Mirabella airily waved her hand. "Look-maybe it's just a matter of neither one of you knowing what you had before. And now you do. Like…you get a second chance."
"Do we?" Aching inside, Jessie leaned against a porch post and watched as the motorcycle came zipping back down the road and turned into the lane, making a sound like an angry hornet hooked up to an amplifier. She watched Tristan deftly and gracefully dismount, pull off the helmet and hand it over to J.J. with a grin she could see all the way from here. She threw Mirabella a look. "Not a second chance-I mean, do we know what we have? Because whatever we may have had before, it's not gonna be the same thing now. He's for sure not the same way he was, and I'm not, either. What do we do if we can't-if he doesn't-"
She stopped, because thinking about it was like looking into a terrifying abyss. After a couple of painful swallows, she gave an impatient, almost angry laugh. "Oh, hell, I'm just bein' a crybaby, never mind me. I don't s'pose we're the first married couple to have to readjust after bein' separated by a war. What do you think-a few million?"
"I don't know," said Mirabella with uncharacteristic gravity, "but I imagine quite a few of those marriages suffered as a result. But," she added in a more normal, positive tone, "you two loved each other once, enough that you didn't remarry-"
"Oh, for Pete's sake," Jessie interrupted, with an angry swat at the air, "it's not like I wouldn't have, if I'd met anybody I wanted to marry! I just didn't, that's all."
"Maybe," said Mirabella, "that's because you never found anybody who could measure up to Tristan." Jessie looked at her and didn't say anything. "So what was it about him, do you remember? What was it that made you fall in love with him, all those years ago?"
Jessie gave a gulp of guilty laughter. "Oh Lord-the sex. No-I swear, it was. Sex, hormones, chemistry…what can I say?"
Mirabella made an impatient face. "Yeah, sure, right. At first, maybe. Look-I know Tristan's got great eyes and a killer smile, but the sex-appeal thing doesn't last. I mean, what did you love about him?"
"Oh Lord." Jessie thought about it, hugging herself because, in spite of the warmth of the afternoon, she could feel herself shivering deep inside. "God…when I think about him back then, all I seem to be able to remember is the way he smiled…his eyes…he seemed so happy-go-lucky, so arrogant, so confident and cocky…" She laughed shakily. "Stubborn to the point of being bullheaded…opinionated…convictions as unshakable as his jaw."
Her sister-in-law shook her head and made a clicking sound with her tongue. "Hmm…not exactly an easy person to live with," she murmured, and Jessie caught a glimpse of the laughter in her eyes. Because, of course, Mirabella herself could have been that person Jessie'd just described.
"Well, no," she hastened to add, "but he was strong and brave and loyal, too. He wouldn't hesitate to risk his life for somebody, even a stranger. And he was about as softhearted as they come. I don't know if anybody knew it, but he was really sentimental. And gentle. And-" her voice choked and she finished in a whisper "-he really, really adored his little girl."
"And her mother, too, certainly."
"That I'm not so sure about," Jessie said with a bleak little smile.
"Oh, come on." But for once Mirabella wasn't going to have a chance to argue, because Tristan was coming toward them across the lawn. Max was with him, and the two men were talking and laughing and grinning like little boys who'd just done something incredibly foolhardy and gotten away without a scratch.
The sight should have warmed her heart…shouldn't it? Here it was, a beautiful day, much like when she'd stood on this very porch and watched those two officers in dress blues come across the lawn with the news that had blown her world apart. The climbing rosebush was in full bloom, the lawn was yellow-polka-dotted with dandelions, just as they'd been then. From the other side of the house she could hear somebody hollering that the ribs were 'bout done and for Momma to send somebody out with a platter. A screen door slammed, and laughter and conversation rippled and floated on the warm, humid air.
Home. This is my home…my family. And here in the midst of it all was Tristan…alive, laughing, grinning his old familiar Tristan grin. It was a miracle…beyond anything she could possibly have dreamed of. She should be overflowing with happiness. Giddy with it.
* * *
Later that evening Jessie stood before the antique oak chest of drawers that had belonged to Granny Calhoun, and gazed at the gold wedding band in the palm of her hand. Outside, the brief Southern dusk had deepened into its soft and velvety darkness, and somewhere out in the woods a whippoorwill had begun its frantic song. The food leftovers had been packed up and distributed, and one by one the families had drifted away-Troy and Charly were on their way back to Atlanta, and Tracy and Al to Augusta, and C.J. and Caitlyn to their little house down the road. Summer and Riley were staying overnight with Mirabella and Jimmy Joe; it was a long drive back to Charleston. Tris and Max and Sammi June were still out in the backyard, dismantling the tables and putting away the barbecue.
Jessie had finished helping with the last of the kitchen clean-up and had come upstairs to the room that had been hers alone for eight and a half years, and which, for the past two days, and for the first time in her life, she'd been sharing-sort of-with Tristan. With my husband. She'd been putting lotion on her hands when she remembered her wedding ring, still in its little velvet box where she'd put it years ago, in the old rosewood humidor that had served as her jewelry box ever since she was a teenager. In the hectic time since they'd been home, with all the demands of family and television interviews and tapings, neither she nor Tristan had thought of it.
Now she was remembering the terrible day she'd taken it off…the day of Tristan's memorial service. It had been hot, she remembered, and humid, with rain threatening and thunder grumbling in the distance. She remembered Sammi June's small, sticky hand in hers, and both of them jerking when the rifles fired their salute…and then the white-gloved hands holding out to her the folded three-corner flag. She barely remembered taking it and murmuring thank you. Later, she'd placed the flag in a drawer in this very dresser-the top one-and had taken off her wedding ring and put it in its box and put it in the drawer with the flag. Later that night, unable to sleep, she'd opened the drawer with trembling hands and taken the ring out of its box and put it back on her finger. Sometime after that, during a spring cleaning-she couldn't remember exactly when-she'd moved the flag to the cedar chest. The ring had stayed on her finger until she'd started working in the NICU. She'd started taking it off when she left for her shift, and then one day she came home and didn't put it back on. Tristan's gone, she remembered telling herself half defiantly, as if she were about to commit a sin. He's not coming back. It's time to move on.
Now, gazing at the ring, her eyes shimmered and filled with tears. Tris is alive! I should be so happy, she thought. I am happy, dammit.
So why do I feel this aching sadness that won't go away?
Behind her the door opened. She heard Tristan come quietly into the room and close the door. She didn't turn but watched his reflection come to join hers in the murky, oak-framed oval mirror above the dresser. He was smiling, and when he put his hands on her shoulders and bent his head to kiss the side of her neck, she smelled beer on his breath.
"Hmm," he murmured, nuzzling her with his chin, "wha'cha doin'? Ah-" Noticing the ring in her hand, he took it from her, and with both arms encircling her from behind, slipped it onto her finger. "There," he said thickly, "back where it belongs."
He nudged aside her hair and kissed the back of her neck, and she shivered. In response he chuckled and opened his mouth on her damp nape, at the same time wrapping her in his arms and covering her breasts with his hands. She felt a hot, drawing pressure on her neck, and nerves sang through her skin and hardened her nipples, and arousal pooled between her thighs.
"Are you making a hicky?" she mumbled, already half-incoherent.
"Mmm…so what? Nobody'll see it. Unless you put your hair u
p…oops, damn. You made me lose my place. Oh, well…guess I'll just have to start over…"
"Tris…" But his hands were under her shirt, cupping her breasts and plucking impatiently between them at the closing of her bra. She released it for him, then gasped when he brushed the bra aside and took each sensitized tip between a thumb and forefinger. The heat between her thighs coiled and writhed, and her legs turned to jelly. This time she whimpered it: "Tris…"
He lifted his head and watched her in the mirror while one hand found her zipper and ripped it down, then slipped inside her panties. His palm was warm, and his fingers splayed over her belly, gently kneading. The other arm, tight across her breasts, held her close against him while he continued to torment one taut nipple. "I enjoyed today," he said softly. "More than I thought I would." His eyes gleamed like dark pools in moonlight.
"Did you?" She could barely talk, now…barely stand.
"Umm-hmm…more than you'll ever know." The unfathomable pools that were his eyes darkened…deepened. His lips tightened briefly and then quirked sideways, as if he'd felt a spasm of pain and was determined to hide it.
More than you'll ever know… How will I know if you won't tell me? she thought. But her mind and body were in different places. Her heart was bumping against his arm, and lower down, his fingers measured the frantic thrumming of her pulse.
She wanted to close her eyes but somehow knew he wouldn't want her to, so she fiercely ordered them to stay open and watched herself…watched him…as he slipped his fingers into her. Not gently-suddenly and deeply, and holding her tightly so that the thrust of his hand made her feel his hardness pressed against her buttocks. But she was ready for him, and the gasp that burst from her wasn't pain. Her body liquefied. Her palms and the soles of her feet felt scorched. In the murky glass of the old mirror, her eyes looked wild, and her cheeks glowed as if with a fever.
"I can't-"
"Yes-you can. You can."
But her body was already spiraling out of her control-if it had ever been in it-and she was breaking up in a thousand tiny explosions, all cold fire and flooding warmth. She gave a soft, desperate cry and let the kindly darkness come, and as she closed her eyes she felt his mouth, hot and open on her neck, and his fingers inside her, playing her body's sensations like quivering guitar strings, making them last and last and last…
And then he was laying her down on the bed and taking off her clothes…guiding her thighs apart and entering her still-throbbing body. Gently now, he moved within her, braced above her on taut and trembling arms, eyes closed, neck muscles corded. Dazed, Jessie drew her hands down his back, stroking rigid muscles and sliding over the ropy ribbons of scar tissue, rocking with his thrusts, arching her body into his, remembering what it had been like, remembering this…remembering.
His climax was restrained, almost…polite, Jessie thought. Afterward, he kissed her, used his discarded T-shirt for a towel, then gathered her against him-her back to his front-and fell asleep, breathing softly…snoring gently into her hair.
It was early, nowhere near Jessie's customary bedtime, and she lay awake for a long time, afraid to move or get up and go to the bathroom or turn off the lights Tris had left burning.
It's going to be all right, she told herself, staring at the familiar room…the wallpaper, the furniture, the curtains she knew so well. We've come so far already. Haven't we?
It'll be better once we have a place of our own.
Chapter 13
Gradually the days returned to more normal rhythms. On Monday Max left to go back to his home in Florida, and Sammi June drove off to school in Athens in the little red Chevy pickup truck Jimmy Joe had fixed up for her to use. Her professors were being understanding about giving her make-up exams and extensions on overdue papers. The last of the media people had left; their interest in Tristan's story had waned rapidly when they discovered he wasn't going to share with their audiences any of the gory details about his POW experience.
On Monday Jessie called the hospital to see how things were going in the NICU and found out that two of her nurses were out with the flu and a third had fallen off of a stepladder and broken her wrist. So on Tuesday she went back to work.
Tristan started running every morning with C.J. and working out with weights in his garage afterward. He'd been putting on weight, and was beginning to look almost like his normal self again. In the afternoon and evening he studied flight manuals and answered some of the hundreds of letters that had been pouring in from around the country, and drank beer steadily until he fell asleep around dusk, which in mid-May was about eight o'clock. By the time Jessie went up to bed he was snorin' like a buzz saw, as Granny Calhoun would've put it. He got up early, though, sometimes as early as four o'clock, tiptoeing around in the dark so as not to wake up Jessie while he dressed in his sweats and went downstairs to wait for it to get light enough to go running.
One evening he'd dozed off in Granny Calhoun's old recliner chair, watching the evening news on the TV in the living room. Not knowing what else to do, Jessie left him alone until ten o'clock, when she was ready to go upstairs to bed. Then she leaned over him and murmured, "Tris? Honey, you need to come to bed now-you're gonna get a crick in your neck." And she put her hand on his shoulder.
He made a wild, grunting sound and shot up out of the chair so fast the top of his head hit her in the mouth, and at the same time he was flailing at the air with his arms. An instant later he was on his hands and knees on the rug, and his face…Jessie had never seen such a look on anyone's face before, and to see it on his-her husband's-was almost more than she could bear. Shattered, tasting blood, she dropped to her knees and reached toward him in desperate apology.
"Oh God-Oh God-I'm so sorry-I forgot. I forgot. I'm sorry…" Tears were streaming down her face. "Tris, it's okay, honey. It's okay…"
He was looking around, not at her, eyes darting here and there like those of a trapped animal. Then, slowly, the bright terror in his eyes faded to dull awareness. He darted one quick, embarrassed look over his shoulder and said in a choked voice, "Your mom-"
"It's okay, she's already gone to bed. Oh, Tris-"
He reached out to brush her lip with his thumb. "I told you not to touch me." His voice was as harsh as his touch was gentle.
She caught her lip with her teeth and sucked it in, hiding the blood from him. "I know…I know. It's just that…you look so…you've been seeming so…"
"Normal?" Wearing a travesty of a smile like a Mardi Gras mask, he got stiffly to his feet, then took her hand and helped her to hers. "I thought this was normal-for someone like me, anyway. At least, that's what they keep tellin' me."
Aching inside, she slipped an arm around his waist. "We just have to be patient, give it time…"
He dropped his arm across her shoulders and drew her close to his side. "Yeah," he said, as they started up the stairs together, "they keep telling me that, too."
Tristan slept in one of the spare bedrooms that night, regretting the pain he knew it was causing Jess, but knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep after all that. He could feel the nightmares lurking still…feel the walls closing in on him even before he closed his eyes. Damned beer must be losing its effect, he thought.
Either that or it's this house. It gives me claustrophobia. It's Jess's place, not mine. There's no room for me here.
It wasn't that it was uncomfortable, this house his wife had grown up in. Just the opposite, in fact. In some sort of complicated, perverse way, it was the very comfort of it, the homeyness of it, that made him feel so alienated. He couldn't seem to get his mind around so much softness and warmth, the clean smells and good tastes, the laughter and the love. The cold and hunger, pain and fear and darkness of prison wouldn't let go of him. In the daylight hours he could convince himself he'd left all that behind him forever, but in the dark of night he knew better. He still hadn't escaped from those prison walls, and he was beginning to wonder if he ever would.
The n
ext morning he told Jessie he was going to start looking for a house for them to rent. "I know your momma's got plenty of room," he said reasonably, "but we need a place of our own." He didn't use the word home. He still felt a long way from being able to do that.
His biggest problem, he soon discovered, was going to be transportation. There seemed to be plenty of vehicles around, but no spares, and even if there had been, it went against his grain to borrow a car from one of his wife's relatives. The obvious solution was to buy himself a car-he was going to have to, eventually. And money wasn't going to be an issue-he'd been given the first installment of his back military pay before he'd left Washington, which had amounted to a pretty sizable sum. But it was only one more confusing thing about his return to "normal" life that he found the idea of buying a car both thrilling and terrifying.
He didn't know where to begin. There were too damn many choices, that was the problem. After having someone else direct every aspect of his existence for eight years, he wasn't used to making decisions. Used or new? Foreign or domestic? Should he go for power and performance or fuel economy? He sort of liked the idea of the SUVs, but they were really more car than he needed. Sports cars tempted him, naturally, but that seemed a little too much like he was trying to overcompensate. On the other hand, everyday run-of-the-mill cars…hell, how would he ever decide on one? There had to be hundreds of them, all more or less alike.
In the end he said "The hell with it," and went out for his morning run. He was pumping iron over at C.J.'s when J.J. came ripping up on his shiny new Honda motorcycle. Tris stopped what he was doing to watch J.J. put the kick-stand down, take off his helmet and hang it on the handlebars, then dismount with a seventeen-year-old's flexible grace and come sauntering toward them, pulling off his gloves.
"Hey," J.J. said, grinning, the thrill of the ride still bright in his eyes.
The Top Gun's Return Page 18