“So maybe your big date wasn’t such a disaster,” Nat suggested. “Maybe Sky needed to see your response to a situation like that to know how you’d react—and how she would, too.”
“I still don’t know that I’m ready for a relationship,” he confided.
“Regardless, it looks like you’ve got one.”
“I don’t even know how long I’m going to be in Haven.”
Nat smiled then. “That’s what I said, too—five years ago.”
But Jake knew he couldn’t stay in Haven.
This was only a temporary detour in his life, and he’d get back on track as soon as he found the track again.
But as he settled in his usual seat for the meeting, he found himself wondering if he was really even looking. And as he listened to others talk, not about the traumas they’d endured but the struggles that came after, he wished that he could do the same.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about his experience, but that he couldn’t. Every time he thought he was ready to say something, his throat would close up so that he couldn’t even speak.
Tonight, after Doug Holland—who’d survived friendly-fire in Syria—finished talking about his ongoing struggle with anger management, Jake decided it was his turn. He was ready to open the gates and let the demons out.
My name is Jake Kelly...
The words were there, but they wouldn’t come out.
Apparently he wasn’t ready to open the gates after all—or maybe they were rusted shut.
* * *
He’d enlisted because he wanted to serve and defend his country. To not just defeat the bad guys but seriously kick their asses and return home a bona fide hero.
By the time Jake was halfway through his first tour, he was no longer concerned about being hailed a hero—he just wanted to make it home alive.
He was proud to wear the uniform. To be a Marine like his dad and his brother. But life in a war zone was a special kind of hell, particularly when the bad guys weren’t readily identifiable. The enemy was nowhere and everywhere, and if a man let his guard down for half a second, he could end up dead...
Ask Jonesy, the radio operator who’d gone outside the wire to retrieve an errant football. Except that no one could ask Jonesy anything anymore, because he’d been taken out by sniper fire.
Jake’s recon team had a new radio operator now. Corporal Anderson Walker was a third-generation Marine, earning him the nickname Trey. He didn’t play football and he sure as hell didn’t venture outside the wire without a combat helmet and body armor.
But he was a good man.
All the men on his recon team were good men.
Molly nudged his shoulder, waking him before the memory-slash-dream could turn into something darker.
He drew in a deep breath and pushed himself up in bed.
“You want to go for a walk?” he asked.
She waited patiently while he pulled on some clothes.
The night was dark, the sky full of stars, the moon a crescent of silver. The stillness of the countryside had taken some getting used to after living back in San Diego for the past few years. Just as he knew the faster pace of San Diego would take some getting used to after living in Haven for several months.
If he went back to San Diego.
He frowned at that thought.
Of course he was going back. He never intended to stay in Haven permanently—just until he got his life on track, however long that might be.
* * *
Later that day, Jake was again in the converted barn, taking inventory of the equipment and supplies and wondering what the heck he was going to do with everything, when Molly barked and left her usual post by the open doors. There weren’t many things that drew her from his side, unless they were rabbits, squirrels or Ashley and Rey. So he wasn’t surprised when his young neighbor stepped inside the workshop.
“What’s going on with you and Sky?” she asked without preamble.
“What makes you think there’s anything going on?”
“I’m very intuitive,” she said.
“Isn’t that just a fancy word for nosey?”
“I’ve been called that a few times, too,” she admitted. “But most people cut me some slack because I didn’t have a father for the first twelve years of my life.”
“Lots of kids grow up in single-parent homes. How is that an excuse to butt into other people’s business?”
“In this case, one of those other people is my sister,” Ashley pointed out. “So that kinda makes it my business.”
“I don’t think Sky would agree with you on that.”
“Probably not,” the kid acknowledged. “But I can’t help but worry about her.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she’s always so busy taking care of other people that she sometimes forgets to take care of herself.”
“Maybe you are intuitive,” he noted. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not nosey.”
“I saw her Jeep in your driveway when my mom brought me home from Chloe’s the other night.”
“And?”
“And then she didn’t come home until three o’clock in the morning,” Ashley said.
Though he’d teased Sky about having a curfew, he hadn’t realized she’d stayed so late—or that she apparently had reason to be concerned about the example she was setting for her sister.
And if he no longer rushed Sky out the door as soon as they finished making love, she seemed to accept that he wasn’t yet ready to let her stay overnight. That he wasn’t yet ready to let her know all his demons. That his freak out at the restaurant was only the tip of the iceberg.
“But you don’t know for certain that she didn’t go somewhere else between the time that you saw her Jeep in my driveway and when she got home,” Jake pointed out.
“No,” she acknowledged. “But she was smiling when she came up the stairs, and she’s not usually in a good mood when she comes home after dealing with some kind of crisis.”
He was pleased by this confirmation that Sky had left his bed obviously satisfied, but it was the latter part of Ashley’s comment that prompted him to ask, “Does she ever talk to you about those crises?”
Ashley immediately shook her head. “She would never violate a client’s confidentiality. But I know that Mrs. Morningstar’s boyfriend had naked pictures of Jodie because Jodie is Chloe’s sister and Chloe’s my best friend.”
“How old is Jodie?” he wondered.
“Sixteen.”
“And she let her mom’s boyfriend take naked pictures of her?” His stomach roiled at the thought.
“Oh, no,” Ashley was quick to assure him. “She didn’t know he’d put a nanny cam in one of her teddy bears.”
“I hope he’s in prison now.”
She nodded. “In Minnesota. He was extra—” She wrinkled her nose, as if thinking hard to remember the word.
“Extradited?” he guessed.
“That’s it,” she confirmed.
Jake had known that Sky had to deal with some weighty issues as both a youth counselor and volunteer at the women’s shelter, but he suspected the situation Ashley was talking about had hit particularly close to home for her because of her sister’s connection to the family. Of course, having lived her whole life in Haven, Sky probably dealt with personal connections more often than not.
“So what are you doing in here?” Ashley asked, clearly ready to move on to another topic of conversation.
“Not a whole helluva lot of anything at the moment,” he told her.
She made her way around the room, examining the tools and materials.
“Don’t touch anything,” he cautioned, as she reached toward the miter gauge of a table saw. “I don’t want to have to mop up the blood if you chop off a body part.”
She immediate snatched her hand away. “Eww.”
He held back a smile.
“What is all this stuff?” she asked.
“Mostly tools for making furniture,” he told her.
“Is that what you do?”
He shook his head. “No. My uncle was the carpenter.”
“I know. He made the table and chairs in our dining room, and the fancy cabinet where my mom keeps her best dishes.”
“He made a lot of stuff for other people,” Jake said.
Good, quality furniture that would last for generations, and yet a lot of the furnishings in his own home looked like garage sale markdowns. Of course, good furniture cost money, which was in short supply for Ross and Anna Ferguson. So while his uncle had been capable of making heirloom pieces, he couldn’t afford to keep them.
“What’s this?” Ashley asked, pointing to a tool on one of the workbenches.
“That’s a pocket hole jig.”
“What does it do?”
“It helps you drill pocket holes so that screws can be inserted at an angle, along the grain of the wood rather than through it. It makes the joint stronger and more stable.”
He perched on the edge of a sawhorse, watching as she made her way around the room, pretending to be interested in items whose names and purposes eluded her.
“What are you really doing here, Ashley?” he asked her.
“I’m bored,” she admitted.
“Why don’t you go hang out at the mall?”
“Haven doesn’t have a mall. And I don’t have a driver’s license, which means I’m stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and no one to talk to.”
“Some of us enjoy being in the middle of nowhere with no one to talk to,” he said, deliberately emphasizing the last part.
She didn’t take the hint.
“Maybe you could show me how to make something,” she suggested.
“I’m not sure I remember how half these tools work,” he told her.
“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed.
“But maybe we could spend some time teaching Rey to drop the ball after she fetches it,” he suggested.
The girl immediately brightened. “Okay. But I should warn you, she’s not a very quick learner.”
More than an hour later, after Ashley and Rey had gone, Jake returned to the workshop and picked up a board from the top of the stack. Though he had forgotten most of what his uncle had taught him so many years before, he had an idea in his mind and nothing else to do at the moment.
Ross had enjoyed working with reclaimed wood. He said the old weathered boards reminded him of himself: one part of his life—his struggles as a cattle rancher—finished and another just beginning. The nicks and scars in the wood were proof of its experience and ensured the finished product would have unique character.
Remembering his uncle’s words now, Jake realized that the same analogy could be applied to his own life.
What he’d been, the career he’d had, was no more.
If he wanted to move forward, he needed to reinvent himself.
And maybe he could start right here.
Chapter Twelve
Sky just wanted to go home.
It had been a really crappy day, and now she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head until morning.
Or maybe next week.
She didn’t know what impulse made her turn into Jake’s driveway before she reached the Circle G. In fact, she was about to shift into reverse to pull out again when Molly came around from the back of the house, her tail wagging so happily that Sky couldn’t bear to disappoint the dog by leaving again without at least saying hi.
So she parked, climbed out of her Jeep and crouched to greet the Lab.
“Hey,” Jake said, his lips curving into an easy smile when he saw her. “I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”
She straightened up, suddenly uncertain again. “Is it okay that I stopped by?”
“Anytime,” he replied without hesitation.
Inexplicably, her eyes filled with tears.
“Hey,” he said again, tipping her chin up. “What’s going on?”
“I just had a really crappy day,” she confided.
“You want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “Could you just—never mind,” she decided, already turning back toward her car. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He caught her hand before she could find the handle. “Maybe you were thinking that you needed a friend,” he suggested.
“Are we friends, Jake?”
“At the very least,” he assured her. “And maybe working toward something more.”
She managed a smile, though it wobbled at the edges.
“You want to come in for a cup of coffee?” he invited.
“Yeah, that sounds good, thanks.”
Sky sat at the table while Jake moved around the kitchen, filling the reservoir with water, measuring grounds into the filter.
“How about food?” he asked.
“What?”
“Did you have dinner, Sky?”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “No.”
“I could heat up some leftover pasta for you.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
He retrieved two mugs from the cupboard.
“Want to tell me about your day?”
“I want to, but I can’t,” she said.
“So what can I do?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Let’s try something anyway,” he suggested, tugging on her hands to draw her out of the chair.
She wasn’t really in the mood for sex, but maybe that was why she’d come here. Maybe, subconsciously, she’d known that getting naked and sweaty with Jake would push everything else out of her mind—at least for a while.
But instead of starting to unbutton her blouse or even lowering his head to kiss her, he simply put his arms around her and held her close so that she could hear his heart beating, steady and strong, beneath her cheek.
And it was that gesture—the simplicity and sweetness of it—that broke the barrier and the tears that she’d mostly managed to hold in check could be held back no longer. She cried and cried, until there were no tears left, and all the while, Jake continued to hold her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, when she finally managed to pull herself together.
“There’s no reason to be.”
“I soaked your shirt.”
He glanced down at the damp fabric. “It needed to be washed anyway.”
She tried to smile, but now that the storm of emotion had passed, her head was pounding.
“Do you have any Tylenol?”
“Headache?” he guessed.
She nodded. “I always get one when I cry too much.”
“How often is that?”
“Not very,” she assured him. “I’m usually pretty good at holding it together, but today was just...” She left the sentence unfinished, but he got the message.
He retrieved a bottle of pills from the cabinet and poured her a glass of water.
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t you go to my room and lie down?” he suggested, after she’d downed the pills.
The prospect of falling into bed right now was almost too tempting. “Because I should get home.”
“You’re always looking after everyone else,” he said. “Why don’t you let someone else take care of you for a little while?”
“You already have,” she said. “And I’m grateful.”
“You shouldn’t get behind the wheel with your head hurting. And you’ll feel better after a quick nap.”
“Are
you sure you don’t mind?”
He responded by turning her toward the exit from the kitchen. “Go.”
So she went.
Molly followed, then jumped up onto the bed to stretch out beside her.
“I’m going to assume you’re allowed up here because I don’t want to send you away,” Sky said.
The dog settled in, and Sky fell asleep on top of the covers and stayed that way until morning.
* * *
Whey Sky woke up, it took her a moment to orient herself to her surroundings and realize where she was.
Jake’s bedroom.
She reached over to touch the other pillow, but there was no evidence that he’d been there with her. There were, however, more than a few yellow hairs visible on her pant leg, confirming that Molly had snuggled with her for a while.
She ducked into the bathroom to splash some water on her face, wipe away the smears of mascara under her eyes with a tissue and rinse with the mouthwash on the counter. Then she made her way to the kitchen, where Jake was measuring coffee grounds into a filter.
“Déjà vu,” she said.
He hit the button to start the machine brewing, then turned to greet her with a smile. “Good morning.”
“When I stopped by last night, I didn’t plan to crash,” she told him.
“It wasn’t a problem.”
“Still, you should have woken me up and sent me home.”
“I liked watching you sleep in my bed.”
“You watched me sleep?”
“Not all night,” he assured her. “But I did check on you a few times. Though I needn’t have bothered, because Molly stuck pretty close to your side the whole time.”
Sky lifted a hand and ruffled the dog’s fur, hoping to convey both her affection and appreciation.
“Where did you sleep?” she asked Jake.
“On the sofa.”
“That couldn’t have been very comfortable,” she said, trying to imagine his six-foot frame folded onto a five-foot couch.
His smile was wry. “I’ve slept in a lot worse places.”
“Oh. Right.” Afghanistan and Iraq, she remembered now. And possibly other countries that he hadn’t mentioned. “In that case, I won’t feel too guilty about stealing your bed.”
The Marine's Road Home Page 14