Only Love by Garrett Leigh (34)

Epilogue

September 2007

Ashton, OR

MAX SET down the sander, lifted his goggles, and wiped his brow. The air was thick and muggy, heavy with sawdust and a brewing late-summer storm.

He tossed the goggles aside and drifted to the boat shed’s open door. In her shady corner, Flo raised her head, but didn’t follow. The oppressive heat had made her lazy. “Don’t worry, girl, I’ll take you for a swim later.”

The collie flicked her tail in response and returned to her doze. Max stared out over the water. Behind him the cabin lay silent and still, the yard too, empty but for the pottering, pecking hens. To an outside observer, the place appeared deserted, but Max knew better. With two retired soldiers and two extra dogs for company, he was far from alone.

Trouble was, Jed’s friends, Raffi and Luke, went about their business with barely a sound. Between them, they were even quieter than Jed, and from time to time, Max forgot they were there.

Not today, though. A closer sweep of the yard revealed Raffi alone by the water’s edge, sparring with himself in a game Max had yet to figure out. In fact, he’d yet to figure out the quiet, pint-sized Latino man at all, he said so little. Still, Raffi cooked a mean curry, and Belle and Tess adored him. That was enough for Max, and aside from Glenn, Raffi was probably his favorite of Jed’s old Army crew.

He’d met them all at some point or other over the past six months; all but Pat, who was the only one to return to active duty after that dreadful day in Kirkuk. They were a motley bunch: Luke with his lost hearing. Beau with his prosthetic leg. All unique and different, but united in a bond no outsider would ever understand.

Max cast his gaze closer to the shore, searching for his other live-in babysitter. He found Luke dozing in a shaded spot by the greenhouse, Saja and Jed’s dog, Desta, settled by his side.

Yeah, Jed’s dog: Max’s own solution to a worry that had plagued Jed’s recovery… the worry that when the storm cleared and everyone went home, their combined life-changing illnesses would destroy them before they’d even begun.

Bringing Desta home had made perfect sense to Max. Flo had given him his life back, his independence and freedom, and a set of proverbial balls when he was too scared to get out of bed. Why not Jed? Flo couldn’t watch over the both of them, as hard as she tried. Getting another dog had been a no-brainer.

Jed had taken some convincing, but Flo, and later his poignant reunion with Saja had won him over.

It helped that Desta—an old African name meaning joy—had a sorry tale of his own to tell. He’d been abandoned in a paper bag at the side of the road, and even Jed at his most stubborn couldn’t say no. The fast-growing, mischievous young pup had been glued to his side from the moment Max brought him home.

It was a shame Jed couldn’t take him to Colorado. Max would’ve felt better about the mysterious, open-ended trip if Desta had been with him. The spaniel clearly thought so too. Even now, he was lying with his eyes lazily trained on the horizon, awaiting his master’s return.

Max let out a heavy sigh. At least Glenn was with him, right? Glenn had been their rock while Jed had been ill. Too often, he’d been the only thing standing between Jed and another lengthy hospital stay. He’d been gone more than a month now, and Max missed him almost as much as he missed Jed, who’d only been gone a few weeks.

A few weeks. Fuck. It feels like a bloody lifetime.

Max went back to his work, completing a boat renovation and putting the finishing touches to the long-neglected desk project he’d started when Jed had been in the hospital. He’d just carved his initials in the legs when Flo’s low bark signaled a presence behind him.

“What are you making?”

Max spun round and let out a startled gasp. He knew the voice, but for some reason, Jed’s droll grin was the last thing he expected to see. He dropped his carving blade with a clatter. “Damn, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Jed deadpanned, but his grin widened, and he didn’t seem all that contrite. “Want me to go away and come back?”

God, no. Don’t ever leave me again.

Max shrugged and bent to retrieve his tool. “Where would you go?”

“Here and there. Would be better if you came with me, though.”

Max smiled a wry smile at the indirect reference to their impromptu road trip to Phoenix a few months back. Paul’s widow had given birth to a daughter while Jed had been in the hospital, and rather than brood over it as he might have done before his second brush with death, as soon as he was fit enough, Jed had thrown some clothes in a bag, hustled Max and Flo into the truck, and hit the road. They were halfway there when Max realized it was the furthest he’d been from the cabin since he’d come to Ashton all those years ago.

Would he have had the balls without Jed by his side? Who knew? With any luck, he’d never find out.

Jed tugged him upright and took the blade from his hand. “I’m sorry I was gone so long. I missed you.”

Max sighed. Jed had given him little notice of his trip and no indication when he’d be back, but Max knew well enough whatever he was doing at his old Army base in Colorado wasn’t anything fun. “Don’t mind me. It’s been a while since I had a real conversation. Luke and Raffi don’t say much. I missed you too. A lot.”

Jed’s expression softened. Max put his hands on his chest and took a moment to absorb the metronomic thud of his heart. He closed his eyes, willing away the memories of those dark, dark days when that steady beat had slowed to nothing. His short-term memory often failed him, but that black moment would stay with him forever. He couldn’t clearly recall the scene, the faces around him, or even the explanations that came later, but sometimes he could still feel the icy wrench in his heart as the center of his world slipped away.

Jed closed his hands around his wrists. “You with me?”

“Think so. Did you say something?”

“Nothing important.” Jed rubbed his stubbled cheek against Max’s own. “Come inside?”

“Where are the others?”

The deep rumble of a truck engine answered his question. Jed grinned. “Taking the dogs into town to pick the girls up from school. Belle seems to have Raffi under her spell.”

“She gets that from you,” Max said dryly, noting that Flo had disappeared. Recently, he’d come to realize Belle was, in her own way, just like Jed—stubborn, insanely observant, and so bloody lovable.

“If you say so.” Jed yanked on his hand, harder this time, more demand than request. “Now come inside.”

Max didn’t protest as Jed led him inside. He’d come to know the glint in his eyes rather well over the past few months. Clothes littered a path into the cabin. They barely made it to the bed, and it seemed no time passed at all before Jed pushed Max down on his stomach and slid into him from behind.

The pace started slow and sweet, but fast became rough and urgent as weeks of separation with little contact began to fade away.

Jed covered Max with his body, wrapping his strong arms round his neck and shoulders in a viselike grip, molding them together in a perfect fit as the bed jumped and squeaked beneath them.

Max braced himself on the wall, scrabbling for purchase on the chipped paint, and reveling in the sensation of Jed inside him. They didn’t often fuck like this, so rough and physical. The desire was there… damn, it was always there, but sometimes, the inferno between them was too much.

Jed slipped his hand around them, sliding his chest against Max’s sweat-slicked back. He took Max’s cock in one hand and joined his other hand with Max’s on the wall. The change in angle made Max see stars. He pushed back, desperate to take more of Jed in, to feel him all the way from his curling toes to his tingling fingertips. Jed was big, thick and long… too much, but never, ever enough.

Release hit him like a freight train. He came with a shout, spilling into Jed’s hand. Behind him, Jed stilled and released inside him with a rumbling groan.

Max’s arms gave way, and he collapsed face-first with a rueful smirk. Though a dominant, physical lover when his mood was right, Jed was as quiet during sex as he was with everything else. Max liked that. It suited him.

He gathered his shortened breath and rolled over. Jed lay sprawled on his back beside him, his sun-lightened hair a sex-tousled mess. Max pushed it out of his face.

Jed opened his eyes and smiled. “So you really did miss me, huh?”

Max ducked under Jed’s raised arm. “Piss off.”

Jed grinned, and new warmth crept into Max’s bones. He remembered the first time they’d slept together, that stormy night when Jed was so tired and devastated he’d wept in his arms. Sex was different these days. Jed was different these days. Sometimes Max could hardly reconcile the smiling, energetic lover he had now with the haunted, broken soldier who’d walked onto his land nearly a year ago.

Happy, healthy Jed was a sight to behold.

Max traced the fresh pink scar on Jed’s belly. It was three inches long and dwarfed by the other scars branding Jed’s body, but to both of them, the tiny incision represented a new lease on life.

Jed shivered.

Max stilled his fingers. “Am I hurting you?”

“Nope. Feels kinda—” Jed yawned.

Max rolled his eyes. Getting a conversation out of Jed after sex was hard work, but he didn’t mind. He settled by his side and watched him doze for a while, his mind still entrenched in the rough six months they’d endured.

It had taken Jed a while to consent to the experimental surgery. The idea of having a tiny pacemaker fitted in his stomach had, understandably, freaked him out. The minuscule device was designed to help him maintain the diet he needed to be healthy and control the chronic pain and sickness that made him so miserable.

To Jed, it had sounded too good to be true, and in the beginning, Max had shared his skepticism. How could something so small work such magic?

But they’d both been wrong… hugely and wonderfully wrong.

It had been like flicking a switch. Jed got over the surgery and was jogging around the lake two weeks later. In the weeks that followed, real color returned to his cheeks, and Max caught his first glimpse of the fit, agile man who’d been lurking beneath such a debilitating illness.

Max was staggered. On the one hand, guilt that he’d never realized how sick Jed was until it was almost too late tore at him, but then he’d watch Jed lithely scale the height of the boat shed to replace a rotten panel, and everything else was forgotten. In moments like those, there was no guilt, pain, or fear. Instead there was only awe and wonder at the astounding strength of the man he loved so much.

Life wasn’t perfect. Jed had days when he could only curl up on the couch in unimaginable pain, but those days were few and far between—a temporary glitch rather than a hard way of living.

Jed mumbled something. Max ducked to catch the words. “What’s that?”

There was no response, but Max didn’t mind. They’d come a long way since the bleak days when he’d have given anything for Jed to wake up and utter a word.

Max lay down and put his head on Jed’s chest, his gaze trained on the sparkling, sunlit water of the lake. The sight was dazzling, and for the first time in a long time, the future looked just as bright.

JED WOKE to Max’s soft lips on his chest, the tip of his warm wet tongue tracing the scar on his belly, and his strong hands tugging on his hips.

He opened his eyes as Max slid into him, and sucked in a breath. It burned, but he didn’t care, because sometimes a little pain felt so fucking good.

He shifted, eager for more. Max followed the silent cue, his gaze hawklike, watching Jed for signs of discomfort.

There were none. Jed gripped Max’s hips and pulled him closer, taking all of him into his body. Sometimes it bothered him that Max was so cautious, but other times he was grateful. After all, having his leg jammed over his head would hurt like a bitch.

Max bent and kissed him, distracting him momentarily from the sweet push and slide of his cock inside him, but not for long. Jed pulled away with a breathless gasp. A shudder tore through him, and he dropped his head back on the pillow Max had jammed under his head while he slept.

“Fuck.”

As ever when Max topped him, Jed was right on the edge in mere moments. He raised his hips to meet Max’s slow deliberate thrusts, and reached for his cock.

Max batted his hand away. “I want you to come like this.”

Jed was powerless beneath the weight of Max’s heated, dark gaze. He gripped the bedframe behind him, desperate for something, anything, to tie him down to the world.

Max twisted his hips. Sweat broke out over Jed’s chest. On the inside, he screamed. Only Max had ever taken him like this… only Max had ever made him feel like this, so desperate for something he’d yet to understand.

Only Max.

“Let it go, baby.”

The throaty, whispered words and term of tender endearment, used only in moments like these, was all it took. Jed arched his back and came without either one of them ever touching his dick.

Huh.

Max followed fast and collapsed on top of him in a careful heap.

He trembled in Jed’s arms. For a moment, Jed worried, until the wonderful sound of laughter reached his ears. “Somethin’ funny?”

Max raised his head and shrugged. “I should quit fucking you while I’m ahead. One day, I’m going to come before we’ve even got started.”

Jed chuckled, but held his tongue. Max didn’t need to know the effect he had on him. Not yet, at least. He’d let him figure it out all on his own.

He closed his eyes and his mind wandered, recalling the very first time he’d fucked Max. It had happened almost by accident. For months it was something he’d almost been afraid of… afraid of his own recovering body failing him, afraid that the sensation of Max’s beautiful, lithe form writhing beneath him would finish him off for good.

Then Max had come to find him one day, shirtless, smeared with oil, with an endearing, devilish plan.

Now Jed couldn’t get enough, and he drifted back to sleep to the lullaby of Max humming and playing with his hair.

He was alone when he next woke. It figured. Max rarely slept in daylight hours—he had too much energy and it upset his routine. Routine was good for Max; it kept his wayward brain in check.

The thought sobered Jed as he lay naked in bed. Max had only dropped with a full seizure once since the grand mal in the boat shed, and Glenn had been around to catch him, but the shadow of his condition never went away, even if Max did a stellar job of ignoring it.

Flo was amazing, and Desta was fast learning to guard Jed as well as Flo did Max, but their combined efforts didn’t keep Jed from worrying. He wanted to take care of Max, to love him and protect him the way he deserved, but how could he if he wasn’t strong enough for both of them?

He hauled himself out of bed without bothering to ponder an answer. It was a quandary he knew he’d probably have to live with till the end of his days, or at least as long as Max would have him.

A cool shower called to him. He washed away the grime of a three-day drive and a double round of reunion sex. Then he set about unpacking. Dirty clothes found their way to the hamper and toiletries to the bathroom. When he was done, there were two items left: his cell phone and a sealed envelope.

He picked up the envelope and frowned. Max had handed over the letters Glenn had given him a few days after he’d come home from the hospital. Endearingly, Max had been worried he’d lose them. Most of them had found their way to the fire at one time or other, considered obsolete. There was no need to tell Dan he was sorry he’d left him, or Belle he wished he’d known her, because those wishes had been fulfilled. But one letter remained: a letter Jed could hardly remember writing, but couldn’t seem to destroy.

He picked up his cell phone and pressed a speed dial he’d never used. Nick’s voice mail kicked in a moment later. Jed left a message, telling him that he was back in town, and hung up without asking Nick to call back.

With a heavy sigh, he shoved the envelope in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. His relationship with Nick was bitterly flawed, and probably always would be, but if the past year and his repeated clashes with mortality had taught him anything, it was that the way he felt now perhaps wouldn’t last forever. Nick was deeply entangled in a recovery of his own. Maybe one day they’d meet in the middle.

Jed’s cell phone buzzed in his hand. He stared at the overseas code and pressed the call button. Who the fuck did he know in Stuttgart?

“Hello to you too,” Glenn countered. “Miss me already?”

Jed rolled his eyes. He’d just spent the best part of a month with Glenn on their old military base in Colorado, tying up loose ends. The trip had been an ordeal, and though he loved Glenn like a brother, he wasn’t ready to miss him yet. “Give it another year.”

“Olivia okay?”

Jed suppressed a sigh. He’d gone to Phoenix after he and Glenn had finished their work. It had been easier last time, with Max to distract him, but facing Olivia’s grief alone this time around was as heartbreaking as it had ever been. “Seems to be.”

Glenn let it go. Jed suspected he knew the reason for the call, and he wasn’t surprised when Glenn cut straight to the point. “I did that digging you asked me about.”

Jed sat on the edge of his bed. “And?”

“And I don’t think you have anything to worry about. The case is closed. Lamumba Moore is dead. There’s even a damn grave.”

Jed let out a long breath. It had felt like a betrayal to divulge Max’s secret to Glenn, but he’d seen too much horrible shit to let it go. He had to know if Max and Kim were at risk. Glenn had worked in Northern Ireland in the eighties, and he still had contacts there. It made sense to ask him to reach out. “What about the hit itself? Where did it come from?”

“Now that I don’t know… which is good news. From what I can tell, no one had Daniel Moore on their radar. Yeah, he pissed a lot of people off with his do-gooder shit, but not enough to warrant what happened.”

“So what did happen?”

“I think it was racial, and opportunistic. The hit wasn’t a clean job, and it was botched from the start. I don’t think they expected the kid to be there, much less put himself between his mother and an iron poker.”

Jed felt sick, and for once it wasn’t born of a physical defect. “Do you trust your source?”

“With my life.”

Jed nodded, though Glenn couldn’t see him. Despite the grave context, coming from Glenn, those three simple words were enough. “So when are you heading to the Med?”

“My plane leaves in an hour.”

Jed nodded again, feeling a distinct wave of sadness creep over him. Glenn had taken a job at a rehab facility in Cyprus. The dude was a soldier through and through, and he had chronic itchy feet. Jed missed him more than he cared to admit, but he’d known from the start that Glenn’s presence in his day-to-day life was temporary.

He owed Glenn a lot. Without him, he’d have spent many, many more nights in the hospital. Glenn had nursed him, bullied him, held his hand and spent long days sitting by his side on the bathroom floor—all the things Jed couldn’t bear to let Max do, least not as often as the need arose.

“So I guess I’ll see you….”

“Soon, dude. Soon. Take care of your people, and let them take care of you.”

Glenn hung up before Jed could respond. He stared at the phone for a moment, caught between the life he’d left behind and the one awaiting him until the sound of Max’s laughter called to him like a siren.

He followed the sound outside to the yard. The sight before him made him smile. At the water’s edge, Dan stood with Tess on his shoulders. Raffi was beside him, teaching Belle to walk on her hands. Carla and Luke sat to one side with Saja and Carla’s elderly lab at their feet. All around them, Flo and Desta played chase, tearing in and out of the water, and right at the end of the jetty stood Max, shirtless, his shorts soaked.

Jed took a moment to drink in the scene. It often amazed him that the many facets of his life fit so well together. For the longest time, he’d thought such a thing impossible.

Desta spied him lurking and barked, giving away his presence. The spaniel bounded away from Flo and across the yard, preparing to hit him with a flying leap of wet dog. Jed stopped him with a stern word. Desta skidded to a stop and whined, but for once did as he was told. Tess wasn’t quite so patient. Somehow, Jed had missed her ditching Dan and darting across the yard.

She jumped up into his arms as Max laughed again.

Jed met his gaze and stared, feeling another fissure in his battered heart heal. He wondered if it would always be this way. For him, Max was the early morning sun, a cool springtime breeze, and a blanket of fresh white snow. His warm eyes were a guiding light in the dark, and the love they held was the only thing Jed would ever need.