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There was that three-day weekend I brought Harper and Kenzie down, but that seems like an even more distant memory. Too little, too late. I think by then, Harper had already made her decision. She’d become as distant as me, and the months that followed only compounded and accelerated the end.
“You’ve wondered off in your head, haven’t you?” Libby asks, nudging me in the shoulder, and I tense on impulse, clenching my fist.
She’d barely grazed skin, but it was enough to send the now familiar shock through my nerves.
“Oh, shit.” Her face goes slack. “I’m s—”
“It’s fine,” I insist. Waving her off, I keep walking, and hope she does the same, but she continues watching me with that same apologetic intensity. I hate it. “Sometimes my nerves just like to remind me that being set on fire wasn’t something they enjoyed.”
“What happened?” Her voice is low and breathy at first. “Or you can tell me to shut up and mind my own business. I won’t take offense.”
Honestly, I think I’d be hard pressed to find something she does take offense to with the kind of razzing she deals and takes.
“We… um…” I rub the back of my neck. I wish we were already at the restaurant so I could have a beer in front of me. Usually I hated the questions. They were all the same. Over and over when all I wanted to do was stop thinking about it. But why am I not annoyed right now? “There was an explosion set to decimate everything within ten feet. My shoulder caught part of the blast. All I remember is a flash. Then I was lying on my back while one guy put out my shoulder. I don’t even remember feeling anything at the time, just smelling burning flesh. The guy in front of me wasn’t so lucky, but I didn’t feel lucky in the hospital. They had to do skin grafts and reconstructive surgeries.”
A bitter tang burns the back of my tongue as the memories surface in vivid detail. The smell of burned flesh that lingered for days, and the persistent metallic taste that came with the cocktails of IV drugs. The minor things I focused on to keep my mind off the excruciating pain. “I developed an infection early on and they talked about amputating but concluded it’d more than likely make things worse because they couldn’t viably remove the worst of it. Safe to say there were a few days that the pain was so unrelenting, I wished the blast had just wiped me out. Finally things started to turn around, but between the injury itself and the complications, the nerve damage is still a problem. Parts of my arm haven’t fully regained sensation and other parts feel like it’s been turned up a thousand percent.”
Libby’s eyebrows pull together and upward “I can’t even begin to imagine, and I’m sure you’ve heard all the standard responses.”
More times than I care to count at this point. Usually it doesn’t really matter what people say, I find the words more irritating than comforting.
“Well.” She offers me a weak smile, taking my hand and tugging me back as she stops. “I’m glad you’re a bad ass who made it through.”
The air rushes out of my lungs, and somehow, I find myself returning her smile. “That’s just because I’m offering you tacos.”
“You can tell yourself that. And one day you might believe your own lies, but I’m enjoying the company, too.” Libby squeezes my fingers, taking a step toward me. She then looks up, holding my gaze. “That’s a lot of shit to deal with, especially carrying around a reminder every day, while trying to pretend you aren’t affected. You gave your energy to something bigger than all of us, and I figure losing that probably hurts more than your shoulder. But if you were strong enough to overcome that, you got this. Your identity didn’t end with your career path. You’re just out here being a hero in different ways.”
I trace my thumb over her first knuckle. It’s impossible to keep my guard up around a woman who doesn’t play by any of the standard rules. She’s a spitfire and seductress rolled up in a package I can’t take my eyes off of. A glimmer that’s bound to disappear as quickly as it appeared. “You’re brutal sometimes, you know that?”
Her grin widens, and she turns away, biting her lower lip. “Don’t get me wrong. Providing me with coffee and tacos is endearing in my book, and I didn’t know you before all of this, but I’m grateful to keep bumping into you. Not just because you’re hot and preventing caffeine withdraw and starvation, because I appreciate both of those things. It’s been nice having someone understanding to chat with, who doesn’t get offended by my brazen remarks, and tends to throw them right back.” She trails off and turns toward the ocean. “It’s refreshing.”
When she spins back to face me, she’s so close, right against me, the wind picks up, tossing her hair around her face. When she closes her eyes, I brush the loose pieces back, my skin caressing her soft cheek. Her eyelashes part and her face is soft as she stares up at me with those sparkling brown eyes.
Shit. I rock back. I’m about to lose it over someone I’ll probably never see again after this week. For so long, my brain has equated touch with pain, but my skin tingles from touching her, longing for the sensation again. I need to keep my head on. The walls up—walls she doesn’t even seem to recognize.
And yet, she does. She doesn’t hound me with the usual questions, or even give me the usual reactions. It’s as if she sees right through the walls, but still senses and respects their presence.
I clear my throat as we continue walking. I’m so out of practice with this, but the silence is amplifying the thud of my heart in my ears. “So do you do anything for fun besides reading psychology books?”
An ironic question coming from me. For years, I’d lived and breathed for the SEALs. Maybe because I didn’t want to deal with any other reality. Coming home left me with scars I didn’t want to talk about, but I believed if I just kept moving and focusing on the next mission everything would be fine. Unfortunately, there’s always a last mission and the most memorable thing from mine is the smell of burning flesh.
“My dog appreciates when I hang out with her. She’s a black lab and has way more energy than me. Beckett hated it when I got her though. Guess I made the right choice there.” She kicks at a pile of sand. “Other than that, I work. I’m lucky to have time to curl up to a good horror movie.”
“Horror? That part of your research too?”
“A million problems Ashville has, possessed dolls and zombies are not among them-unless you count the guy who’s usually so high out of his mind, we’ve had to pick him up for walking around town with his pants around his ankles. He never did figure out why he was in trouble.”
“Sounds like an interesting town.”
Chapter Five
Libby
The air turns suddenly cooler as we begin our walk back to the condos. As the winds picks up, dragging the rolling clouds over the evening sky, I wish I’d brought a hair tie. It’s hard enough to walk against the wind when my entire body feels heavy from gorging on the Bangin’ Shrimp tacos and Jack’s Ritas.
Despite the cold wind, we end up dawdling along the shore, joking and laughing as the purple of twilight spreads along the horizon. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the kind of ease that unwinds my entire core, and one evening with him has done that for my spirit.
He may not have taken me seriously earlier, but I can’t adequately express how much I have appreciated his company today. Having someone to laugh with is an often-underrated treasure.
