Page 66 of Cowboy's Last Stand
“I made a mistake with the wiring and sped up the time-release instead of dismantling it.I knew immediately that I was in trouble.I couldn’t run because of my suit, but I tried anyway.I tripped and fell.”
Natalie clapped a hand over her mouth.She was familiar with the protective equipment bomb techs wore.The suit was bulky and heavy.
“I rolled over to crawl.My teammate came to help me against my orders.”
“Would you have died if he’d listened?”
This question gave him pause.“The incident report indicated a 90 percent mortality rate at the range I’d been in, so yes.I probably would have died.He got me to a safer distance before the explosives detonated.It was inside the mosque.The walls offered some protection, but the ceiling fell down on us.”He touched the back of his skull again.“I ended up with a broken leg and a traumatic brain injury.It took a long time to heal.”
“What… what happened to your teammate?”
Jason’s eyes became distant.“He didn’t make it.I drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to move.There was rubble on both sides of us, and he was on top of me.I could hardly breathe.The comms didn’t work, so I couldn’t call for help.The recovery efforts were slow.I wasn’t rescued for forty-eight hours.”
Natalie stared at him with a mixture of sympathy and horror.No wonder he avoided enclosed spaces.He’d been buried in a collapsed building with a dead man.“I can’t imagine how excruciating that must have been for you.”
“It was worse for him.”
“You feel responsible.”
“Iamresponsible.”
“What would you have done in his place?Left your teammate?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed.“I was his superior.I gave him a direct order.He should have followed it.He had a family.”
“You have a family.”
“He had a wife and child.”
She acknowledged the importance of this difference; she’d lived it.She also recognized that his guilt was a motivating factor in his presence here.He wanted to help her because she was a military widow.“Have you spoken to them?”
His eyes shone with unshed tears in the muted light.He cleared his throat but didn’t respond.She rose from the front step and sat down next to him.When she wrapped her arms around him, his body went taut.Discomfort radiated from him, but he didn’t pull away from her.Nor did he break down, though his shoulders shook with unexpressed emotion.
“They would be proud of his bravery,” she whispered.
He seemed unable to speak or cry.She brought his head to her chest and rubbed his back in soothing strokes.She hoped he would stop torturing himself.This was the secret he’d been keeping, the “wrongness” she sensed in him.He’d been injured mentally and physically.The traumatic experience had literally broken him.He couldn’t forgive himself for the death of his comrade.He’d walked for months without gaining any self-acceptance.
Although his eyes stayed dry, hers did not.She had no trouble summoning tears lately.She cried for him and for Mike, who’d been killed in action like Jason’s teammate.Jason wrapped his arms around her snugly.They stayed that way, finding solace in each other, until he drifted into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Jason woke latewith an emotional hangover and an aching neck.
The neck pain wasn’t a surprise.He’d worked himself to the bone the previous evening.After the babysitter left, he’d fallen asleep on the glider.Then he’d done it again after his talk with Natalie.In the wee hours of the morning, he’d moved to his sleeping pallet for a more restful slumber.
He didn’t feel rested, however.He didn’t feel relieved.He’d tried to unburden himself of the weight he’d been carrying for over a year, and he’d failed.He hadn’t been forthright enough, withholding just enough details to keep her in the dark.She hadn’t recognized his last name.She still didn’t know who he was or why he’d come here.If she’d put two and two together, she wouldn’t have been so kind in her assessment of him.She wouldn’t have comforted him or told him that the man’s family would be “proud.”
Christ.
He rose from the pallet and rolled up his sleeping bag, wincing.He should have known that she wouldn’t guess his connection to Mike.There were six different EOD units in Kabul.Hundreds of soldiers were trained and employed for explosive disposal.Deaths were more common in this specialty than any other.
The fact that Jason, a former EOD tech, had turned up on the doorstep of a Marine who’d died while working with an EOD unit was too much for coincidence.Natalie was an intelligent woman, but she was also incredibly kind and trusting.People had a hard time recognizing uncomfortable truths—especially those that were deliberately hidden.
Jason didn’t have the heart to connect the dots for her.Instead of giving her the full story, he’d taken the coward’s way out.He’d skipped over the hardest part for selfish reasons.He hadn’t wanted to ruin his chances to bed her.
He studied his hiking gear on the porch, wallowing in self-derision.He wasn’t any good to her.He couldn’t evensleep indoors.His therapist had told him that death by suicide was the most common military casualty.Maybe he needed to walk away from Natalie and keep walking until he dropped dead from exhaustion.
Annoyed with his maudlin thoughts, he left the porch and went to the upstairs apartment.In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and examined his reflection.The bruises were gone, but that was the only improvement.His face was tense, and his eyes had a haunted appearance.He turned his head to the side, touching the black stubble on his jaw.He looked more like his father every year.
