“As if you can give advice.” Theresa’s husky laugh hinted at secrets with her husband. “I don’t remember wine or flowers when you asked me.”
Grace didn’t know where to look when Rey’s friends smiled adoringly at each other, so she glanced at Rey, who was watching her, not his friends.
When he intercepted her gaze, Rey’s eyes rolled up and his tongue stuck halfway out.
At least they had their reactions to the other couple’s affection in common.
Wulf and Theresa caught Rey’s expression and laughed too. “What did you always call that? My kitty eyes?” Wulf rested his hand on Rey’s shoulder. “Join the club, buddy.”
These people loved Rey. She couldn’t imagine telling them the engagement was a lie, one their friend had started, not without a better explanation that wouldn’t leave them as bewildered as she felt. The best she could offer was a smile.
Cruz didn’t think he’dever remained this silent except on a mission. He always instigated a debate or posed a hypothetical.If he could get his mouth to work, he’d ask Wulf about the end game in Denmark two months ago, but he was too tired to try.
Wulf stepped away from his wife—funny to think of him married to Doc—sat next to the bed and braced his arms on the bed rail. “Never expected to see you play the strong, silent type.”
“Sss-uck.” He’d meant to say he was shit out of luck, but the meaning was identical.
The wetness in his buddy’s eyes made Cruz want to swivel his head toward the window or cover his face, anything not to see tears, but Wulf was still talking. “If I could trade—”
Cruz slashed his finger through the air over his throat to signal his friend to stop. They both knew life didn’t make bargains. It just dealt hands. You played them as they fell.
Wulf’s gaze travelled to where the top sheet’s military corners lay undisturbed by the three dimensions of Rey’s missing legs. “Doc ran a 5K last month.” He bowed his head, shoulders slumped. “You’ll be up and walking too. That’s for sure.”
Rey’s stumps hurt like hell, but they were his lesser worry. Recovery would be hard work, but he’d picked fruit and he’d survived Q Course, so he knew whatever he wanted his body to do, it would. But his brain wasn’t a muscle he could shove at a weight machine until it fired straight.
“We’ll dance at your wedding.” His friend was still discussing legs. “You will too.”
He wanted someone to understand, and the man he’d spent eight years eating dirt with seemed like the obvious choice, so he pointed at the empty mattress. “Dry-on.”
“Dry…on… Drive on?” When Cruz nodded, Wulf whooped.
But when he pointed at his head and tried to sayworried,it emergedw-w-wor.
“Work? Word?”
What would he trade for speech? Would he trade both balls? One? Tough call, since he wasn’t confident they worked, despitewhat urologists promised, but his brain sure as hell wasn’t pulling its weight.
“Enough charades.” Wulf fished a newspaper from the trash, found a pen, and shoved them at his face. “Try this.”
The piece of paper offered a path. His hand had scabs, but he could already feed himself and hold his own piss-pot. He could do it.
He tried the pen in his right hand, then his left, but it didn’t feel less awkward, so he switched to his right again. The audible scratch of the pen crossing the paper released the tension that had squeezed him like a compression bandage. With a pad of paper, he would write messages the nurses could read to his mother and sister, and ask for Tabasco with his eggs, and apologize to poor Grace for dragging her into his clusterfuck. This pen would free him.
Through his peripheral vision he noticed Grace lean closer, and he wrote,Thank you. I’ll explain after they leave.
Wulf sank in the chair and raised his hand to cover his eyes and forehead.
Rey froze. Without even the scratch of the moving pen, the silence took on weight.
Grace bit her lower lip and wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Theresa looked at him and his notes—she was a doctor, she understood bad handwriting, didn’t she?—but her face was smileless.
Finally looking down at what he thought he’d written, he focused on the reality, not the wish. His sentences weren’t even words. Strings of letters covered the paper, mostly capital E and H and other square shapes, backward and sideways like an eye chart.
The pen snapped in two, then hit the wall across from him.
He wasn’t confused inside. He could read the news ticker on television and sort it from the announcer, so why the fuckcouldn’t he communicate? Why couldn’t he control his mouth or his hands?
