by Susan Stoker
“That sounds perfect. Thank you.”
Bryn breathed out a relieved sigh but didn’t say anything, merely nodded and tried not to shiver when his finger dropped from under her chin.
“Want a Blizzard? It might be a bit mushy by the time we get to the picnic area, but should still taste good.”
“I think it’s against the law to come to Dairy Queen and not get one,” she replied with a straight face.
“Right. Let me guess. Oreo?”
Bryn tilted her head. “Why do you think that’s what I like?”
They shuffled forward in the line, and she saw Dane’s eyes flick back and forth for a moment before settling back on her. She could tell he was uncomfortable. It couldn’t be easy for him to stand in a line with people in front of and behind him. If he didn’t like others being in the same aisle as him in the grocery store, this had to be torture. She shifted so she was facing his side, rather than standing next to him. She looked to her right then left, then back up at him.
He understood what she’d done. “Got my back?” he asked in a soft voice, which carried to her ears only.
She nodded.
“Thank you.”
Bryn reached out for his hand, only realizing at the last moment that she was on his left side. Mentally shrugging, she curled two fingers around one of the hooks on the end of his prosthetic with her right hand and held on tight. “You’re welcome. Why Oreo?”
She could tell she’d surprised him, but he didn’t pull away from her grip. “You seem like a black-and-white kinda gal. Classic. Oreo and vanilla ice cream is as classic as it gets.”
“Brownie, caramel, chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter chips, and Butterfinger.”
Dane’s brows furrowed and Bryn could tell for the first time since they’d walked inside the small restaurant he was wholly focused on her, and not his surroundings. “What?”
“Brownie, caramel, chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter chips, and Butterfinger,” she repeated. “In my Blizzard.”
“Good Lord, woman. You’re gonna go into diabetic shock if you eat that.”
She shook her head. “Hypoglycemia is usually only an issue for people who have diabetes, which I don’t. It’s actually when a person has too much insulin in their bloodstream and indicates a low level of blood sugar. Hyperglycemia is when the body has too much blood sugar and not enough insulin to balance it out. While healthy people can get hyperglycemic, it’s also usually only an issue with people who are diabetic.
“If I have too much sugar in a single meal, it fills me with dopamine, which can give me a false kind of high, but because glucose is digested quickly, the levels of sugar in my bloodstream will fall quickly. I don’t sleep a lot, so I usually do something to counteract the sugar when I eat dessert…take a walk, eat something with protein in it, like nuts or peanut butter, or have a cup of green tea or water. That helps me pee and expunge the excess sugar in my body.”
“Right.” Dane smiled at her but didn’t say anything else about her explanation. He merely shuffled forward to the counter when the couple in front of them moved to the side to wait for their food order.
Bryn had no idea what she’d said that was apparently humorous to him, but she wished she knew so she could repeat it at a later date. Dane’s whole body had relaxed and it seemed as though he’d forgotten there was a line of people standing at his back. The thought that she’d done that for him, made him relax enough to not care about being out in public, was enough to make a warm feeling blossom through her chest.
Even though she’d been studying his face so intently, she noticed when he reached over with his right hand, unhooked her fingers from around his prosthetic, and then reached around her waist and pulled her into his side.
Bryn felt the strength of Dane’s biceps against her back. He didn’t look down at her at all, merely kept his eyes on the teenager behind the cash register. She rested one hand on the counter in front of them, and curled the other around his waist and hooked her thumb into the belt at his right side. It felt intimate, but right.
He shook her, bringing her attention to what he was saying. “Make sure I get this right, Bryn,” he ordered, then recited the items she wanted in her ice cream.
The teenager’s eyes got big with each item Dane ticked off, but she nodded after each one.
“Did I get it right?”
Bryn nodded at him. For once in her life, her mind was blank. All she could think about was how nice it felt to be held against Dane and how good he smelled. The leather of his jacket, the slight scent of cologne, and the underlying scent of sweat. Not enough to be gross, but just enough for her to realize he was a man who would never spend his days sitting in a chair behind a desk. Idaho fit him. Or he fit Idaho, Bryn wasn’t sure which was more appropriate.
Dane grabbed his wallet and laid it on the counter. He pulled out his credit card and handed it over, all without moving his prosthetic from around her waist. The teenager ran the card and returned it. He stuffed it into his wallet, shut it, and put it back into his pocket. Then he shuffled them both sideways and leaned up against a wall next to the counter to wait for their food.
“You made that look easy,” Bryn commented.
“Made what look easy?”
“The wallet thing.”
“It’s not brain surgery to get a credit card out, Smalls.”
“You didn’t think so last night in the bar.”
He smiled at her for a moment, then informed her, “I could’ve gotten it out of my pocket with no problem.”
“Nuh uh. You were drunk.”
“I was, but even with my non-dominant hand, it’s not that hard, even if it’s on the far side of my ass.”
“So you were faking it?”
“Smalls, I had the opportunity to have a pretty woman stick her hand down my pants and feel my ass…so yeah, I was faking it.”
Bryn was speechless.
“What’s going on in that amazing brain of yours?”
“You said I was pretty.” The five words tumbled out without thought.
“You are.”
“No one in my entire life has ever said I was pretty.”
“Bryn, you—”
She had no idea what he was going to say, because an employee called out their order number as he was speaking.
Thankful for the interruption, Bryn stepped away from Dane and grabbed one of the Blizzards and the bag of food. Dane took the other ice cream and they headed toward the exit.
A man stood in front of the door, and, as they got close, his cell phone pealed with an annoying alarm sound.
Bryn felt Dane stiffen next to her, and before she could do anything, he’d grabbed her around the waist and pulled her forcefully to the side, turning as he moved them so his back was to the man in the doorway and no part of her was exposed to the perceived threat.
It was as if they were invisible to others. No one even noticed what had happened. A woman came up to greet the man in the doorway, and he leaned over and kissed her before following her to a table in the back of the restaurant.
Bryn could feel Dane breathing hard against her. His warm breath wafting over her neck and his chest rising and falling against her back. The cup of ice cream he’d been holding was now lying on the tiles at their feet, melting.
“Don’t worry about the mess. We’ll get it cleaned up, no worries.”
Bryn glanced up and saw one of the teenagers who’d been working behind the counter standing near them, a concerned look on her face.
Ignoring her for a moment, she turned in Dane’s arms. At first he wouldn’t loosen his grip, holding her to him tightly, but finally he let go. Bryn took one look at the tight, closed-off expression on Dane’s face and took charge of the situation.
She turned back to the employee. “Thanks. Sorry about that, we were startled.”
“We can replace the Blizzard,” the teenager said.
“No, it’s okay. We can share this one.” Bryn held up t
he treat she’d managed to keep hold of; luckily it was her fully loaded one. She didn’t want to wait for them to make a new dessert. She needed to get Dane out of there. “We’re sorry about the mess.”
But the young woman had already turned away, probably to get a rag to clean up the spill.
“Come on, Dane. Let’s go.”
He nodded and swallowed hard, before moving once again to the exit. They didn’t say another word, but Bryn could see Dane was on edge. His head swiveled back and forth, checking out the parking lot and the area surrounding the restaurant. They reached the truck and Bryn tucked the bag of food under her arm and held out her hand. “I’ll drive.”
She thought for a second he was going to refuse, but finally he dropped his key ring onto her palm and took the bag from her, tucking it under his left arm much as she’d done, then took the Blizzard into his right hand. He waited until she’d climbed up. He shut the door with a quick shimmy of his ass and moved around to the other side, getting in without a word.
Bryn moved the seat to where she could comfortably drive and started the truck. The cab was quiet until Dane finally said, “Sorry ’bout that.”
Instead of telling him that he had absolutely nothing to be sorry about, somehow knowing he definitely wouldn’t agree, she instead said, “A Brownie Batter Blizzard has eleven hundred calories. A cookie dough Blizzard has fifteen hundred calories. I figure with everything in the cup you’re holding, I’ve calculated that it tops out around two thousand. It’s good that you’re so muscular and buff. The dopamine drop from consuming so many calories and sugar will be less if you help me consume it.”
He didn’t respond, but sagged into the seat instead of sitting ramrod straight and frantically looked around as they moved down the road.
She kept talking. Telling him random facts about the fat content and how many calories were in popular fast food meals. She moved on to talking about the statistics of how many Americans drove a standard versus an automatic car, and when they were pulling into the small picnic area off of the main road that led into Rathdrum, finished with a one-way discussion of her opinion why more women didn’t major in physics or math when they went to college.
Bryn turned off the ignition once she’d pulled into a parking spot at the deserted roadside rest area and looked over at Dane. The lines around his eyes were gone and she could tell he wasn’t clenching his teeth anymore.
“I’ll come around,” he said in a firm voice, not waiting for her response as he grabbed the bag of food and the melting Blizzard and hopped out of the truck.
He came around to her side and opened the door, then stuck out his left elbow, giving her something to hold on to as she awkwardly got out. Once again, she felt the strength in Dane’s body as he held rock solid while she used him for leverage and to steady her as she safely got out of the high cab of the truck.
She kept hold of his arm as they headed for the nearest picnic table. She sat and was slightly surprised when he settled in next to her. Bryn wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure what. He hadn’t seemed overly impressed by her conversation in the truck, and she was pretty much out of ideas.
“I don’t know what kind of life you’ve lived and who you’ve known, but I’m thinking it’s been a bunch of idiots. You’re pretty, Smalls. Not just pretty, but beautiful. And you know what makes you that way?”
Bryn shook her head and swallowed hard, emotion climbing up her throat and making it impossible for her to say anything as she realized he was continuing the conversation they’d been having at the restaurant before their food was ready.
“You’re sensitive to what people are feeling around you. You don’t get embarrassed when people near you do stupid shit. You simply take it in stride and defuse whatever the situation is.” Dane paused and reached out for one of her hands. They were in her lap clenched together. He rubbed his thumb over the back of it and finally put it down on her thigh and covered it with his own large hand. “You’re small, but your heart and compassion and…being…are bigger than anyone’s I’ve ever met. That’s what makes you not just pretty, but absolutely beautiful in my eyes.”
Bryn’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. She had no idea how to respond to that. None. He went on.
“I’m sorry for saying what I did to you in the grocery store. Seriously. You aren’t a freak. I am. I have to shop in the middle of the night so I don’t lose it. When there’s a storm, I have to put on music and listen to it turned up way too high on my headphones. I’ll probably go deaf and have to deal with that on top of all my other fucked-up mental issues. And I can’t even be in the local Dairy Queen for more than ten minutes without making an absolute ass of myself.”
And as if he’d flicked a switch, Bryn found her words. It was much easier to defend him than think about herself. “Bull. So you’re a little jumpy. Big deal. Twenty percent of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s twenty percent of two-point-seven million people, which is around six hundred thousand veterans. And that’s a low estimate.” She couldn’t read the look on his face, and quickly blurted out, “At least you don’t spout random statistics at weird times that no normal person would ever know or want to know.”
“I like it.”
“What?”
“I like it. Believe it or not, it brings me out of whatever funk I’m in. I’m fascinated by what you know, and it’s interesting.”
Bryn could only gape at Dane. Her? Interesting? No way.
“Anyway, thank you, Smalls. I didn’t hurt you?”
She knew what he meant. “No. Not at all.”
“All I could think was making sure you weren’t in the line of fire.”
“You did good. You’re so big, I don’t think one inch of me was exposed to the guy in the doorway.”
“It’s not me, it’s because you’re so little, Smalls.”
“I am not,” she protested immediately. “You’re just Gigantor.”
He grinned. And the quirk of his lips was the best thing she’d seen in a really long time. Dane wasn’t back to his normal self—whatever that was, she didn’t really know him after all—but the twitch of his lips meant he was breaking through whatever hell his mind had gone back to. She’d take it.
He let go of her hand after a small squeeze and reached for the bag of food. “We’d better eat this before it’s too cold and the ice cream is too hot. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
They chatted about nothing in particular as they inhaled the greasy hamburgers and fries. And when they were finished, they shared the almost completely melted ice cream. Dane even agreed that it was the best Blizzard he’d ever eaten in his life.
When they’d finished, Dane drove them back to town and to the library’s parking lot. He unlocked her car for her and stood next to her door, making sure it started all right. Grimacing at her when it took three tries.
Backing away, he nonchalantly said, “See you later, Smalls.”
“Later, Dane.”
And that was it. She drove away and managed to only look back at him once.
Lying on her couch, watching late-night TV later that evening, Bryn thought over the day and about Dane. It was obvious he was struggling, but it was just as obvious he was a good guy.
She looked down at the open book in her lap and started reading where she’d left off. The information about prosthetics and amputations was fascinating, and she couldn’t help but hope, from a purely scientific standpoint of course, that she’d get a chance to examine Dane’s stump again, now that she knew a little more about it.
He hadn’t indicated that he wanted to see her again. Didn’t tell her he’d call. Didn’t ask her out again. But he had called her pretty. If she hadn’t already been half in love with him, she would’ve been after sitting with him at a trashy roadside picnic area, talking about nothing, sharing a melted ice cream treat, the word “beautiful” echoing in her brain.
Chapter Seven
“So tell me about Smalls,” Truck ordered. “You have seen her again, haven’t you? That town you live in is tiny.”
Dane relaxed back on his couch and smiled as he thought about the woman who’d been on his mind for the last week. He hadn’t seen her again, as he’d stayed holed up at his house trying to overcome the nightmares and flashbacks the trip to Dairy Queen had brought about. He felt weak. He shouldn’t be so affected by this shit. It was almost as though moving to Idaho had made him worse, rather than better.
“I took her out for dinner,” he told his friend, trying to snap out of his morose thoughts.
“Well, fuck me sideways and twice on Sunday,” Truck breathed. “You went on a date?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call getting takeout at the local Dairy Queen a date.”
“It is in Rathdrum,” his friend returned immediately. “And?”
“And what?” Dane grinned. It was kinda fun messing with Truck.
“Fish,” the other man growled impatiently.
“We got food, I let down my guard too much, had a flashback, and we went and ate at a shitty roadside rest area.” Dane tried to sound nonchalant about the incident, but knew Truck wouldn’t let it slide. That’s partly why he’d even mentioned it. He hated seeing the Army shrinks, who always made him feel like they were in a hurry and didn’t give a shit about who he was as a person. But talking with another soldier, someone who’d been there when he’d been hurt, and had certainly seen a lot more shit than he ever did when he was deployed, was a whole different thing.
“How’d you let down your guard too much? Is that even a possibility?”
“We were in line, my back was to the door and I was ten seconds from bailing. Then Bryn turned so she was facing me. I saw her eyes go from behind me, to in front of me…assessing the situation. It felt so much like I was back in the desert with a battle buddy at my side, that I relaxed.”
“And the flashback?”
Dane took a deep breath. “We were headed for the door and a guy came in. His cell phone went off and the ringtone he had reminded me of the ringing in my ears as I laid under that fucking Humvee, unable to move.”