Page 30 of Embattled Return

He turned to look at her for a moment, his stunningly bright eyes dimmed in the shadow of the car. “I’ll think about it.”

Marigold knew that he wouldn’t call her, and that hurt her heart. It was his choice though. She watched as he made his way into the hotel, then she pulled away. She couldn’t worry about every guy/client that came through the LNF doors.

10

On Monday, Logan called John in the hopes there had been a breakthrough in his investigation, but there hadn’t been. He’d been hoping that he would have some reason to go down to the office and see Marigold. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms and he’d had a long, boring weekend to regret that. Several times he’d picked up his phone to call her, then changed his mind. What exactly would he say to her?

Oh, hey, sorry I was a dick. You were just too nice and it freaked me out because I don’t want to get attached to anyone in case I decide to kill myself.

How lame, metaphorically, could he be?

If he had any sense at all he would take her up on the housing offer, if it was still available, and hope they didn’t see each other at the house or something. Yeah, right. He’d seen the look in her eyes. The one that made awareness rattle his bones. If he had any balls at all he would test that look and allow his life to take a different path.

And the kiss on his ear... Fuck. The scene kept replaying in his mind, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that, exactly. All he knew was that it kept him up at night, replaying through his mind. Wondering how far she’d go.

Man, it hurt when it didn’t work out, though.

A relationship wasn’t for him. There was no way he was going to allow himself to stick around and be a burden on someone. He looked down at his legs. Since he was in the hotel room he hadn’t bothered to dress in more than boxers and a T-shirt, though he should have. He hated looking at himself. Scars crisscrossed his legs in every direction, and there were chunks out of his thighs. All shrapnel wounds. Just like the divot out of his right calf and the missing toes on his right foot. His right knee had been replaced because it had been completely shattered. Sometimes he wondered if that wouldn’t have been better to have amputated the damn thing. It gave him more trouble than anything else. The IED had blown up beneath their vehicle, and the same metal that had protected most of his vital organs had destroyed his lower extremities. The doctors had said that they couldn’t do much more for him, although his physical therapy guy thought he could do more than he already was. That was hard to believe just because of the level of pain he dealt with daily.

Pain pills barely controlled the agony. Logan had been trying to wean himself off of them, but sometimes the pain was just too much, and he would have to take one. Or even a few of them. It made him feel weak to need pills, and he hated it.

At least he was here, though. Wasn’t that what they’d told him at Walter Reed? You made it back when others died.

In his mind, the ones that had died had gotten off easy.

Guilt gnawed at him. He didn’t like thinking that way. Miller and Harrison and Stafford hadn’t deserved to die. If they had any say in the matter, they would probably all be here, no matter how wounded they would be.

At least they weren’t in unending, uncontrollable pain, though. Every day was a trial, and he wanted to get off the fucking merry-go-round. It was what he was living for. Force himself to go see Miller’s family and get the fuck out.

He still wasn’t sure how he wanted to approach them. He’d called the number to the house, then hung up when someone young and female had answered, probably Miller’s younger sister. Logan didn’t feel like he was strong enough to go out yet. The address was mapped on his phone, marking the place eighteen point three miles away where his best friend’s family lived.

In a way, he was excited to see them again. Several times over the years he’d spoken to the family and visited, and they were on a first-name basis. He’d been to Miller’s home. Eaten their food. Joked around with his mom, a single parent, and his sixteen year-old sister. The thought of looking into Lisa Miller’s face and trying to explain to her why her boy was gone absolutely gutted him. They’d been notified officially, of course, but it was his moral responsibility as Miller’s commanding officer and best friend to explain to the family why their boy hadn’t returned home.

What answers could he give? He was still wondering what the hell had happened himself.

One minute they’d been joking around like they always did and the next, he’d been swiping pieces of brain matter off his face, trying to understand why his ears were ringing. Just that quick their lives had shifted and gone in a different direction. Most of the time Logan felt like his compass needle was still spinning.

He missed his battle buddies. They’d done everything together and now that he had the toughest mission before him, they weren’t here to support him.

Walter Reed had released him last October. In February, just a few months after he’d gotten out of the hospital, he’d talked to Harrison’s family in Florida. They hadn’t known what to do with him standing on their front porch. In the end they hadn’t invited him in, which he was okay with. Rex Harrison had been his friend, but he hadn’t been as close as Miller.

After Florida he’d flown directly to Milford, Kansas, where Charles Stafford had been from. Charlie’s father had railed at him, calling him every name in the book for not bringing his only son home. Charlie’s mother Charlotte had cried and melted into her husband’s arms, and Logan had felt like he’d hurt them unnecessarily. They’d received the official notice months before, and his presence had only resurrected more pain.

The next day, though, when he’d been packing his bags, Charlotte had invited him out for coffee. The situation had been stilted and painful, but in the end, they’d been able to laugh about some of Charlie’s antics. He’d been the joker of the team and Logan felt like he’d been able to leave Charlotte with some good memories of her handsome son.

Miller’s family was completely different. In a way, Logan felt closer to them, even now, than he did the remnants of his own family. He knew that Lisa had a volatile temper, and that she could quite literally beat him for losing her son. Logan didn’t want to hurt her. Didn’t want to hurt either one of them. He’d rather get blown up again than cause them any more pain.

He had to talk to them, though. Putting it off wasn’t going to make it any easier.

The weight of the guilt he was carrying was going to kill him before he could do it himself.

For a moment he allowed himself to feel how utterly alone he was in the world. If he killed himself now, literally no one would mourn him. His father had disowned him, his mother was too hung up on his father, his brother was probably tweaking in jail and his sister...well, she was gone.

Marigold might miss him, a little. But she’d probably chalk it up as just another veteran suicide, eventually. He would be one of the twenty, or whatever the number was now, a day that just disappeared from life. No more pain, no more loneliness.

A small voice inside him wondered if that loneliness wasn’t partially his own fault. After he’d gotten out of Walter Reed last year, it had taken a while for him to even leave his efficiency apartment. It had been so hard adapting to life after the military. People just ran around like idiots, feeling self-important as they carried their designer coffees into jobs that no one cared about. There was no place for him to fit in.

There was counseling, of course. He’d gone a few times, trying to get what he could out of the experience, but it left him feeling even more isolated. They wanted to pump drugs into him, saying that his childhood issues, his combat trauma and survivor guilt were what they called Complex Post-Traumatic Stress. C-PTS. He’d never heard of it before, and he wasn’t sure he believed in it. Certainly not enough to take happy pills. Logan realized very quickly that he would rather be clear-headed and morose than drugged and oblivious. It was bad enough he had to take pain pills.

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