“Are you?”
Though it appeared to be a simple question, Jamie sensed there was some depth behind his mild words. Wondering if he was really trying to ask if she was emotionally available, she considered his inquiry carefully even though she knew the answer even before she spoke. “I haven’t spoken to Clay in a year now. He’s involved, and from what I’ve heard he’s happy. I wish him no ill will and hope he finds happiness someday.”
At that point, she decided it was time for a change in the subject. Discussing her ex-husband was not her idea of a pleasant first dinner. “Did you like your dinner?”
The abrupt change of subject seemed to catch him off guard, but he collected himself rather quickly. “That was one of the most memorable meals I’ve had in a long time. If I had known what a good cook you were, I would have begged a meal sooner.”
“Begged a meal?” She grinned at him.
“Well, you did make me pay last night.”
Realizing that he was teasing her, she laughed. “I love it when your sense of humor makes an appearance, Andrew. You need to work on letting it out more.”
“I am, believe me,” he replied. “I’m trying.”
Falling silent, Jamie took a moment to study him intently. The truth was that he had made great strides. Remembering the lifeless and shocked gaze that had held her captive on the day he was released, she realized that he had been changing on a daily basis. A little bit more of his true personality showed with every passing day.
“I see it. I’m glad what happened hasn’t changed you permanently.”
He shook his head. “Oh, it’s changed me plenty. Whether or not I can overcome what’s happened is another matter that only time will tell.”
Coming to her feet, she began to gather up their dishes. Together they cleared the plates, and Andrew wrapped the leftovers while she rinsed and loaded her dishwasher. It was nice to work together, and she noted quickly how well they did. They never bumped into one another, and Andrew seemed to have no problem finding things in her kitchen. He maneuvered through her drawers like he had been living there for years.
She had just turned on the dishwasher when Andrew returned from the dining room with the two candles in his hands. He placed them on the counter and leaned against it with his arms crossed over his chest.
She hung the dishtowel on the rack and smiled at him. “I know you saw some terrible things, but I’m going to help you forget.”
His brow rose, and again the corners of his mouth deepened. “You are, huh? Am I some sort of project?”
Unfazed, she nodded her head. “Absolutely.”
“In that case, good,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m looking forward to it.”
She laughed in return. “Don’t you worry, I’ll make it well worth your time.”
Reaching out, he grasped her wrist and pulled her into his arms. As his head lowered for their first kiss of the evening, she saw him smile. His voice was deep and full of a promise of his own. “All the better.”
Chapter 16
A slight movement under her cheek brought Jamie slowly awake. She had not meant to fall asleep on Andrew’s chest, but apparently the previous late night with him had left her more tired than she had thought. When her eyelids fluttered open, she realized that the movie she had put in for them to watch had already finished, and Andrew had tuned it to a channel that was presently showing a group of soldiers in military fatigues bearing guns and heavy packs climbing up the side of a rugged mountain. The clock on her cable box revealed it was shortly past ten.
She raised her head wearily and looked up at him. “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”
The arm that had held her close tightened slightly. “It’s okay. It was nice to be close for a while.”
“But I’m crushing you,” she said as she straightened.
“No, you feel good.”
Smiling, she turned her attention to the television. “What are you watching?”
Andrew inhaled deeply, his chest rising and lifting her away from him. Before she could escape the confines of his heavy arm, he pulled her tight again. “I was going to be a career military guy, but I guess the higher powers had other ideas for me… We were on a night mission when we were attacked,” he said softly.
Jamie tensed immediately but remained silent. She wanted to encourage him to speak, though his voice was so low that the sound of the television almost drowned him out. His chest rose under her cheek again when he took another deep breath. “You know, we never really talked about it while we were there. We tried to keep a good face on and bury everything inside. If morale slipped for any of us, the whole team would be affected. So when bad things happened, we’d talk about it briefly and then move on to the task at hand. It was always about the mission.”
Nodding her head briefly to indicate that she was still listening, Jamie held her tongue. This was an important step, and it was a step toward healing.
“Attacks were not uncommon. Though in the beginning we subdued the resistance fairly quickly, a lot of what was reported back was propaganda… at least while I was over there. They would back off for a time to regroup, but then they would come back and try to catch us off guard… They did catch us that night Adam mentioned.
“We were on an open road. Funny that we were, considering most of the time we were high in the mountains. But we had gone down to lower ground, in a valley. There were fields on one side, and a ridge on the other. The moon was just about full, so visibility was good… They were on the ridge waiting for us. We had heard some radio chatter and knew they were setting up, but we didn’t know where or when.
“An IED hit the lead vehicle. Even with armor, it was not a pretty sight, and it blocked the road forward. They were coming up from behind. It was a stay and fight situation.”
Jamie shuddered, imagining their fear. “So you fought?”
Ignoring her comment, he continued. He was lost in the memory. “We’d been in situations like this before; we knew what to do. Everyone took position while a few of us went to check on the first truck. There were four guys in there.”
Though she wanted to ask if any of them made it, she kept quiet.
“I was pulling our translator out of the truck when the convoy pulled up. It was too big a force approaching, and we had to get to more secure ground.”
He paused again, his voice growing deeper as he went back to that evening. “They were still laying down cover fire and protecting our rear, but no one really considered what was ahead of us, even though it’s the IEDs that usually warn us of an impending ambush… We finished loading up the guys from the first truck and drove off-road to get out of there.
“That wasn’t unusual for us either. We always tried to take different routes so they couldn’t guess our movements, but this night was a little different. We had to get to a safe position. Sitting exposed was a death warrant, and we all knew it.”
Jamie shuddered. She had tensed thinking about the scene he painted, and she wondered how he had managed to keep his cool when they were trapped.
“Everyone was shouting, excited and confused. It was hard to tell who was hurt and who may not make it. All we could smell in the vehicle was burnt flesh. Our translator was burned pretty bad but still breathing when I put him in the truck… That smell will stay with me forever.”
A tremor went through him, and Jamie tightened her arm around his midsection. The hard flatness of his belly was tight and tense. She began to stroke him lightly in an effort to relax him, but his mind was miles and years away.
“Most of us didn’t know how to deal with everything, Jamie. We all stuffed it down. I don’t know how to react anymore. Do I keep denying it? Or do I try to express it? If I talk about it, it brings it all back. If I don’t, I’m in denial. Which is worse?”
Jamie raised her head and stared up at Andrew. His pale eyes were glowing with an emotion she had never seen before. Normally so guarded and piercing, his eyes had seemed cold and disengaged, but at the mom
ent they were shining in the semi-darkness. She suspected that the dam was about to bubble over.
“Do what feels best for you… maybe over time it will get easier,” she whispered in return.
“We drove across the field. Brad was driving. Everyone was screaming in the back. The ride was bumpy and the injured guys from the first truck were taking the ride hard. With all the shouting, Brad couldn’t tell who was saying what. He was driving too fast, too recklessly. One of the trucks behind us sent us a warning, but I think Brad was too panicked to stop or slow down. When you finally realize that it’s real, that the popping sounds are real guns aiming for your head to blow you away, your instincts kick in. It becomes all about survival, and sometimes you react without thinking. All he could think of was getting us out of there to safer ground.”
He paused and stared down at her. “We were all pretty tight, a unit of guys who stuck together by an unspoken code. But he was my best friend, Jamie.”
Jamie could feel tears rising in her eyes, but she held them back for him. The raw emotion in his voice warned her that what he was about to tell her was very traumatic for him.
“They were yelling at us to slow down and take it easy. No sentries had been through the area and they weren’t sure if it was cleared or not... Brad just ignored them and kept going. The next thing I knew there was another explosion and we were flying through the air. Everything went black. The truck flipped, and we were all tossed about like paper dolls. I had climbed in the back to help provide cover, so I was thrown, which I guess was a blessing. It was silent for just a few seconds then all hell broke loose. People were screaming, but I couldn’t see anything. All I could feel was the pain. It’s hard to describe, but when all of your internal organs are aching from the blast it hurts. I was also hit with shrapnel, but I lived. The others, four of them, didn’t.
“I’ve seen lots of dead people; maybe too many for my liking. I still see bodies of men missing arms, legs, heads, you name it… but nothing sticks in my memory like when they pulled those guys out of the truck.”
His voice shook at that point. Jamie sat up slightly and moved her head to his shoulder where she pressed her face against his neck. Wrapping both arms around him, she hugged him tight.
“I think Brad would have been ashamed of himself for losing it had he made it, so it was almost a mercy killing. Those guys – all dead.”
His voice broke. Jamie gave him a few moments to regain his composure before asking quietly. “What did you do?”
He cleared his throat while his free hand came up to press against the bridge of his nose. “It’s fuzzy. The explosion was so loud and my ears were ringing, but I remember the other guys running up and shouting at me to hold still. Our medic was telling me to stop moving. I guess I was fighting them pretty hard and screaming at them to let me up so I could kick some ass... I don’t really remember. Afterwards they told me that it was a good thing my helmet had stayed on. It had hit me from the eye to my neck and they were afraid I would bleed out. It looked like hamburger. Well, you’ve seen part of the scar.”
Against her back, she felt his fist clench. “They tried to shoot down the copter that flew us out of there. Air support was finally able to hit them hard back, but not before two other guys were hit…
“Then they told me in the hospital that I was done. I had too many pieces lodged too close to my cervical spine to operate on, so I was no longer fit for duty.”
Swallowing hard, she placed several soft kisses against his neck. “You’ve been through so much.”
“No more than all the other guys I was with.”
“You’ve all experienced a lot, Andrew, and those times will stay with you for the rest of your life. There’s nothing wrong with feeling grief and anger.”
He nodded impatiently. “I’ve heard all that before. They would tell us to take it out on our enemies, but look at me now. The state became my enemy; the public I served, killed for and almost died for did. My family is fractured. My brother…”
Jamie pressed two fingers against his lips. “Andrew…”
Shaking his head, his hand tightened around her. “I came home half the man I was when I left. When I received my discharge, I had no idea what I was going to do. Even when I went to see Brad’s wife and his little daughter it was just different. I was an outsider in the community that had been my home. My girlfriend at the time couldn’t handle it. She took off right after I hit stateside.
“I had symptoms that they couldn’t diagnose well back then. The doctors were trying to figure out what was wrong with all us guys who came home and couldn’t sleep. They were throwing medication at me left and right. At one point I had five prescriptions… Since they couldn’t really tell me what to do and how to cope, I started drinking.”
She had wanted to know, but now that it was coming so quickly she was not sure how to react. Sorrow, anger, fear, shock, all of those emotions welled up inside her. Raising her head slowly, Jamie met his steady gaze with as much strength as possible.
“I drank for a while before I realized that self-pity wasn’t going to help me get any better. So I decided to quit drinking and come home. Adam finished up his advanced training and was deploying to Iraq. It was hard to put on an enthusiastic face for my little brother, but I tried. I put on my positive face and hid it all from him – I kinda wish I hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t be so torn up right now if he knew what he was feeling was what I’d gone through.”
“So you think that he’s going through what you went through?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Is that why he’s so angry at you?”
“I always protected my brother. I failed him this time, and he hates me for it.”
That explained a lot about his behavior during their dinner, and Jamie wondered how Andrew could have been so different when she first met him. After all, that first encounter had charmed her. He seemed so different from the man he was describing.
“It was so easy for the courts to use my problem to their benefit when they were accusing me of murder. They announced that I’d snapped after witnessing prolonged combat and stress. It was so easy to believe yet so hard to treat. So I ended up shunned and sent to prison, right after I made the conscious choice to take my health into my own hands.”
“That’s my fault. I should’ve been there for you.”
“You’ve said that before,” he said. His eyes closed briefly as he shook his head. “Jamie, when I talked to you that night I thought that I was finally getting my life back. I left feeling a lot happier and more of my normal self than I had since my first deployment. I thought I was becoming me again.”
Jamie smiled, but it faded when she realized how quickly that moment was taken away from him.
“The next thing I knew I was being arrested. Then I was looking at life in prison. At first I thought it was all a joke, but that didn’t last long. I was wearing prison stripes and locked in a tiny cell.”
“Was it that terrible?”
He studied her for a moment without speaking then shook his head. “I went in thinking I would just keep to myself, but I learned quickly that it doesn’t work that way. It makes you a target. The first few months were hell, and I ended up in the hospital. But I still had so much rage, and I remembered my training well… After I got back to my cell, people decided that I was too much of a loaded cannon to mess with. I chose my … I guess I can’t call them friends… associates I guess, very carefully. I just preferred to be alone.
“It was hell, Jamie, don’t get me wrong. I guess I shouldn’t say that it wasn’t that terrible because that isn’t true. It was years off my life where all I could do was think: think about war, think about the mess my life was, think and rage that these people had turned against me. I would’ve preferred going back to Afghanistan than sitting and rotting in that hell hole with people that would just as soon spit in your face than smile at you.”
Seeing the horror in her eyes, he stopped speaking. She leaned over
and pressed a kiss on his cheek, and then she moved to his chin before finally coming to rest on his scar. She let her lips linger briefly before sitting back. “I understand why you never smile,” she said softly. “But I’ll make sure you laugh again if it kills me trying.”
He reached over and pulled her atop his lap. His hands slipped up her back and over her shoulders until he cupped both her cheeks in his hands. As he drew her face to his, he spoke one last time. “Jamie, you’ve already saved my life.”
He kissed her then as desperately as he had the night before. Despite his urgency, she relaxed against him and kissed him back with all the emotion he had raised inside her with his story. Even though he claimed he was only half the man he used to be, to her he was the strongest, smartest, bravest person she had ever met. He was a man that had gone on when so many others would have given up. In her eyes he was a man in the truest sense of the word, scars or no. When he slipped his arm under her knees and came to his feet, she also realized that he was the man she was falling in love with.
***
Though he had been expecting it and waiting for it to happen, Andrew watched Ford approach with a slight feeling of trepidation. After an early return to his grandmother’s house midweek, Adam had rented a car and driven off to San Diego to visit with more friends. With his brother out of town, Jamie had insisted that he continue to stay at her house, and two of those days during the week he had not snuck out at dawn, preferring to lie next to Jamie’s soft body for as long as possible. In addition, his truck had been parked in her driveway for most of the weekend, so it was just a matter of time before one or all of her brothers descended upon him. He actually felt some relief that Tuesday afternoon that it was just her oldest brother and his boss that appeared.
His work had been exemplary, and Ford had on more than one occasion made a comment that he hoped Andrew would not leave him for something better due to the fact that he was ‘damn smart’. However, at that moment Ford did not look as though he was coming to praise him.
If We Dare to Dream Page 24