Page 38 of Save Me

She quit fiddling with the staples, and was staring at the ceiling and thinking about Hunt when someone knocked, and then the door swung inward.

Charis came through, then stepped aside. “Mission accomplished, dear friend. Rest well. We’ll talk another time,” she said, then blew her a kiss and left the room as the door swung shut behind Hunt.

Seconds later, he was at her bedside. He dropped his backpack to embrace her, then froze. Between the stitches in her head, the bandages on her feet and the cuts still healing on her lips, he was afraid to touch her body at all, and took her hand instead.

“Hey, baby...what did they say? What all did they do? Are you hurting?”

“Pain-wise, I’m better now. I have a concussion, which is healing in spite of me. Bruised ribs but nothing broken. The obvious staples in my head. I’m told that after they cleaned my feet, they glued the deep cuts, and left the rest to heal on their own. A couple of places were infected, as you know, but I have double doses of antibiotics in me, and enough pain meds in me to make the world look pretty in pink.”

He smiled. “I’d almost forgotten your sense of humor, and now I’m wondering what kind of description you gave to your friend that made her identify me so fast.”

“Oh...basically just look for the best-looking guy with black stubble,” she said, and ran her fingers against his chin.

“Ah, yes... I’m going to have to deal with all that.”

“They’re going to let me go home tomorrow. I’m still here only because they administered anesthetic. When do you have to go back to work?”

His eyes darkened. “Never. I’m not leaving you.”

“But your job?”

“Darlin’, I can fly choppers anywhere. However, I may be ahead of myself. I guess I need to ask, is there still room for me in your world?”

“Dumbest question ever, and yes,” she said. “I have a house. I bought it years ago. I love the house. Everything I did to it was with you in my heart. I guess I should have sent out an SOS years ago, but I think I was afraid to face you.”

“Well, that’s bullshit, and now you know it,” Hunt said. “Then it’s settled. I’ll call my boss, Pete, and tell him I’m staying. I can catch a quick flight back in a few days to pack up my clothes, and we’ll go from there.”

Tears quickened. “Go from there... We finally have a future, don’t we?”

“Yes, ma’am, we do, but we can’t go back. Life happened. We both changed, but without each other to monitor the changes. We’re gonna take this slow and this time, do it right. No running. No hiding. We already love each other. We just need to feel the solid ground beneath our feet here as well,” he said, and brushed a kiss across her forehead.

She was crying again. “Thank you for coming to find me. Thank you for still loving me even after all the chaos my parents caused. I’m so sorry about your scholarship. I cannot imagine how that felt.”

Hunt slid his hand beneath her palm and felt her fingers curl around it. Just like they were before—always needing that feeling of connection. She’d bared her soul to him on the mountain, and he was still living with his hell. It wasn’t fair to her, and there were things he needed to purge. They were already talking about their future, and he was still buried in the past.

“I need to tell you stuff, but at the same time, I keep thinking, wait until she’s better. Only we both learned the hard way what happens when you wait.”

Lainie tightened her grip on his hand. “Lower this bed rail and sit down beside me. Whatever it is will never change how I love you. Give me your demons to hold. I know how to handle them.”

Hunt lowered the railing, then scooted onto the side of the bed. He glanced at her once, then dropped his head.

Lainie reached for his hand as she waited. She could feel the tension in his body and gave his hand a little tug. “Hunter, it’s okay.”

He took a deep breath and started talking.

“I’ve never talked about this before, and you deserve to know. Because there can’t be secrets between us again. Ever. I have nightmares that will never go away. Just as I’m sure you do. But you told me yours. And I need to tell you mine.”

“I’m listening,” Lainie said.

Hunt nodded. “I shut down after I left New Orleans. I packed up the boy I’d been and tried to forget he’d ever existed. There were days in Iraq when I thought I would probably die. Looking back, I think I joined the Army expecting it to happen. By a twist of fate and an aptitude test, I wound up in Aviation training and came out good at what I had learned to do. The whole time I was deployed, I carried out my job in the cockpit of an Apache Longbow, the Army’s most impenetrable helicopter. I occupied the front seat as gunner and copilot, with my pilot, Preacher, behind me quoting Bible verses as he flew. Every pilot has a call sign. They called me Gator because I was from Louisiana. There were days when we felt invincible, and days it felt like not even God could save us. Yes, we got shot at every time we went up. And yes, they threw everything at us from ground fire to blasting at us with RPGs, and MANPADS. But we were in Longbows, and what we didn’t evade was deflected. We were not on the ground like foot soldiers, being moved from place to place in truck convoys, riding along with your buddies in the middle of nowhere and getting blown up by an IED while you’re in the middle of laughing at someone else’s dirty joke. But pilots did die. And war sucks. You know?”

Lainie’s heart was hammering. She could feel every nuance of the nightmares within him, and yet there were no platitudes that fit. No words to take away the pain, so she did what he needed most, and just listened and watched the shadows come and go on his face.

He was staring out a window now as he talked. She knew he’d gone back there in his mind, and there was no way for her to follow.

He glanced back at her face. She hadn’t flinched, and this was good, because it was her permission he sought, to be able to continue.

“We’d been in-country for almost eighteen months and were having a little downtime at the base. It was hot and sunny, and the endless wind was blowing sand in our hair and in our eyes, and if we laughed, we had grit in our mouths, but on that day it didn’t matter. We were just hanging out, playing a game of pickup. Rat had the basketball. I was defending under the basket. T-Bone was dancing around in the corner, waving his hand for a pass, and Preacher was coming in behind Rat for a steal when a sniper hiding in the surrounding mountains fired a shot. Preacher had this look of surprise on his face.” Hunt stopped, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “And then I saw the hole in his forehead about a second before the next shot hit me in the back.”

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