Page 53 of Tacos & Toboggans
“And I get that. It’s not a concept I can’t wrap my head around, but it’s hard when you don’t have your life together and you come face to face with someone who does.”
“Ha!” he said, making me sit back in surprise. “You think I have my life together? You couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“You have a good job, a house, a car, and a bank account. That’s pretty together, Major.”
“Of those four things you listed off, the only thing you don’t have is a house, and you’ll get that sorted out eventually. You spent a decade caring for someone else in their home. It’s going to take you some time to recover from that.”
“I’ve had two years,” I said sardonically.
“And I’ve had nine, but here we are,” he said, his words not just sarcastic but scathingly sarcastic. Should I have shied away from the statement? Yes. Would I? No, because it was time to address this head-on and stop dancing around it. Thus far, doing that has only made us both uncomfortable and uncertain.
“Where are we?” I asked, hoping he’d elaborate a bit, so I didn’t have to be the one to push the issue.
“Still running,” he answered, kicking back the rest of the wine in his glass. I was tempted to refill it to help him loosen his lips more, but I was afraid to interrupt him. “Going from job to job in hopes that the next place, the next job, the next town would help me escape the memories of the past and find a future that holds more than endless hours at work followed by endless hours in an empty house.”
Honesty. Finally. “Has Bells Pass been the one to break that cycle?”
“You’re sitting on my couch, so that puts it ahead of every other place I ran from,” he said with a wink, though I could tell the wink was not so much kidding as it was nervous. A beep sounded, and he dropped his head back to the couch. “You were sitting on my couch.” The muttered sentence was followed by him pulling his phone from his pocket with a shake of his head.
“I’m still sitting here, Major. Tell me what’s going on,” I said, putting my hand on his arm as he went to get up. “If you think that telling me you’re an amputee means I’ll run away, then you’d be assigning some rather unkind personality traits to me that I don’t appreciate or have.”
“Telling you isn’t the part I’m worried about,” he admitted with a sigh. “I will tell you, but can it be tomorrow? It seems my leg is all out of juice again and needs to be charged, which means taking it off, and that will scare you off before we can talk.”
I shook my head as I stood. “Where’s the charger?”
“In my bedroom, plugged into the wall by my bed.”
“Take it off while I go get it.”
“Jaelyn,” he said, but I whirled back around and held out my finger.
“Don’t argue with me. I’m not going to go running from the house because you take your leg off. I’m friends with several amputees. For God’s sake, give me a little bit of credit and stop insulting me. If the kiss we shared at the farm was any indication of how you feel about me and where you’d like to see this go, then I can understand why you’re nervous about being vulnerable. Here’s the thing: if we can’t be vulnerable with each other, then maybe I should walk out the door, and we can remain friends. Which way do you want it?”
Rather than wait for him to answer, I walked down the hallway to his bedroom. Suddenly, the lack of pictures on the walls hit me in a whole new light. He kept saying he hadn’t had time to decorate, but I wondered if he expected to leave Bells Pass just as quickly as all the other places. Maybe it wasn’t worth the time and effort it took to make his house a home. Then again, it could be his heart was too broken to allow him to find comfort in a home.
The thought stopped me short in the doorway of his bedroom. It was a room I tried to avoid as much as possible, partly because being in his space made my daydreams about him feel more attainable. Walking into his room again reminded me of the gentle masculinity that was him in a nutshell. The muted greys of his bedding were met by the rich mahogany wood of his matching bedroom set. The bed was made with military precision, but the image of him tangled in the sheets was not hard to conjure.
The charger was easy to spot next to the bed, so I carefully unplugged it. On the way out the door, since I couldn’t stay in there forever to inhale his spicy cologne, no matter how much I wanted to, I grabbed the crutches on the floor by the bed. Once he took his leg off, he’d need them to get around until the leg was charged. Shutting the light off, I took a deep breath before walking down the hallway because, as much as I wanted to pretend it wasn’t true, what came next could alter the course of my life forever.
Chapter Eighteen
Either Jaelyn had grown tired of my evasion attempts and had thrown down the gauntlet, or when she returned, she’d chuck the charger at me and walk out the door. I was okay with the first one but not the second, so I’d wait her out. Nerves filled my gut, and the rice swirled with the wine, making me wonder if it had been a bad idea to agree to both when I knew this was coming. The last thing I needed was my liquid courage to end up on my living room carpet.
You can do this, man.
You've done far more complicated things in life than tell a girl you don’t have a leg. Hell, you’ve even been with several women, and while they didn’t stick around after a roll in the hay, that had been carefully orchestrated as well. Some women were out to bed the wounded warrior like some little book boyfriend they read about. Then the reality of what that might look like long term sets in, and suddenly, the picture it paints looks nothing like the musclebound, tatted-up guy wearing dog tags on the cover of their favorite novel.
Jaelyn wasn’t one of those women. She was the kind of woman who would dig in and do the hard stuff if it meant a deeper connection. That’s what terrified me the most. I’d spent so long running from a connection of any kind that a deep one, one that could end up with my heart shattered worsethan my leg had been, was daunting. It was stomach-churning. The only thing that made it tolerable was her. That’s what told me if I could find the courage to be open with her, it would be the first step toward the rest of my life. A step I’d been too afraid to take until I walked into this little town and made a split-second decision to grab a taco for lunch. Now, I was hovering with my missing left leg forward and praying she would catch me. If she didn’t, I would most certainly fall.
When she walked back into the room, she’d already caught me. The battle for my heart had been won, and she was holding the trophy in the shape of two crutches. She held them up along with the charger.
“Figured you’d need these if you didn’t have your prosthesis—” she glanced down at my two feet still on the floor. “Oh.” That was it. Just oh. She set the crutches down and handed me the charger with a forced smile. “I should go.”
Grasping her wrist gently, I held her in place. “Stay. I didn’t take it off, just in case you couldn’t find the charger and I had to walk down to the room. Would you plug this in there?” I asked, pointing at an outlet on the side of the couch that I couldn’t reach. “Then sit so we can talk.”
“Sure,” she agreed, taking the charger back and plugging it in.
While she was distracted, I lowered my pants and pulled them off, thankful I’d had the wherewithal to put a pair of basketball shorts on under them when I’d finished in the shower. I expected to have to show her the leg, just not in all its glory. What’s the old saying? No time like the present?
