As we pulled up next to the house, I turned the motor off and looked over at Cameron.Mason, I reminded myself. Poor guy looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes and strain showed even now as his head lay slumped against the Jeep’s window.
Something about the hair falling across his face made him seem so damn young. Vulnerable. Without thinking, I reached over and brushed the hair back from across his eyes. My fingers stroked a lock gently. It was like hot silk, warm and soft. I had to force myself to release it and pull my hand back.
I couldn’t figure out what it was about the guy that got beneath my skin. He seemed so damn familiar, but I couldn’t place from where. He seemed like a completely different person from who I had picked up at the airport.
First, he’d been a huge prick, and not thegoodkind. Then, at the motel doorway, the look of utter terror on his face had gripped me and drawn out this absolute need to protect him. I didn’t understand it, or him, but I found myself wanting to. Who was this guy?
I was trying to decide if I should try waking him when something in the underbrush moved and the security light over the front porch came on, sending a flash of light over our faces.
I glanced at Mason and froze. The shadows the light cast, the way the blue light contrasted with the shadow, made him look ten years younger. He looked so much like another face I'd seen, so many years ago, tied to a bed, face purpled with bruises and blood. Younger, but the same.
“No…” I muttered, my breath catching in my chest. “No. Fucking. Way.” I whispered to myself as I studied his face. The more I looked, the more I realized it was entirely possible.
Mason wasn’t exactly a common name, after all. The light threw part of his face into shadow, almost like the bruising I’d seen covering it last. He was older, obviously, than the last time I’d seen him, and the injuries he’d endured hadn’t caused permanent damage. Well, notvisible scars, anyway, as I thought of the reaction he’d had at the motel room.
If itwashim, the reaction he’d had suddenly made sense. He’d had a long, stressful day. Adrenaline had been running high already, then walking into that motel room must have been some kind of trigger for him. As I thought about it, I realized the layout of the room had been very similar to the one where I’d met him in Milwaukee.
“Shit,” I whispered, banging my head softly on the steering wheel. Had he recognized me? He hadn’t said anything and he hadn’t seemed to, but maybe some part of him had? Maybe that was one of the things that had triggered his panic attack?
I struggled with the feelings of shame that coursed through me as I remembered the horrible events of eight years earlier.
When I’d woken in a hospital in Germany after the ambush, it was to find my life as I’d known it was over. Mack was dead, and I was crippled.
They’d done a total hip replacement and I carried more metal in my body now than most trash cans, but the steely-haired doctor who’d done the surgery had assured me I’d be able to walk again if I worked on my physical therapy, as if I’d cared about walking at that point.
The next few weeks had been a blur. I was transferred stateside and took Mack’s body home with me. He’d always joked that he didn’t want to be one of those people who reappeared during a zombie apocalypse, and fire was the only thing guaranteed to stop a zombie. It had seemed hilarious at the time, but when the funeral director handed me his ashes, I didn’t find it very amusing.
More surgeries and physical therapy followed, but I was eventually given a medical discharge when it became clear that my mobility would always be hindered. Either the bullet, or the explosion, had done too much damage to my leg and it would never be the same. Kind of like the rest of me.
The physical pain I endured was nothing compared to the aching echo where my heart had been. I was home, surrounded by my friendsand family – all of them except the one I'd planned to spend the rest of my life with.
My friends didn’t seem to know what to say to me. Conversations stopped when I entered the room. The cane I’d taken to using clicked on the hardwood floors in my childhood home and seemed to tap out a warning. “Here comes the cripple! Here comes the broken one!” Fake smiles appeared on faces as they all tried to think of something, anything, to talk about when I entered a room, other than my loss.
After a suicide attempt thwarted by my brothers, the twins had gotten me into grief counseling. It wasn’t quick, wasn’t easy, but it helped. I joined a support group and got counseling for PTSD.
Loud noises still tended to startle me – especially if they were loud enough I could feel the vibrations. A large truck going down the road was enough to make my heart race and my skin break out in a cold sweat, but I’d been doing a lot better. One of the reasons I loved living near a park was not so many trucks to deal with.
Once I was physically able, I’d insisted on moving into the house Mack and I had built. Since I’d been injured in the line of duty, I’d received a sizable pension, as well as, apparently, Mack’s inheritance. He had left everything to me.
I’d been astonished about a month after I’d moved into my new place when the lawyers had contacted me. A registered letter, stiff ivory-colored envelope with the gilded name of an unfamiliar law firm from New York caught my attention, standing out amid the advertisements and “You May Already Be A Winner!” junk mail.
Apparently, Mack came from money, money with a capital “M”. He’d never mentioned it, never acted like he had anything more than the average pilot’s pay, but all told, the money he left me was more than enough to pay any medical bills the military didn’t cover and keep me in comfort for the rest of my life.
Not that I cared. I’d have given it all up in an instant to have Mack. The majority of Mack’s family, and his life before the military, remained a mystery to me. I knew he’d had a sister, but that was it. The lawyers had refused to share any information with me, just saidthat there had been a rift in the family, and that Mack hadn’t wanted anything to do with them.
I convinced myself that once I moved into the house, I would feel better, more in control of my life, but it just seemed too… big, too empty. I needed something that would get me out of the house and my own head. I had planned on continuing my career as a medic, but I couldn’t risk my physical or mental limitations causing a problem in an emergency situation.
So, I did what any self-respecting millennial would do. I became an Uber driver.
Driving for Uber brought in some cash, and it got me out in the world interacting with people. I liked helping people, and even if I wasn’t saving lives, I was making people’s lives better. I developed some regulars and began to actually look forward to working my shifts.
Slowly, bit by bit, my crazy, rambling, chaotic family started to go back to normal around me, or as close to normal as you could get with five gay siblings and a pair of moms who were obsessed with the movie “Aliens.”
As my heart and head began to heal, so did my body. I was still using a cane, especially if I had a long distance to walk, but it wasn’t always necessary. As the rest of me began healing, I had to find a way to deal with my most difficult body part—my traitorous dick.
For a long time, I simply ignored it, refusing to allow myself to even contemplate sex with anyone after Mack. But as time wore on, I realized I was being stupid. Mack wouldn’t have wanted me to become some kind of eunuch just because he wasn’t here to be with me. Hell, if I believed in ghosts, I’d have been worried about him showing up to kick my ass for neglecting his most beloved appendage.
I tried the bar scene, but couldn’t seem to find anyone with whom I could really connect. All the men seemed so damn young, just kids playing at being adults. Age didn’t even seem to be the factor. They could have been the same age as me, or even older, but their petty worries and concerns did nothing but piss me off. They made me want to rage about their “first world problems”.
