“We’re sort of dating,” he admitted. His eyes darted away. “And, um, King. With King. You know.”
Carmina reached out and tugged his arm to get him to look at her. She held up three fingers, eyes wider still.
“Yeah,” he said. He could feel himself blushing. “Keep it down, will you?”
Carmina laughed, like it was a joke, and he realized what he’d said. “Oh, man, sorry. I didn’t mean…” She just shook her head and looked at him with an exasperated smile. Then she made the give me more gesture.
“We hooked up over the summer, before you moved down here,” he told her. “It was like an experiment, you know? I was worried I’d go apeshit if I slept with someone, she was cool about it, and King stayed in the room to make sure nothing happened.” Carmina grabbed his arm again and frowned at him as she shook her head, pointing at him. “I know,” he said impatiently. “It’s all in my head. Whatever. The point is, it was hot and we liked it, and when we met up with her again here in Birmingham, we decided to see where it goes. And I guess I just wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”
Carmina sat back with a confused look and pointed at herself, shrugging.
“You know you’re supposed to be trying to talk,” Sam chided her softly. “The doctors said you have to at least try.” She frowned ferociously at him and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said, holding up his hands. “Look, I asked whether you minded or not because you don’t have feelings for me or anything, do you?” he asked awkwardly after a moment of silence. Talia and Lelei and Mrs. Ulupoka had been telling him for months that he needed to have a talk with Carmina about this, just to clear the air. They were worried about her and why she’d come down to Birmingham. She didn’t let them fuss over her much. She said it made her uncomfortable.
At his question, Carmina burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that several people turned to glare at them, as if they were farting at a funeral. “I’m being serious,” he hissed at her, which only made her laugh harder. Buster K lay back down, convinced she was fine. Every time she started to stop laughing she’d look at Sam and start all over again. She had to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Okay,” Sam said at last. “So that’s a no, right?” She nodded in answer while still chuckling. Sam hadn’t seen her laugh that hard since she’d gotten out of the hospital.
“No,” she said in a clear voice. Sam grinned at her.
“Good job,” he said, punching her in the shoulder.
“Okay, everybody,” some guy said from the podium in the front of the room. He still had a military haircut and wore a long-sleeved button-down shirt. He practically screamed Marine. “Let’s get started. I see some familiar faces and some new ones. So I guess we should start with introductions. Feel free to share as much or as little as you like. I’m Kevin. I was a Marine for twelve years, and did two tours in Iraq.”
Great, thought Sam, I can pass. He looked at Carmina and she looked a little worried. He sighed inwardly. He’d have to introduce himself if he wanted her to try to introduce herself.
“Gary,” the first guy said. “Army. Afghanistan.” That was all he said. Boy, Sam got that. Go, Gary. He seemed even more reluctant to be there than Sam. Probably court-ordered or some shit. Gary sort of set the bar for everyone else. A few people didn’t give more than their name, and Sam wasn’t so sure they gave their real names. Sooner than he would have liked it was his turn.
“Sam,” he said. “Army. Afghanistan.” If it was good enough for Gary, it was good enough for him.
“Sam fucking Taylor,” a guy named Bob said from the other side of the room. “That was a kick-ass game against the Seahawks, dude.”
“Thanks,” Sam said, squirming uncomfortably in his hard wooden chair. So much for anonymity.
“We try not to reveal too much about participants,” Kevin said. “Sorry for the interruption,” he said to Sam, as if he were the one who started it. “We don’t want to intimidate newcomers.” Sam gave him the look that comment deserved, the one that said fuck you without words. Carmina had taught him that one. Kevin looked unimpressed. He was a Marine, after all.
“And you?” Kevin said to Carmina with a condescending smile. She was the only female here tonight. They’d run into this before, assholes that didn’t think she had a story because she was a woman. She was also the only one with a service dog, which some people also interpreted as weak. Sam disliked this Kevin guy more and more with each passing minute. Sam looked over at Carmina, waiting for her cue. He could see her biting the inside of her lip, but she didn’t look at him and gesture for him to talk for her.
“Carmina,” she said slowly. She pointed to her head. “T.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. To their credit, no one tried to rush her. “TBI.” She tapped her lips. “No soy bueno…” She was nervous. She lapsed into Spanish when she was nervous. She finally looked at Sam.
“Talking,” he said. “She has trouble vocalizing what she’s thinking, especially when she’s nervous. We were in the same unit,” Sam explained.
“Okay,” Kevin said. “No pressure here. We don’t make anyone talk if they don’t want to.” Oh, yeah, Sam thought with a sigh, that’ll help her try to talk more. Way to go, Kev.
“What’s TBI?” one of the guys asked her.
“Traumatic brain injury,” she said very slowly, each syllable pronounced carefully.
“Were you shot?” he asked, frowning.
“Okay, hey, we don’t ask questions,” Kevin interrupted. “We each get to tell our own stories at our own pace. If you want to answer questions, then you can tell us that.”
“Whatever,” the guy said, sitting back in his chair. That was two now that Kevin had effectively shut up for the night.
“Bomb,” Carmina suddenly said. She looked at Sam, but he could tell she was looking for permission, not for him to speak for her. He nodded and she pointed to him. “Both. The rest…” She shook her head. “I got…thrown. Hit head.” She shook her head. “Hit my head,” she said very slowly, then nodded, satisfied. Sam smiled his approval at her.
“Shit,” Bob, who’d recognized him earlier, said. “I didn’t know you were hit, Taylor. You never talk about it.”
“Well, not to you,” Sam said defensively. “I don’t even know you.”
“Whoa,” the guy said, holding up his hands. “Too good to talk here. Got it.”
“Let’s not attack one another,” Kevin said, glaring at Sam. “Nothing gets accomplished that way.”
“Could we not say attack?” one guy asked in a shaky voice.
“You must be new at this,” an older vet named Al said to Kevin. “We try not to use aggressive language.” Sam had to try hard not to smirk at Kevin.
“Sorry, sorry,” Kevin said apologetically. “Yes, this is only my second time leading a session. My bad.” He looked over. “Sam, would you like to talk now that Carmina brought you into the conversation?”
Carmina looked at him with I’m sorry written all over her face. Sam gave her a lopsided grin. “Only if Carmina is done,” he said. She nodded energetically. “In that case,” Sam said. “It was a routine transport run. Carmina and I were in the back of the truck with a couple of other guys, and two in the cab. IED. Blew the truck to hell. Then we were ambushed. Carmina was thrown out of the line of fire and knocked out. I was pinned under a burning door. I got shot, too. Broke an arm. The rest of the unit was in bits and pieces. We got first-class tickets home.” A few of the guys laughed. “That was three years ago.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Kevin said, pausing long enough that Sam realized he was actually asking if Sam minded being asked a question.
“No, go ahead,” he said.
“How did you get from there to playing professional football?” Some of the guys nodded, listening really hard. Like he had the answers to how they could get their own shit together. This was the part Sam hated. He didn’t have his shit together, but he couldn’t tell them that, could he? For some
insane reason seeing him out there playing a game gave them hope. He fucking hated the responsibility.
“I was drafted out of college,” he answered. “Deferred playing until after my tour. When I got out of the hospital and contacted the Cowboys—they drafted me—they told me they’d traded me to the Rebels. So I contacted the Rebels and, believe it or not, they wanted me. Or at least wanted to see what I could do at minicamp. That was last year. I just always talked about coming back and playing and the guys all wanted me to do it. So when I got back, I did. I thought I owed it to them, you know? To play.”
“Not all of us have a professional athletic career to fall back on,” Gary grumbled.
“It was never about playing ball,” Sam said, not really angry. He got where Gary was coming from. “It was about doing what I said I wanted to do. Not being afraid to try. I made it back. They didn’t. They couldn’t do all the things they’d talked about, so I’m doing it for them.” Sam slumped in his seat, suddenly embarrassed. “That’s all.” Carmina reached out and grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Me tambien,” she said, mixing up her languages. But she was talking, so Sam didn’t care.
Kevin actually did the leader thing and moved the conversation around to someone else, much to Sam’s relief. He’d done his part tonight. He’d gotten Carmina to talk, and he’d gotten a few of these guys to think. As far as he was concerned, that was some pretty good footwork.
Chapter 18
“So you guys are leaving tomorrow?” Jane asked as she meandered down the trail at Oak Mountain State Park. It was about thirty minutes south of Birmingham down I-65. She’d picked the park for their second date because they had a lot more privacy here than at a crowded restaurant in town. Her shift ended at two, and they’d picked her up at the hospital a little after two thirty. She wasn’t sure why she was still nervous about having them pick her up at home. She was beginning to think she had real trust issues. She hadn’t let the last guy she dated pick her up until they’d been seeing each other for a month.
“Yeah,” King said. He’d picked up a stick a few minutes ago and was absently tapping his leg with it. “We’ve got the Texans this weekend.”
“Are you worried about it?” she asked as Sam helped her over a thick tree root running across the trail. His hand was big and callused and she liked the feel of it. She remembered what it had felt like on her ass as he held her up against the wall in that hotel room. His hand was as rough as the sex had been.
“Nah,” King said dismissively.
“King doesn’t worry,” Sam said. “Not about football, at least.”
“Football is easy,” King said with a shrug. “Sisters, that’s hard.”
Jane laughed. “Well, I don’t have sisters, just my brother.” The park brought back memories of David so forcefully she could almost hear him laughing as he chased her through the trees. They used to camp here with their parents when they were kids. “Sam, do you have siblings?”
“Nope,” he said. “My parents weren’t married long enough to have more than me.”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said, meaning it. “My parents have been married for almost thirty-five years.”
King whistled. “That’s a good run.”
“What about your folks, King?” she asked curiously. “I’ve met your mom, but not your dad.”
“My dad was a good guy,” King said, “but he’s dead. Over ten years now. Heart attack. My mom, she lives with me now.”
“With your two sisters? The ones I met at the hospital, right?”
“Mm-hmm,” King said, swishing the stick along the branches beside the trail. “You see your mom and dad a lot?”
“Every Sunday like clockwork,” she said. “They live in Birmingham. I grew up here, you know.”
“I kind of figured that out from the accent,” Sam told her.
“What about you?” she asked Sam. “You see your folks much?”
“My dad, maybe once a year. When I was a kid he got the requisite two weekends a month. But when I got older our schedules just didn’t mesh and we kind of grew apart. But we try to meet up at least once a year. My mom, holidays. I visit during the off-season. That sort of thing. She worked full-time after they split, so she wasn’t really a big hands-on parent. We get along well, though. She brags about me.” He grinned at her. “And after I was injured, she dropped everything to come out and stay with me for three months. We really reconnected then, you know? It was nice.”
“They say children of divorce don’t really see relationships the same way everyone else does,” Jane said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “You know, they don’t value monogamy or forever and ever amen like kids from two-parent homes. Do you believe that?”
“No,” Sam said. “I think I could do forever and ever amen.” He glanced at her and then they both looked away. Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you asking if that’s why I want the three of us to be together instead of just me and you?”
“I guess maybe I am,” Jane admitted.
“You didn’t ask me,” King said. “I want that, too, and my parents weren’t divorced.”
They were still ambling along, heading for the Alabama Wildlife Center and the Treetop Trail, where you could see the rehabilitated birds that couldn’t be returned to the wild for one reason or another. She always visited the birds when she came here. The heavy conversation seemed out of place on the sun-dappled trail.
“We’ll get to your issues in a minute,” Jane teased King with a grin. “Let’s analyze Sam first.”
“Jesus, I’ve been analyzed so much lately I’m afraid to think at all, for fear someone will jump out of the bushes and say, ‘Tell me how you feel about that, Sam.’ ”
“Sorry.” Jane winced. “I didn’t know. Why so much analyzing?”
He shrugged. “My game was way off when the season started, so I went to see the team psychologist.”
“I remember you told me that at dinner.” She reached out and pulled his hand out of his pocket. After a surprised look he gripped her hand firmly, swinging it slightly as they walked.
“And I took Carmina to a group session at the VA.” He shuddered exaggeratedly. “I hate those things.”
This was the perfect opportunity to ask about his old teammate. Jane had promised herself she wasn’t going to pass up this kind of opportunity again. Talking was important. If she got too deep in her own head, she’d never take any chances.
“Carmina, huh?” she said casually, not looking at him. “Mika told me she’s very pretty and she’s your girlfriend.”
“Whoa,” Sam said, pulling her to a stop. “Time out. She is not my girlfriend. She’s a girl, and she’s probably one of my best friends, but that’s not the same thing.”
“Okay,” Jane said, relief sweeping through her. “Good to know.” She bit her lip.
“Uh-oh,” King said. “Go ahead and ask. What else is bothering you?”
“Talia,” she said, closing her eyes. She opened one and looked at King and then Sam. “Are you two involved?”
King laughed. “Only in Talia’s head,” he said. “She thinks because I brought him home, he belongs to her.”
“I do not feel the same way,” Sam said. “I mean, she’s a nice kid, but no, I’m not attracted to her.”
“Which is a good thing,” King added, “because, ugh. I couldn’t have a threesome with Sammy then. That’s just disgusting.”
Jane laughed. “That’s true.”
King took her arm in his hand, which was even bigger and rougher than Sam’s. “Come on. I’ve never been here.” They started moving again. Jane liked the feeling of having both guys next to her, of Sam’s hand in hers and King’s hand on her arm. She just let herself enjoy it for a minute or two as they walked. They came upon the first enclosure, where a great horned owl sat on a branch near the back corner. It turned its brown-and-white-feathered head and looked at them.
“The feather horns always make them look li
ke they’re judging you,” Sam said, tipping his head to the side to stare back at the owl.
“Why are they in cages?” King asked with a frown. “I don’t like birds in cages. It’s against their nature.”
“All the birds along this trail that are in cages have some kind of injury that prevents them from being released back into the wild,” she told him. “They can’t survive on their own anymore.”
Now Sam was frowning, too. “Maybe they need to be allowed to try. I mean, who decided they couldn’t? Or that they should? Nature gives and nature takes back. It’s the circle of life.”
“It breaks my heart to think of something so beautiful being released to its death,” Jane said sadly. “I suppose they’re kept here more because of how people feel about it than how the birds do.”
“Maybe they’d rather die in the wild than be caged up to salve the conscience of a few humans,” Sam snapped. He turned his back to the cage. “I don’t think anyone has the right to impose their will on another living creature.”
Jane could tell this was important to him. “Not ever?” she said. “Even if it’s in their best interest? Even if it will keep them alive, like this owl?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said softly, staring out into the trees. “I don’t know who should make those decisions.”
King walked over to Sam’s other side and stood there without saying anything, close enough that their shoulders touched. After a few seconds, Jane could see Sam’s shoulders loosen up. Just being close to King could do that for him. Was there more here than just two guys who wanted her? Was there something going on between them? Wouldn’t they have told her?
“Let’s go,” King said quietly, turning toward the end of the raised boardwalk. “What else is there to see?” Sam automatically turned with him, then reached back and snagged Jane’s hand again.
“There’s the lake,” she offered, with one last glance back at the caged owl. She’d never think of these poor birds the same way again. One man’s rescue was another man’s prison, she supposed.
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