Chapter Nine
THE MORNING after the girls’ sleepover, Max glanced at the clock, rolled over, and stretched. It was dawn, and he’d woken to the sound of Jed’s truck driving away. He frowned, puzzled. Jed was an early riser—when he went to bed, at least—but he didn’t usually leave for PT until much later.
Max was an early riser too, but he’d grown used to meeting Jed in the kitchen at sunrise each morning, and the knowledge that it wasn’t going to happen kept him in bed a few minutes longer than usual.
He thought back over the past month or so. Living with Jed was… different, but haggling over who cooked breakfast was fun. Most days Max won and cooked. Some days Jed ate, some days he didn’t. Jed was strange like that. Most mornings it was obvious he hadn’t slept.
The days Jed had PT, Max didn’t see much of him, but on his free days, Jed had taken to finishing up the many undone jobs around the cabin. Max didn’t mind. He worked hard to keep the cabin from falling down, but his approach was somewhat scattered. Besides, Jed was good with his hands, and occasionally Max got lucky and caught a glimpse of him at work. No right-minded soul would complain about that.
Max groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. The sight of Jed’s strong arms and deft hands was beautiful, but it wasn’t the picture that lingered in his mind. No. The image he couldn’t shake was something far less pleasant, something that made him shiver for all the wrong reasons.
Jed possessed stealthy ninja reflexes; but a few days ago he’d emerged from the bathroom shirtless, lost in a world of his own. Max was a foot away before Jed noticed him, and by then it was too late—too late for Jed to hide the macabre burn on his shoulder, and too late for Max to hide his shock.
They’d passed in the hallway without comment, but Max had hardly seen him since. Coincidence? Maybe, but Max had seen the flash of pain in Jed’s eyes. His body bore many scars, no doubt inside and out, but he carried something in that marbled patch of skin—grief, loss, pain. Max knew those emotions well, but seeing them reflected in Jed’s eyes hurt more than his own grief ever had.
Had. Did. Would it ever go away? With another heavy sigh, Max dragged himself out of bed to face a solitary day in the boat shed.
That afternoon, he gave up on his work and called it quits early. He felt restless and out of sorts—not a good mix with tools. A scar on his own arm bore witness to that.
He locked the shed and walked back to the cabin, noting the persistent absence of Jed’s truck. He’d been gone all day, and despite Max’s early finish, it was getting late. PT or not, Jed was usually home by sundown.
Max cleaned up, then ventured back out to raid the shed where he stored vegetables. He loaded up his arms with yams to cook his mother’s yam stew. Makemba’s old recipe was one he could cook in his sleep, and something he often turned to if he was feeling off. But it didn’t work tonight. The first bite tasted bitter and metallic. Frustrated, Max jammed the lid on the pot and dumped it in the fridge. Perhaps Jed’s strange ways had rubbed off on him more than he thought.
Agitated, he drifted through the cabin. His roving gaze fell on a folded pink bedspread on the end of the couch. He picked it up, surprised Jed hadn’t tidied it away. Books aside, Jed didn’t seem to like things lying around.
Max grinned as he recalled the long-awaited slumber party. It had passed without much incident, save a round of musical beds. Despite previous insistence that Jed’s room was too spooky, after trying out every other possibility both girls had claimed his bed for the night.
“You can top and tail with Uncle Max.”
Max couldn’t help a snort of laughter. Belle’s very British suggestion was innocent, but the smirk he’d shared with Jed over her head had been anything but. Jed had fallen asleep on the couch minutes later, dozing through two Lion King DVDs until it was time to put the girls to bed, but Max had watched him for most of the evening, noting the way the noisy room put him to sleep. It crossed his mind that perhaps Jed wasn’t used to sleeping alone. Military life had always struck Max as communal and loud—a far cry from the secluded peace of the cabin. Maybe life had become a little too quiet for Jed.
Or maybe Max was seeing things that weren’t there.
Max took the bedspread to the closet and put it away. On his way back, he spotted a broken window catch, and it became the first of many bonehead tasks that kept him occupied for the rest of the evening.
Later, he took a shower and flopped on the couch, but after staring at the TV for a while he found himself still buzzed with willful energy. Agitation became paranoia—a creeping, prickly feeling he couldn’t shake. After a time, he became convinced he’d left his power tools plugged in. Irritated, he stamped into his boots and picked his way across the dark yard.
Flo followed him, lazy and disinterested, until the boat shed door closed behind her. She whined and scraped at the wood, reminding Max to leave the door open.
Max kicked open the door and set about checking his tools. He found them neatly packed away in their rightful place. He growled and let the tool chest slam shut, annoyed with his dysfunctional brain. He was used to his mind playing tricks on him, but he wasn’t in the mood to indulge it.
Vexed, he locked the shed. Over the wind whistling down from the mountains, he thought he heard the cabin phone. He growled under his breath—a phantom phone was his faulty brain’s other favorite trick—and set off around the lake for a late night walk.
JED PULLED into the hospital parking lot with a heavy sigh. Most of his PT appointments were scheduled in the mornings, but every second Tuesday, Carla pulled him in for an evening session. He didn’t usually mind—PT hurt like bitch whatever the hour—but today a round-trip to Seattle had left him beat.
He trudged wearily into the hospital. Carla took one look at him, flipped a switch on the treadmill, and pointed to the massage bed.
Relieved, Jed slipped one leg out of his sweatpants and maneuvered himself onto the bed. He bit back a wince as Carla slid practiced hands over his weakened thigh. Her hands were small, but deceptively strong. Though a therapeutic massage was less effort than physical training, it was sometimes every bit as painful.
Carla manipulated the damaged muscles in his leg. Jed bore it in silence until he noticed she was uncharacteristically quiet. Carla talked his ear off most days, even when he closed his eyes in protest. When the fog of pain had cleared enough, he glanced up and shot her a quizzical look. “Why so quiet?”
That earned him a smile. He’d learned his first Spanish from Dan, but over the years his dialect had become more Mexican than Ecuadoran. The syntactic variations amused Carla, and fascinated Jed enough to filter through his apathy-clouded brain.
Carla lifted his leg and pressed her fingers into a sensitive spot below his hip. “Long day,” she said. “I took my senile grandfather grocery shopping. It’s always an experience.”
“Grocery shopping’s never fun.”
“Speak for yourself.” Carla waited for Jed’s discomfort to pass. “I’m pretty sure I saw you and Max living it up in Walmart.”
Jed let the remark pass. Walmart was the devil’s playground as far as he was concerned.
“Speaking of Max,” Carla said when Jed failed to take her bait. “I’ve called him a few times today, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. Has he got a big project booked in at the boat shed?”
Jed shrugged. It was sometimes hard to tell what Max was up to. He worked his fingers to the bone, but his tidy workshop belied his chaotic approach, and Jed was never altogether sure which boat had his sketchy attention. “I don’t know what he’s working on.”
Carla let it go and moved on to a particularly painful phase of her massage. Jed covered his face with his arm and gritted his teeth. The time for talk was over and, perversely, the grinding pain in his leg sometimes sent him to sleep.
A little while later, Carla nudged him awake. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing to exhaust yourself today?”
Dazed, Jed lowered his arm. The bright light of the room hurt his eyes. “I’m all right.”
Carla grinned and held out her hand to help him up. “Sure you are. That’s why you just snoozed through an hour of muscle manipulation.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” Jed braced one arm behind him, accepted her hand, and sat up. He rarely let anyone help him, but he got a strange kick out of letting his petite therapist yank him upright.
Carla bustled quietly around him, tidying up and resetting her room while he got dressed and took a moment to steady himself. When she was done, she pulled up a chair and scribbled at the notes in her lap until he was sure the room had stopped spinning. “So,” she said, her attention trained on her work. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Jed smirked. Carla was as inquisitive as he was private. Many of her questions went unanswered. “About?”
“Don’t be a dick. What have you been doing to wear yourself out?”
His grin widened. Despite the setting of their relationship, he found her blunt candor comforting and familiar. It reminded him of both his old life and the new life he was forging with Max at the cabin. “I had to go to Seattle today.”
“Seattle? Why?”
“Work.”
“Work? I thought you were discharged?”
“Not Army shit,” Jed clarified, though in truth, discharged he might have been, his job was far from done. “I got offered a translating contract for an NGO in Sudan.”
“NGO? That’s a nongovernment organization, right?”
“Right.”
Carla set her notes aside and leaned forward. She was curious, he could tell by her tilted head and open hands. “Something close to your heart?”
“Used to be. Not sure I can take the job, though.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have a laptop, Internet access….”
Truth was, Jed wanted to take the job. Not because he needed the money, or because translating public health documents was particularly stimulating, but because he needed to do something. With dark dreams haunting what little sleep he got, he needed to flex his brain before he lost control of it completely.
“Max had an Internet connection for a while. I don’t know what happened to it, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you set it up again.”
“Wouldn’t do me much good without a computer,” Jed countered.
“So buy one.”
Carla reached behind her and retrieved the smallest laptop Jed had ever seen. He eyed it warily. He’d handled the most dangerous weapons in the world, but he found domestic technology perplexing. The computer was tiny. He was sure he’d break it.
Carla flipped it open and pulled up the website for an electronics store. Somehow she needled Jed’s credit card from him and bought him a laptop that seemed not much bigger than hers.
“Man, you’re a pushover. Thought you Special Forces guys were hard as nails?” Clearly pleased with herself, Carla handed the card back. “If the Internet thing doesn’t work out, you can always print your work here, come to my place, whatever. We can work it out.”
“You know I’m gay, right?”
“Fuck off.”
For the first time in days, Jed laughed. It hadn’t taken long for Carla to topple down the walls he’d spent years building around his sexuality. She was more like Dan than she probably cared to admit. Jed slid off the bed and planted his feet on the floor. Dizziness washed over him. He steadied himself on the edge of the bed, but he felt Carla’s sharp gaze all over him.
“How’s that pesky anemia coming along?”
Jed shrugged. It had been a while since he’d bothered to check.
Carla tsked gently. “I had a feeling you might say that. Sit your ass back down. I want to check your blood sugar.”
Really? Jed sighed, but obeyed. Anemia and chronic low blood sugar were both symptoms of gastroparesis Jed lived with every day. Who cared about the damned numbers? Carla pricked his finger with a small device and waited for the result to come up.
“Dr. Howarth came to see me this morning. He told me to tell you if you don’t make an appointment soon, he’s going to make an impromptu house call.” The blood sugar machine beeped. Carla let out a low whistle. “That’s low. When did you last eat?”
“This morning?”
“Skipping lunch is not cool,” Carla said sternly. “You need to get your iron levels checked too, and don’t discount Dr. Howarth. He will come looking for you.”
Jed didn’t doubt it, but he wasn’t in a hurry to hook up with the good doctor. Max’s vegetable garden was keeping him in as much iron as he could handle.
He left Carla, promising to take better care of himself and remind Max to return her call, and made his way back to the truck. Max remained on his mind as he drove the short journey from Portland to Ashton. He’d been distracted most of the day, but with time on his hands and the freeway for company, he couldn’t help brooding over his vibrant young roommate.
Max had been avoiding Jed since he’d given him an eyeful of his burned shoulder, and Jed hadn’t made much effort to seek him out. He understood the horror in Max’s face—it was a reflection of his own disgust—but he missed him. It had felt strange to slip away from the cabin at the crack of dawn without his daily dose of Max’s infectious grin.
Through the haze of PT-induced exhaustion, Jed suddenly found he couldn’t wait to be home.