Amanda's Blue Marine (40 page)

He looked at the floor. “The first time you stayed with me was the night after the medal ceremony and I was…” his voice trailed off into silence.

“Too ill to throw me out?” Mandy suggested.

He let that go without comment. “And after that I just wanted you to be with me all the time. I took the chance. I was betting you could take it.” He looked up. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, Brendan, you were right.” Amanda blew out a long, slow breath. “You know we have some work to do. You can’t keep pounding everybody who gives you grief.”

He nodded, still not looking at her. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s a one way ticket to trouble and I can’t expect you to bail me out of every jam that finds me. The next time you won’t be able to make the mess go away.” He smiled slightly. “Even you are not that good, Amanda.”

“I don’t know. I just keep screwing up and then getting tanked after I do. I don’t know what to call it but I know it’s going to ruin my life. And yours. What’s the label for that?”

“There is one, you know. Karen discussed it with me.”

“Oh, swell. My biggest fan, Dr. Karen, the President of The Brendan Kelly Critics’ Association, Pennsylvania Chapter. I’ve been saying my prayers every day that you WON’T listen to her.”

“Well I’m going to disappoint you because I think she’s right on target in this case. She sees a lot of people in the emergency room and her wide experience has taught her quite a bit. She gave me a brochure and I made some phone calls, got the basic information. Remember back when I had that accident and we talked about post traumatic stress disorder?”

He looked at her levelly, his expression wary. “Yeah.”

“Anyone can suffer from it after a bad enough experience. It can be one incident, as it was for me, or it can be an ongoing situation, like Iraq was for you.”

“In the service they told us about PTSD. People can’t handle what happened to them in the war and they carry the aftermath into civilian life. You’re saying I have that?”

“Maybe so. I had it from the car accident in law school and I needed a lot of help to get over it. For you it’s your memories of Iraq.”

“I never think about Iraq.” His tone was firm, as if he had promised himself that those memories were inaccessible.

“You don’t have to, the effect on you is subconscious. PTSD can happen any time a trauma has an aftereffect, not just in the military, though it is the military in your case I think. Anyone who experiences a trauma and tries to dismiss it without dealing with it can be a victim of the syndrome. The drinking isn’t the real problem, Kelly. Neither is the impulsive response to bad situations. They’re symptoms of the problem. You don’t drink every day and you don’t drink all the time. Something else is bothering you which is causing you to drink too much occasionally, when you get overwhelmed. The uncontrollable reaction to stress is also a result, and the nightmares speak for themselves. You can’t have a normal life when your sleep is haunted.”

“So what do I do?” he asked, surrendering to at least the initial stage of the process without returning a salvo, which further surprised her.

“On Monday you call the number listed on a card I have in my wallet. There are services available for veterans like you, people who need help dealing with what happened to them in the war.”

“I don’t want to ask for help.” His tone was cold.

“I know that. You’re proud and independent and you don’t want anyone, especially me, to think that you’re weak or unable to handle your problems.”

He didn’t meet her gaze but he also didn’t dispute her.

“Everybody needs help sometimes, Brendan. I needed help when you first met me. Did you think any less of me because I came to you for help?”

“That was different. A stalker was after you.”

“Something is after you too, darling, and here’s a chance to make it go away. I was never more relieved than when you made Cameron go away. Do you think I would advise you to do something I thought was going to hurt you?”

He smiled faintly. “No, Red, I don’t. But contrary to popular opinion around here, you might not know everything. And Dr. Karen Freud might not either. She’s a little out of her area with this, right? Isn’t she one of those ER docs who just handles traumas and patches people up?”

“She did a six month fellowship at a veteran’s hospital and saw a lot of guys in your situation,” Amanda said calmly.

He looked at her directly. “What situation is that, Amanda? A shark living in a crib where he takes advantage of women?” he said evenly.

“I didn’t know you’d heard Karen say that,” Amanda replied quietly. No wonder he was leery of her friend.

He shrugged. “Plenty of people would agree with her.” His gaze fell and he said more softly, “I was living each day as it came, Amanda. I didn’t know you were in my future.”

Mandy got up and walked over to his chair. She sat on the arm and leaned down to embrace him. He hesitated, then reached up to pull her toward him and she curled up against him.

“Karen thinks that a guy with my lousy track record doesn’t deserve somebody like you,” he said quietly.

“How does anyone deserve happiness?” Mandy asked him. “It’s not something you earn. It’s a gift, and if it comes your way you grab it and are grateful for it.”

“I think you are a terrific person. I think I love you very much. I think I wouldn’t want to live a day without you. But I also think you need to face what’s bothering you or else you’ll never be whole.” She heard her voice beginning to crack and she thought, oh please, don’t let me start crying now. She had to remain calm and logical and persuasive or else he would just comfort her and she wouldn’t be able to resist him and they’d wind up having sex. She knew the sequence and this time she couldn’t afford to let it happen.

“I can ask because I love you. If you trust me you’ll take my word for it that you need to talk to a professional to get your life back on track. For both of us.”

He sighed wearily, lifting her hair off her shoulders and spreading it out on her shoulders. “Manning sent a department shrink to see me while I was in jail. He grilled me about everything in my past and declared that I am ‘an incipient alcoholic.’” He looked at her with a thin smile. “I’m sure you know what that is, professor.”

“Just getting started, at the beginning.”

“Right. In other words, I’m standing on top of the well getting ready to dive into it. I’ll wind up like my old man unless I get a handle on it now.”

“You can do it, Kelly.”

“I guess I have to do it. Otherwise you’ll start listening to your friends, like Karen, and your family, like your mother, who have been warning you against me.” He rolled his eyes. “And it’s not like I have given them nothing to say.”

“I’m not paying attention to them, Brendan.”

“Why?”

“Because I know how much you love me. The most important thing to you is keeping me with you, and to make that happen you know you have to face this.” She paused. “Sometimes I think you were better off before you met me. Since I’ve been in the picture the pressure of trying to get your act together for me has complicated your life.”

He shook his head. “Don’t ever think that. Before I met you I was going nowhere fast, fronting a good act on the job, getting bombed when anything pissed me off, sleeping with any woman who came on to me. Uh, not sleeping,” he smiled, “but you know what I mean.”

“I know. And I also know there were quite a few.”

“Too many. I didn’t care about them and they didn’t care about me. Even I knew I was on a treadmill going nowhere but I wanted….something…anything…” He shrugged. “A distraction.”

“A hobby?” she said, keeping a straight face.

“Okay. Fine. I deserve that. I did what was easy, going from one to the other, always somebody new. I made sure I was careful with the sex, I didn’t want any problems or complications but I didn’t want a relationship either. I was always up front with them about that. No ties, no worries, just a good time.”

“For them or you?” Amanda asked quietly. “Didn’t any of them fall for you despite what you said?”

He met her gaze candidly. “They weren’t like you, Amanda. Trust me, they were not. There are plenty of women looking for the same thing I was. I didn’t mislead anybody.”

He looked at her levelly. “I know this discussion makes me sound like a complete jerk and that’s why it’s been so tough for me to talk about it. I was afraid if I came clean about all this you’d freeze me out immediately. But I want to tell you the truth now, Amanda. It’s important that you know everything. I don’t want any secrets between us.”

Amanda nodded. It had taken him so long to open up on this subject that she didn’t want to interrupt the flow of his words.

“All I’m trying to say is that I wasted a lot of time and energy dodging involvements before I met you.” He looked at her closely, sighed, then put his head back against the chair and closed his eyes wearily. “I’m not doing very well with this, am I?” he said.

“You’re doing fine,” Mandy said reassuringly, afraid that he would stop talking. Introspection was something he avoided and she was stunned to hear this confessional pouring into her lap, especially since she hadn’t been prodding him for it.

“This may come as a shock to you but I’ve been able to figure most of this out myself,” she added. “And if I hadn’t managed to do it there were plenty of helpful people around to clue me in about your colorful past. Police stations are gossip mills and I guess our interest in each other was pretty obvious. Quite a few comments were passed for me to overhear them.”

“And that didn’t drive you away?” he said softly, opening his eyes.

“The stories I heard didn’t match the person I was getting to know,” Mandy said honestly. “I was intrigued. You were so polite, so nice, so circumspect…”

He raised his brows inquiringly.

“Careful,” she said. “From what I could see you were the furthest thing from a feckless heartbreaker and I didn’t understand the dichotomy between what I had heard about you and what I was experiencing with you.”

“Translation,” he said. “Feckless. Dichotomy.”

“Useless, careless. The gap between what I had heard about you and what I was seeing for myself.”

He nodded. “I’m not as good at analyzing these situations as you are.” He sighed. “Oh, hell, the fact is I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, so you tell me. Why was it different with us?”

“I think it was because the situation we were in compelled you to get to know me gradually, as a person, as a friend. You couldn’t fall back on your love ‘em and leave ‘em routine with me. That road was closed if you wanted to keep your job so you were forced to relate to me on a different level.” She didn’t add that she was practically quoting clairvoyant Karen or she would have lost his attention immediately.

“You really make me sound like an ass,” he said dismally. “How can you understand all of this about me and still love me?”

“If you had to be perfect to get someone to love you we’d all be alone,” Mandy said, putting her arms around his neck.

“I’m glad you feel that way, because imperfect is my main game,” he said dryly. “You’ll never be disappointed.” He hesitated and then asked in an even tone, “Can we talk about the dream I had last night?”