Meagan's Marine (Halos & Horns)

by Lori Leger

  ****

  Fifteen minutes later, he rounded the fruit section, nearly colliding with a small boy wearing a brace on his arm. He grabbed the child by the shoulders to keep him from falling. “Whoa, sorry little man!” The boy lifted his face, staring up with familiar blue eyes as Meagan’s voice reached Mitchell.

  “Don’t run, sweetie. You already have one broken arm.”

  Mitch grinned down at the small boy. “Hey, Buckaroo!”

  Buck stared at him until it clicked. “I know you. You gave me a pterodactyl.” He turned to face the woman just rounding the corner. “Mama, look who’s here!”

  Meagan stopped, the smile for her son frozen on her face. “Oh. Hi.”

  “Try not to get too excited.”

  She gave a light snort. “Why should I? Experience is a wise teacher, and it’s taught me it does no good where you’re concerned.”

  He winced. “I guess I had that coming.”

  She nodded. “Yes, you did.”

  “I apologize, Meagan.”

  “For what? Scaring the crap out of me in the wee hours of the morning or calling me a liar?”

  He grabbed his shopping cart to keep it from blocking the aisle. “Both, I guess. I don’t know where the hell that text came from but I know you didn’t send it.”

  She nodded before turning to examine a bin full of apples. “I accept.”

  He grabbed a bag of oranges from the shelf and dropped it in his basket. When he turned, she was facing him wearing a curious look.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He assumed an at ease position, his shoulders relaxed. “I just know.”

  She crossed her arms, as though daring him to lie to her. “Yeah, right.”

  He glanced at her buggy, saw her backpack in the front section. “I see you found it.”

  “I left it at the club, just as I thought. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  “I sus—” The lift of her brow stopped him from going through with the lie of omission. “I went by the club after I left your place and saw it, right where you left it.”

  “You broke my phone.” Her tone was dry and accusatory.

  “I did not.”

  “Don’t you lie to me.”

  “I didn’t. I just—it fell.” He huffed, annoyed that she knew. “The damn thing flew across the counter and fell on the floor. It broke into a few pieces but I put it back together.” He shifted uncomfortably, rested his hand on his hip. “How’d you know?”

  “I suspected.”

  Just when he thought her glare was equivalent to no further explanation, she spoke.

  “We were the last two people to leave the club. I woke Red this morning to ask him to come unlock for me. He told me you were the only other person who has a key to this place. It didn’t take a genius.”

  He looked down at his feet, adjusted his stance. “If I broke it, I’ll get you a new one.”

  “It’s not broken. But did you find what you were looking for?” Mitch didn’t answer so she repeated the question. “Did you?”

  “It erased the damn call history when it fell.” The words rushed out of his mouth in a jumble. The rest was a low murmur. “Before I could check it.”

  Her face transformed from stern, school-teacher glare to an unexpected grin as she released a deep-throated chuckle. “I know I should be more pissed at you for snooping, but the thought of you panicked, with my phone in pieces, and wondering how the hell you’re gonna explain it?” She giggled. “Well, that’s just funny, right there. I don’t care who you are.”

  Mitch would have been looking for a hole to crawl into if Buck hadn’t come to the rescue. The boy started pulling on the bottom of his shirt.

  “Hey Mitch, guess what I’m gonna be for twick aw tweat? Guess! Twy to guess!”

  He looked down at the boy, admiring his energy and excitement, and always amused at his inability to make the ‘r’ sound. “Oh, I don’t know…a pterodactyl?”

  “No, not that! Guess again.”

  “Frankenstien?”

  Buck’s face twisted in confusion. “Who?”

  Mitch waved off the choice. “Never mind. I guess you’re a little too young for that. Uh, can you give me a hint?”

  “He’s gween and has big muscles!”

  “Oh…and he goes like this?” Mitch bowed up with his two fists and attempted a somewhat quiet Hulk-like roar.

  “Yeah! The Hulk!” Buck gave an identical roar only much, much louder.

  “Okay, okay! Not here, please.” Meagan hissed, trying to shush them. “You two are gonna get us thrown out of here.”

  Mitch laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Well, I bet you get a ton of candy tomorrow night.”

  Meagan groaned. “Yeah, just what he needs. More sugar in his system.”

  Buck nodded excitedly, his face lit up with a huge smile. “Aw you coming with us?”

  “Um, I volunteered to pull the hay ride trailer full of parents and kids for trick or treating tomorrow evening. Red insists that a single trailer is less dangerous than everyone going in separate cars.”

  She nodded, keeping her arms crossed tightly at her chest. “We’ll be on that hay ride, also.”

  Mitch squatted in front of Buck and gave him a big smile. “Well, then I guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow night, little man.”

  “Okay, see ya!” Buck took off down the aisle like a shot, followed by his mom, who grabbed his hand to stop him.

  “Buck!” she hissed. “What did I say about running in the store?”

  He stopped long enough to face her. “Um—it’s not safe?”

  She raised her finger to point at his nose. “That’s right. You could hurt yourself or someone else, remember?”

  He nodded once. “I wememba, Mom.” He went to wipe his nose on his sleeve.

  “Don’t you dare!” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped his nose. “Blow.”

  He did as his mom asked and grinned up at Mitch. “Bye!” He waved just before he headed off down the aisle.

  Mitch laughed as he watched the boy bounce from one side of the aisle to the other. “Man, I wish I had that kind of enthusiasm for life.”

  Meagan stuffed the tissue in her pocket and pulled out a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her backpack. “I wish I had that kind of energy. Just for a week or two, anyway.” She squirted some of the clear gel in her hands and rubbed them together. “I could make a serious dent in my to-do list.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. So, how long does he have to wear that brace on his arm?”

  “It’s been two weeks and the doctor said at least four. It’s just a hairline fracture rather than a full break, but he didn’t want to take any chances with it not healing as it should.” She stared off after Buck.

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry,” she said, stuffing the bottle into the zip compartment of her backpack. “You’ll be too busy driving to see much of us.”

  “Meg—”

  She raised her hand to cut off his reply. “Look, I get that you’re not ready for a relationship, Mitch. It’s cool. Forget it.”

  Mitch watched her push her buggy over to her son, just in time to thwart Buck’s efforts to reach a bunch of bananas from the top of the heap.

  He knew he’d hurt her…again. What he saw as pure and simple concern for her safety, she deemed as nothing less than rejection. Considering his words and actions in the past, he couldn’t very well blame her.

  Forget it, she’d said.

  If only it were that simple.

  CHAPTER 23

  Hulks and Heroes

  Mitch sat in an empty lot near the middle of the block, waiting for the trick or treaters and their parents to catch up to him. Red and Tiffany had decorated a trailer with lights and bales of hay for everyone to sit on. The method of dropping them off and waiting had kept the cumbersome vehicle out of the heavily trafficked areas for most of the evening.

&
nbsp; Halloween night in Small town, USA had changed in one significant way. Judging by the number of cars on the streets, nobody walked anymore. Hell, when he and Sarah were kids, they’d set off on foot with their dad to visit the houses on their block.

  Mitch watched nervously from the side view mirrors of his truck, cringing as the silhouettes of costumed children stood out in relief against the headlights of multiple vehicles. He prayed everyone was watching their children closely.

  He raised the volume on the country station radio he’d been listening to just in time to hear Trace Adkins belting out Swing. He smiled to himself, picturing Tex on the bandstand at the club a couple of nights ago. To Mitchell’s surprise, the big man had swung his hips and lip-synced his way through Ladies Love Country Boys. His looks and mannerisms had been close enough to the real Trace that he’d walked off with the club’s “Look Alike” cash prize of $100. He shook his head, remembering how women were hanging off that son of a bitch by the end of his ‘performance’.

  Mitch hadn’t discovered until the next day that he’d narrowed the swarm down to one woman. Tex had shown up at his place, wearing a remarkably sheepish, though somewhat satisfied grin. As it turned out, he’d spent the entire night acquainting himself with Niki, Meagan’s roommate. Mitch assumed Tex had taken her to one of the two hotel rooms he and Haley had booked for the night.

  Mitch had spent the better part of fifteen minutes chewing his friend’s ass out. He’d tried to make Tex see that a one-night-stand with Niki could only mean trouble between Meg and himself.

  “How?” Tex had asked. “You have nothing to do with this. I barely even saw you all night. Besides,” he’d thrown in, “Nicole is thirty years old. Plenty old enough to know what she wants.”

  “That doesn’t matter, and you damned well know it! If you hurt her, I’ll be guilty by association—plain and simple.”

  Haley had shrugged and eventually agreed with him, telling her brother that the bonds of friendship between women didn’t always have to make sense…they just were.

  Something had been off with Tex since then. Some strange look on his old bud’s face had signified a change, a shift, in the paradigm of Tex’s former attitude toward women. Yep. He definitely sensed a shift—major or minor—it still wasn’t clear to him.

  Mitch popped a butterscotch candy in his mouth and frowned at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Change, good or bad, was always cause to be on the alert.

  “Don’t run, Buck!”

  Meagan’s voice cut through his contemplations like a hot knife to butter. He stepped out of the truck in time to see her make it back to the trailer first.

  Buck held up his glow in the dark trick or treat bucket like it was a prizefighter’s gold belt. “I got candy, Mitch.”

  Mitch lifted him onto a bale of hay circling the edge of the trailer. “Hey, let me take a look at that haul.” He made a show of checking out Buck’s container full of goodies. “Yep, you got enough there to keep your dentist happy for a good while.”

  Meagan pulled her son’s foot closer so she could retie his sneaker. “And his mother broke and exhausted. Every overly energetic almost-four-year-old boy needs more sugar in his diet.”

  “Aw hell, Meg, we did it and our folks survived. Besides, if it weren’t for Halloween, you may never have discovered how good your son looks in hulky green muscles.”

  “I gotta admit he’s a handsome little devil.”

  “I’m not a devil. I’m the Hulk.”

  Mitch laughed. “That’s right, and whatever you do, Mom, don’t make him angry—”

  “—because you won’t like me when I’m angwy,” Buck finished. He faced Mitch and roared, bowing his bulked up plastic green arms. Mitch roared back at him, bowing his arms as well. The two of them joined forces and roared in unison.

  By the time Mitch turned his watchful eye on Meagan, she was trying hard not to laugh at their antics, but losing the battle. She broke finally, ruffling her son’s hair above his green painted face and grinning at him. “You’re such an adorable little mutant!” She stifled a yawn and rested one booted foot on the trailer. “I don’t know about you Mr. Hulk, but I’m ready to call it a night. I’ve still got some studying to do.”

  “But you haven’t made it to the haunted house yet. I think that’s our next stop.”

  “Yeah, I want to go to the haunted house!” Buck started jumping up and down on the bed of the trailer.

  “Okay. We’ll go, but that’s the last one. You already have enough candy there to last you until next Halloween.” That seemed to satisfy the miniature Hulk enough to sit still for a minute.

  “Jeez-Louise! You’d think he’d had enough of haunted houses, wouldn’t you? Being that…well… you know,” she finished weakly, before biting her lower lip.

  Mitch tried, he really tried, to stop the spontaneous snort from erupting. He failed miserably. Before he knew it, he and Meagan had both doubled over in hysterical laughter, while Buck watched on, looking thoroughly confused.

  Meagan wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “I can’t breathe,” she said, gasping for air as she straightened and held her sides.

  “Oh God…that timing couldn’t have been more perfect if you’d planned it!” Mitch wiped his eyes on the cuff of his long sleeved shirt.

  “I didn’t,” she insisted.

  “I know you didn’t. That’s what made it so damn funny.” Without thinking, he pulled her into his arms and gave her a long, lingering kiss on the lips. Her guttural groan made him pull back suddenly. Clueless as how to explain himself or justify his actions, he simply set her away from him. He took two steps back and turned to go sit in the truck.

  After instructing her son to stay right where he was, Meagan met Mitch in the front of the truck. She pulled him around, her face a perfect composite of anger and hurt. “What the hell, Mitch?” she hissed.

  “I know…I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.” His words sounded lame to his own ears. He could only imagine how they sounded to her.

  “You know, I’m a little tired of your mixed signals. One minute you act as though you want me, then you push me away. I have had about all the rejection I can take from one man. I don’t think this ‘friendship’ of ours is healthy for me, Mitch. Maybe you’d better keep your distance from both me and my son from now on.”

  “Meagan, wait…” He grabbed her arm to stop her from walking away. The crunch of tires meeting pavement caught his attention as a small sports car turned down the street, its rpms revving at an entirely too high rate of speed for a street crowded with trick or treating children.

  “Buck?”

  The single word had his head whipping around to where the child should have been seated, but wasn’t.

  “Buck, noooo!”

  The screech of tires and a sickening, bone-breaking thud preceded Meagan’s horror-filled scream.

  CHAPTER 24

  Halloween Hell

  The lights of Lake Coburn winked and sparkled in the night sky. Meagan stood there, her head pressed against the large plate glass window, just outside the 3rd floor surgery waiting room. The room itself was full—too full—of people, and she couldn’t take it, had to get out. She knew they meant well. They were all concerned about her son.

  The fact remained, that if Buck didn’t pull through this surgery, it wouldn’t be their loss. It would be her loss. Her loss and her fault—hers—and hers alone.

  Her eyes drifted closed, shutting out the steady ribbon of car headlights travelling over the I-10 bridge.

  “Megs.”

  She didn’t need to see him to know the voice. Mitch stood behind her, torn up, blaming himself, wanting to make things better for her. He couldn’t. Not this time. And if Buck didn’t come out of this surgery perfectly fine, he never would, but she didn’t blame him in any way, whatsoever.

  “It’s not your fault, Mitch. It’s mine. He’s my son, and I should never have taken my eyes off of him—not even for a second.”

  �
�Can you turn around? Please?”

  “I don’t want to see anyone right now, Mitch. I can’t have anyone trying to console me or tell me everything is going to be fine. And if things go south, I absolutely do not want to hear the words ‘It’s God’s will’ from anyone. So, if you want to help me, you can go in that room and tell them all not to say that to me…ever. Because if they do, I will surely…” She clamped her jaw and spoke through clenched teeth. “I will…lose…my…shit.”

  “I-I can’t keep you from losing your shit right now, Megs. I’m too damn close to losing my own.”

  His voice reminded her of silk running over broken glass, jagged and catching. She opened her eyes, letting the lights from outside come into focus, and then turned slowly to face him.

  If anyone had told her another human being could look that miserable over someone else’s child being hit by a car, she’d never have believed it. The man was hurting every bit as much as she was.

  She supposed it shocked her so badly because the contrast was greater. He’d had a much longer distance to fall than she before hitting rock bottom. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t help but go to him.

  Without saying a word, she looped her arms around his waist, and laid her face against his heaving chest. Silently, she willed his breathing to even out, the rapid beating of his heart to slow, and his tears to stop.

  Meagan hadn’t realized until that moment of seeing Mitch so near broken, how being needed by another adult could be so empowering. She practically felt her strength seeping into him, melding with his own, and multiplying, increasing to all-time highs for them both. Buoyed by a sudden realization that things would be fine, she began to relax in the knowledge, letting that sense of inner peace seep into every pore and nerve ending in her body. The two of them stood in silence, holding each other, united in their concern for Buck.

  You’re stronger together.

  Meagan started at the voice, then smiled as she hugged him tighter. “I think so too, Mitch.”

  He put her at arm’s length, stared down at her, his gaze curious. “Did you hear that?”

  Her own gaze narrowed. “That wasn’t you?” She frowned as he shook his head. “What did you hear?”