Page 13 of Strangers in Love

This wasn’t the time or the place for that particular conversation. Not only would it be extremely awkward if we were trying to work together while we were bickering, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring up such a volatile subject right before we started a sixteen-hour flight. The other passengers would’ve thanked me for it if they’d known it’d been a possibility. Freedom and I didn’t get into screaming matches or anything like that, but it still would’ve been extremely uncomfortable for anyone around us.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Freedom said as she stepped out of her shoes and put them in the plastic container on the conveyer belt. “Did you give Mom and Dad the number to Neutral Ground’s emergency contact line?”

“Yes, and I also wrote it down and put it on our fridge at home in case anyone from the school needs to get ahold of us for some reason.”

“Dr. Ipres has the number already,” Freedom said.

Since we had an off-campus apartment that we were leaving empty for six weeks, she’d asked Dr. Ipres to come by every couple days to pick up mail and check things out. Since Freedom had watched Dr. Ipres’s house more than once over the years, the professor had immediately agreed to do it. It wasn’t that Freedom and I didn’t have friends at school who could do the same thing, just that we weren’t really close enough to any of them that Freedom felt comfortable giving them keys to our place. I thought she was being a bit overdramatic, but I wasn’t really going to complain since it’d been a good idea to ask Dr. Ipres.

Not for the first time this year, I wondered what would happen when Freedom and I returned to Stanford in November. She’d been there for two years before I’d joined her, but she’d enrolled there because of me. She’d arranged her entire schedule – from day one through to completing a master’s degree, including all of the extra language classes – so that she and I would be on track to graduate together. She’d had the apartment ready for me to move in from moment one. Yes, we’d spent some time apart here or there, but my trip to Vegas with Martina had been one of the few times in the last six years that Freedom and I had been apart for more than a couple days.

I loved my sister, and I liked us doing things together, but with school behind us, I wondered how much of our future would be the same. We’d focused on two very different careers, which most likely wouldn’t take us to the same places. Which of us would have to be the one to either split us up or sacrifice what we really wanted for us to stay together?

It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and I forced it from my head as I followed Freedom through the scanner. I wasn’t going to do this. I refused to let thoughts of an uncertain future ruin this amazing opportunity ahead of us. We were going to do great things and help so many people, and then we’d go home and figure out what the next step would be. We had our whole lives stretched out in front of us, and they were going to be great.

Ten

Eoin

If I didn’t getout of the house, I was going to explode.

My family had been great these past four months, giving me space and not pushing me too hard, so it wasn’t that I wanted to get away from any of them. It was because I’d never done well with being cooped up.

When I’d been going through my rebellious phase, being grounded and not allowed to go anywhere had been the worst form of punishment. One of the things that Leo had used to get me to join up with him had been the promise of constant movement. I’d had no problem with how hard the physical stuff had been or with the danger I’d faced. Honestly, I’d liked both of those realities.

That changed the same day as everything else.

In the hospital, being around people hadn’t really been an issue because walking around that vast space, doing my physical therapy, I hadn’t been the only one with visible scars. Hell, I’d been one of the luckier ones.

I hadn’t really lost anything physically, nothing more than a little nerve damage in my cheek and some aches. Sure, I’d needed to work at getting full use of my arm, and there’d been muscles that’d needed to heal and then be rebuilt, but that was nothing compared to what others had been through.

Coming back to the U.S., however, had triggered something in me that’d made it hard to be out around people. At Camp Parks, it hadn’t been too bad, especially since I’d still been a soldier and followed the regime I’d been given. I’d used that to tire myself out during the day, so I hadn’t had to worry about nightmares. Well, it’d been physical exhaustion and alcohol. And they’d worked for the most part. I’d still had a few, but most of the time, what little sleep I’d gotten had been dreamless.

Even though Mom and Da lived less than fifteen miles from the base, it wasn’t until I’d moved back here that life had started spiraling out of control. The nightmares that left me covered in sweat, trying not to scream. The flashbacks that had me frozen and shaking. I didn’t know if it was because my mind had tried to protect itself until I got home where I knew I’d be safe or because I’d finally processed that I wasn’t a soldier anymore. Either way, it ended the same.

Going to see Israel and Nana Naz had been one of the few times I’d gone out since I’d moved home.

The worse things in my head got, the less I wanted to be around people, even the people I loved. I tried as much as I could to hide it. I didn’t want to worry anyone more than they already were, but I didn’t think I was fooling much of anyone.

My stepsister, Paris, had been home for a little while, and then, earlier this month, there’d been an active shooter scare at my niece’s school, so she and Alec had come down for a few days. He had a shit-ton of stuff going on in his life, but he’d taken the time to talk to me, and he wasn’t usually much of a talker, especially about this sort of stuff, which told me everyone was more concerned than I’d realized.

I could pretend for a while. Sit through a meal and a conversation with my parents. Spend an hour or two with one or more of my siblings. But the longer I was with other people, the tighter my chest got, the harder it was to breathe. The more I couldn’t push back the things I didn’t want to think about.

It’d been twelve days since Paris, Alec, and Evanne had all left. Paris’d had a lecture somewhere, and Evanne had school again. Alec always had business. But I didn’t have anything to occupy me. I knew my parents were getting worried, and as I stared up at my bedroom ceiling, I decided that I was done skulking around the house. If I wanted things to change, I had to get my head out of my ass and start making it happen.

I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could turn everything around and have this brand-new shiny life just by thinking that I was finally going to do something. I needed to start small and with a project that would help me get out of my own head.

I needed to get back in shape. I wasn’t too bad, but I wasn’t going to use ‘not too bad’ as an excuse anymore. That was how I’d backpedaled from my prior decision to start working out again. I was going to get my ass out of bed and put together a plan to get myself back to where I wanted to be physically.

Mom and Da had kept the exercise room in the basement that Alec and our oldest stepbrother, Austin, had set up when they were in junior high. It’d been a good place to work-out when we weren’t practicing with whatever team we happened to be on at the time, and I could have used it now – hell, I could’ve been using it all along – but I needed to get out of the house as much as I needed to exercise.

If I remembered correctly, there had been a gym a few blocks away, and it was entirely possible that it was still there. If it wasn’t, then I’d look for another one. It was a nice day. A walk might be just what the doctor ordered. Not that I’d seen a doctor since I’d finished my physical therapy.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that the gym was still there, though it was under a different name. I couldn’t remember what the name had been, but the new one was Rock Hard Bods. I was pretty sure that hadn’t been the name before. I would’ve remembered that. Nothing would’ve made a teenage boy laugh as hard as the term “rock hard.”

From the outside, it didn’t look like much, but I went inside anyway and ended up being pleasantly surprised. The place was a little worn, but it was clean, and the equipment looked to be in good order, at least from where I was standing. I paid for a guest pass, signed a waiver saying I wouldn’t sue the gym if I did something stupid and hurt myself, and then got the five-cent tour.

Since it was a Friday morning, there were only a handful of people here, which I liked, and none of them gave me a second glance, which was better. In the past, I might’ve gone to a gym to pick up a woman – well, probably not, actually – but now, I was even less likely to talk to a single person.

---