Hard to Lose (The Play Hard Series Book 4)

by K. Bromberg

  “But you’re not telling him about the letter because he doesn’t know who you are, right?”

  “Something like that,” I say quietly, waiting for his lecture about honesty and being upfront.

  But it doesn’t come.

  That, in and of itself, has me pursing my lips and wondering what he’s not saying.

  “Okay,” he says. “So you found the pitcher who’s no longer a pitcher. You’re volunteering at the place he volunteers and trying to do good things there. Then at nighttime, you’re getting to know him better. Then, what? You’re just coming back home in the near future?”

  “I guess Dekk and Brex didn’t tell you the whole of it,” I say in regards to the getting to know him better part.

  “Oh, they told me all right. I know you’re dating him. Doing things with him.” He clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable with that aspect, and I fight my grin.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Did you expect me to say something else?” he asks.

  “You’re not going to tell me to get my ass back to New York because I’m slacking in getting shit done?”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything. I could tell you that you have contracts piling up and requests coming in that need your attention. That regardless of your absence, I’m impressed with the progress you’ve made with marketing and social media and excited to see how this will help KSM move forward. I could sit here and badger you with questions, and tell you that it’s ridiculous to play out this charade, one that I hope won’t hurt you in the end. But I won’t. When you left here, you told me you’d be home on a set date, and I’m going to trust that you will be since you haven’t told me otherwise.”

  I watch Gunner doing normal, weekend things and wonder how it’s going to feel to miss this when I do go home. The ease. The comfort. The having someone who gets me.

  “Honey?” my dad says.

  “Hmm?” I don’t trust myself to talk, because I think my voice would betray the nonchalance I’m attempting about leaving here.

  To leaving Gunner.

  “Remember this. The best relationships are the ones you never saw coming.”

  “Who said anything about a relationship?”

  His chuckle is low and comforting and a tad mocking. “Because I know you, and if my Chase wasn’t going to get the prize, she would have had her shit packed and be headed home as soon as possible. My Chase doesn’t like failing at anything and so—”

  “I didn’t fail,” I say and then realize it only serves to prove his point.

  “No, but you didn’t come home.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “That tells me all I need to know.”

  “Dad.” The lone word is an exasperated sigh.

  “Don’t apologize, Chase. Enjoy your time. Paint the town red. Sometimes life just happens and you have to jump on the merry-go-round till it’s time to get off.”

  I don’t know why tears come to my eyes but they do, and I blink them away. “How do you know when it’s time?” My voice is barely a whisper when I ask.

  “Sometimes it’s never time. Sometimes you have to get used to that incredible dizzy feeling. It forces you to readjust the way you look at the world, because you realize you can’t live without it like you once did.”

  I clear my throat and try to find the words to respond. “I don’t have that option, Dad.”

  But his words stay with me all day.

  As Gunner and I laughed and had an impromptu dance party while we barbequed burgers. As we had a mini make-out session on the couch—simply kissing, and nothing else. I can’t remember the last time in my adult life a man simply wanted to kiss me, to enjoy the act, without using it as a precursor to sex.

  It was refreshing.

  It was sexually frustrating.

  And there was something special about it that simply owned my heart.

  Yet, my dad’s talk about merry-go-rounds and being dizzy spun in my mind and now I can’t sleep. So I wander through the house. I look at pictures on a bookshelf. One of him and a woman who looks so much like him, I assume she’s his mom. One of four soldiers in addition to Gunner and wonder if this is the group he talks about often. The one he celebrates the birthdays of even though they’re no longer here.

  I walk past Gunner where he has fallen asleep on the couch. Sleep comes so hard for him, even after a long day and closing down the bar, I’ve noticed he’s usually fitful in sleep. So much so that many nights I wake up to find the bed beside me cold and when I get up to look, he’s typically sitting on the couch or at his desk in the alcove off the kitchen. Anything to exhaust him to the point of no return so as he says, “the nightmares don’t come.”

  But tonight, he fell asleep on the couch when he got home after closing FU-Bar. I laid a blanket on top of him and went to bed alone, not wanting to disturb him, but his sleep isn’t peaceful.

  It was his struggling with someone in his sleep that woke me even from where I was asleep in the bedroom. I contemplated waking him up to pull him from the dream but by the time I got to the family room, he was settled.

  But the nightmare is still there, still troubling him, and I wish I could do something to soothe him or make him feel better. I know I can’t. I know soft words from a girlfriend aren’t going to erase the horrors of war that his mind relives, and that’s hard for me to accept.

  “Stay with me. Shotgun. Come on. Don’t you fucking die on me.” He groans and kicks his feet around. Normally he settles down after an outburst, but this time he continues to be agitated. A tear slides down his cheek. He gurgles, like he’s drowning. He thrashes his head from side to side.

  I watch him for what feels like an eternity and can’t take it any longer. I do the only thing I know to do. I squeeze my ass onto the couch beside him and gently rub my hands up and down his chest so as not to startle him.

  It’s something that first my mom and then Dekker used to do to me when I was a little girl and struggling with a nightmare.

  Gunner startles awake, disoriented with wide eyes and his chest heaving, ready to fight against me as if I were the enemy.

  “Are you okay?” he asks me when he catches his breath and orients himself.

  “Mm-hmm,” I say quietly, as I stay where I’m seated but lay my chest on top of his so I can slide my arms around him. It takes him a second before he accepts the silent comfort and compassion and wraps his arms around me in turn.

  We lie like this for some time. With his chin on the crown of my head and my head on his chest, with the strong staccato of his heart against my ear.

  “I don’t sleep well most nights,” he murmurs after a bit, finally breaking the silence.

  “Understandably.”

  “I have to work myself to the point of utter exhaustion before I crash or else the nightmares come.”

  I’m the furthest thing from a psychologist, but the one thing I can imagine is that most nights Gunner feels completely out of control against his memories. It’s an assumption—maybe it’s even something I read in the Military Life magazine in my hotel room—but it’s enough to make me want him to feel in control of this conversation at least.

  It’s not much but it’s the best I can do.

  “I’m here if you want to talk about the nightmare. I’m here if you don’t want to talk about it.” I press a kiss to his chest. “I’m just here, is all.”

  Gunner runs his hand up and down the length of my back and blows out a sigh. “I led the guys into the village that day. I’m the one who trusted our interpreter and thought he was trustworthy. I was pissed about everything back home and didn’t care what trouble we got ourselves into. I was the selfish one because while I felt that way, they all had families at home and people who loved them.”

  “As did you,” I whisper.

  “No. I had nothing anymore. As I explained, I’d said goodbye to everything that had mattered to me before in the letters Dickman suggested I write. One went to my mom where I told her I loved her, but that I could no longer li
ve in her world full of excuses and misgivings. A few went to sports agencies telling them thanks, but no thanks. Another to the girl I had been dating at the time. I had nothing and no one who I felt missed me, so I was the reckless one, leading my men, my brothers, into danger.”

  His words cut through me like a knife, and I struggle how to comfort, how to acknowledge, how to relate when there’s no possible way I ever could. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing you can say. It was what I had to do to survive the situation I was in. But it also made me dangerous to those around me, because I didn’t care what happened to me since I’d already said goodbye to everything I’d loved.”

  “Jesus, Gunner.”

  “Yeah, I know better now. I know how precious life is and all that I would have missed out on . . . but that day, I didn’t care. I didn’t care, and so I pushed our team to go into that village and get the intel I was told was there. I harassed Dickman when he said no. I got the guys rallied up over it. I was the one who caused it.”

  “You’re not at fault for what happened.”

  “Men died, Chase. My friends, my brothers, died. And I’m the one who has to bear that burden my whole life.” His sigh is heavy, his chest shuddering right after. “I told you I wasn’t as good as you’ve made me out to be in your head.”

  His chuckle is self-deprecating at best and the sound of it holds so much grief and guilt that I can’t not argue with him. I sit up so that he’s forced to meet my eyes.

  “You weren’t the commanding officer. Dickman could have said no. He could have told you to go to hell. You are not—”

  “I pushed for it though.” His eyes glisten with tears that destroy me. “I was so desperate to feel again that maybe I craved the thrill of a fight. Maybe I needed to make sure I wasn’t dead . . . and in the course, killed four of my friends.”

  I frame his face, my soft hands against his rough stubble, and wish I could take away his pain, but know I can’t. “I can tell you till I’m blue in the face that you’re not to blame, but I know you won’t hear or accept it. So I’m going to tell you this, Gunner Camden, and I hope you hear it. You are an incredible human being who not only saved lives that day with your heroics—”

  “Chase—”

  “No. You listen to me. You saved lives that day, and in the process, almost got yourself killed. Since then, you’ve dedicated your free time to kids who don’t have parents and created a successful business where you give a part of the earnings from your hard work to widows of your fallen soldiers.” I lean forward and press a kiss to his lips. “You make a difference, Gunner. You’ve devoted your life to trying to ease the survivor’s guilt you have, while you make so many more lives better. You make a difference.”

  He doesn’t say anything, but his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and he blinks away the tears welling in his eyes.

  And I’m okay with the fact that instead of words, he pulls me back down to his chest and just holds on tight.

  His chest hitches and each time it does, my heart breaks a little more and fills with love at the same time.

  And it makes me coming to terms with what I’ve done and what I’m going to have to do that much harder.

  While I thought it would be okay to walk away from him not sharing my truths, I know I can’t do that now. Given his complete honesty, his honor, his heart, he deserves my utmost respect. I don’t want him to believe that I set out to delude him, but he does need to know that in withholding the truth from him, for lying to him, he has the right to feel deceived.

  Shit. I hate this.

  Tears form in my eyes. Apart from my family, it’s never mattered so much that someone not think badly of me. Knowing Gunner may hate me for dodging the truth is tearing me apart.

  I love him. Simple as that. But I know I won’t know his love in return. I’ll have to leave before I can feel that. And that is the worst type of pain.

  I’ll hurt, but as I’ve thought before, he doesn’t deserve to be hurt anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Chase

  “I’ll get that contract over to you ASAP. I’m sorry it’s late, I’m just a little buried right now,” I say as I look out the open reception window into the gymnasium area where Joey and Robbie are practicing their free throws.

  “Buried? Since when do you get buried? You’re a badass, Kincade,” Darius Tomlinson, three-time Pro-Bowler and one of my long-standing clients, says with a laugh.

  “I get buried. Now get your ass back on the field and prove to me you’re worth every penny I just negotiated for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I end the call and drop my cell on the desk.

  “Get your ass back on the field?” a voice from behind me says, causing me to nearly jump out of my shoes. “Negotiations?”

  “Ellie. My God.” I whirl around. “You just scared the shit out of me.”

  How much did you hear?

  My heart is in my throat as I stare at her and wonder what she heard.

  “Sorry. I was just coming to hand over some checks that a few parents gave me when they dropped their kids off. I didn’t mean to interrupt your negotiations,” she says. I hate the feeling that she’s asking me to explain without asking me.

  “Negotiations.” I chuckle, thinking on the fly. “That was my cousin. He’s in college. I negotiated with his mom to buy him a new pair of cleats if he wins his upcoming game.”

  The lie rolls easily off my tongue and I hate that it does. That this is what I’ve resorted to, but it’s necessary to keep this ruse up.

  “Oh, and here I was selfishly and now embarrassingly hoping it was about the gear for The Center.” Her cheeks flush.

  “That’s coming too. I promise. I heard back from my friend and he’s gotten the baseball team, the Austin Aces, to contribute new gear and uniforms for the kids. We also have a new sports court coming courtesy of the NHL team the Lumberjacks, as well as some new turf as a donation from the New York Raptors.”

  Her eyes widen and her surprise makes me feel good about doing this. About helping The Center out. About helping to make a difference in some small capacity.

  “That’s amazing,” she says. “Gunner didn’t tell me all of that.”

  “I think he’s holding his breath to see it happen first, and I totally understand that, but I’m going to make it happen.” But when I glance back toward the gym area, I’m immediately drawn to the doorway when I see Joey pointing to Gunner’s neck.

  “What are those?” Joey asks, his voice loud and innocent.

  “What are what?” Gunner asks, half distracted with showing Robbie how to roll the basketball off his fingertips.

  “Those red marks on your neck,” Joey continues. “Nick said they’re from where you were abducted by aliens, but I think you were hurt.”

  Gunner stops what he’s doing and turns to give his full attention to Joey. “Nick is wrong and you were right,” he says, his voice softening as he lowers himself to the floor and sits cross-legged so he’s eye level with Joey. “Would you like to see them?”

  Joey nods slowly, earnest and cautious eyes staring at Gunner as if he’s not sure if he should be embarrassed that he asked.

  “Sure,” Gunner says and proceeds to pull his shirt over his head. I’m used to what they look like so I don’t flinch at the sight of the angry, red scars. But there is something about seeing him there, shirtless and vulnerable, being stared at by eight little boys that makes them seem so devastating.

  The reactions of the boys are a mixture of gasps and whoas, but Gunner just sits there as if it’s not a big deal to be sitting there and stared at.

  “Do you have questions?” he asks softly.

  “Do they hurt?”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Did you almost die?”

  Questions are asked unabashedly as only kids can do, and Gunner spends time explaining to them. “They don’t really hurt anymore but they did when they happe
ned and a long time afterward. I had to be in the hospital with lots of doctors to try and make sure I was going to heal properly.”

  “How did it happen?” Robbie repeats his question.

  “I was in an accident,” Gunner says. “There was an explosion on the side of the road and it hit my Humvee.”

  “IED?” Gregory asks. It kills me that these boys use these terms so nonchalantly. It’s something they should never be so familiar with and yet . . . they are.

  Gunner nods and meets his eyes. “Yes. An IED.”

  There are more questions. Will they ever go away? Does he have metal plates under his skin? Is he embarrassed by them?

  But it’s the last question spoken so very quietly that has both Ellie and me holding our breaths.

  “Were you scared?” Joey asks in the softest of voices that has all of the kids turning to look at him—as if that’s the one unspoken question they all wondered about. And before Gunner can answer, Joey continues. “I bet my daddy was scared.”

  My breath hitches at the question and at seeing Gunner motion for Joey to come closer. When he does, Gunner sits him on his knee and says so everyone can hear. “Yes, I was scared, but I knew your daddy, Joey. And I know he wasn’t scared. He was too busy thinking about you and your mommy and how much he loved you guys and how proud he was of you.”

  Joey’s chin quivers and mine does right along with his. I watch Joey reach out and run his hand over the top part of Gunner’s shoulder to feel his scars. “Do you think he hurt?” Joey asks.

  Gunner works a swallow down his throat and shakes his head. “No. I don’t. I think you guys loved him so much that all that love protected him from the hurt.”

  “You sure?” Joey asks as a single tear slides down his cheek.

  “I’m sure,” Gunner says, his voice breaking. “Any other questions?”

  “Can we play basketball now?” Carl asks and everyone jumps up, but not before I notice Gunner whisper something in Joey’s ear that has him nodding. They sit there for a moment, staring at each other, before getting up and joining the group like that was as normal as normal can be.

  But not me.