Jamie’s face entered his vision. Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m okay,” he shouted, then pointed at his ears. “Can’t hear though. And I’m feelin’ a little…dizzy.” Okay, a lot, but he didn’t want to worry her.
Sergeant Milligan knelt beside Jamie, talking into his radio. Someone else moved to the opposite side of him…Kinsey, the medic. His back was to Brian as he leaned over his body.
Brian tried to get up on his elbows to tell him the problem wasn’t with his legs; it was with his head, he couldn’t hear, but then he glanced downward, past Kinsey.
His boots were gone. Then he realized…so were the feet that had been sweating inside them.
He drew a deep breath and glanced up at Jamie.
She was mouthing words he couldn’t hear, cupping his cheeks. When she bent and kissed his cheek, he knew he was dead. “I’m not fucking dying,” he tried to shout, but he knew it came out a whisper, because he was weakening, barely able to keep his eyes open.
The wind pulsed against his face, and he opened his eyes, saw the helicopter above, a fiery trail of rounds blasting toward the hill before it wobbled in the air then settled on the sand beside the trail.
He raised a hand to point toward Benny. “Him first,” he said, glancing sideways, but Benny was no longer kneeling. He lay with his eyes open, staring up at the cloudless blue sky.
Kinsey moved away, and Brian glanced down. Tourniquets were on his legs, below his knees. He glanced at Jamie. “They find my boots?”
Her face crumpled, and Tessa wiggled her way in between Jamie and Sergeant Milligan. Her tongue lapped at his cheek. Her cold, wet nose nuzzled his ear.
Any other time, he would have pushed her away, but Brian no longer had the strength. “Hey…they find my boots?”
Brian awoke, surprised to see darkness when the sky had just been so blue, and uncomfortably aware that the air inside his bedroom was frosty-cold not fry-an-egg-on-a-rock hot.
His words echoed in his brain once more. Those damn, stupid boots…
Drawing in a deep breath, he pushed aside the dream, trying to remember that he’d been the lucky one. Benny had been dead the second he’d knelt in the dirt.
Brian ground his teeth together. He’d never have that chance to ask Jamie to dance, and now, Jamie was married to Sky. Not that he’d stewed for long about his lost opportunity after “the incident.” He’d had too many other challenges to overcome.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep again—he never did after having the nightmare—he reached to the right and flicked on the switch for his bedside lamp. Then he pushed himself up to sit and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. Almost there.
Reaching out, he planted his right hand in the far side of his wheelchair seat, his left in the mattress beside his hip and pushed his body up and across to the edge of the seat. Settling backward on the cushion, he unlocked the wheels and made his way to the toilet in the bathroom, transferred from his chair to the toilet seat, took care of business, moved back into the chair, wheeled to the sink to wash his hands, then made his way back into his bedroom to dress.
Half an hour later, he wheeled down the hallway that led from his apartment in the back of the office building into the kitchen, pausing along the way at the thermostat on the wall to reset the temperature to a comfortable sixty-eight degrees. Thankfully, his apartment and the rest of the office were wheel-chair friendly, so the thermostat was well within his reach.
Once in the kitchen, he started the coffee machine, grabbed a bagel from the fridge, and popped it into the toaster. With a buttered bagel and a cup of coffee balanced on a tray in his lap, he moved out into the bullpen toward his desk.
He might as well get started on the day, pull a spreadsheet of skips, check his email. A million things he needed to do other than think about the fact Raydeen would be expecting him on the track at ten AM, along with all the available hunters. She’d informed him he was necessary, that they needed a timekeeper, but he knew she had ulterior motives for getting him out on the track.
She’d cajoled him more than a few times to wheel around the track to get some upper body exercise in, but him getting some cardio in wasn’t what she really wanted, either. She wanted him to watch all his buddies running around the track, to remind him that he was wheelchair bound—by his own choice—but that there were other choices he could make.
She was a physical therapist, and he thought maybe she believed it was her mission in life to “fix” him—Brian Cobb. He was her challenge.
Brian didn’t want to run a stopwatch for his friends. Didn’t want to sit and watch them running around the track, complaining about aching joints and wheezing because they weren’t in top shape. Not after a long, cold winter of sitting on their asses.
Which wasn’t exactly fair, because they were all a pretty fit bunch, but he liked to gripe, at least in his mind, because while they weren’t purposely cruel, their very fitness ate at his pride. Reminded him of everything he’d lost.
He rolled backwards, away from his desk, and headed to the large bulletin board at one side of the room—at the “hall of shame” pictures the group hung to celebrate their team members’ most inglorious moments.
There was the pink, sequined and glittered frame surrounding the picture of Dagger and Lacey, when they’d been prom king and queen in high school; the picture of Animal confronting the bear, his arms outstretched and looking like a lunatic; another of the mud-splattered hunters who had surrounded Jamie and Sky as they’d stood in front of Reaper (who’d gotten his license to marry them over the internet) to say their vows. He hadn’t been there to witness Animal’s crazy act or Jamie’s wedding. He’d been right here, as always, stuck hearing about everyone’s adventures while his dreams rotted in this chair.
Brian leaned back his head and breathed deeply. He’d promised himself when he’d taken the job at MBH that he was over feeling sorry for himself. Most of the time, he kept that promise. He kept busy, made sure the hunters had what they needed in the way of equipment, intel, and coordination. He made himself indispensable—because if they needed him, he had to be there.
When he’d been at his lowest, before Jamie had come back home and rescued him from himself, he’d considered ending himself. He’d even bought the gun—a Remington handgun that sat in a locked box under his bed. He just hadn’t ever bought the bullets.
These days, he rarely thought about offing himself. He was too busy, and some part of him had begun to believe, to hope, that something better was coming. Because he’d lived through the worst a man could face and come out…if not whole, then not completely destroyed.
He had friends who respected him and cared about him, a job he truly enjoyed with new gadgets and tech to keep him from ever being bored. The van, the drones, the advanced surveillance equipment the agency could now afford due to the success of their reality TV show was enabling him to become a bigger part of the operations. He lived for those times, because with the cameras the team wore, he felt as though he was in the thick of the action. He forgot he was chained to a chair. He was with the team, entering that building or clearing. He heard the shouts, the cries, the pops of gunfire. For those fleeting moments, he was fully alive, fully engaged.
So, if he had to spend the occasional morning watching his buddies run around a track while a certain physical therapist gave him pointed glares, so be it. She wasn’t going to wear him down. He’d dare her to try.
Also by Delilah Devlin
Montana Bounty Hunters
Reaper (#1)
Dagger (#2)
Reaper’s Ride (#3)
Cochise (#4)
Hook (#5)
Wolf (#6)
Animal (#7)
S*x on the Beach (related)
Big Sky Wedding
Quincy (#8)
Brian (#9)
Uncharted SEALs
Watch Over Me (#1)
Her Next Breath (#2)
Through Her Eyes (#
3)
Dream of Me (#4)
Baby, It's You (#5)
Before We Kiss (#6)
Between a SEAL and a Hard Place (#7)
Heart of a SEAL (#8)
Hard SEAL to Love (#9)
Big Sky SEAL (#10)
Head Over SEAL (#11)
SEAL Escort (#12)
Texas Cowboys
Wearing His Brand (#1)
The Cowboys and the Widow (#2)
Soldier Boy (#3)
Bound & Determined (#4)
Slow Rider (#5)
Night Watch (#6)
Cowboys on the Edge
Wet Down
Controlled Burn
Cain’s Law
Flashpoint
Triplehorn Brand
Laying Down the Law (#1)
In Too Deep (#2)
A Long, Hot Summer (#3)
Night Fall
Sm{B}itten (#1)
Truly, Madly…Deadly (#2)
Knight in Transition (#3)
Wolf in Plain Sight (#4)
Knight Edition (#5)
Night Fall on Dark Mountain (#6)
Frannie and the Private Dick (#7)
Sweet Succubus (#8)
Truly, Madly…Werely (#9)
Bad to the Bone (#10)
Long Howl Good Night (#11)
First Knight (#12)
Big Bad Wolf (#13)
Texas Billionaires Club
Tarzan & Janine (#1)
Something To Talk About (#2)
Who’s Your Daddy (#3)
Love & War (#4)
* * *
Some Standalone Stories
New Orleans Nights
Begging For It
Hot Blooded
Raw Silk
Warrior’s Conquest
Rogues
Enslaved by the Viking Short Story
Conquests
Smokin’ Hot Firemen
About Delilah Devlin
Delilah Devlin is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author with a reputation for writing deliciously edgy stories with complex characters. She has published nearly two hundred stories in multiple genres and lengths, and she is published by Atria/Strebor, Avon, Berkley, Black Lace, Cleis Press, Ellora’s Cave, Entangled, Grand Central, Harlequin Spice, HarperCollins: Mischief, Kensington, Montlake Romance, Running Press, and Samhain Publishing.
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One Hot Night: A New Orleans Nights Story Page 12