She thumped her skull onto the padded seat. This got worse. “I’ll stay until she gets here.”
“I didn’t tell you all that to guilt you. You don’t owe him.”
“Maybe I do.” Images of the young man with the missing arm, the laughing guy flirting with her escort from his wheelchair, and Rey,Rey, propped in his half-empty hospital bed, swamped her. “Maybe we all do.”
“This is not a patriotic duty. You have a duty to pay taxes, not to pretend to be engaged.”
“Don’t you think there are places in between?” It wouldn’t hurt her to keep him company, maybe read to him or watch a movie.
“Be careful, okay? That’s advice from your sister.”
“Puh-leeze. You’re way too young to sound like Mom.”
“Speaking of, they’re super excited about your engagement. No idea how you’re going to reveal the truth that you’re not going to be coming home more to visit.” Her sister snickered. “They’re counting potential grandkids.”
“Oh, shut up.” Deciphering Rey might be easier than deflating her parents’ nuptial expectations for their firstborn.
Chapter 5
The little guy’s longblue shirt fluttered as he tumbled from the opposite bank. His head bobbed once, but the canal was too deep, always too deep. Every night Cruz watched him disappear underwater.
Cruz dropped his rifle and fumbled to unclip the chest strap of his assault pack.Stupid,he tried to yell, but his gear pressed too hard for him to breathe, too hard for his warning to rise above a moan.Don’t be stupid. He’s not worth it.
Instead of listening, his dream-self took the big hop over the lip of the irrigation ditch. The three strokes to reach the kid used up all his air. Each time he struggled to hand the boy up to his older brother, wiry arms clung to his neck like suckers. He peeled the runt away, but the arms came back and strangled him.
He needed air. He needed to breathe. He opened his mouth.
Nothing.
Chapter 6
Grace came back. Thatsurprised Cruz more than anything since he’d stepped on the mine. Today she brought a Canyon Fruit Cooperative box, or rather, she escorted the navy kid carrying the box for her and thanked him profusely.
“Apps?” Sitting in his wheelchair felt and looked closer to normal, even if he couldn’t talk. He missed his legs, missed using the john like a man, missed more than he had imagined, but he could get through that. Soldiers did. The lost words were another matter, and he shivered, thinking these garbled sound-fragments might be his best effort. “Ah-pul-z?”
“Cards, I think.” She heaved the container from the guest chair onto a table that shuddered under its weight. “I’m supposed to deliver them.”
She picked at the tape with her nails, so he pointed to the butter knife on his breakfast tray, but he must be invisible.
When he tried to maneuver around the foot of the bed to the side table, the Hummer-sized footrest raised to be level with his seat made it like driving a bicycle with an ottoman strapped tothe front. His right front wheel locked on the bed frame, but he couldn’t see below the footrest to know whether to go forward or back. Stuck, like a low-rider on a parking barrier.
The ripping tape irritated him. “Stop.”
She didn’t hear, or didn’t pay attention, and kept picking at the package until he barked “knife” like a constipated drill instructor. Her hunched shoulders made him feel both guilty and pissed off, and he wanted to pound his forehead into the wall. Couldn’t hurt his brain much more, but he was too jammed to even manage self-injury. Idiot at the wheel.
He lowered his voice, pointed at the breakfast tray, and said “knife” again, but she didn’t turn. Maybe he hadn’t said what he’d intended.
“I can’t do this.” She rested her elbows on the carton and cradled her head. “I have no idea why I’m here.”
If spending an hour with him was too hard, then she could march her tight ass out the door. She was nice enough to look at, but she wasn’t his type. He could make it alone.
Not one word left his mouth.
“My sister said your mother should get here today.” She walked to the knife without looking at him and started sawing the tape. “Do you want to unpack? Or shall I?”
Hell, he’d been blown up last week and already done two hours of stretches and mat work with a physical therapist, and didn’t think he looked as exhausted as she did. “You.”
After she stacked envelopes and cards across the foot of his bed, she lifted out a quilt. “This is beautiful apple-print fabric.” She hunted for a tag, the flush returning to her face. “We’ll have to check the cards to see who made it.”
