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"Jett!" I heard Maddox yell off in the distance. The sound of his voice had me shaking with relief.
He’s alive. Thank God for small favors.
I turned my focus back to the man I’d mowed down. Despite the fact that he’d knocked me off his upper body, my legs had somehow ended up across his lap.
"Look, sir, I'm sorry but if you can just stay still until I—"
"Get. Off. Me," the man responded icily. He didn't even give me a chance to respond to the request. He yanked his lower body free of mine and then began dragging his body across the rocks to reach his bike.
Except it wasn't a bike. It was a wheelchair. A goddamned wheelchair.
And he wasn’t dragging his body because he was injured… no, he was dragging it because his legs…
Oh God.
I couldn't hide my shock at the fact that not only had I run down a man in a wheelchair, I also hadn’t even noticed his more than obvious physical disability while I’d been sprawled out on top of him. Unfortunately, said man chose that moment to look in my direction. His already angry expression turned almost deadly. "What, you never seen a fucking gimp before?" he bit out.
"No, I—" I began before I shook my head lamely because there was no good answer.
"Jett!" Maddox yelled again.
The man I could only assume was Jett didn't respond, so I called out, "Down here!" Stupidly, my eyes still were stuck on the spot where his legs should’ve been. Jett reached his wheelchair and managed to right it, but the terrain made it impossible for him to position it in a way that he could get himself back into it. I sat there helplessly on my ass as I watched him struggle. When I finally came to my senses enough to climb to my feet so I could help him, he growled "Don't!" and put his hand out as if to hold me back.
He was like a wild, wounded animal and for the first time in my life, I was clueless about how to help.
"Jett?" Maddox called when he spotted us as he rounded the corner. Unlike me, he jumped into action.
"Get away from me!" Jett shouted. Maddox completely ignored him and made a move to pick him up. That sent Jett into the mother of tailspins. "Don't fucking touch me, you son of a bitch!" he snarled. "I told you I didn't want this! You fucking did this to me, Lieutenant." The title was said with an ugly sneer that had Maddox lurching back. Maddox's eyes shifted to Jett's legs which I could now see had been amputated just below the knee. Guilt was etched into the lines of Maddox's normally stoic features. The need to defend my friend had me stepping forward, but Maddox put his arm out to stop me.
"Just leave me the fuck alone," Jett said more quietly. Whatever rage had been burning inside of him seemed to get snuffed out just like that, leaving behind a wounded, broken soul who was beyond anyone's reach.
The three of us hung there for several long moments before a commotion on the pathway caught our attention. Dallas and Nolan rounded the corner. As Nolan hurried to Jett's side, a worried Dallas stared at his brother. Then he went to help Nolan get a suddenly willing Jett back into his wheelchair.
Although willing didn't exactly describe the sullen man. His eyes were no longer looking at anything in particular, and he wasn't much more than flesh and bone as Nolan and Dallas lifted him. When Dallas looked back at his brother, Maddox motioned with his chin in the direction of the house. Dallas sent him a quick nod and then he began the tricky task of getting the wheelchair back up the path. I almost laughed out loud when it suddenly made sense why Dallas and Maddox had been working so frantically to pave all the walking paths at the center. I’d foolishly assumed it was because of the increase in foot traffic that the place had seen in the last six months.
"Maddox," I said softly when the trio was out of sight.
"You okay?" Maddox asked me.
I ignored his question and instead said, "He should get looked at. He took a pretty hard fall."
Maddox let out a sigh and said, "Yeah, that's not gonna happen."
"He's your friend from the military?" I asked.
Maddox nodded.
I tried to hold my tongue.
I really did.
But Jett's final words to Maddox kept ringing in my ears and I couldn't make sense of them. Before I knew it, I was vocalizing the question I’d told myself not to ask. "What did he mean when he said that you did that to him?"
Maddox was quiet for a long time. When he finally looked at me, I saw someone who was nearly as broken as Jett. I hadn't seen that Maddox since he'd met Isaac.
