Page 7 of Cooper's Salvation
“Seems like a lifetime ago now.” Shaking her head, Kara asked, “You hungry?”
“Getting there.”
She grinned. “Up for chicken fried rice? I’ve got some leftover chicken that needs to be used.”
“Yeah, I’m good with that.”
“Excellent.” Going into the kitchen, she opened the fridge. With her head stuck inside, he heard her ask, “Can I pour you some sweet tea, or would you prefer something else? Unfortunately, I don’t have any beer to offer you.”
He watched her pull things out and put them on the counter, a pitcher the last thing before she bumped the door closed with a hip.
“Can I help with anything?”
“Sure. You can chop veg,” she replied, reaching for glasses in a nearby cupboard.
Cooper swallowed as his mouth suddenly watered at the sight of the sliver of bare skin exposed where her tank top had ridden up.
“Coop?”
“Huh?”
Kara was looking at him funny. “You okay there?”
“Yeah, sorry. What’s up?”
“I asked what brings you back to town? You just disappeared after…” Her voice faltered for a moment. Clearing her throat, she continued, “Well, after. And when I saw you at Healing Heroes, you were so distant it felt like you wanted nothing to do with me. So I’m a little surprised you’re back.”
He swallowed again, this time with nerves. He’d known this conversation was coming. To be fair, he owed her an explanation for simply vanishing from her life for a year without so much as a text or a call. What he didn’t know was where to start.
Scrubbing his hands tiredly over his face, Cooper took a deep breath. Then another. Finally, he looked back up at her. His eyes roamed over the delicate features of her beautiful face. He sighed. Where to start?
“The day of the explosion started out like any other. Just after lunch, an informant came to tell us he’d received word insurgents were in a little village a few clicks from base. They were terrorizing the villagers, looking for intel of their own.” Cooper gripped the counter where he stood, his knuckles turning white. “Atal had been working with us for a long time, and we had no reason to suspect there was anything wrong with his intel. We pulled a plan together, loaded up, and headed out.”
Kara stood as if transfixed by his words. She didn’t move, barely blinked. All thoughts of the dinner they were meant to be preparing forgotten. In that moment, Cooper would have given anything to be anywhere but there. The hell he’d lived through when others hadn’t was about to open wounds for her he’d far rather remained covered, if not healed.
“Kara, I’m not sure –”
“Keep talking. This wasn’t what I was expecting when I asked what brings you back to town, but now that you’ve started, you can’t leave it there.”
Nodding, he gripped the back of his neck. Something, anything, to anchor him, to prevent him from going backthere. “I’m not sure why, but from the time we arrived, everyone seemed uneasy. It was too quiet. Something was off; we just couldn’t put a finger on it. We surround the compound, everyone in place, and this young guy comes out …” He gripped his neck tighter as the memories of that day flooded his mind.
Kara came around the counter, taking his other hand in her smaller one. Squeezing in comfort and support. “It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to go on. Let’s talk about something else.”
Taking a deep breath, Cooper shook his head. “No, it’s fine. So anyway. This young guy comes out, and that’s when everything went to hell. I don’t really remember much after that until I woke up in a hospital bed in Germany. Once I recovered sufficiently, they shipped me back stateside to do my rehab here. Healing Heroes was the last step in my rehab program. Now that I’m considered fit for duty, I’ll be reporting to Fort Benning in a couple weeks to start training snipers.”
“Ah, so that’s what brought you back to town.” Kara nodded, but the look of hurt in her eyes gutted him.
“I’m sorry I stayed away for so long, K. My intention was never to hurt you. I just needed to put myself back together, in more ways than one.”
His mind was a tangled web of nightmares interwoven with memories shared with her and Tom being relived through a veil of ugliness. Beautiful memories and wistful thoughts, bordering on lustful, refracted by a shattered lens. The constant struggle to heal the raw, unspoken emotions had made him reluctant to draw her into the minefield that had become his reality.
God, what am I doing? Fuck. That’s the last thing I want to do is hurt her. All I want is to touch her, feel and hold, not torture her like this!
Despite the rapid-fire churning of his thoughts, all he eventually asked was, “How do you want these vegetables chopped?”
4
Cooper’s words were like a body blow as each fell from his lips. Kara was surprised to find herself still standing when he was done. Losing Tom had been like having a limb severed. They’d only had each other at the foster home, swearing to be the only family they’d ever need to each other, forever.
