Chapter Seventeen
MAX WOKE first, disturbed by the bright morning light. He rolled over, confused, until he opened his eyes to the wide expanse of Jed’s bedroom window.
Fuck.
The events of the night before came flooding back to him, and he was almost afraid to turn his head, convinced he’d find himself alone.
He looked anyway, and his heart skipped a beat. Jed was there, curled slightly on his right side, one arm wrapped around his belly and as asleep as Max had ever seen him. Max considered him, ignoring for a moment the fact that they were both naked. He didn’t regret a thing, but Jed had been so broken, both before and after, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d feel the same.
Jed stirred, as though he could feel eyes on him. A grimace colored his face and his eyes flickered open.
Max put out a hand, stilling him before he could move. “Easy. I’m going to feed the animals. Go back to sleep.”
There was a beat of silence. Jed stared at him, like he was trying to figure out if Max was real, then he let his eyes fall closed again, leaving Max to wonder if he’d been awake at all.
Max slid from the bed, retrieved his clothes from the floor, and padded out of the room. He fed Flo and let the chickens out. Took his medication and got in the shower. By the time he drifted back to the kitchen, the rain from the night before had morphed into a full-blown winter storm.
He went around the cabin, battening down the hatches. Most of the windows were sound, aside from the one in the hallway. Or so he thought. He approached it, ready to plug the gap with duct tape, only to find it fixed with a shiny new catch.
Jed.
Damn it. How long had that been there? Jed had been gone for days. When the hell had he done that?
The phone rang as Max finished making the cabin as safe from the rain as it was going to get. It took him a while to track it down, hidden under one of the couch cushions. He answered before the machine cut in.
Carla’s voice greeted him. “Finally.”
Max frowned at the clock on the wall. “What are you doing up at this ungodly hour?”
“I had an early appointment. Speaking of which, don’t suppose you’ve heard from that elusive roommate of yours, have you?”
Heat flooded through Max’s body, making him glad Carla couldn’t see him. “Um, he got back last night.”
“Is he all right? Where’s he been?”
Max paused, torn between the fact that Carla wasn’t asking as his best friend, or as the little sister of Jed’s own best friend. She was Jed’s physical therapist, and Jed had bailed on her as much as anyone else.
Besides, what was he supposed to say? He only had a vague idea of where Jed had been all this time, and he knew for sure that he was far from okay.
Carla sighed, reminding him that she was there. “Okay, I get it. Just tell him to call me, would you? If I don’t hear from him soon, I’ll be banging on your door, and trust me, neither of you wants that.”
She hung up before he could figure out what the hell she was talking about. He tossed the phone back on the couch and glared at it. It rang again before he could move. He ignored it, letting the machine pick up. One irate call from Carla was enough.
The machine was in the hallway. Max passed it as beep sounded and the caller began to speak. It wasn’t Carla. It was someone else, a woman with a soft southern accent.
“Jed? Hi, it’s Olivia. Are you avoiding me now? I tried your cell, and then your brother again. Your sister-in-law gave me this number. I don’t know who I’m even calling. Is this where you live now?”
After a long pause, she continued.
“Listen, Jed, I’m calling…. God, I don’t know. I’m calling to make sure you got home okay. I’m sorry about what happened before you left. Sometimes I find it so hard to separate you from Paul. You were so close, and I know how much he loved you.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? Don’t be a stranger. We love you, and I want you in our lives as much as you’ll have us. Take care, Jed.”
The machine clicked off, and Max found he’d frozen in the hallway. Pieces of a distant puzzle slid into place. Paul. The memorial service must have been for him. Jed said he was a friend, but something about the anguish in the mysterious woman’s voice suggested there was far more to it.
Max shook himself and continued on his path to the kitchen. Jed hadn’t touched the tea from the night before, so he busied himself making some more. When the kettle had boiled, he carried two mugs into Jed’s room.
Jed was still asleep on his side with his back to the window. He hadn’t moved at all. Max set the mugs down. He considered taking his own and slipping away, but Jed stirred before he could move.
Once again, Max noticed the wince in Jed’s expression as he came awake. He knelt on the bed, his nerves forgotten, and helped him sit up. “Okay?”
Jed scrubbed his hands over his face and took a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah, I think so.” He paused and looked down at himself. “I’m pretty fucking naked, though.”
Max grinned, relieved that Jed seemed to be back to some semblance of his normal self. “That you are. I put the water heater back on. Want a shower?”
Jed nodded slowly and held out his hand. “Come with me?”
STEAM FILLED the bathroom. Jed pushed Max against the tiles and kissed him, paying no heed to the cascading spray of water between them. They were both hard, but Max knew a repeat of the previous night was out of the question. Jed had needed something then, something deep rooted and all consuming, but it didn’t take a genius to work out he was a natural top.
That suited Max fine, but it went unsaid that Jed wasn’t going to be fucking him anytime soon. He seemed caught at a crossroads, and Max knew he had to wait for him to choose the right path.
Jed broke the kiss, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. Max ran a cautious hand down the length of his water-slicked bare back, coming to rest at the base of his spine. “Sore?”
“Nothing hurts when you do that.”
Max grinned, but he wasn’t convinced. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Not unless you want to procure me a new body.”
“You can have mine.” Max pressed his lips absently to the uneven skin on Jed’s scarred shoulder. “But I want your sense of equilibrium in return.”
Jed raised his head and smiled a smile that was faintly sardonic. “Be careful what you wish for. Mine doesn’t feel so hot today.”
“Temporary glitch,” Max said lightly. “Mine’s totally fucked.”
They stayed under the water until it ran cold. No other words were spoken, but none were needed. Jed’s gentle touch and warm lips were enough to let Max know the most incredible sex of his life had been real.
He left Jed in the bathroom and retrieved his clothes from the bedroom floor for the second time that day. He met Jed in the hallway. Jed was dressed, but one look at him, an arm braced against the wall and his face drained of color, told Max he was in no state to do anything but fall back into bed.
Alarmed, Max put a steadying hand at the base of Jed’s spine. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why you’ve turned the same color as the ash in the fireplace. Do you want me to get you some meds?” Jed remained stubbornly silent. Max took advantage of his lack of resistance and slipped an arm under his shoulders. “Fine. Have it your way, but you’re going back to bed.”
It took a moment for Jed to be able to move. Max rubbed a tentative circle into his back. He’d seen Jed suffer with pain in his leg before, but he’d never seen him so immobilized by it. He helped Jed into his room and eased him onto the bed.
“Thanks.”
Max smiled at the muttered, reluctant sentiment. He knew from experience how irritating it was to need help. “No worries.” He peered beyond Jed out to the tempest raging outside. “You might as well stay there now. That storm’s here to stay.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“On whether you let me take care of you or not. If you’re gonna be a stubborn git, I’ll watch TV all day on the couch. If not, I’ll watch it in here with you while you rest.”
Jed grinned in spite of himself. “You do take care of me, every day. Doesn’t mean I can’t get up.”
Max gestured again to the window. “Why bother when Mother Nature is telling you not to?”
He won the argument in the end, but only because Jed didn’t put up much of a fight. Instead, he swallowed the tramadol Max fetched for him and put his head in Max’s lap. And that was pretty much how he stayed for the rest of the day.
IT WAS dark when Max watched him wake up. Though a little stoned by the tramadol, he seemed considerably more himself, and Max finally got some hot tea down him. After, he remembered the message on the machine. He recounted it to Jed. Though his short-term memory often failed him, somehow, he remembered the woman’s heartfelt plea word for word.
Jed listened silently, rubbing a hand over his unshaven jaw. “Olivia is Paul’s wife.”
“The soldier who died?”
“Yeah. He died a while ago. I didn’t make it to the funeral.”
That made sense. Jed had been in Iraq up until he was hurt, then, as far as Max could tell he’d been laid up in a VA hospital in Boston, in no state to go anywhere. “Were you close?”
Jed didn’t answer. Instead, he got carefully out of bed and retrieved the bag Max had fetched in from the truck. He pulled out a large, battered envelope, came back to the bed, and tipped the contents onto the comforter.
Max stared at the scattered pile of photographs. Some were old and crumpled, and many were torn. A few even had barely legible inscriptions scrawled on the back. Jed turned one over. It was of him, naturally, hunched over a ferocious-looking gun, smeared with oil, a week of beard on his jaw and a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips.
Bloody hell.
Max licked his own dry lips. He hated smoking and loathed guns with a passion, but the image was incredible. Obviously a few years old, Jed was heavier in the photo, his face round with youth. Max chanced a glance at him now, noting that he’d grown leaner and harder with age. His face was thinner, his features more pronounced. It wasn’t better or worse, just… different.
Max took the photo and flipped it over to read the writing on the back.
Fuckin’ poser!
“I take it you didn’t write that?”
Jed smiled faintly. “No. These are Paul’s. Olivia gave them to me.”
Max put the photo down and reached tentatively for another.
Jed pointed to one with the words “pied pipers strike again….” scribbled in smudged black ink.
Max turned it over. It was Jed again, and this time he wasn’t alone. He was crouched on the ground in front of another soldier and surrounded by hordes of malnourished children. The other man was older than Jed, quite a bit older, but good-looking in a rugged kind of way.
“Who’s that?”
Jed peered at the photo. “Glenn.”
“Is he your friend?”
“Yeah. I worked with him for a long time. He was my buddy when I was in jump school.”
“Jump school?”
Jed handed him another picture. “Paratrooper training. 101st Airborne.”
Max flipped through a series of terrifying shots of men jumping from airplanes. He didn’t quite have the stomach to ask Jed which one was him. “Was Paul a paratrooper too?”
“No. These are from way before I met him. He must have pinched them from Glenn.”
Max pulled his legs up and crossed them underneath him. He kept his eyes on the photographs, attempting to appear casual. “When did you meet Paul? Where you in the same unit?”
“I met Paul seven years ago?” Jed frowned. “Maybe more. We both led small teams, and Command merged us together for a big operation. The setup worked, so we stayed that way, on and off until….”
Max got the picture and heard the deflection loud and clear. He’d heard whispers from Nick that Jed was Special Forces, and so knew better than to ask too much. “Where was this taken?”
Jed squinted at the group of men lounging in front of a tent. The image was faded and smudged, barely decipherable. “Africa.”
“That narrows it down,” Max grumbled dryly. He glanced up at the pin-covered map on the wall. Jed had been all over Africa, but the lack of desert and the jungle background told Max it had to be one of three central countries—Rwanda, Uganda, or Tanzania. “Rwanda?”
“Nope, next door. You wouldn’t find me smiling in Rwanda.”
Uganda, then.
It took a while to work through all the photographs. At first, Max thought Jed was handing them to him at random, then he figured out the order was deliberate, and roughly chronological.
Max stared hard at each and every one, taking in every detail, knowing he might not find Jed so accommodating again. The candid pictures of his team were fascinating. It was obvious the group of men was close, and Jed was central to their dynamic. “Did they know?”
Did they know you were gay?
Jed interpreted the unspoken meaning to his question with a wry smile. “Yeah, and they didn’t give a shit. I was… well, I was lucky, put it that way. I was good at my job, and my crew was loyal. They didn’t much care who I wanted to fuck.”
The setup was alien to Max. He’d never had many male friends. Even back home in England, long before he’d come out, he’d always found it hard to get past the macho crap that came with getting close to a straight guy. Jed’s Army life was unimaginable.
Jed grinned again when he said as much. “My friends were quite protective of me in that respect. No one outside our circle ever suspected a thing, but they got a kick out of camping it up anyway. If there were going to be rumors about any of us, by the time they were done, I was the last person anyone would look at.”
To prove his point, he showed Max a picture of a tall blond man standing on a tank, dressed in women’s underwear. Underneath the heavy makeup, the guy was hot, almost as hot as Jed. “No one gave you any trouble?”
“No.” Jed shook his head. “There were eight of us, and we all had a rep for being badass at something. No one really fucked with us.”
“What were you badass at?”
Jed moved like a snake. Suddenly Max found himself pinned on his stomach with Jed’s arm wrapped tight around his throat. Jed flexed his arm, ready to snap Max’s neck, before he kissed the hollow below his ear and released him.
Max rolled over, his heart pounding, though not from fear. He knew Jed could kill him in an instant, but the dark humor glowing in his eyes was too alluring for Max to care much. He cleared his throat. “Who’s the drag queen?”
Jed’s grin faded. “Paul.”
“Do you have a better picture?”
Jed rooted around. The next picture he came up with was fairly recent; it had to be, given his leaner appearance.
Max took in Paul’s wide grin, friendly brown eyes, and dark-blond hair. “He looks like a cross between you and Dan.”
Jed snorted. “That makes sense. They were both fucking buffoons.”
“And yet they were both your best friend.” It was a guess, but while Max was unsure of the way Jed had loved Paul, there was no doubt in his mind they’d had a deep friendship.
Jed let the comment slide and passed over a picture of a German shepherd bounding through water with a flashlight strapped to its head. “You might like this one.”
Max studied the picture. “You worked with dogs?”
“Not officially. Kip, one of my weapons guys, picked her up in Basra. The Brits didn’t want her, so she came back up north with us. He trained her in just a few weeks. She was amazing.”
“What’s her name?”
“Saja. It means to be calm in Arabic.”
“And was she?”
Jed chuckled. “Yeah, when she couldn’t smell explosives. Then she was a damned werewolf. Saved our asses more times than I can remember.”
“Where is she now?”
Jed’s humor evaporated. “I don’t know. Kip’s dead. Chances are she is too.”
Max felt each dull, flat word like a razor blade scraping over his heart. He averted his gaze, gathering up the photographs that had scattered across the bed when Jed tackled him. Kip was dead, Paul was dead, and Jed had been hurt so badly he’d nearly died himself.
How many of the other men he’d seen tonight had shared their fate?