Second Chance with Her Army Doc

by Dianne Drake

  “Just tired. Which is why I came here.”

  “Well, that color you’re wearing right now isn’t your I’m tired color. Normally that’s more pasty and white. In fact, as I recall, that color is your—”

  “Just stop it, Carter! I didn’t come here to rehash old times. I need some stitches and a tetanus shot. If you can’t do that, I’ll go find Matt and ask him to.”

  “He didn’t tell you I was here? Because what are the chances that you’d simply bump into me in the middle of nowhere?”

  He picked up a bottle of disinfectant and squirted some on her leg.

  “When I saw you sitting on my table I assumed you were here to find me.”

  “Trust me, Carter. You’re the last person I wanted or expected to find here. And, no, Matt didn’t say a word.”

  Which made her wonder if Matt was trying to get them back together. Surprise meeting in a desert in the middle of nowhere? Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe not. Right now, she didn’t care. She just wanted Carter to fix her leg so she could get out of there.

  * * *

  Carter hadn’t expected to see Sloane in Forgeburn, of all places, and now that she was here he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Stay away from her altogether? Allow a small amount of cordiality in? Just what was the etiquette here? What etiquette was involved in meeting up with the woman you’d loved for so long, then dumped?

  He knew Sloane in every way one person could know another, so it wasn’t as if they were strangers caught up in a chance meeting. Something like that would have been easier to deal with. They could have shared general chit chat, a string of pleasantries, talked about the weather—except, Sloane deserved more than the weather forecast.

  The problem was, he didn’t have more. Not for her, anyway. It was too difficult, too painful, and he didn’t want to go on hurting her over and over.

  “The wound is clean and, as cuts go, the edges are good. So I’m going to use about ten butterflies, then wrap it in gauze. If you’re still here in a couple of days come back for a check. Or go to your own doctor when you get back home.”

  Which he hoped she would do—go home. Today. Right now.

  “I’m here for two weeks,” she said. “It’s the first vacation I’ve had since... Well—that week you were on leave from the Army. You came home and we took a cruise down to Mexico. What was that? Four years ago?”

  He knew exactly when it had been, but he didn’t want memories of that week popping into his mind. It had been too nice, and they’d gotten so close. Closer than they’d been even after two years together. It was when he’d proposed to her. Well, it had been a pre-proposal—one of those If I were to ask you, would you marry me? sort of things.

  It hadn’t been until almost two years later that he’d done the real asking. And then it had been by satellite hook-up. It had been her birthday, and her friends and family had been having a party. He’d been left out, of course, being overseas. So when they’d talked later that night the question had simply popped right out of him, surprising him almost as much as it had her.

  Marriage had always been his intention, though. Women like Sloane didn’t come along every day, and he had been so head-over-heels crazy in love with her, almost at first sight, he hadn’t been about to lose her. But he’d wanted to wait until he got home and do the proposal the right way, on a romantic weekend on the beach, or maybe up in wine country.

  Somehow he’d seen it happening at dawn, not dusk. They’d be strolling hand in hand, wherever they were, and when they stopped for a break he would pull an engagement ring box from his pocket. Or they would be having brunch, sipping mimosas, and he would discreetly slide the ring box across the table.

  That had been the other Carter Holmes, though. The one who’d replaced him didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. Even reminding himself of the things he’d thought before made his hands shake.

  “I’m going to give you a prescription for an antibiotic. There’s a pharmacy about ten miles down the road. You can fill it there. If I remember correctly, you were allergic to—”

  Damn, why did he have to remember so many things about her? He’d been trying not to since he’d left, and on good days he sometimes succeeded. Now, though, everything was coming back. More than he wanted. More than he could deal with.

  “Penicillin,” Sloane said, sliding off the exam table then bending down to straighten out her pants. “So, how much do I owe you for today?” she asked as she straightened up and looked him directly in the eye.

  “Really, Sloane? Do you think I’d charge you for this?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know what you’d do. I didn’t expect you to leave me without an explanation, but you did. I didn’t expect you not to return my calls and texts for three months, but you did. I didn’t even expect you to join the Army, but you did. So, tell me... How am I supposed to anticipate your next move, Carter? How am I supposed to know what you will and will not do?”

  “I know I didn’t do things the way I should have, but...”

  But what? What was his excuse? He’d been doing it for her? She wouldn’t believe that, even though it was the truth.

  “But what’s done is done, and I can’t go back and change things.”

  “No, you can’t. Neither of us can.” She headed for the exam room door, then stopped and turned back to face him. “Look, us being here at the same time is a coincidence. But could we find some time when we could get together and talk? I have questions, Carter. And I deserve answers.”

  “Let me figure out my schedule, then I’ll get back to you. Do you still have the same cell number?”

  “I’m not the one who changed, Carter. You are. Yes, it’s still the same. I didn’t want to change it in case you actually did try to call or text me.”

  During his few hazy weeks in Vegas the last thing he had wanted to do was return her calls and have her figure out that he was even deeper into the pit than he’d been before he’d left. His drinking had been worse. He’d been taking those pills. And gambling... All the things that had distracted him from what was real.

  Then in Tennessee cell phones had been confiscated and handed back only for emergencies and once-a-week contact with family or a loved one. Since he’d had no family then, or even a loved one, there’d never been any reason to ask for his cell phone back for that one allotted hour.

  “I wasn’t exactly in a position to reach out to anybody. It was rude, and I’m sorry, but that’s who I was then.”

  “And not now?” she asked him before she left his office.

  “It’s complicated, Sloane.”

  And he couldn’t make promises, or even lead her in the direction of thinking that he might be getting better because he didn’t know if he was. Time would tell, he supposed. Time and new surroundings. But how could he tell her that? How could he tell her that she was part of the past he was running from?

  * * *

  “Life is complicated, Carter,” she said. “For everybody in some way.”

  He sounded so—not bitter, more like apathetic. As if he’d given up or given himself over to his battle.

  “So you’ve given up?”

  “It’s called hitting rock bottom.” He took a couple steps toward her, then stopped, as if a barrier had been lobbed into his path. “And my choice is to not drag anybody else down with me.”

  “You owe me an explanation, Carter.”

  “For what? For losing one kidney and a spleen to shrapnel? Damaging my other kidney? For PTSD after too much gunfire, too much death, too many people to save that I couldn’t? Is that what you want to hear? Because if it is I’ve said it all before and look where it’s gotten me.”

  She wanted to see some emotion—some of the old Carter trying to fight back. But what she saw in his face was—nothing. His eyes were blank. His expression resigned.

  This wasn’t the C
arter she’d used to know. Used to love. Not at all. This was a different man. One she didn’t understand. Couldn’t explain. One who seemed to be calculating every facial expression and every word. She’d been through so much with him, but this—it broke off another piece of her heart.

  “You still drinking?” she asked him, not sure why she was even bothering.

  He shook his head. “Gave up the pills, too. Momentary interruptions in my process are only that—momentary. Then it all comes back. So, what are you really doing here? Come to save me from myself?”

  “I’m on vacation, like I told you.”

  But she wondered if subconsciously she’d chosen Forgeburn not so much expecting to find him here but to be closer to a part of his life when his life had been good. He and Matt had made so many plans about biking, hiking and climbing over the years, and it was something Carter had talked about so often. Getting back to his roots, he’d say, even though he wasn’t from the area. Maybe the sentiment had appealed to him, or maybe it had simply been the need to step out of his problems for a while.

  Whatever it was, could she have actually come here expecting to find answers? Or even expecting to find Carter himself?

  “You’d talked about the area so often—maybe I thought I could find some kind of closure here. You took that from me, you know.”

  “I know I did,” he said.

  His voice was soft now. The animosity was gone, replaced by a sadness he couldn’t conceal. At least not from the woman who’d loved him for so long.

  “It was never my intention to hurt people—most of all you. But that’s how it turned out, and in the end who cares? Who really gives a good damn?”

  “I do—did,” she said, fighting back tears.

  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. That no matter what Carter said or did she wouldn’t let him reduce her to that again. But here she was, fighting it because her heart was breaking yet one more time. For her—and for Carter.

  “I cared.”

  “You should have never waited for me, Sloane. You could have had better. We both knew that.”

  For an instant his expression changed. Did she see regret? Or a sadness deeper than anything she’d ever seen from him before? It was there and gone so quickly she didn’t know, but in that instant she’d seen Carter. The real Carter. He was still there, which did give her hope. Not for their relationship. That was over, and she had to reconcile herself to that. But she did hold out some hope for Carter—something she hadn’t done in a long, long time.

  “Maybe that’s what you thought,” she said, “but it’s not what I thought.”

  Standing on tiptoes, she brushed a light kiss to his cheek, then backed away.

  “What I knew was that I still loved you, but you didn’t still love me. That’s a difficult adjustment to make after so many years. I wish I could have done better at it. But I suppose that’s a moot point, isn’t it? Since you made the final decision about us without me.”

  * * *

  Sloane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sitting in her rental car in the parking lot, she was too unsteady to go anywhere yet. Maybe the kiss had been a mistake—maybe it had been the last thing he wanted from her—but it had told her something she wasn’t prepared to know. She still loved him. Maybe not in the breathless way she’d loved him at first, but in a more deep-down sense. It was something more profound—something she didn’t understand and wasn’t ready to think about.

  Carter was a handsome man and, while she’d rarely let a man turn her head, she’d always reacted to him. He’d taken off some weight since she’d last seen him, and it looked good. Was he working out again? Because for the first time since he’d been injured he looked toned.

  But he’d always been a head-turner, hadn’t he? Sometimes he’d shown up for work in tight leather pants, which had given all the ladies quite a show before he gave himself over to his day and changed into scrubs.

  She’d loved that side of him because he’d known what he was doing—had had fun with it. He’d loved having people looking at him, speculating about who he really was—a bad boy or simply a narcissist. In truth, he had been neither. Carter Holmes had simply been a man who’d enjoyed life. He’d liked to play around with it to see what turned up. And he’d taught her to enjoy it along with him. To be spontaneous. To let go occasionally and live in the moment.

  That hadn’t been her when they’d first met. After her mother died she’d been raised by a loving but very serious father who’d overwhelmed her with his serious world. Yet Carter had made her life so—good. So much fun to anticipate.

  Those days were so far in the past, though, she almost wondered if they’d happened at all. Nothing seemed real anymore. It hadn’t for such a long time. Even now—being here and discovering Carter was here as well—was an altered reality, and the pieces of it hadn’t come together in her mind yet.

  “I didn’t want to stir the pot,” Matt said to her an hour later, when she went to his surgery and challenged him about not telling her that Carter was in Forgeburn.

  “So you just let me bump into him accidentally?” She shook her head, angry because of so many things.

  “There was no guarantee you would bump into him.”

  “Yeah, right. This is Forgeburn, Matt. It’s only a ten-minute drive from one end of the town to the other. How could I not bump into him?”

  Matt looked out into his waiting room. Today it was overflowing with patients.

  “Look, Sloane... When you called me and told me you might come here for a few days Carter and I hadn’t made any specific plans yet. And, honestly, neither of you told me how bad it was between you. Carter said something to the effect that you were having problems, but I didn’t know until after he was here that they were permanent problems. By then you were already on your way. So don’t blame me for what you and Carter have or don’t have going on. I’m only the bystander who’s watching the world cave in around two of my friends.”

  Sloane did understand his position, but that didn’t make things better. Nothing did right now, so she decided to head back to her hotel, shut herself in her room, and decide whether she should stay or go.

  In so many ways she wanted to stay—maybe simply to find some closure. That was her due, and she hadn’t had it—not with the way Carter had left her. But leaving wasn’t such a bad idea either. This time she’d be the one to walk away. There would be a certain satisfaction in that.

  But acting that way wasn’t who Sloane was. She’d loved that man for too long, and because of everything he had been through she had no desire to hurt him. If—and that was a great big if—he still cared enough to be hurt.

  Sloane didn’t know if that was even possible. Or if what she might do would hurt her even more than before. It was a lot to think about. But she wasn’t in the mood to think, or to do anything that related to Carter.

  Except, despite her best efforts, Sloane still couldn’t get him off her mind, and she was suddenly afraid that she might slip back to where she had been three months ago, when he’d left her. Not that she’d come very far from that position up until now. Still, she didn’t want to backslide.

  But with Carter so close to her now was there any kind of chance she could really move forward? Or even move on? She hoped so. But there was no confidence backing that hope. None whatsoever.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CARTER EMPTIED THE bottle of cheap whiskey he’d just bought down the drain, then placed the empty bottle on the stand next to his bed and stared at it. Cheap booze, expensive booze—it was all there, waiting for him to take that first drink. No one would know if he did. No one would care, either. But the bottle reminded him of where he was trying to go. And, that’s what he still needed so much of the time. A reminder of where he’d been and how bad it was. A reminder of all the things he’d lost, that he couldn’t get back. But it was also there to show
him the way out if there was a way to get out.

  This was his hell to pay, though. His test to achieve. To conquer. So the damned bottle would sit there and taunt him for as long as he needed to be taunted. If that was forever, so be it. But because of The Recovery Project there had been times when he’d actually felt optimistic. Not overly so, but just enough to get him through the steps they required.

  But there were still occasions when Carter didn’t think there was a way out, and felt that he was simply biding time until something even more drastic than PTSD invaded his life.

  Much of the time his ambivalence defeated him. Or at least set him back a step or two. But always, no matter where he went, when he set that bottle out Carter did so with hope. And, yes, there was a tiny thread of it left in him when he cared to look for it. Which he didn’t too often. Especially not where Sloane was concerned.

  Tonight Carter was restless, in part because of his new life and in part because Sloane was here. Consequently, he paced the dirty hotel room like a caged tiger—back and forth. An hour of it, non-stop, hoping to tire himself out.

  But when he stopped he was only physically tired, not emotionally. The thoughts in his brain wouldn’t turn off. Thoughts of the two of them, what they’d had, what they’d planned. The big things—talking about having a family, buying a house. The little things—sleeping in late on Sunday mornings, taking walks, bubble baths for two.

  “Why?” he whispered, finally sitting down on the edge of the bed, dropping his head into his hands. “Why?”

  What his cognitive therapy counselor had told him was that there was no answer to why? Of course Carter already knew that, because it was the same question so many of his patients asked him. Why did I get cancer? Why did my daughter die?

  “Instead of asking yourself why it happened, ask yourself how you’re going to get through it.” That was what the counselor had said.

  So how was he going to get through this with Sloane? Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day? Could he simply ask her to leave and let her know that being anywhere near her scared him more than the bullets had in Afghanistan?