Page 4 of A SEAL's Heart
He nods at me as soon as he enters the cafe and strides over. “You still drink your coffee black?”
I nod. It’s a relief I don’t have to explain myself to Joel. He already knows why I don’t talk.
Joel heads to the counter to place our orders, and a few minutes later, he squeezes into the seat opposite me.
Joel doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. “You look like shit.”
His words don’t phase me. I know how I look. I’m sleeping on the floor of an old trapper's cabin, the only accommodation I could find close enough to the medical center. Joel helped me find the place. With no family, I had nowhere to go when I was discharged from the hospital.
I wasn’t expecting my military career to end abruptly. I received an honorable discharge. The Navy has no use for a SEAL who can’t speak.
Joel convinced me to hang around Hope at least until the various therapists I’m seeing are done with me.
Then I got the letter requesting I be at Jake’s will reading this afternoon. I have no idea why he’s left me anything. It’s probably his old military kit. I always admired his high-tech webbing. I guess he’s giving that to me. Too bad I won’t get to use it.
“You need to come stay with me. Get out of that cabin. It was supposed to be temporary.”
I shake my head. Joel offered me a bed at his place. He’s got two daughters, and he was going to put them in the same room and give me the other.
There’s no way I was letting him do that. I’ve heard the stories about his girls. He used to regale us with stories of the fights they got into whenever he was back. His wife would call him in tears, trying to pull the two of them apart.
If they move into the same room, I will not be responsible for what they do to each other. Besides, two adolescent girls don’t need a strange man living in their house.
So I took the cabin and took my luck with the rats. Hell, it’s a bed. I need little more than that.
Joel sighs and looks away. “You’re too damn stubborn, Ed.”
The barista calls out his name, and he gets up and gets the coffees. He sets mine in front of me, and I add a generous pour of sugar. Joel raises his eyebrows and I glower at him, daring him to say anything.
When I was a SEAL, I looked after my body. But now what’s the fucking point? Besides, a hit of sugar is better than a hit of something more addictive.
“I’m doing a thing.” Joel taps his fingers on the table, and I realize today isn’t about me. He’s got news.
“I’m setting up a retreat. A veterans retreat, right here on Wild Heart Mountain.”
Joel mentioned a veteran’s retreat before, a place for ex-servicemen and women to recover. Not the kind of recovery that’s physical, but the kind that’s harder to track. Healing the wounds that are harder to see.
“I’ve got council consent, and the VA is behind it. It’s happening, brother.”
His features widen in a grin, and it’s infectious. I smile for the first time in what seems like an age, and my jaw sends a warning shot of pain through my skull.
“I’m using some of the land where the old Tyson ranch used to be. There’s room for a PT course and a skills area, a climbing wall, and buildings I can convert into cabins.”
He talks about his plans, and I can imagine it as he talks. A place for veterans to come to recover, to get their confidence back through physical activity. A place to remember who they are. He’ll lead hikes into the mountains and to the climbing crags, focusing on the inclusion of veterans with disabilities.
“I’ve got plans, I’ve got funding. The only thing I’m missing is the people to help me run it.”
He stops talking and looks at me. I sip my coffee, and I take a moment to get what he’s getting at.
Hell no. I try to speak, and it comes out as a slurred grumble. Frustrated, I try again. This time, all that happens is the grumble is louder.
A little girl from the table next to me glances up, startled. She sees the scar on my cheek and the strange shapes my face is making as I try to work my mouth into the right words, and she starts to cry.
I shake my head and slink back into my seat.
I’m not fit to be out in public. I scare little girls for fuck’s sake.
Joel holds up his hands. “You don’t have to decide now. The land’s derelict, and it’ll take some work to clear it, then build on it. But there’s a job if you want it. In whatever capacity, I’ll find something for you.”
