Awake and Alive (3 page)

“Missed your calling, huh?”

Though Jed knew the journalist’s question was meant for him, he didn’t respond. He was done shooting the breeze. He had shit to do, like planning a fucking mission that could get them all killed.

Glenn’s laugh was dry. “Hell, yeah. Jed’s a people person, a teacher, a leader of men. Can’t you tell?”

The journalist didn’t look convinced, and the conversation moved on, as did the war machine.

The next night, Jed’s crew flew behind enemy lines and dropped unnoticed into a Kurdish village. The mission went as expected: brutal, dangerous, and long. It was two weeks before they made it back to base camp.

Jed found the reporter the night after their return. The guy was sitting by the wheel of a Humvee, smoking a cigarette like it was his last night on earth. Jed considered walking on by, but something made him turn back.

“Hey, Ross?”

Ross looked up. The surprise in his eyes made it obvious Jed was the last person he expected to see. “Yeah?”

“Paul forgot the last line of the poem.”

“The Kipling one?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

Ross didn’t reach for his ever present notebook, and Jed wondered if he thought Jed didn’t know himself. He turned his back on the reporter and walked away. He was nearly out of sight when he tossed the line over his shoulder:

“And go to your God like a soldier.”

“W
HY
DO
think you didn’t end up like that?” Carla pointed at Brady. “You’re older than him. You’ve seen lots more horrible things.”

Jed let the present filter back into his consciousness. “Maybe I didn’t see them when I was twenty-two.”

“Yes, you did. You were in Somalia when you were twenty-two.”

Dammit, Glenn.
“So?”

Carla sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m trying to—” Carla stopped and threw up her hands. “Okay, I admit it. I don’t know what I’m trying to do either. I just don’t want you to end up like my
abuelo
: old and terrified of things you’ve never told anyone about.”

J
ED
LEFT
Carla and drove home with their conversation playing on his mind. Her concern wasn’t unfounded, and he felt a little bad for shooting her down, but not bad enough to burden her with the bullshit that came with a decade of active service.

Glenn was right: they all had PTSD and there would be something wrong with the world if they didn’t. Trouble was, he didn’t feel in the right place to deal with it. Not yet. There was something else he had to do first. A loose end, if you could call the overdue line-of-duty investigations into that fateful day in Kirkuk a loose end.

Perhaps he was in denial. He was scheduled to fly out to Fort Carson in less than a month, and he still hadn’t told Max he was going.

Max.

Jed let the image of his lover’s bright smile distract him from morbid thoughts of a military review. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was early evening, the time Max usually came in from the boat shed. He’d be cooking supper now, his skin damp from his evening shower. Jed bit down on his lip as he turned up the long road to the lake, and with his foot pressing down on the gas, it wasn’t long before he pulled up in the yard.

With Desta at his heels, he found Max pottering by the stove, shirtless, cooking up enough pasta to feed every soul he’d ever met. Jed leaned over his shoulder and swiped a mushroom from the pan. Max elbowed him and his smile lit up the world.

“Hungry?”

“Mmm. Whatcha got?”

“Duh. What does it look like?”

Jed fought the urge to lift Max off his feet and spin him around the kitchen. Instead he sunk his teeth into the skin of Max’s bare shoulder and left the room to clean up. His belly wasn’t the only part of his body going through a rebirth, and he’d get his own back later.

Not much later, as it turned out. Clearing up after dinner got out of hand, and a jovial water fight over the sink turned into something else. Max put his fist through a cabinet door as Jed fucked him over the kitchen counter. The encounter was explosive, dangerous in its intensity, and after, Jed wondered if the heat between them would ever fade.

Later that night, Jed lay on his back in bed. Max lay beside him, massaging a nagging pain out of his abdomen. It happened from time to time. The pacemaker in his stomach made his gastroparesis easier to manage, but it hadn’t gone away. The difference now was that the toe-curling spasms didn’t make him puke and were often cured by a Tylenol and the magic of Max’s hands.

With the pain all but gone, Jed opened his eyes and smiled at Max.

Max grinned and pressed a kiss to his scarred stomach. “All right?”

Jed hummed, but though he was more content than he’d ever been, the sound came out noncommittal.

Max sat up. Jed tried not to ogle his perfect form, but failed. Max was beautiful, inside and out, and next to Jed’s battered, scarred body, he shone like a star. A lithe, wiry, dark-eyed star….

“
Jed
.”

“Hmm?”

“What’s up? Does your belly still hurt?”

Jed closed his eyes as Max combed his fingers through his hair. “Not at all.”

“Then what?” Max kissed Jed’s cheek and waited.

Knowing he wouldn’t quit, Jed opened his eyes with a sigh. “I got an earful from Carla today. She wants me to volunteer at the VA.”

Max didn’t seem surprised. “So that was her grand plan? I knew she was up to something, but she wouldn’t tell me what.”

“Did she tell you she was going to dump me on the psych unit for the day?”

“No. Is that what she did?”

“Uh-huh. Left me in a room of catatonics.”

Max smiled in a way that told Jed that, despite the heavy subject matter, his chagrin was amusing. “Was it terrible?”

“Yeah,” Jed said honestly. “But not for me. I can handle that shit. It’s… disturbing, but I know if it was going to play out like that for me, it would’ve happened already.”

Max said nothing. He was the best medicine for the depression that Jed was coming to realize had manifested in him years before they’d ever met, but it wasn’t something they talked about much. They didn’t need to. It was everywhere they turned, even on the good days.

“Maybe you could take the dogs with you. Desta could cheer anyone up.”

Jed chuckled. Flo had become a regular on the children’s ward since his stint in the hospital. Max often took her when Jed was summoned to see Dr. Howarth. And the idea of Desta on the psych ward wasn’t a bad one. It sure beat scribbling with crayons on the floor.

“Maybe I’ll go when he’s a bit older, then.”

Jed said it as much to himself as anything, but Max smiled and kissed his cheek. “You can do anything you want now, Jed, whenever you want. Your life is your own.”

Jed grinned in answer and rubbed his chin on Max’s head. Max was right. Of course he was, but it wasn’t about
want
. After all, Jed was awake and alive. What more could he possibly need?

G
ARRETT
L
EIGH
lives in a small commuter town just north of London with her husband, two kids, a dog with half a brain, and a cat with a chip on her shoulder. She’s twenty-nine, and now she’s reached that milestone, she intends to stay there for the foreseeable future. Garrett has been writing just about her whole life, but it’s been about three years since she decided to take it seriously. According to Mr. Garrett, it was either give the men in her head a voice or have herself committed.

Angst. She can’t write a word without it. She’s tried, she really has, but her protagonists will always, always be tortured, crippled, broken, and deeply flawed. Throw in a tale of enduring true love, some stubbly facial hair, and a bunch of tattoos, and you’ve got yourself a Garrett special.

When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on
Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible. That, and dreaming up new ways to torture her characters. Garrett believes in happy endings; she just likes to make her boys work for it.

Garrett also works as a freelance cover artist for various publishing houses and independent authors under the pseudonym G.D. Leigh.

Social media:

Website: http://garrettleigh.com
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Garrett_Leigh
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garrettleighbooks
Cover art enquiries: [email protected]

By
G
ARRETT
L
EIGH

N
OVELS

Only Love

R
OADS
S
ERIES

Slide

Rare

Published by
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REAMSPINNER
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RESS

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The Roads Series from
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ARRETT
L
EIGH

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The Roads Series from
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ARRETT
L
EIGH

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

The Roads Series from
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ARRETT
L
EIGH