Indeed, when he'd taken her as his for the first time—that morning she'd very nearly killed herself getting to him—she had reached out to touch him, but he couldn't allow her to.
Now she'd been doing it for the past two weeks or so, whether he wanted her to or not, regardless of how horrible he'd been to her.
He resolved, then, that he would give himself a few more days to recover more fully.
And then he would go after what it was that he wanted in this life, and woe betide anyone who got in his way.
CHAPTER 7
A s it was, Lawson ended up giving himself almost ten days because he found he was weaker than he had expected to be in the after effects of the illness.
Still, he kept himself as busy as he could, even as he got better, doing the smaller things that he could manage easily, like cleaning up the place—although he knew from both Patsy and Devon that it was Fleur he had to thank for the fact that he could actually see the floor in all of the rooms he'd trashed.
It seemed he was finding out that he owed her more and more every day, and eventually, he intended to pay her back for every single sweet thing she'd ever done for him, even if it took him the rest of his life.
And, although it scared the ever-loving crap out of him to do it, he even got in touch with the local doc who had operated on him, asking for advice about getting into whatever veteran's programs he could at the dreaded hospital—for physical—and mental—therapy. He had finally acknowledged that he had things he needed to deal with on both levels and that he needed help doing so. He might never fully recover in either area, but he was sure as hell going to get as healthy as he could.
Even before he went to his first appointment, though, he forced himself to confront and divorce himself from the booze. He gathered up every single bottle he could find in the house and, borrowing a pickup truck from the farm, brought it all down to the dump, rather than letting it sit in the trash can at home, where it was still easily accessible.
He did the yard work that had been sorely neglected along with everything else—slowly but surely—mowing and trimming the lawn, trimming the hedges around the verandah and even planting some spring flowers. He repaired as much as he could on the house without killing himself—including the pipe she'd hung off of, putting in extra—and extra strong—brackets, just in case she got a wild hair up her ass again, which he could only hope for—and hired old friends to handle that which he couldn't, even to the point of having a fresh coat of paint put on the house.
While he was outside, though, he remained as covered up as he could, still wearing that cowl hood that kept his face from the view of anyone who wasn't staring at him straight on, more as a public service than anything else.
But there was visibly less of him to upset the masses because, while he'd been sick and then convalescing, no one had shaved him. He was sure that it was the last of their worries, as it had been his own. As a result, there was hair on all of his normal, left cheek, and even a reasonable amount of it in quite a few patches on the right. It had grown enough that the hair on his right cheek was long enough to cover a lot, if not all, of what had been the highly visible splotches of ugly assed scar tissue, so that they were quite well hidden and barely noticeable.
He quickly learned to grow and shape and trim it to the best advantage, settling on a style that had him smiling at his image in the mirror for the first time in nearly two years.
There was still the slash of ruddy red skin over and above his eye. That wasn't going to go away. But he looked a damned sight better than he had.
So much so that he cancelled his standing orders at all of the various stores in town one morning when he'd discovered that he needed coffee, and he decided to go and get it himself.
He even eschewed the gloves he usually wore outside. His father's hands had hardly been pretty—they'd been all scarred up from a lifetime of hard work on a farm—barbed wire, ornery livestock, even his mother had accidentally driven a nail into his pinky—"accidentally on purpose," his dad had always said with a wink and a nudge, just to annoy his mother—and left a big old divot in the middle of that pinky from then on.
The long sleeves and long pants stayed, along with shoes, but then, lots of people dressed that way, even in the summer.
The car that had been sitting in the garage, waiting for him to drive it, wouldn't start, of course. Probably a battery problem, so he ended up walking, using the cane he had been given as soon as they had begun getting him up and encouraging him to walk, but that he had never once used voluntarily.
He wasn't going to make it to the big market in town on foot, but there was Kehoe's Corner Store no more than a couple blocks away. Lawson set off slowly, not wanting to tax his bad leg too much, and he was amazed to realize that he wasn't hurting as badly as he thought he would when he finally got there.
Mr. Kehoe had known him since he was a pup, greeting him effusively, and thanking him for his service. Even Mrs. Kehoe came out from behind the counter to hug him and pinch his cheeks—as she always had while he was growing up—with no trace of hesitation.
Until afterwards, when her hand flew to her mouth and she looked positively horrified. "Oh, dear, I hope I didn't hurt you!"
He just grinned down at her, tiny little picture of grandmotherly perfection that she was and winked. "How come you never asked me that when I was younger?" Then he reassured her, "Not at all, ma'am."
"I'm glad then! It's a hard habit to break!"
Mr. Kehoe offered the services of his grandson to collect what he needed around the store, but he took the opportunity to walk up and down the aisles—again, very slowly—with a cart, seeing what was new and different and remembering old favorites that he piled into it that were probably all bad for him, but what the hell.
He even got himself a couple of steaks from their butcher shop, but it wasn't until Mrs. Kehoe had rung everything up for him that he realized that he didn't have a way to get his groceries home easily.
"Take a cart, my boy, take a cart," her husband said expansively, already lifting it out the door and down onto the pavement for him. "I'll send Joseph along in an hour or so to pick it up."
He made his own way down the stairs and thanked the older man profusely, but he merely patted him on the back, whispering, "It'll give you something more substantial to lean on, on the way back home. You might find you're a bit sore after the exercise." He surprised Lawson then by knocking on his left thigh, from which a distinctly non-fleshy sound could be heard. "Lost it in the charge up San Juan Hill. Good to see you up and about, young fella."
Then he disappeared back into the store and Lawson ambled home, more glad for the cart than he wanted to admit by the time he got there.
Joseph appeared promptly an hour later, and he tried to tip the young man, but he staunchly refused. "My grandpa would whup my ass if I took your money, Mr. Fields."
So, he shook his hand and settled for saying thank you, instead, then asked, on impulse, "Joseph?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Does the sight of my face…bother you?"
"Nah," the boy answered guilelessly, and Lawson believed him completely. "My Uncle Teddy came back looking a lot worse than you do. He lost his nose and his ears and all of his hair, too. He can't hide what he looks like at all, but then," the youngster seemed to think for a moment, "I can't remember that he's ever really tried to, either. He just looks like he looks. People stare sometimes, but I think he thinks that's their problem, not his."
Lawson smiled and nodded. "Thanks, buddy."
"You're welcome, Mr. Fields."
WITHIN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, things began to change for him in even bigger ways. The folks at the hospital—the hated hospital, which he'd sworn once he was released from the one in France to return home that he'd never set foot into any kind of again—ever, for any reason—helped him regain even more use of his leg and arm, reversing some of the atrophy that had occurred while he was drowning in that big pool of self-pity.
He'd also been pointed towards a veterans' group that met every Tuesday morning, and there he reconnected with a lot of the guys he used to know, most of them who had been through a lot of the same things he had. Even the few who didn't show any signs of outward disfigurement suffered from the internal kind, instead, which seemed to him to be even more debilitating and harder to fix.
They all went out to lunch afterwards at Minard's Diner, which he refused to do the first couple of times. Eventually, he bowed to peer pressure and relented, allowing himself to be convinced to take his life in his hands and let Conny Rivers—the scourge of their high school class, the one who had put frogs—in various states of dissection—in all of the girls' desks, who had organized a raid on the girls' locker room that had resulted in several suspensions—luckily not his—and who had acted up so badly in Judge Douglas' Civics class that the enormously tall, strong old man had actually hung him out the window by his ankles until he thought that Conny had learned his lesson—drive him there.
He certainly did drive more conservatively than he had when they were younger, and Lawson told him so.
They arrived at the restaurant without incident—Conny was a family man now, with a wife and a couple of babies, so he was quite the reformed juvenile delinquent. The waitresses always had a couple tables pushed together for them at the back, Conny told him on their way in, because they knew that, come noon or so on a Tuesday, they were all going to descend on them for lunch.
As he eased himself up the stairs and into the cramped quarters of the small diner, the first thing he saw was Fleur and Devon having lunch together. His first impulse was to go over there, but he didn't think that Fleur would appreciate that, and he didn't want to ruin her lunch.
On the other hand, he'd never really gotten the chance to thank her properly for what she'd done for him, and he felt quite badly about that. So, he peeled himself off from the back of the group and headed for them.
Fleur saw him first, turning an unhealthy shade of white and looking immediately away from him, setting her silverware down on her plate and staring down at her hands where they lay in her lap.
He saw Devon lean forward in concern, not knowing he was bearing down on them, and ask, "Are you okay?"
But she didn't answer him. She didn't need to. He was already there.
"Don't let me disturb your lunch. I just wanted to come over and say something that I have been remiss in not saying before. I wanted to thank you both—but you, Fleur, in particular—for taking care of me as you did. I will never be able to thank either of you enough for everything you did for me. I won't take up any more of your time, but if there's ever anything I could do for either one of you, please don't hesitate to ask. Enjoy your meal."
Turning away from her was terribly hard. Seeing her sitting there so cowed and quiet and obviously unhappy at his presence made him feel sick to his stomach, but he headed for his friends without attempting to thank her any more, or apologize, or try to comfort her as he desperately wanted to, because he knew it was the right thing to do.
He tried not to stare at them once he sat down, but couldn't keep his eyes off of her. They left after only a few minutes, and he saw that she had barely eaten any of her meal before she got up and headed out of the restaurant ahead of Devon, who shot him a deadly glare before leaving money on the table and heading after Fleur.
The enjoyment of the meal was kind of lost to Lawson from that point on, and Conny picked up on it, and it probably wouldn't even have occurred to him not to have mentioned it.
"We all thought you and Fleur were a sure thing. Did she dump you when came home? Couldn't handle you being uglier than when you left?"
Ignoring the insult entirely as expected, his friend's question nonetheless annoyed him, not because of the subject matter, but because he assumed it was Fleur's fault that they weren't together. "No, exactly the opposite, in fact. She doesn't care about that kind of thing at all. Turns out, I do."
"Huh. Well, you always were an idiot."
Lawson glared at Conny, but Conny just sat there, grinning back at him.
"So you're just gonna lie back and let that draft board reject have your woman without a fight?"
They might not be each other's favorite cousins at the moment, but they were still kin. "Devon has asthma—that's what disqualified him from joining up."
"I would repeat myself, but I think you heard me clearly the first time."
The waitress came to take their orders, and when she'd left, he replied, "It's not that easy."
"It never is with a woman. Well, whatever it is, you'd best fix it, and pronto. She's belonged to you—in every possible meaning of the word—her whole life. You can't tell me, regardless of what you've done to her, that she doesn't still want to be yours rather than his. Time's a wastin'. You two ought to have been long since married, and you should be working every night to keep her at home and full of your babies."
He almost choked on his shepherd's pie. "Classy as always, Rivers. Shakespeare ain't got nothing on you."
As crass as he was, the less civilized side of Lawson agreed with everything Conny was saying. Luckily, he was not—quite—as much of a caveman as Conny was.
Close. But not quite.
Meanwhile, Devon was putting Fleur into his car after they left the restaurant.
When he got behind the wheel, she apologized, "I'm sorry for ruining our lunch, but it was such a shock—I haven't seen him out in public like that, and it startled me."
Devon frowned. "I knew he was branching out a bit, but I didn't mention it to you because I didn't want to upset you. Patsy saw him a couple of weeks ago at the hospital—he's apparently going to physical therapy, and he's even joined a group of vets—the ones at the diner with him—who get together for a kind of group therapy thing where they talk about their experiences during the war."
"Oh, wow. Well, that's a good thing, then. At least, he's not out hoping to scare people to death by jumping out at them from under a bridge or something."
"That's a terrible thing to say!" Devon scolded, although it didn't help that he was giggling at the time, his mind picturing exactly what she'd described.
Nor did it help Fleur that his scolding tone had absolutely no edge to it.
Not like Lawson's had. He could get her to stop doing something she shouldn't be doing just by giving her a particular look. If she ignored it and he had to actually take the time to say something to her, she was going to end up over his knee at some point in the not too distant future.
"I know." Experimentally, just to see how he reacted, she added, "I ought to be spanked for saying that."
Devon gave her an almost annoyed look. "You're a bit old for that, aren't you?"
So much for that.
"It doesn't really work anymore, anyway, because that beard helps to cover up so much! He looks almost like he used to."
"He does."
"And I do sincerely hope it helps him."
"So do I. Maybe he'll find a cute nurse at the hospital."
She had to hide the impulse to frown at that idea. "Maybe." Fleur forced her mind away from that topic. "Wait a minute, Patsy knew, too? And she told you, but not me?"
"Yes."
"So…you two have been talking when I'm not around?"
He really wished this topic hadn't come up at this moment, but then, he supposed that there really wasn't a good time to talk about it. He cleared his throat and answered her calmly, "Yes."
"Oh."
Devon maneuvered the car into her driveway, and Fleur got out as he asked, "Can we…can we talk before you go? I have something to tell you."
She wasn't at all sure she liked the sound of that, but she invited him up onto the couples' swing on the verandah. Her mama was up state, visiting her sister, so at least she wouldn't be peeking through the lace curtains at them and wondering why they hadn't come in—and then jumping to the inevitably incorrect conclusion that he was proposing to her or something, which she would bet
he was never going to do.
"Sure. Shoot."
"This isn't easy to say, and I never meant to hurt you—"
"But you don't love me."
Devon gave her a surprised look. "Um, yes. I'm so sorry—"
"Don't be—you don't need to be, really. I don't love you, either, except as a friend."
She wasn't sure whether she should be insulted by the loud sigh of pure relief that he heaved. "That's exactly how I feel, too! I'm so glad we're on the same page!"
"But I have a question."
"Yes, sure, anything." He was unbelievably glad that she wasn't angry, although he wasn't sure that that feeling was going to make it through what he figured she wanted to know next.
"If you didn't like me, like me, then why did you ask me out in the first place?"
"Well…I did it because I was hoping that my idiotic cousin would see us together and come to his senses."
"You did it to make him jealous?"
"Yeah, but it didn't work."
"No, really?" she asked sarcastically.
"Well, I believed that the two of you belonged together."
"Past tense?"
Devon sighed. "Yes. I'm sorry I'm such a coward—I should have decked him when I heard him talk to you like that, sick or not."
"No thanks. I prefer you not in traction."
He chuckled. "Bless you. So do I."
"So," Fleur said, turning towards him and holding out her hand. "Friends?"
Devon grinned broadly and shook her hand. "Friends."
Impulsively, Fleur leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then rubbed the traces of her lipstick off his skin.
Of course, that was the exact moment when Conny was driving Lawson home, and they both saw her kiss him.
Conny shook his head as he tsked. "Man, like I said, you'd better move quickly or you're going to lose that girl."
Lawson didn't trust himself to say anything, but both of his hands were balled into tight fists on his knees.
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