“By appreciating how cute and dumb they are,” he said. “Seriously, having a toddler is like a way more fun version of a drunk friend. They’re still irrational and throw hissy fits over nothing, but you can just pick them up and make them go to bed.”
“How old is KJ, now anyway?”
“He’ll be starting school next year,” Knight said, his voice all proud papa like that was some kind of achievement instead of just a matter of enough time passing since the kid was born. I liked kids all right, but maybe there was some stuff you really didn’t understand until you had your own. I’d never understood why every minuscule ‘accomplishment’ was celebrated, but I could tell he was happy, so I was happy for him. We shouldn’t both be so miserable.
“So I shouldn’t bring booze to this thing, is what you’re telling me?”
“So help me, Bear…”
“Oh, ho ho, not so fun being on the other side is it?”
“Don’t be late, asshole.”
I was still chuckling when I hung up the phone. It felt good to joke around and have a laugh without thoughts of Wyatt creeping in to ruin it.
Just that fast, it was back. I felt guilty for thinking the memory of my best friend was ruining anything. Why did it have to be so hard? Why couldn’t I just move on? Get over it?
The game was in a few hours, so I dragged myself out of bed and headed into the shower, hoping that was enough to get rid of the hangover I had from the previous night, since I really didn’t feel like facing the outside world right at that moment. A run might’ve helped, but I didn’t really have it in me right now. It was just about all I could do just standing under the stream of hot water, letting the steam curl around me.
I eventually managed to wash up and shave — the latter made me look almost normal again. I’d been ignoring the stubbled growth, letting the shadow on my jaw get darker and darker, making me look more and more unkempt and unruly. But a clean shave almost made me look like the good Army boy I used to be. I almost didn’t want to scowl at my reflection.
I threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, slipping on a baseball cap and sunglasses before I headed out. I was thankful for both as soon as the bright sunlight hit my face.
For a minute, I considered heading by Lexi’s to do some more work, but after skipping out on her before she got home yesterday, I kind of felt like a prick. I knew I didn’t make any promises or anything, and hell, she might have only invited me to be polite anyway, but I still felt like a heel for it. I could have at least stayed long enough to tell her I didn’t want to stay for dinner.
While I walked, thinking about yesterday, I couldn’t help but remember how she felt in my arms, so soft and warm. Vulnerable, but resilient too. She was so strong for having to go through all of that, and she was handling it a hell of a lot better than I was, that’s for sure.
I thought about how her soft strawberry scent invaded my senses and refused to leave my memory, still lingering there even then, making me close my eyes and groan.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew that spending time with Lexi was making me see her in a whole new light. It was sparking thoughts and ideas in me that I’d never really had before, and I didn’t really know how to handle that. Especially not with all the associated guilt on top of it.
Even though I didn’t feel like running, I took a walk down the path in the woods. I was headed toward the sports complex anyway, and that wasn’t exactly a short-cut, but it was more pleasant than walking alongside traffic.
The trees were lush overhead, their branches crossed over the path to create a thick leafy canopy that bathed the path in dappled light. It was cooler here, too, thanks to all the shade, and damper, the air smelling like moist soil, the sweet decay of fallen leaves, mixed with wild lavender.
There were birds chirping in the trees, squirrels scampering across branches, but no people.
It was glorious.
After years surrounded by people, locked in a desert with nowhere to hide from the sun, that place might’ve as well been heaven. There were no bombs going off, no stench of men, no one trying to kill me, and no one giving me orders.
Pretty much heaven, yeah.
But I knew even as nice as this was, even as much as I loved the peace, solitude, and isolation, that I couldn’t stay here forever. I couldn’t just hide out in the woods or become some kind of mountain man. I didn’t really know where I fit in with civilian life, but I knew I had to find somewhere. I knew that I couldn’t just sit around waiting for something to fall in my lap.
At some point, I had to stop hiding from the world.
Maybe going to this tee ball game was the first step. Hanging out with my brother and nephew was a normal kind of thing for a normal kind of life. And that was what I needed, right? To figure out what the hell I was doing with myself from that point forward.
When I got to the sports complex finally, people were already starting to filter in. There were families with kids rolling coolers into the little stadium, dads with their little ones perched up on their shoulders, moms slathering on sunscreen to squirming faces. Everyone was here for a good time, a nice family outing.
It was weird that I was there.
A sharp whistle cut through the air, and I turned to face it, spotting Knight a little ways away. I couldn’t believe how much older he looked, but he looked healthy. He looked good. Maybe he’d finally learned to take care of himself now that he had his girlfriend’s son, KJ. No more partying when you had a kid to take care of.
“Shit, I almost wasn’t sure it was you with the Hollywood get-up,” he said. “You hiding from the paparazzi or something?”
I scowled at him. “Got something against not wanting to squint or have sunburn on my scalp?”
He rolled his eyes. “Come on, I’m just teasin’ ya. No need to be so serious. Hey! KJ, come meet your Uncle Bear!”
There was a group of kids all around the same age huddled together, wearing matching uniforms. One of them perked up, his little glasses caught the light as he pushed them up his nose and comes running over to us. He hung behind Knight, clinging to his leg.
“This is your Uncle Bear, KJ. He just got home from Iraq, so maybe you’ll see more of him from now on?” he said, lifting his brows at me.
Fucker. Like he really gave me any choice by saying that in front of the kid.
“Assuming you want to,” I teased, crouching down to his level, holding out my hand.
“Nice to meet you, KJ.”
He looked uncertain for a second, and I realized I probably still looked like a nut with the cap and sunglasses on, so I pulled them off long enough for him to get a good look at me.
“He’s not gonna bite,” Knight said. “Shake his hand.”
“Is it true you’re a soldier?” he asked, eyes were big with wonder.
“I was, yeah. Retired now.” My hand still hung in the air between us, and I don’t think he was going to shake it, but I didn’t pull back, just in case.
“Did you ever kill anyone?” he asked. It was what everyone asked. It was what no one really wanted to answer, but everyone always asked. It’s not so bad when it was a kid. It was a lot more irritating when it was a grown adult who doesn’t understand how insensitive that question is.
“KJ,” Knight hissed.
“What?”
“It’s not polite to ask that,” he snapped.
KJ frowned and looked back at me, clearly chastised. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured him, patting him on the shoulder rather than expecting him to take my hand. “Being a soldier isn’t about killing people. It’s about protecting people. It’s about making sure that the guys in power don’t take advantage of those without it. Most guys in the Army don’t ever want to have to take someone’s life, because we know that person has a family too. They’ve got a dad, a mom, maybe brothers and sisters, maybe even their own little kid. It’s a big deal, and we take it very seriously.”
His eyes were
wide, lips were pressed in a thin line. Maybe it wasn’t the time for a little lesson, but I thought it was better to explain to kids why things are inappropriate instead of just snapping at them. He was old enough to understand the gravity of taking a life if he was old enough to know that was what soldiers did, in my opinion.
“But what about bad guys?” he said, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
I gave him a half-smile and squeezed his shoulder again. “Let me ask you something — you’re playing on a team today, right?”
He nodded slowly, not finding the connection.
“Do you think your team’s the good guys, or the bad guys?”
“Good guys, duh.”
Knight chuckled, seeing where I was going.
“What do you think they’d say if I asked someone from their team?”
His face scrunched up. “What?”
“Pretend for just a minute that you’re on the other team. What are they called?”
“The Stingrays,” he said.
“Okay, so pretend for a minute that you’re a Stingray. What color is their uniform?”
“Blue,” he said, looking down at his white-with-red-stripes.
“Okay, so close your eyes. Imagine that you didn’t join the Suns when your dad signed you up, but you joined the Stingrays, can you do that?”
“But they’re—”
“Just try. Close your eyes,” I said, glaring up at Knight who was still snickering. He should be thanking me that I was giving his kid a little life lesson.
KJ screwed his eyes closed tight. “Okay,” he said warily.
“Now imagine wearing that blue uniform, can you do that?”
“Yeah,” he said nodding.
“Can you imagine them calling the Stingrays onto the field, you and your friends going out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, now are you the good guys or the bad guys?”
“Good,” he said. “I’m a good guy.”
“What about the Suns? Are they bad guys now?”
His eyes flew open, his jaw dropped. “What? Who’s the bad guy?!”
Knight bent down, scooping KJ up. “The point Uncle Bear is trying to make is that most people think they’re the good guys. Even bad guys don’t always realize they’re being bad. And sometimes it’s the people we think that are good guys that are bad.”
KJ frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Everyone’s good and bad,” I said. “We all have both of them in us, and it just matters which we choose.”
“Well I’m good,” he said resolutely.
“Me too, buddy,” Knight said, ruffling his hair. I gave him a skeptical look and he gave me another look that didn’t need any words to get its point across.
“Are you a good guy, Uncle Bear?” KJ asked, his little voice cutting straight through me.
I sighed. That was a hell of a question to be answering with the way things were going in my life. Standing back up to my full height, I slid the cap back on my head, sunglasses followed soon after. I swallowed. I didn’t want to lie to the kid, but if I told him the truth, he wasn’t going to look at me with that same awed look.
Did I think I was a good guy? Did good guys let their best friend kill themselves?
“I try to be,” I said honestly.
Knight set KJ down on the ground. “You better go back to your team, bud. Looks like your coach is looking for you.”
He started to run off, but then stopped and darted back to me, holding out his hand for a handshake.
I held in a chuckle as I took his tiny hand and shaked it. He looked at me with eyes that were so much like Knight’s, but somehow, I felt like the kid sees through me even more than my brother did. It was weird how they did that. How kids managed to know so damn much more than they should.
“I think you’re good,” he said with finality before he went running off to join his team.
Knight shook his head as KJ ran off.
“He’s a cute kid,” I said. “Too bad he looks like his mama,” I grimaced, clapping him on the shoulder with a laugh as he flipped me the bird.
“Come on, we should go grab seats before the tripod parents set up.”
“Tripod parents?”
“Yeah, they bring like this professional-grade camera equipment, I swear, and block out all the action if you don’t get in front of them first.”
I shaked my head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah it is,” he said, pushing through the crowd without any qualms about it. I probably wouldn’t had been so forceful, but apparently these little things are kind of brutal — at least in the stands. The kids were having a blast out on the field, but the parents are way too into it.
Looking around, this couldn’t all be for those two little teams.
“How many games are they having today?” I asked.
“Three I think? KJ’s is second.”
“Didn’t think to mention that, did you?” I asked in a not really serious grumble.
“Would you have come if I did?”
“Touche.”
Part of me hated that he was right that I would had bailed if I realized what a commitment it iwas. I needed to be better than that. It wasn’t just my friends that I needed to step up for. I had a family too, whether I really wanted to admit it or not. Knight and I had never had a great relationship, but if that was ever going to change, it had to start somewhere. Who was to say itwasn’t here? Now?
“How are you adjusting to civvie life?” he asked as he picked out a bleacher with the perfect view.
I shrugged. “As well as I can, I guess? I’m not jumping at slamming doors or car alarms, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He nodded, tight-lipped. “You know, I’ve got no idea what you went through over there? You’ve never really told me anything about it.”
“It’s not really a feel-good story,” I said.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It just… is.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, but finally I broke and started to tell him some of the more mundane shit about my time in the desert. About the shitty food, the sand in places you’d never want it, how guys were so desperate they’d hide out in port-o-johns to jack it. That was the one that gets him.
“Jesus,” he said. “How the hell do you get an erection, let alone orgasm, in a 120-degree box full of other people’s shit and piss?”
That got him a dirty look from one of the other parents, but if Knight noticed it, he didn’t care. Of course he didn’t. He had never cared all that much about rules or propriety. Rules were meant to be broken and people were meant to be shocked, if you asked him.
“Beats the hell out of me,” I said, eyes roving over the crowd. Knight hadn’t been the only one who invited me out there that day. I didn’t actually give Lyla a definitive answer, but I figured if I saw her, I should at least say hello while I was there. It was only polite, and I was trying to do that more.
But the familiar face I found picking through the stands wasn’t Lyla — it’s Lexi. When I noticed where she was headed, I saw Lyla and Clay over there with little Annabelle, but my eyes barely strayed from Lexi.
She was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a baseball cap. Not too different than what I had on, but she looked fucking adorable in it. I couldn’t help but notice the curve of her hips in those jeans, the way her long legs moved as she shuffled through the bleachers. And then I realized she wasn’t wearing a bra, and suddenly my blood went hot.
After the day before, some switch in my brain had been flipped, and I couldn’t look at Lexi the same way I had before. She wasn’t the off-limits girl of my friend. She was the grieving widow of my friend who could very much use some company and comfort.
Or hell, she was just a friend of mine that I had for years, that I suddenly realized I was very attracted to. It didn’t have to be about Wyatt at all. He was the one dumb enough to give her up.
I thought my gaze m
ust have burned her, because she looked over and spotted me almost instantly, waving from the other side of the stands. It wasn’t like there was any real distance over there. I could’ve gone over and said hi and been back here before those kids even got through an inning.
“I’ll be right back. Need to say hi to someone,” I said to Knight, standing up and heading over, eyes locked on Lexi the whole time.
12
Lexi
Dallas was off on the bleachers playing with some friends from his from school that had also been dragged to this ‘baby sport’ as he put it. I guess he was starting to get to that age where being cool was important. And being there certainly wasn’t cool. But abandoning your mom to play with your friends was.
Whatever. Let the kid have fun, I didn’t care. I was a little annoyed he wanted me to buy the hot dog and soda for him and then I was left picking my way through the crowd with it because he didn’t want it.
Guess I’d have a hot dog for lunch.
As I’m winded through people, trying to get back to Lyla and Clay, I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. Like a whisper of air ruffling the fine hairs there. I didn’t know what that feeling was, especially not out there in the open in the middle of the day. Normally that weird feeling was saved for when there was a creepy empty parking lot at night or something.
But it wasn’t really a danger feeling, so I turned around, squinting at the sun. And almost instantly, my eyes landed on him. Bear.
Lyla told me she invited him, but I didn’t expect him to come. I lifted up my hand and waved at him, nearly sloshing soda on myself and narrowly avoiding it. By the time I was seated again, he was coming my way.
I inhaled the hot dog in three bites, making Lyla give me an arched-brow look that suggested I might’ve been crazy. “You’re giving the pregnant lady a run for her money there,” she teased, but I ignored her, trying to down the soda quickly too. I didn’t want hot dog breath.
Bear finally winded his way over to us and nodded, taking off his sunglasses.
I was surprised. He didn’t look completely thrilled to be here, but he also didn’t look like he normally did either. He didn’t look angry or surly or moody.
A Baby for the Soldier (Boys of Rockford Series Book 2) Page 7