by Serena Bell
Whatever Mira wanted from him—if she wanted anything at all, and he was decidedly not convinced she did—it shouldn’t keep him from doing what he was supposed to be doing. It shouldn’t keep him from finishing what he’d started. If he could go back in, he’d visit Sam on leave, do his best to be a father in the time he had with his son.
He would let a month or two go by. He’d let the urgency die out of his own feelings, and he’d let her cool off. Then he’d ask her if he could take Sam to a baseball game or something. He’d try to arrange outings where there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunity for him and Mira to be alone, and over time—he was sure—they’d figure out how to ignore any lingering chemistry. They’d focus on Sam’s needs. They’d get into a rhythm that would work for all of them, regardless of whether he retired or went back to serving.
It was a good plan.
If his brain kept trying to write Mira back into it, he could ignore that.
Chapter 10
Running with the new prosthesis was a whole new ball game. It had been hard to catch the rhythm—new socket, new knee, and best of all, new foot. The first time the running foot—which looked more like a curved hook than an actual foot—had bounced him off the ground at the track where he and Harwood had been playing around with it, he’d almost fallen flat on his face, but he was getting it now, and it was such a high. He was doing five miles now, no problem, and even though he didn’t think he’d ever be a parathlete, he could understand the draw. Why you might come out of an accident broken, put yourself back together with spare parts, and throw yourself wholeheartedly into a new fight.
He took another lap of the Discovery Park path he liked to run on, slower now, cooling off. Not even minding the slight chafe of the socket against his thigh. Having Harwood in his court made all the difference. The guy was a perfectionist, totally obsessed. If he asked Jake, “How’s it feel?” and Jake answered with anything other than “Like my own leg,” he’d be in there with measurements and tools and adjustments, tweaking socks and sheaths, as if it were his own stump they were trying to baby.
Jake had started biking, too, on a special bike outfitted to work with his new cycling prosthesis, and next week he’d start swimming. In the mornings he worked out, and in the evenings he worked with a trainer, a guy named John Spiro, who specialized in men like him. Men who’d lost limbs and wanted to get back into army shape. Who wanted to convince the Medical and Physical Examination Boards to give them another shot. Every millimeter of his body, muscles he hadn’t known he had, hurt like a motherfucker every hour of the day. Every night he fell into bed exhausted.
He hadn’t told anyone what he was doing, not his physical therapist, not his mother, not his siblings—although it had occurred to him that maybe he’d give Pierce a call, see if he wanted to run a mile or two together. As they once had, growing up, and when Jake came home on leave.
But he hadn’t yet, hadn’t told anyone yet, because he didn’t want to see doubt on anyone’s face. You? Fight again? And because he didn’t want to jinx it. Didn’t want to tell too many people what he was trying to do, in case he couldn’t pull it off. It was a long shot, after all, as strong as he felt, as quickly as he was getting mobility and nimbleness back. There was still the fact that he was an above-the-knee amputee, and trying to do anything with a manufactured knee took a lot of goddamned work.
Plus, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if he wanted to fight without Mike. He doubted his own motives—was he pursuing this route because he didn’t know what else to do? Working toward something felt great, but he didn’t have confidence that it was the right thing.
He hated not being sure.
He jogged to a halt and sat down at a picnic table. He watched kids play on the nearby playground.
“Jake!”
One of the kids was running toward him. Sam. Behind him, slower, came Mira. She wasn’t quite smiling. Well, neither was he. Because this was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. Open-ended, casual time with her.
And yet, he was ridiculously happy to see her.
“That’s a cool leg!” Sam said, pointing at the curved metal foot of his running prosthesis.
“It’s my running leg,” Jake said.
“Watch me climb!” Sam instructed, and ran back toward the playground. Jake got up from the table and followed him.
Mira fell in beside him. “Fancy meeting you here. What are the odds? You don’t have to watch him if you’re busy.”
“I’m not busy.” It was the truth, and the run had made him feel loose and a little reckless. Plus, the sun was out, and it had gotten in her hair so it looked like something was shining out from the inside. She wore a scoop-neck tight T-shirt and jeans that hugged her ass, and as much as he wanted to run and hide, he hated that man. Soldiers engaged, and even if he wasn’t one anymore, he wasn’t going to be a fucking wuss.
Sam began climbing on a structure that looked like a rope spiderweb.
“It’s seven-year-old boy heaven,” Jake observed.
“So, this is weird.”
“Small world.”
“How have you been? You were running?”
“Trying.”
The last time he’d been this close to her, he’d had his hands all over her. Shoved her up against a wall. It was hard to get those pictures out of his head. Even harder to get rid of the feel of her, how soft she’d felt, the cloud of hair, the curve of her breasts and ass, the way her mouth had slid and opened under his.
Jesus.
How fast could he get himself out of here, before he did something stupid again?
“I’ve been meaning—I should have called you,” she said. “Can we talk?”
His stomach sank. Not fast enough, then. “Here?”
They stood together under one of the taller trees. The ground was smattered with round, sturdy pinecones over a thick carpet of long pine needles. Other kids played and shouted on the structure, their parents scattered around the perimeter.
“As good a place as any, right?”
“I guess.”
She laughed. “You guess?”
“Look, I’m not much for talking.”
“I don’t want to rehash anything that happened between us. I get that it’s not a good idea. I totally agree that we need to keep things as simple as possible between you and me.”
Was that disappointment he was feeling? She’d let him off the hook. Given him permission not to do something impossibly self-destructive. And once again, his stupid dick was trying to take the reins.
She’d goaded him into kissing her again. He’d gotten hard fifty times since then, thinking about it. You can get it up. I can definitely attest to that.
Down, boy. She wants to talk.
“It’s not about that. It’s about Sam. He said something last night. And, okay, what he said was, ‘Do you think my father is like Jake?’ ”
Once, before the accident that had taken his leg, he had been within the percussion zone of a big explosion. Not close enough to be injured, not close enough to take shrapnel, not close enough to lose an eardrum, but close enough to feel the air hit his body like a blow. Her revelation felt like that. He said, “Shit. That must’ve freaked you out.”
“Kinda. I didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘Yeah, he’s a lot like Jake.’ But it felt like a lie. And it made me feel awful. I know, I know—” She waved his protest away. “I realize it doesn’t seem like a very big lie after the whole sperm donor thing …”
Jake shook his head. “I’ve kind of gotten used to the sperm donor idea—I mean to the idea of it as an explanation. It’s clever. And you’re right, what else can you tell a little kid?”
“Right, it felt different then, but now he’s old enough to understand the truth, or a version of it, and I’m lying about someone who’s in his life—” She stopped, and met his eyes. “Sorry. See, that’s the thing: I don’t know if you are or aren’t. Or if I want you to be or not. Or—I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m making th
is really complicated.”
“No, don’t apologize,” he said. “It is complicated.”
“And I don’t want what happened between us to affect—I mean, I want you and Sam to be able to have a relationship without it getting all mucked with—”
She gestured vaguely, but it didn’t keep him from manufacturing his own vivid images. The way it had felt to pin her against the wall, how soft she was but how passionately she’d responded, how intensely she’d kissed him back and given herself over. The whole length of her pressed against him.
“This can be whatever we want it to be,” he said.
“What if I want it to be you and Sam? For now?”
“It could be that.” But he couldn’t suppress his regret, and maybe she saw it, because for a moment, he thought he saw it echoed on her face, too. Regret and longing. That hadn’t been an ordinary kiss. It had been like the kisses all those years ago, packed full of things they both needed and wanted to say but couldn’t get out in words. Old mistakes and new cravings and bad ideas that didn’t feel bad. Crazy shit he’d seen, stupid stuff he’d done, people he’d let down.
Situations where emotions—where love, specifically—had clouded his judgment.
He turned away from her and watched Sam climb higher on the structure.
“That’s high enough, Sam,” Mira called.
God, he wished she wouldn’t do that. The kid was seven years old and a monkey. He could handle a child’s play structure.
What did Mira want from him?
What did he want from her?
And how did Sam fit in? How could they make sure that no matter what happened between them, Sam wouldn’t get hurt?
That one day when Jake had babysat Sam, when they’d finished running, Jake had plopped down on the front stoop and Sam had collapsed in his lap, a heap of sweaty little kid, warm and panting. Totally trusting. And Jake had thought:
You don’t want to put your eggs in this basket, kid. I’ve made some really bad decisions. The kind of bad where people died.
Every once in a while, it was there. Clear as day. Irrefutable.
“I meant everything I said. I’m not good for much. I’m not good for you, and I’m not good for him.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re wrong. He was really down before that day you sat. And he’s been—a different kid since. Cheerful and energetic and full of himself.”
“That was what I was hoping. He was so proud of what he did that day we ran. I’m glad it carried over.”
He eyed Sam, now descending the play structure far more cautiously than he’d scrambled up it. She’d put her own fear in him, and she didn’t even realize what she was doing. That must be the toughest thing about being a single parent: having to be brave enough for two so your own fear wouldn’t become infectious.
Maybe he could help. He could be a buffer. For both of them.
“We don’t have to tell him the truth yet. I’m mostly saying that he has questions.”
She didn’t say, I have questions, but when he met her eyes, he could see them there. What the hell happened that night in my kitchen?
Yeah, he wanted to know the answer to that too, and the answer to and will it happen again?
“Yeah. Okay. So, don’t say anything to him now. If you can stand not to. I don’t intend to disappoint him. But like I told you, I’m not myself. I’m not even sure—”
He stopped.
“What?” She said it so gently. She was watching Sam, not looking at him.
“I’m not sure that man exists anymore. ‘Myself.’ So what I’m saying is that I don’t know. I don’t know myself, so I can’t promise things and I especially don’t want to promise things that involve Sam, because I understand what you’re saying. He’s a kid and he doesn’t understand.”
Now she turned to look at him, and her face was soft with gratitude. He wanted her to look away again, because her emotion was levering itself under his skin. If he were going to turn back, if he were going to stop whatever this was that felt so inevitable, now was the time to lay down the boundaries. To draw the lines.
He wasn’t sure if he could.
No, he was sure he couldn’t. Not standing here next to her, craving her again, wanting to grab her and do it all over again. To choose, this time, what had felt like compulsion last time. To let her know: This is what I want. Him, yes, but also you.
Something big and hard catapulted itself into his good leg, and he had to grab Mira to steady himself. Sam—Sam had slammed himself against Jake for a hug. Jake regained his footing and released the handful of Mira’s T-shirt he was clutching. His heart pounded, a cocktail of adrenaline and shame. He felt unmanly. Weak. The voices that had drilled into his head during training were rising from the basement of his brain to torment him again. That the best you can do, girls? You’re a worthless, pathetic bunch of losers.
I’m not. I can run. I can bike. I ran five miles today.
Who are you arguing with, douche bag?!
“Climb that tree with me?”
“I’m not much for tree climbing these days,” Jake told him.
“Please?”
“He doesn’t go that high,” Mira said. “Just out on that big branch.” She gestured to one that was low and nearly horizontal, thick as a man’s thigh.
Jake eyed it.
“I have a better idea,” he said. It would give him some space, too, put some physical distance between him and Mira.
“What?” Sam’s voice was suspicious.
“We’re going to play baseball.”
“I didn’t bring my glove or my bat or my ball.”
“You don’t need them to play this kind of baseball.” Jake picked up a stick about as long as his forearm. “Here’s your bat.”
“Where’s the ball?”
“Go stand over there.” Jake pointed to the tree.
Sam went.
Jake bent, picked up a pinecone, and pitched it, underhand and easy, to Sam, who swung. The pinecone sailed past Jake’s ear.
“Nice!” Mira called. She grinned at him. “Clever.”
“Nah. Used to making do with whatever’s on hand. Nimble, maybe. Not clever.” He grabbed a new “ball” and pitched again.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s cool.”
He hazarded a glance in her direction. She was watching him with genuine admiration. It made his gut glow.
God. Simple had receded far into the background, like a dream he’d had but had almost forgotten by the time his eyes were fully open. There was nothing simple about this, not about any of it. Not about the pleasure of pitching pinecones to his son, not about how the glow in his gut had lit him up hard, not about the conversation they’d had before Sam had barreled into him. It was all complication, and he didn’t hate it half as much as he wanted to.
He didn’t hate it at all.
He liked it, too fucking much.
He hated that.
Chapter 11
Sam and Jake played pinecone baseball while she sat at a nearby picnic table and watched them. Watched the rough contours of Jake’s body under the gray T-shirt he wore, watched how even when he was dispatching a pinecone, she could see muscle flirt with fabric. He had a funny half-straddle he did to pick up the pinecones, and even that was sexy, because he made it into a graceful performance. His hair was mussed, as it always was, and he needed to shave. He looked haunted, the bones in his face rough and high under the skin, darkness under his eyes that even sunlight didn’t chase away, a grim set around his mouth that only occasionally gave way to something you might call a smile, when Sam did something particularly charming or funny.
This was a moment she had fantasized about when Sam was little, but it was different from the fantasy. In the fantasy, Jake had been light, joyful. He romped with Sam, his mind not on his physical limitations but on the adventures that he and his son could have together, how high they could go in the tree, how far and how fast they could run. In the fantasy, he crouched down to show
Sam something at eye level. In the fantasy, he swept her off her feet and carried her, both of them laughing, while Sam demanded to be included in the embrace.
She didn’t want that fantasy anymore. She didn’t want to be with the Jake she had imagined, who now seemed frivolous. The Jake she’d dreamed up was a party Jake, a celebration Jake, a fair-weather Jake. Her life was hard edges: Sam’s health issues, the brutish reality of working to support herself and her son, the immutable fact of waking up every day to do all of it again, dishes and dust, crumpled homework papers left too long at the bottom of a backpack, a bed that never got warm even when you curled up and wrapped the covers tight.
This Jake knew a day could be an uphill climb.
She wasn’t supposed to want either Jake. Any Jake.
She closed her eyes, because when her eyes were open, she saw a new detail every minute, a connected chain of them. The way sunlight angled through pine needles to find the brightest spots in Jake’s hair, the ones that were more golden than brown. The angle of Jake’s eyebrows, its echo on Sam’s face. The gusts of pain that moved across Jake’s face and vanished again. The way he and Sam looked at each other, when they thought the other wasn’t looking back, with fascination and hunger.
With her eyes closed, she could think about consequences, about potential disasters. About the person she wanted to be, who wasn’t someone concerned with consequences or potential disasters. She wanted to be someone who would seize joy and hang on tight, someone who would even, occasionally, laugh at worry. But she hadn’t been that person, not since she’d gotten pregnant with Sam.
“Mom? Can we ride the Ferris wheel?”
She’d been promising Sam a ride on the ten-story Seattle Ferris wheel since it was installed last summer. But so far the timing had sucked. The timing sucked now, too. She didn’t think either she or Jake would benefit from being shut up in close proximity to each other.
“Please, Mom? Please?”
On the other hand, it was a beautiful afternoon. Warm, but not hot.