Chapter 7

 

Hutch

I rode in the convoy over shaky terrain. We’d done at least a dozen times. I made a joke. I could never remember what it was. Something lewd and crass that made them all laugh. That laughter was the last normal sound I heard before the ear-splitting explosion. Before my unit was no more and the world changed. Everything went dark and loud. I drowned in the sounds—our screams, metal scraping, bodies tumbling, hard thing slamming into other, harder things breaking bodies. Then I couldn’t hear at all. I was blind and deaf and half-dead all at once.

I called out names. Every fucking name. No one answered but Briggs. I heard him just above the constant ringing in my ears.

“Sir?”

“I’m okay, private,” I replied, except it didn’t sound like my voice.

“Do you hear the gunshots?”

I hadn’t until he said that. They were in the distance somewhere.

I lay awkwardly on my side in the rubble of it all. I breathed in the acrid smell of blood and burnt metal, resulting in a hacking fit. Is this what hell smelled like? There was a twisted body beneath me and one beside me. I fumbled until I could reach across to feel for pulses. Please…please let there be a heartbeat. Nothing. The prisoner was dead. My brothers were dead…except for Briggs. Private Brian Briggs, eighteen-years-old with a wife and a newborn back home. My lungs stung with every breath, and my heart pounded so hard I thought it was trying to escape my body.

“The window. You see it, sir?” Brian asked.

I looked up, blinking my eyes, trying to get out whatever grit had gotten in. Finally, I saw the dirt-covered glass. Were we buried beneath the sand? Was this our casket?

I kicked my leg, my boot making contact with the glass. Each kick had a little more power than the last but never enough.

“I can’t do it.”

“Try one more time.”

I reached out each arm, trying to grasp something sturdy to hold onto. The sound of the glass cracking urged me on. I think I kicked that fucking window a hundred times. My adrenaline-ripe scream drowned in the harsh sound of raining glass. I lifted myself up, ignoring the razor-sharp pain in my right leg.

The vehicle was on its side. I balanced my body, reaching inside the open window, trying to ignore the painful smart of metal and glass inside my skin with each movement. Briggs was still inside.

I reached for his hand. “Pull yourself up.”

“I can’t walk.” His face was bloody. He lay awkwardly, a bone sticking out of his leg. I dry heaved a lungful of air.

“You got arms, don’t you? Pull your fucking self up.”

He grunted and cried, but he never gave up. Finally, he was on top of enough bodies that I could grasp his hand. I think I dislodged his arm from the socket pulling him from the mountain of steel debris and crushed bodies. Out of breath and energy, we rested on top of the flipped Humvee.

“You’re hurt.”

No shit, I thought, but I followed his gaze down to my leg. The pain sharpened once I looked, attaching me in a succession of staccato bursts like the climax of an opera. Blood oozed from my leg, bubbling up to the surface, past all the sticky sand. I closed my eyes to fight off nausea and wash away everything I’d seen.

“It’s not my blood,” I said.

The faint sound of gunshots snapped my attention back. We had to go. We had to run. The bullets were closing in. I prayed for a little hope…a way back home for us.

He put his arm around my shoulder. Thankfully, we were close in height, the two tallest boys in the unit. We walked through the sand, fighting to make forward progress with each step. He cried out in pain. I bent down and lifted him over my shoulder in a fireman carry.

A mile or twenty, I had no idea. What I did know was that I couldn’t walk anymore. I eased Briggs to the ground. Exhausted, I collapsed on my back. We both stared at each other—sand, blood, dirt, glass, and defeat covered our faces.

“I’m sorry, man. I can’t.”

“It’s okay. Good try, sir.”

My right leg throbbed with a pain more fierce than anything I’d ever experienced. I managed to sit up, each movement required excruciating effort. Something shiny and pointed stuck out of my calf, preventing my fatigues from rolling up all the way. I could not see, but I felt the blood ooze down my skin, sticky and warm, coated with grit and sweat.

“Fucked up, soup sandwich.”

Briggs grunted in agreement.

With the sand beneath me and the sun above, it didn’t take long for my skin to scorch. Dying of dehydration or sunstroke wasn’t the worse way to go. I took a moment to say a prayer for Mom and Colt, apologizing for not fighting harder and not coming home as I promised them. I said another prayer for the brothers we left behind and one for Brigg’s wife and kid. He wouldn’t come home either.

I squinted at the unrelenting sky. The ringing in my ears subsided just in time to hear a fresh round of ammunition. Please let them be merciful. Let them shoot us in the head. Or let the sun get us first. Or…or something else if necessary.

“You got your gun, Briggs?” I asked.

 “Yeah, we can fight them off.”

God help me, I laughed because he had no idea why I really wanted it.

“Keep it close.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Hutch, call me Hutch right now.”

The quiet stretched around us as the pauses between gunshots grew.

“Hutch, I’m scared.”

“Me, too.”

I closed my eyes, the rhythm of my heart finally decelerating.

“I lied, Briggs. It is my blood.”

“I know, bro.”

He crawled over to me. I opened my eyes at the sight of him hovering over my face, blocking out the harsh rays of sun. He grabbed a fistful of my shirt and brought his face real close.

“Hutch?”

“Yeah?” I asked, surprised by his strength.

“Wake up before you scare her.”

I opened my eyes, choking on the foul taste of sand and glass. I blinked until the room came into focus again. Realization of where I was and who I was with hit.

Brigs wasn’t over me. Lilly was. Lilly’s hands lay flat against my chest, her brows knitted with worry.

“You were having a nightmare.”

Her soft voice wavered with fear. Too late, Briggs. She’s already scared.

“I’m fine.” I shifted away from her.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

If the nightmare hadn’t been bad enough, my leg ached. It swelled against the tight bandage that held the artificial limb in place. I’d forgotten to take off the prosthetic. That wasn’t true. I’d done it on purpose. I didn’t want her to see me without both legs.

I should have thought about the ramifications of spending the night with her. I’d been nervous as hell to reveal my battered body to her. But there was no reflection of disgust in her face…or pity. Thank God for that. I might have walked out otherwise. Instead, she looked at me like a woman who desperately wanted to fuck me. And that…that was a look I craved.

But there were other things I should have thought about, like not having any pain meds on me or a walk-in shower complete with retractable showerhead and plastic handicap chair like I did at Hayden’s condo.

I swung myself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, wincing through the pain. I sucked in a harsh breath as I fumbled with the tight medical bandage that connected my knee to the fake limb. I should never have laid on it this long. The agonizing pulsations on my right side were a beacon, drawing energy from every cell in my body. My fingers shook with clumsiness as I attempted to remove the binding that connected the real me to my crutch.

“What are you doing?”

The soft whisper might as well have been a scream, the way my back stiffened.

“Go back to sleep.”

She sat up, her bare breasts pressing into my back, her hair skimming my shoulder. She put her arms around me. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I think you do. I can—”

“I fucking do this every single day, Lilly!” The bark in my voice had bitten right into its mark.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. I hated myself for making that happen. I reached for her wrist before she took her arms away. I kissed the underside of it.

“No, I’m sorry. Just go back to sleep, baby. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She didn’t say anything. She walked around her side of the bed and into the bathroom.

I heard the faucet turn on. Lilly was gearing up to leave. I couldn’t blame her. She came back with a glass of water and a damp towel.

“Thank you,” I said, drinking the water greedily as she wiped the sweat from my skin. “I’m not supposed to sleep with the prosthetic. My leg swells and it makes me uncomfortable. It’s hard to take the binding off when that happens.”

“Show me how to do it.”

“I don’t want you to see me this way.” My voice betrayed me, vocalizing the very thing I didn’t want to admit. I fucking hated how vulnerable I was.

She crouched in front of me. Her hair was such a tangled, beautiful mess that even in pain, I couldn’t keep my hands from fisting through it.

She tilted her head up. Our eyes locked. “I took off all my clothes in front of you. I did it without reservation because you make me that comfortable. I hope I make you comfortable enough to let me see you completely naked too. Please let me help you.”

I swallowed down my insecurity before instructing her. She didn’t look at me with pity. There was only kindness and compassion in her eyes. After she removed the binding, she took off my prosthetic and carefully leaned it against the wall. She washed the bandage like I’d told her and laid it out to dry. Then she rifled through her purse until she pulled out a small silver tin.

“What’s that?”

“My neighbor makes this from dried herbs. Its homemade salve, but I call it my own personal magical potion. I use it whenever I get a muscle ache.” She rubbed a generous amount of the cream into my skin.

“I can massage it in. That should get the blood circulating again, which will reduce the swelling.”

Her fingers pressed into my skin with firm pressure. She did it for a long time until I felt the throbbing ease up. Then the pressure subsided completely. Although I appreciated the salve, I thought the true magic was in her touch.

“You can stop now, Lilly. Thank you. That stuff really works.”

“I’ll get you a tin.”

She ran her fingers there once more before kissing my stump. “There’s no need to thank me.”

“I wasn’t just thanking you for making me feel better, although you did.”

“Then what?”

I tilted her chin so I could look at her beautiful face, the moonlight cast shadows against her creamy skin.

“Thank you for being you.”

I traced the curve of her smile.

“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

It was appropriate since she was the nicest thing that ever happened to me.