I eyed the outstretched hand, a combination of fear and hope in my gut. I realized I had a choice. I could stay hidden, stay stuck inside my safe little bubble, hope that I could find a publisher that wouldn’t push me. Or… or I could step up. Take a chance. Do the same thing I told all my fans, be brave.
I slid my hand shakily into his, that same electric shock zinging through me.
“Mason Cameron, nice to meet you, too.”
The smile that spread across his face warmed me to my core, thawing something deep inside me that I didn’t realize was frozen. Lee pulled me to my feet and we made our way back to the cabin.
“So, got a thing about hotels?” he asked as we walked slowly back toward the car.
“You could say that,” I muttered. “Bad memories.”
He just nodded, thankfully choosing not to probe further.
My heart began to speed up the closer we got to the hotel. By some miracle, my laptop and other luggage still lay piled in front of the cabin. In Seattle or Milwaukee it would have been long gone by now.
By the time we got to the car my hands were shaking and I was beginning to hyperventilate. I could feel Lee’s eyes on me as I stopped.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling my throat constrict the closer to the open cabin door we got. “I don’t think I can--”
“S’okay,” Lee interrupted me as he came to some kind of decision. “You’re not staying here.”
Before I knew it, he had grabbed the luggage and loaded it, for the third time, into the back of the Jeep. He opened the passenger door and gently guided me to the seat.
“But where…" I started to protest as he handed me my laptop.
“My place,” Lee said.
5
Lee
It was a good thirty-minute drive to my home and most of the way was spent in silence. Mason was so quiet that at first I was worried that something else might be wrong, but a glance as we got off the interstate showed him sound asleep, his head resting against the window of the Jeep.
I drove the final distance berating myself silently. My place? Why the hell was I taking him back to my place? I should be dumping him off with the twins, or meeting up with Jon and Anna. They were supposed to be responsible for chaperoning our guest for the next few weeks anyway, couldn’t he stay with them? No matter how many reasons I kept coming up with that this was a bad idea, something kept me heading to my house.
I lived on a wooded lot just outside the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was a beautiful three-bedroom home that Mack and I had built before our last deployment, but had never had the opportunity to live in together. On the outside it looked like a log cabin with locally-sourced stone decorating the front. Inside it was about as modern as you could get.
It was long after dark when I pulled into my driveway, and it was a good thing I knew the area so well, or even I might have missed the turn. National parks were not fans of adding streetlights.
As we pulled up next to the house, I turned the motor off and looked over at Cameron. Mason, I reminded myself. Poor guy looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes and strain showed even now as his head lay slumped against the Jeep’s window.
Something about the hair falling across his face made him seem so damn young. Vulnerable. Without thinking, I reached over and brushed the hair back from across his eyes. My fingers stroked a lock gently. It was like hot silk, warm and soft. I had to force myself to release it and pull my hand back.
I couldn’t figure out what it was about the guy that got beneath my skin. He seemed so damn familiar, but I couldn’t place from where. He seemed like a completely different person from who I had picked up at the airport.
First, he’d been a huge prick, and not the good kind. Then, at the motel doorway, the look of utter terror on his face had gripped me and drawn out this absolute need to protect him. I didn’t understand it, or him, but I found myself wanting to. Who was this guy?
I was trying to decide if I should try waking him when something in the underbrush moved and the security light over the front porch came on, sending a flash of light over our faces.
I glanced at Mason and froze. The shadows the light cast, the way the blue light contrasted with the shadow, made him look ten years younger. He looked so much like another face I'd seen, so many years ago, tied to a bed, face purpled with bruises and blood. Younger, but the same.
“No…” I muttered, my breath catching in my chest. “No. Fucking. Way.” I whispered to myself as I studied his face. The more I looked, the more I realized it was entirely possible.
Mason wasn’t exactly a common name, after all. The light threw part of his face into shadow, almost like the bruising I’d seen covering it last. He was older, obviously, than the last time I’d seen him, and the injuries he’d endured hadn’t caused permanent damage. Well, not visible scars, anyway, as I thought of the reaction he’d had at the motel room.
If it was him, the reaction he’d had suddenly made sense. He’d had a long, stressful day. Adrenaline had been running high already, then walking into that motel room must have been some kind of trigger for him. As I thought about it, I realized the layout of the room had been very similar to the one where I’d met him in Milwaukee.
“Shit,” I whispered, banging my head softly on the steering wheel. Had he recognized me? He hadn’t said anything and he hadn’t seemed to, but maybe some part of him had? Maybe that was one of the things that had triggered his panic attack?
I struggled with the feelings of shame that coursed through me as I remembered the horrible events of eight years earlier.
When I’d woken in a hospital in Germany after the ambush, it was to find my life as I’d known it was over. Mack was dead, and I was crippled.
They’d done a total hip replacement and I carried more metal in my body now than most trash cans, but the steely-haired doctor who’d done the surgery had assured me I’d be able to walk again if I worked on my physical therapy, as if I’d cared about walking at that point.
The next few weeks had been a blur. I was transferred stateside and took Mack’s body home with me. He’d always joked that he didn’t want to be one of those people who reappeared during a zombie apocalypse, and fire was the only thing guaranteed to stop a zombie. It had seemed hilarious at the time, but when the funeral director handed me his ashes, I didn’t find it very amusing.
More surgeries and physical therapy followed, but I was eventually given a medical discharge when it became clear that my mobility would always be hindered. Either the bullet, or the explosion, had done too much damage to my leg and it would never be the same. Kind of like the rest of me.
The physical pain I endured was nothing compared to the aching echo where my heart had been. I was home, surrounded by my friends and family – all of them except the one I'd planned to spend the rest of my life with.
My friends didn’t seem to know what to say to me. Conversations stopped when I entered the room. The cane I’d taken to using clicked on the hardwood floors in my childhood home and seemed to tap out a warning. “Here comes the cripple! Here comes the broken one!” Fake smiles appeared on faces as they all tried to think of something, anything, to talk about when I entered a room, other than my loss.
After a suicide attempt thwarted by my brothers, the twins had gotten me into grief counseling. It wasn’t quick, wasn’t easy, but it helped. I joined a support group and got counseling for PTSD.
Loud noises still tended to startle me – especially if they were loud enough I could feel the vibrations. A large truck going down the road was enough to make my heart race and my skin break out in a cold sweat, but I’d been doing a lot better. One of the reasons I loved living near a park was not so many trucks to deal with.
Once I was physically able, I’d insisted on moving into the house Mack and I had built. Since I’d been injured in the line of duty, I’d received a sizable pension, as well as, apparently, Mack’s inheritance. He had left everything to me.
Apparently, Mack came from money, money with a capital “M”. He’d never mentioned it, never acted like he had anything more than the average pilot’s pay, but all told, the money he left me was more than enough to pay any medical bills the military didn’t cover and keep me in comfort for the rest of my life.
Not that I cared. I’d have given it all up in an instant to have Mack. The majority of Mack’s family, and his life before the military, remained a mystery to me. I knew he’d had a sister, but that was it. The lawyers had refused to share any information with me, just said that there had been a rift in the family, and that Mack hadn’t wanted anything to do with them.
I convinced myself that once I moved into the house, I would feel better, more in control of my life, but it just seemed too… big, too empty. I needed something that would get me out of the house and my own head. I had planned on continuing my career as a medic, but I couldn’t risk my physical or mental limitations causing a problem in an emergency situation.
So, I did what any self-respecting millennial would do. I became an Uber driver.
Driving for Uber brought in some cash, and it got me out in the world interacting with people. I liked helping people, and even if I wasn’t saving lives, I was making people’s lives better. I developed some regulars and began to actually look forward to working my shifts.
Slowly, bit by bit, my crazy, rambling, chaotic family started to go back to normal around me, or as close to normal as you could get with five gay siblings and a pair of moms who were obsessed with the movie “Aliens.”
As my heart and head began to heal, so did my body. I was still using a cane, especially if I had a long distance to walk, but it wasn’t always necessary. As the rest of me began healing, I had to find a way to deal with my most difficult body part—my traitorous dick.
For a long time, I simply ignored it, refusing to allow myself to even contemplate sex with anyone after Mack. But as time wore on, I realized I was being stupid. Mack wouldn’t have wanted me to become some kind of eunuch just because he wasn’t here to be with me. Hell, if I believed in ghosts, I’d have been worried about him showing up to kick my ass for neglecting his most beloved appendage.
I tried the bar scene, but couldn’t seem to find anyone with whom I could really connect. All the men seemed so damn young, just kids playing at being adults. Age didn’t even seem to be the factor. They could have been the same age as me, or even older, but their petty worries and concerns did nothing but piss me off. They made me want to rage about their “first world problems”.
After very nearly doing just that one night at some poor, unsuspecting twink who had been ranting about his inability to find his favorite brand of jeans, I decided it would be best for me to stay away from clubs for a while.
That was when I discovered the wonders of the internet. I was more than familiar with porn sites on the web. Mack and I had joked often and loudly about the corny plot lines on some of the videos as we’d watched them together.
A casual chat with someone half a world away had led me to chat rooms I’d never thought I’d find myself interested in. Each site took me deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, discovering a whole world where it was commonplace for people to pay for sex.
I thought it made sense at first. No fuss, no emotional attachments, just make an appointment and manage a biological need, or at least I tried to convince myself it was that easy.
I often spotted posts by “escorts”—high end prostitutes who always looked glamorous and sexy as hell. They’d advertise a date and time they’d be available, for a price.
I tried it out. The first couple of times I was nervous as hell. I’d never even gotten a ticket for jaywalking, and now I was paying strangers for sex.
I’d started out carrying my gun with me when I went to my appointments, but I became complacent after several encounters where I didn’t have any problems. I did learn fast, though. Cash was preferred. Oddly enough, most prostitutes weren’t interested in accepting debit cards. Go figure.
But the day I’d met Mason had changed my attitude forever. I remembered my horror at seeing a teenage boy tied to a bed, battered and bloody, with two men outside obviously holding him against his will.
I’d talked my way out of the situation and called the cops when I got back to my car, but his eyes, his whispered “Please…” tugged at me, and I knew I couldn’t just abandon him. His injuries were serious, and I wasn’t sure he would live long enough for the ambulance to arrive.
I might have gotten out of the habit of carrying my sidearm, but I still kept it with me. When I’d made it back to the car I grabbed it from the trunk along with the go bag filled with medical supplies. More old habits dying hard.
I knew I could have just left, the police were on their way, after all, but who knew how long it would take them to respond, or whether they would even take my call seriously? The kid had looked like shit. As a medic, I’d seen corpses that looked better than he did. Plus, the way he’d looked at me and whispered, “Please…” I couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave him to die alone.
By the time I made it back to the hotel room he was being held at, I was cursing my leg and the delay it caused. There wasn’t anyone at the door when I’d approached and I’d frozen for a moment, afraid that they might have moved him somewhere else. Then I heard a guttural cry from the room, a sound of such despair and pain.
I’d crashed the door open, only to find one of the men who had been present earlier raping the boy. Killing the piece of shit who had been brutalizing him hadn’t bothered me in the slightest. My only regret had been that the other one, the one Mason called Dreyven, had gotten away.
I’d worked on Mason’s injuries, stabilizing him as much as I could with the supplies on hand, but when I heard the sirens getting close, I knew I had to get out of there. I had no explanation for how I might have known he was there, or why a bullet from my gun had found its way into the other man’s head. I did not need to spend my life in jail for ridding the world of this sadistic piece of shit.
I kept out of sight until I saw the paramedics transport him and followed up on the kid in the hospital. As a medic, it was amazing what you could find out about patients if you tried. Mason had been placed in a medically induced coma to give his body time to heal from the injuries that had been inflicted on it.
For a while, I’d hung around outside the door to his room. I was worried that his other tormentor might come back and try to finish the job. A heart to heart with a charge nurse and a vague story about the kid being estranged from “our” family was all it took, and from then on, all I got were looks of sympathy and the occasional cup of coffee from the nursing staff.
Doctors were hardly ever on duty this late at night, so I didn’t get much grief from anyone once word got around. The hardest part had been when the staff had brought me paperwork to fill out and requested permission to treat his many wounds. I hadn’t known anything about him, so I guessed about most and left the rest blank.
I’d slip into Mason’s room late at night, just to watch over him. He was still in a coma and looked so small in that hospital bed, so broken. Tubes ran in and out of his body, a cast secured pins in one skinny arm. He’d obviously not been eating well even before the attack. He had that gangly look teenage boys often got in their late teens when their arms and legs grew faster than the rest of them. His face had a sort of unfinished quality to it, caught somewhere between the boy he had been, and the man he would become.
I’d stay with him most nights and found myself talking to him about everything - my family, my life, even about Mack. Something about those one-sided conversations helped ease the pain I’d been carrying aroun
d inside me since Mack had died. It became a nightly ritual. I’d limp my way through the darkened hospital halls with my coffee and newspaper in one hand, my cane in the other. I’d read Mason stories I found interesting, or tell him about whatever antics my family was up to. I told him about Afghanistan and the work we’d been doing there, how we’d been changing lives with our work before it was interrupted.
I didn’t know what it was about Mason, but I couldn’t just leave him in that hospital by himself. Just like I couldn’t have left him in that motel room. Every time I thought about leaving, going back to Ohio, going back to my own life, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So I stayed in Milwaukee for almost two weeks.
I’d gotten into such a routine with visiting him that I screwed up. I let my guard down. I’d walked into Mason’s room one night, coffee in one hand, cane in the other and a newspaper under one arm, only to find a middle-aged African American woman sitting next to his bed, holding his hand in her own.
“Hello there,” she said, smiling gently and looking up at me sleepily as I came through the doorway. I’d woken her up. As quiet as her voice was, it froze me in my tracks.
“Um, hi…?” I stammered.
She smiled and stood slowly, reaching her hand out to me. I set my things down on the bedside table and shook her hand almost automatically.
“I’m Tira. Tira Graham,” she said, her voice soft and warm.
“Lee,” I stammered, totally unprepared, too shocked to even make up a name. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you…” I said, starting to back up, ready to beat a hasty retreat.
“Please don’t go,” she said, her warm eyes searching my face. “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked, gesturing toward Mason. Her eyes captured my attention. They were a startling blue in her honey brown face. Lighter than Mason’s, but striking, nonetheless.
“Not… exactly,” I hedged, totally unprepared for the woman’s questions. I berated myself for becoming complacent and not noticing her presence before I entered. I should have known someone would come sniffing around asking questions sooner or later.
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