by Alie Garnett
“I don’t know about that, but she saved Jackson, and that’s all that matters.” He laid down and wondered about his sister-in-law.
Could it be true that she slept around? It didn’t matter; she was a widow and had been for a long time. But it still bothered him that his brother could be that forgettable, that she would sleep with just anyone.
“I’d tap that,” Kyle said as he rolled onto his back, looking at the ceiling.
“Why don’t you concentrate on staying alive and not on women who’re out of your league, Sanchez,” he reminded the younger man. Hell, the woman was almost a decade older than he was, and Sanchez was even younger than him.
“An older woman could teach me some stuff, sir.” The young man grinned.
“She would chew you up, and you’d still be worthless in the sack.” He laughed at the younger man’s pained expression.
Chapter 3
Years ago, after basic training, Dylan had taken to running to shed the pounds she’d easily gain if she wasn’t always fighting against it. It worked, and even though she couldn’t run every day, she ran as much as possible. Those were the days she pushed herself to her limits, adding miles whenever she could. Once her lungs were burning and her mind was clean, she could stop. Until then, she ran.
Walking into the dorm-like building that she had been living in for two years, she headed up the stairs. Her watch told her that she had run close to sixteen miles this time, multiple laps around the hospital complex.
For years her mother toggled between telling her it was just baby fat and being big-boned, but neither had been the truth. Before, she had just been lazy. So lazy, she struggled hard at the shear amount of physical activity in basic training. In the few months she had been there, she had lost close to twenty pounds and had gained muscle she hadn’t known was possible. Twenty years later, she was still maintaining it.
Dylan had slept for over twelve hours, but now she was up and ready to start another day. Sadly, she was still off for a few hours after being written up for working too many hours in a week.
She had journals to read and paperwork to catch up on, so that would have to keep her busy for now. At this point in her life, she had no hobbies and found it hard to find good friends when work kept her so busy. Then there was the constant turnover of people as some went home and new ones arrived.
A moment later, she opened the door to her tiny apartment—actually, it was just a room for sleeping. There was no kitchen or living room, just a bed and desk. Food was served at the canteen, and there were couches on the first floor to enjoy. This was a place to sleep.
Grabbing a towel and her toiletries, she headed out to take a long shower. She heard her name being called as she started down the hall for the facilities.
“Major Marquez,” the voice said, a voice she had somehow remembered from the short conversation she had with him the day before. Captain Holden Marquez.
“Afternoon, Captain,” she said brightly, more brightly than she actually felt.
Turning and facing him, she was disappointed that he was just as handsome now than when she was sleep deprived. Not that she was attracted to him…he was Chase’s brother, after all.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about yesterday. I was rude, and you didn’t deserve that.” His eyes were friendly today, so different from the day before.
“Apology excepted. Thank you, Captain.” She smiled, but she didn’t feel it.
“Holden, you can call me Holden. I’m, uh, also sorry about before. Jessica, I wish I could go back and change things.” His hand extended between them. A peace offering?
“It’s Dylan. I don’t go by Jessica anymore, and don’t worry about the past; it’s over.” She hugged the towel closer to her, not taking the hand he was offering. Mostly because of the weirdness of the last time she shook hands; she didn’t need to experience that in a wakeful state.
“Chase would have wanted...” He dropped the hand as he spoke.
“Do not tell me what you think he would have wanted, Captain. Nobody cared about what he wanted then, so don’t pretend to know what he would want now. I have to take a shower—excuse me.”
“He probably doesn’t want to know how his wife turned out, either,” he hissed. Obviously, her words had hit their mark.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded, turning on him.
“It means that you’re pretty loose with your morals.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Chase wouldn’t like to know his wife sleeps around,” he sneered.
“Do not talk like you have any idea who I am or who he was. Your family didn’t think I was good enough to love him, but now demands that I mourn him for the rest of my life?” She knew her knuckles were white with strain from clenching her fists.
“Maybe seeing that he meant something to you would be enough.”
“Sorry I stopped wearing black, so you couldn’t see me in them fifteen years later. But I had to learn to live again—guess I succeeded.” Closing her eyes, she knew she wasn’t getting to the shower. She was going to break down, and she wasn’t doing that in a public bathroom.
“Very successful,” he spit at her.
“You’re as much of an ass as the rest of them.” She turned back to her room, checking him in the shoulder on her way.
“Aren’t you going to shower?” he asked.
“Not anymore. I have to mourn my husband some more.”
“I thought you said you were done with that?”
Still walking down the hall, she said evenly, “Marquez was my life. He died at 2:08 a.m. my time. I woke from a dead sleep and knew he was gone. Don’t tell me I didn’t love him enough. Ever.”
Without looking at him, she walked into her room and slammed the door behind her. Dropping everything in her hands, she sank to the floor as her body started to shake.
Chase Marquez had been her world for the four years they had together. He was her biggest cheerleader when she needed one the most. Without him, she wouldn’t be where she was today. He had encouraged her to become a doctor—when she had doubted her ability, he never had.
Back when she had enlisted, she had said that she would do anything in the Army but wanted to be a nurse one day. Her recruiter had pushed and had said that based on her grades in school, she should think about being a doctor. The Army would pay for schooling, she just had to have the brains.
Two months before her high school graduation, she got on a bus for Alabama and sat next to another kid from town who had gone to the other high school. They got to know each other during the long drive, and Marquez had told her she would be a great doctor, something those who swore they loved her didn’t think she was capable of.
She had fallen hard for him, and he had felt the same. Not once did they not feel that they were going to be together forever. Even with them both in the Army, they fought for time together.
After boot camp, they had gone their separate ways: her to college in Florida and him to Iraq for his first tour. Through calls and letters, they kept their love alive. Knowing he would be deployed again soon, he went to her when he was stateside, not his parents.
Though he had told his parents about Jessica, they didn’t want to know her. That wasn’t the only reason she didn’t visit them. His parents never realized the two had the same hometown, and she refused to go back.
Chase was gearing up for his second deployment when he had insisted they get married. At first she had been resistant; she was busy with school and didn’t want to make his parents hate her any more than they already did. But she hadn’t been able to dissuade him, and they had married in front of a judge with two county employees as witnesses.
A month later he was gone, shot by a sniper. She had never told anyone before that she knew he was dead when it happened, choosing to keep that to herself. But Holden had made it sound like she wasn’t still mourning Marquez, as if it would only take fifteen years to get over the love of her life.
>
As if when she closed her eyes, she didn’t hear him say, “Love you, Dylan.” He was the first to call her that, and she had taken it as her name after his death. No longer was she Jessica D., now she was J. Dylan.
After he was gone, all she had to focus on was getting her PhD. Then her world became about saving lives and being the best at what she did.
Holden was right, though. She slept around. She was a woman who enjoyed sex. It wasn’t as if Marquez was coming back; they were separate forever. After fifteen years, she had not been in another relationship because she couldn’t love another like she had loved him. Didn’t even want to.
Getting off the floor, she crawled into her bed and closed her eyes, ignoring the fact that she smelled of sweat and had sand all over her. Curling into a tight ball, she let her mind go back to a time when she was loved and thought nothing could take that away, with her husband's arms tight around her.
Chapter 4
Five weeks later
Deep, deep darkness was replaced by light, bright light that hurt his eyes. From somewhere in the distance, a new voice stated, “Welcome back, Captain.”
“W-what?” was all he could choke out though his dry mouth.
“You were ambushed and got shot. But the bullet didn’t go to deep, and the doc got it out. Sorry to say you’ll probably be staying here for a while. Recovery will be quick, though, and then it’s back to work for you.” The blonde nurse was cheery as she talked about the gore of war and piled little tools onto a tray.
“My men?” he asked, because he couldn’t remember. His vision finally came back into focus. He was in a recovery room. What the hell happened?
“All are good. You were the only one injured today.” She actually patted him on the head.
“Thank you,” he said in confusion.
“Don’t thank me, I didn’t do much. Dr. Marquez did all the hard work,” the woman replied, smiling at him.
It had been over a month since he had last seen her, or at least talked to her. He had seen her a few times, running in her dirty sneakers and gray shorts. It seemed once he noticed her that first time, he had noticed her every time since.
Seeing her in shorts and a T-shirt had been completely different from seeing her all covered in gauze and scrubs. The formerly white, now desert-gray running shoes below her long, lean legs. She’d somehow even made the Army-issued shorts and T-shirt sexy as she did laps around the hospital.
What had made him mad about the entire conversation was that he was attracted to her, more than he really wanted to admit. She was his brother’s widow, and he was attracted to her.
“Can I thank her?” he asked.
“No, she’s already gone. IED got five today, so she’ll be in surgery for hours. I will be there soon.”
“Did she know it was me?” He wanted to know. Maybe she wouldn’t have worked on him if she had.
“I don’t know, she doesn’t always look. Another body is another body; they blend after a time. Her goal is just to save them all.” She peeled her bloody gloves off.
“Does she?” He was beginning to think she was a miracle worker.
“No, nobody saves them all. We do our best though. Do you know her?” She pulled off her glasses and cleaned the blood off them with her shirt, only to get more on them than was on there before.
“Not well, really. She worked on a guy under me last month,” he explained, not knowing how much this woman knew about her or how much he should reveal.
“Shoot, I thought you were one of her conquests. So far, we haven’t had one of those come through here. Or, if we have, she’s never said. We don’t get a lot of talkers.” The woman chuckled at her observation.
“Conquests?” He pretended to not know what she was talking about.
“Dr. Marquez likes a good one-night stand. It’s as regulated as her surgery schedule. I’m sure her lovers are told what to do every step of the way, same as I am.”
“Kind of cold, huh?”
“I doubt it. She just knows what she wants and needs, then makes it happen and leaves.”
“Nobody’s good enough?” he asked with a grin, seeing that about her.
“Nobody can live up to a ghost, but it’s fun to see them try.”
“Ghost?”
“However many years later, and she still wears his ring? Nobody can compete with that.”
“I didn’t notice a ring.” He scraped his memory for signs of a ring. He would have looked; he was sure of it.
“Then you haven’t slept with her.” The woman laughed at him as she patted his arm. “It’s on a necklace; she never takes it off.”
Closing his eyes, he wished the pain that had just raced through him was because he had been shot and not because he had been an ass. When he had accused her of getting over his brother, she was probably still wearing his ring.
Why didn’t she just say that? Why did she let him believe she was over Chase, when she was still grieving? Or was the ring a cover and an excuse for her actions?
Chapter 5
“Sorry about Nunez,” Elissa stated as she met back up with Dylan in her office. Both had showered and changed into clean scrubs. Elissa had taken a little time and dried her hair, whereas Dylan didn’t want to waste the time and had just put it up in a ponytail, still wet.
Signing her name to another form she looked up at her in question, names were not something she paid much attention to. She knew soldiers by their wounds, not names.
“Double leg amputee,” Elissa clarified without missing a beat, because it had been over a year.
“Oh, him. He had lost so much blood on the way in, and I couldn’t get him back together fast enough.” She knew that Elissa knew this already; she had been by her side for the surgery. But Dylan still needed to hear that there was no saving him. When she lost a patient, that meant someone else lost them as well. Someone more important than she was.
“So, I talked to the patient that got shot in the leg. He asked about you.” Elissa leaned against her desk as she spoke.
“Hope you told him I was married and pregnant. Men hate that,” Dylan said, as she did every time. She picked the men she slept with, not the other way around.
“I forgot to mention your delicate condition. How far along should I say?” Elissa teased her.
“At least six months…and showing.”
“Next time. But this guy was cute.” Elissa grinned at her.
“I don’t remember him,” she lied. The entire time she was working, she knew it was Holden Marquez because her fingers wouldn’t stop tingling. By the time she had sewn him shut, she had to stop herself from caressing his otherwise perfect thigh.
“Captain Marquez, same as you… You worked on someone under him last month,” Elissa said. Judging by the look on her face, Elissa couldn’t remember which soldier it was though.
“Left leg amputee. Jackson,” Dylan provided.
“You do remember him! You thought he was cute too.” Nothing got past Elissa.
“He’s young and not my type.”
“Young, maybe. Let’s see.” Elissa flipped through the folders on Dylan’s desk. Finding the right one, she opened it, saying, “Thirty-one, just right if you ask me. Why do so many guys get younger women? We need to go for younger men!”
“Says the woman who’s happily married to an older man.”
“Just lucked out that Todd was a senior, just read my ninth grade diary.” Elissa giggled at the memory of her younger self.
“You and your high school romance. How is he doing with Ryan this time?” Elissa had been on tour three times now and loved it. Well, all of it except not having her family close by. She missed her husband Todd, and their son, Ryan.
“Better this time, I think, because he doesn’t have to change diapers. My mom and sister have really stepped it up. Maybe they knew he couldn’t do it after his mom passed last year, but it’s like wow this time.” Elissa explained it was the first time they had been here together, but had bond
ed fast. Though they were complete opposites, it was fun having a friend close by.
They wouldn’t have been friends if they were stateside. She would have her husband and son, and Dylan had an empty apartment because she wasn’t stateside long enough to have anything permanent. But here, they were more equal. Neither would be here forever, their tours acting as a sort of limbo time for both of them.
“Good it hear. Everyone has to chip in to make it easier for him.” Dylan gave her advice, which meant nothing. In reality, she had been alone when Marquez has left. Not many people knew he had passed away, and she didn’t talk about it. There was no family to help her through the hard times on either side.
“Phone sex helps, especially with FaceTime. Hot!” Elissa’s grin made it seem like it had recently happened.
“TMI, TMI!” she said to her friend, grabbing the file from her hand.
She opened it and instantly saw his picture. He looked less like an ass in photos. His brown eyes weren’t as mad either.
Thankfully, she hadn’t seen him since the day outside her room. Whether he had been avoiding her or they just didn’t run in the same circles, she didn’t know. She was just happy it hadn’t happened.
“Hot, right?” Elissa said, looking at the picture from over her shoulder.
She continued to read the file, ignoring both the picture and her friend. He was single, and his address was either his mother’s house or just in the same town. Emergency contacts were his mother and a brother named Roark. His father wasn’t listed… Did that mean he was dead or just not listed?
Marquez and his father Glenn had butted heads more often than not when Dylan had known him. The older man couldn’t hide his disappointment over his son joining the Army and not the Navy. She wondered if Holden had the same issue with the man. She hoped not.
“Why don’t you do rounds and have another look? He doesn’t disappoint.” Elissa pointed at the file.