to ask. The pain overwhelmed her, seemingly invading every cell in her body, and she took refuge in sleep.

  Awake again. Whether hours or days had passed, she didn’t know, but the pain remained intense, smothering her. She fought to localize it. Ankles. Both shins. Left arm. Ribs. Back. Oh, God, she couldn’t move her arms. She cranked open an eye. It was broken. Her left arm was broken. Why hadn’t they set the bone?

  Voices. Doctors arguing at the foot of her bed. One wanted to amputate both of her legs from the knees down. The other wanted to give her time to heal on her own. She’d be crippled but she would have more than stumps.

  In a cold sweat, she moaned, but no one noticed. Don’t let them cut off my legs. Please, don’t let them cut off my legs. Sleep again claimed her.

  The sound of the doctor’s voice roused her from a drug-induced sleep. “We’re taking her to surgery,” he said to someone she couldn’t see, “to amputate her legs.”

  A man in his fifties with weathered skin walked closer to the bed and looked down on her. He wore an enemy uniform, a general’s rank, but the look in his keen eyes was full of empathy. “Captain Slater?”

  She nodded.

  He passed something to her. “This is significant to you, I believe.”

  She fought to focus. The photo of Sam and the kids. Her heart wrenched and she swallowed a lump from her throat. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, turned to the doctor. “You will not amputate her legs.”

  “Yes, General Amid,” the doctor said.

  “Why have her bones not been set before now?”

  “We were waiting to see if she died.”

  Anger flashed across the general’s lean face. “She will not die. You will set the bones in her legs now. I will observe.”

  Katie bit her lip until it bled to keep from crying, and nodded her gratitude yet again.

  You are not safe. You are not safe. Wake up, Katie. Wake up!

  She awakened, but lacked the strength to move. Sharp, stabbing pain throbbed through her, making her sick on the stomach. She screamed, but all that escaped her was a puny mewl.

  “She is conscious, General.”

  General Amid with his lean face and kind eyes stepped into her line of vision. And once again, he placed the picture of her family in her hand.

  She couldn’t speak, but she mouthed her thanks.
>
  He didn’t acknowledge her, just turned and left her bedside.

  A woman in white—a nurse—spoke to the doctor. “Her arm is also fractured. Will you be setting it, Doctor?”

  “I was instructed to set the bones in her legs,” he said in a clipped tone. “I have done so.”

  She had use of her right arm. Her left throbbed as much as her legs and ribs, but the muscle spasms in her chest and back were so severe she couldn’t tell for certain where her arm was broken and it was underneath a white sheet. She couldn’t see the damage. Please, let it be simple. If it’s a simple fracture, I can deal with it myself. Please…

  Where was C.D.? Why wasn’t he here? He would set the bone for her. The nurse stopped and looked down at her. She managed to croak, “C.D.”

  “Your co-pilot?”

  Katie nodded.

  “He’s dead.” Compassion flickered through her eyes.

  The news sucked the air out of Katie’s lungs, the will to survive out of her mind. No. No. Not C.D. Please, not C.D. Oh, no… She wept from the heart, wept until she couldn’t weep anymore. Wept, and prayed for death.

  Chapter Four

  “Hey.” C.D. clasped her shoulder. “Hey, take it easy, Katie.”

  Startled awake, she looked up, her heart beating hard and fast. C.D. It was C.D. He was alive. He was alive and she was… not home.

  Home is gone.

  A crushing ache seized her heart. Sam had remarried. The kids…

  “You were crying in your sleep.” C.D. sat down beside her on the bed and clasped her hand. “Bad dreams?”

  She didn’t want to talk about them. The horrible things that happened in her dreams were too evil to speak of, too painful to think of, and best pushed far, far away. Torture. Starvation. Violation. Why did she dream them? Had those horrors happened to her? Was she remembering, or imagining them? Why didn’t she know? She should know.

  That she didn’t know, and couldn’t tell if they were real, terrified her. Maybe she’d slipped over the edge into insanity. If she had, would she know it?