Page 4 of Operation Rescue
“Long story. You want the whole sorry thing?”
“Up to you, but tell me what I may need to know to help. Are you saying you and… Erin, isn’t it? Are you saying you’re not—”
He hadn’t realized he’d never mentioned that to Rafe. He sighed. “We aren’t me and Erin anymore, no.”
“Sorry. Sucks.”
“In two words, yes.” He sighed again, but stopped when he realized he was dodging. If Rafe was going to help, he needed to know the basics, at least. “When I crashed, it was…pretty bad.” He shot Rafe a sideways glance. “Thanks for offering to help back then, by the way. But Erin—” he had to pause to swallow past the lump in his throat “—she took care of me. She never left my side when I was in the hospital. All the surgeries, all the setbacks, she was there. She made the doctors coordinate, fought with them if she had to…”
He couldn’t stop the tightening of his throat, and for a moment he wondered if he’d be able to even breathe if he kept going. It was a moment before he could.
“I remember waking up sometimes and she was there sleeping on one of those lounger things they bring in, obviously exhausted, and usually…usually with her cheeks wet from crying.”
Blaine couldn’t remember the last time he’d poured all this out, and it still made him uncomfortable. But Rafe said nothing, just kept walking. He had that slight hitch in his gait, but it didn’t slow him down any. And the dog, he noticed, was between them. He looked down to see the dark eyes—were those touches of gold he was seeing there?—flicking from him to Rafe and back again, as if he were assessing and wanted to be between them so he could help whoever needed it. Which was a crazy thought, no doubt brought on by Rafe’s unexpectedly fanciful description of the animal.
He drew in a long breath and went on with the sorry tale. “When I got out of the hospital Erin was there every step of the way. She coaxed, pushed and shoved me through all the rehab and therapy it took to get me back on my feet. For a year she took care of both me and our boy, Ethan. As much as I hurt, as tired as I got, I don’t think it was anything compared to what she went through.”
They’d reached Rafe’s car, a newer-looking, silver SUV Blaine had seen hundreds of on the road. But when they got in and Rafe started it up, the engine roared and then settled into a throaty growl that told him there was nothing basic about it.
Rafe caught his startled look and smiled crookedly. “I came down and did a little work on it after they bought it.”
Blaine remembered something else then, from when he’d happened to be near the hospital Rafe was still in and had stopped by to see him. And had found him in a hallway outside his room, in a wheelchair, talking to another man in a wheelchair. Only this man’s leg hadn’t had the chance to heal: it had been ripped off by an IED. What had surprised him was that they were talking, not about their injuries or recovery, but about engines.
He fastened his seat belt. The dog, who had jumped easily into the back seat, plopped his head down on the console between them. And as they started to move, Rafe spoke again.
“Then what?” he said, prompting him to continue the sorry tale by saying the words in a knowing sort of way that somehow made it easier to vomit it out.
“When I was back on my feet, just when things looked like we could get back to normal, she told me she was leaving. That she couldn’t go through anything like that ever again. Because…because…”
He stumbled on the word twice and gave up. Rafe finished it for him. “Because she loved you too much.”
Surprised, because the man he remembered had not been one to talk about such things, he could only nod. And then he used his last thought as a way to divert from a subject it still gutted him to talk about. “You been studying human nature or something since you got out?”
A slow smile spread across the man’s face. “In a way.”
That clinched it. Whatever had happened to the top Marine sniper since he’d left the service, it had caused a sea change. And it was apparently for the better, because he’d never seenthatkind of smile from the guy.
And he had to quash a stab of another feeling. The guy had dropped everything to help him, after all, so being even a tiny bit jealous of him being so obviously happy seemed wrong.
It was wrong, and it would end now. He needed to focus on the chaos of his own life, not envy someone else’s.
Chapter 3
Erin Everett had to stop herself from rubbing at her aching, weary eyes again. She was where she’d sworn she would never be again, living every day in fear for someone she loved. It didn’t matter that she’d found her niche—freelance graphic design for small local companies. It didn’t matter that she now had her dream house. Old and somewhat small though it might be, it had space around it and she’d been able to garden to her heart’s content until they were surrounded by color and scent and pathways that seemed out of a fairy tale.
It didn’t matter that she didn’t have to face the possibility that Blaine would be badly hurt again, or dread the arrival at her door of messengers delivering death. It didn’t matter because now the one person still in her life who mattered most, her precious son, had finally acted upon the hatred he’d aimed at her ever since he’d realized she was the one who had broken up their family, who had taken him away from the father he loved and admired and so often said he wanted to be like.
And now that once innocent boy was a teenager in chaos, and at fourteen determined to make her pay for what she’d done.
How could you do it? After he got hurt like that, you just walk out?
I stayed until he was healed—
That’s even worse! He thought everything was going to be okay, he told me it would be, that everything would go back to normal, we’d all be fine.
Ethan, I couldn’t go through that again, and as long as he’s in uniform, it—or worse—could happen.
Youcouldn’t go through it?Hewas the one who was hurt! But he got better, so you leave? And you make me go with you?
