All for You (21 page)

Reza frowned, rubbing his hand over his mouth thoughtfully as he listened to Wisniak’s words and thought about what to say. His own prejudice rang loudly in his ears.

Finally Wisniak looked back at him. “All I ever wanted to be was not a fuck-up.” He blinked rapidly then squeezed his eyes shut. “Song said he was going to make sure I was run out of the army because I was a waste of time. That I didn’t deserve the honor of wearing our uniform.” He looked back at Reza, his eyes filled with the loss of something much more fragile than the most precious glass. “He’s right.”

“You tried to kill yourself tonight, didn’t you?” Reza finally said softly.

Wisniak looked down at his wrists. “I even fucked that up.”

Reza swallowed a hard lump in his throat as a memory collided with his present reality. This was not the first time he’d sat with someone wearing bandages on their wrists.

He was at a loss for words. He searched for something to bridge the gap between him and the wounded young soldier next to him.

He settled on the truth.

“We all take a knee sometimes,” Reza said softly, his voice rough.

Wisniak eyed him warily. “You never do.”

Reza pressed his lips together into a flat line. “You didn’t see me six months ago.”

“What happened six months ago?”

R
eza took a deep breath. Fear gripped his throat as shame twisted in his belly.

It was hell to admit to someone that you were an addict. One fist clenched in his lap as he rubbed his hand over his mouth, thinking long and hard before he answered. Very few people in the battalion knew that Reza had gone to rehab. Even the army didn’t officially know he’d gone because he’d been on convalescence leave at the time.

But maybe this kid needed to know that Reza had spoken the truth: everyone had a breaking point. He held his breath until his lungs burned and begged for release.

And then he spoke, his voice raw, his words harsh.

“I spent a week in rehab.” Wisniak’s eyes widened but he wisely said nothing. Reza might have broken if he’d dared breathe a word. “I drink. A lot. It got out of hand on a mission a few months ago.” That was all he could manage of the truth. He looked at Wisniak. “So don’t think we’ve all got our shit together because we don’t. None of us do.” He swallowed hard. “We’re going into the emergency room and we’re going to have a doc look at your wrists and another doc look at your head. And you’re going to need to take some time to figure out what is going to make you happy. Not me, not your dad, not some mythical hero you think you want to be. You. Because this is your life. No one else’s.”

Wisniak’s eyes were wide as saucers. He blinked rapidly then nodded.

There was nothing more to say. Reza led him into the ER and checked him in. Because of the cuts on Wisniak’s wrists, they bypassed the normally hellish wait and were taken right back. Once it was verified that there was no physical risk of Wisniak dying, they began the wait for the on-call doctor. Around midnight, the on-call doc still wasn’t answering his calls, so the hospital began trying to get hold of the head psych doc.

They waited. There was no small talk but the silence was no longer filled with acrimony and harsh judgment. No, Reza had taken on another role the moment he’d shared his weakness with Wisniak. He refused to consider that Wisniak now looked at him like some kind of fucked-up hero. Reza didn’t deserve to be put on a pedestal.

More likely it was the first time someone had been nice to Wisniak. Reza felt the sour taste in his mouth echoing back at him over how badly he’d treated Wisniak and all the other troopers Reza had felt were unworthy of being called soldiers.

Guilt and shame danced at the back of Reza’s neck, a dreadful duo that made him crave the oblivion of alcohol just to escape the wretchedness that threatened to consume him. One more person knew that Reza had fallen down on the job. One more person could now look at him every single fucking day and wonder if he’d had one or two or six beers before lunch. One more person might stand a little too close to see if he’d taken a pull off the flask before first formation.

Admitting his weakness shamed him. It had been the right thing to do but still, he felt like a failure. Like a broken thing on top of a trash heap.

An old washed-out infantry sergeant who could no longer cut it. Some wrung-out GI who would be relegated to sitting around, swapping war stories while young men went off to actual war.

Reza suddenly felt far older than his years. Infinitely older.

He wanted to go to sleep and not get up for a week. Maybe then he’d feel something akin to normal. Maybe everything would turn out to be a bad dream and he’d wake up and everything would start over. Sloban would still be alive and he’d think to ask how his former soldier was doing. Wisniak would not have taken a dull blade to his wrists and Reza could ask if he needed help instead of condemning him like everyone else had.

He rubbed his hands over his face. He wouldn’t have met Emily, though.

He considered the sweetness of her laugh, her terror as he’d taken her through the shoot house. The way her eyes had darkened the first time she’d seen the memorials he’d carved into his skin after each deployment.

There was a quiet knock on the waiting room doorjamb.

Reza looked up into a familiar face.

Emily stood in the doorway.

She hadn’t had time to pull on more than old sweat pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt when the call came in. She’d been half asleep, drifting into slumber with the memory of Reza’s kiss on her lips, worry for the man weighing on her heart.

She’d known immediately who waited for her at the hospital. Part of her had hoped that she was wrong, that it wasn’t Wisniak.

Emily didn’t bother to ask where the on-call doctor was. She spent five minutes with one soldier, a skinny kid from someplace called Benedict, Arkansas, before she had him admitted. He was high from smoking synthetic marijuana and believed that ants were crawling on his skin. Lacerations covered his arms and legs. He’d need to spend time in Intensive Care before they could admit him to Psych.

The second kid had puked up a fifth of Jim Beam and was, according to him, feeling significantly better. No, he’d just been screwing around when he’d told the guys he felt like he’d be better off dead. Yes, ma’am, he’d be fine.

She couldn’t hold him against his will. No matter how much the staff sergeant who sat with him demanded she did. She wrote up a profile that recommended he be kept under unit watch for the next 48 hours, which prompted the staff sergeant to get loud enough that Reza came into the exam room a moment before the security guards. The sergeant wisely shut his mouth when he saw Reza glaring at him from the door.

And then it was time for Wisniak. She pulled Reza into an empty room. “So what’s the story?” she asked, skimming the triage notes. Strictly professional, regardless of what was between them.

“He’s admitted he tried to kill himself,” Reza said, mirroring her stance and keeping his distance. “But he says he was set up with the bomb threat.”

He looked exhausted but the last thing Emily could do in the middle of the emergency room was offer any sort of physical comfort. She was the doc. He was the supervisor.

Nothing more. At least not right then.

“He’s pretty upset. I think if he’s right and some of the guys did set him up, they probably saved his life.” Reza’s voice was rough. Broken.

“Okay. I’m going to talk to him. You’ll have to wait outside.”

Reza’s smile was flat. “I know the routine.”

It took her more than an hour to get Wisniak to admit to still thinking about hurting himself. But when he did, she did everything she could to reassure him that he was going to be okay.

He shook his head sadly. “Ma’am, I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I doubt it. I always feel this way.”

Emily paused from writing her notes and looked up. “It feels like that now but you don’t have to feel this way. We’re going to figure this out.”

Wisniak nodded and said nothing as she stuck her head outside and motioned for Reza to step into the room. “We’re going to admit him,” she said softly. “My assessment is that until we get him stabilized, he poses a risk to himself.”

Reza nodded and said nothing. He looked dead on his feet but still he stood ramrod stiff and straight. She had no doubt that if he’d needed to react to an emergency right now, he could have done so.

Thankfully, the rest of the night didn’t call for anything so extreme.

It was another two hours before Wisniak was escorted upstairs, leaving Reza with instructions to have someone bring a change of clothes and some very basic hygiene items within the next day or so.

The sky was still pitch black when Emily finally walked out of the emergency room to the parking lot where she’d left her car. Reza waited for her, leaning against his truck in the cool morning air. She wondered when he’d swapped his bike for his truck and figured it didn’t really matter.

“You look exhausted,” he said softly as she approached.

“You flatterer,” she said with a tired smile. “But you’re right. Double shifts are often rough.” She paused. “Come home with me?” It was less than a question, more than an order. There was something needy inside her, something that wanted to be held and comforted.

She didn’t want to be alone but more, she didn’t want Reza to be alone. He looked edgy tonight. Raw.

He reached for the keys in his front pocket, but not before she noticed his hand was trembling. “I’m not really fit company tonight, Emily.”

“You’ve said that before.” She took a single step closer to him. Close enough that the heat of his body radiated into hers. Close enough that she could snag his hand and cradle it between hers. She didn’t care that they were in the hospital parking lot. That anyone could see them as the parking lot lights hummed overhead. “And I don’t care.”

He raised both eyebrows at her quiet words. He nodded then, after an impossibly long moment, and tugged his hand away from hers.

She drove out of the parking lot, anxious that he might not actually follow her.

But as she drove out of the main gate and away from Fort Hood, she breathed a silent sigh of relief that the headlights from his big truck stayed right behind her the entire way.

It probably wasn’t a good idea but then again, nothing with Emily seemed to be. He followed her away from the middle-income homes of Killeen, past Harker Heights and out toward the new development in Nolanville.

He was still marveling at the woman who’d captured his interest when he stepped across her threshold and into her home. It was exactly how he expected her to live. Books were stacked around the living room. Overfull bookshelves filled a small study. An empty wine glass sat on a coaster on the coffee table.

“You drink alone?” he asked.

She lifted one shoulder as she dropped her keys into a small dish on a table in the foyer. “Not against the rules.” She toed off her shoes and crossed the scant distance between them in bare feet.

The door closed behind him as her arms came around his waist. He pulled her close and rested his cheek against the top of her head. “I’m so tired,” she whispered. Her warm breath penetrated the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

He said nothing. He felt the fatigue in his bones. The need for a drink was even stronger.

She tipped her face up, brushing her lips against his. There was something deeply comforting here, something he was selfish enough to crave.

He followed her to her bedroom, noticing all the things he hadn’t noticed before. The comforter was deep tan laced with gold. One half of the bed was neat, the other slightly rumpled, as though she only slept on one half of it. Her furniture was solid. Expensive, not particle board like something a kid in the barracks would buy.

He felt her eyes on him as he toed off his own shoes, then pulled off his t-shirt. She slipped out of most of her own clothing, leaving on the t-shirt and panties. He ached for her but tonight, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to simply slide into her bed, feel her body soft and warm nestled against him. Her hair was cool against his shoulder when she rested her cheek against his heart. Her legs twined with his, smooth where his were rough.

He drifted for a while as her fingers traced the names on his upper arm. For once, a woman’s attention on his tattoos didn’t make him go cold. He hadn’t etched those names and places into his skin for a woman’s attention. There was a reason he wore long-sleeved shirts most of the time.

He did it for himself. To honor the men he’d served with. The men he’d failed. But as her fingers traced over al Najaf and Fallujah and Ramadi, he was oddly comforted by her soft touch. For once the scars on his soul didn’t burn, didn’t drive him to raid her kitchen for a drink in a vain attempt to deaden the pain that he knew he’d never escape.

His body settled into the idea that he was wrapped in a woman’s embrace and for once, there was nothing sexual about it. Reza didn’t sleep with women. Not like this. And yet, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lie with her as her breathing deepened. Her fingers traced the letters on his arm until she shifted and her palm came to rest on the black sickle that covered his heart. Her hand was warm and soft over the exposed, ragged wounds tonight. As he drifted into a restless sleep, he turned his face toward Emily and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

The cool kiss of her hair against his skin took him down into sleep.

Emily came awake to the sensation that something was wrong. She opened her eyes to see a very tense Reza, asleep in the center of her bed. Instantly alert, she leaned up at the sound of his mumbled words. His mouth moved but the words were incoherent. The emotion behind them was not.

His fists spasmed as he argued with whatever demon hunted his sleep. She’d never seen this side of the big man. He was always so fierce, so strong. She nudged his shoulder gently, a thousand stories racing through her mind of women who’d tried to wake up lovers from nightmares. Fear skittered down the center of her spine as his eyes flew open.

A pregnant moment hung between them. He scowled, his expression harsh and unforgiving. She held her breath, bracing for his anger, but then he blinked slowly, his expression softening even as a flush crept up his dark skin.

“Did I hurt you?” The first words out of his mouth were thick. Rough.

“No.” She wanted to ask him if he wanted to talk about it but the words were frozen in her throat.

He turned toward her and opened his arms. She slipped against him, her body surrounded by his, her skin absorbing his heat. He smoothed her hair down and rested his cheek against her head. The gesture soothed the ragged fear that had clung to her like a wet cloak since she’d woken him.

He shared her bed but that did not mean he was willing or even able to let her, as he’d put it the first time they’d slept together, go poking at his demons.

The barrier bothered her on a personal level and had nothing to do with her profession. She wanted this man, desired him like she’d desired no other since…ever. She’d never desired her ex this way.

Her eyes fluttered closed as sleep pulled her back down, the rhythmic feel of Reza’s breathing surrounding her. And as she slid down into sleep, she chased the idea that maybe someday he would start unpacking all the baggage that weighed on his sleep. If not with her, with someone else.