“Hmm?”
Strong hands grasped Max’s shoulders, and Jed regarded him for a moment. “Give me that pasta. I’ll make dinner.”
Max had learned long ago to ignore his frequent absence seizures. With Flo sleeping contentedly in her bed, he knew he hadn’t been gone for long, but he wasn’t going to pass up the offer of having someone else cook for him. He relinquished the packet of spaghetti and retreated to the table.
It was oddly relaxing to watch Jed move around the kitchen. Max studiously ignored the neatly stacked paperwork in front of him and lost himself in the expert way Jed maneuvered his body to use his damaged left side as little as possible. It was mesmerizing and it felt like no time had passed at all before a steaming bowl of food appeared in front of him.
Max drew the bowl toward him and took a bite. “This is good,” he said with his mouth full. “What else can you cook?”
Jed took a tentative bite of his own food and chewed slowly. “Don’t get excited. I can cook eggs, spaghetti, and a-hundred-and-one ways with rice.”
“Eggs and spaghetti, huh?”
“Yep. It was all my mom could cook. Nick and I didn’t know there was anything else until we met Anna.”
“What was your favorite food when you were a kid?”
“Really?”
Max shrugged. “Humor me.”
“Peanut butter sandwiches, but I never grew out of it. If any of my crew pissed me off, they used to hide a jar of Skippy in my pack.”
Max smiled as Jed seemed to realize he’d revealed far more than he’d intended. “Hold that thought.”
He rose from the table, deposited his bowl in the sink, and opened a cabinet. He rummaged around and retrieved a dusty jar from the health food store. “That’s as good as it gets in this house.”
Jed took the jar and scrutinized it. “What is it?”
“Natural peanut butter. You’ll have to stir it. I’ve got jelly too. It’s not grape, though. Strawberry, I think.”
Jed made a face that made him look half his age. “Strawberries are the devil’s food. That shit smells like ass. You know how my crew put Skippy in my pack if they wanted to play nice?” Max nodded. “Yeah, well, they replaced all my stuff with strawberry crap if they wanted to piss me off. Sunblock, toothpaste. One of them even put strawberry lube in my gun-grease tin.”
Max laughed, but it cut off as he realized Jed had slipped away. Not physically, of course. He was at the table, fork in hand, but it was obvious by the vacant stare in his eyes that he’d stolen a trick from Max and dropped off the edge of the earth.
Max pried the jar from Jed’s clenched fingers. The motion seemed to rouse him. Max forced a grin. “Damn. You’re picking up my bad habits already. Your brother’s gonna send the lynch mob for sure.”
There was a beat of silence, before Jed seemed to recover his senses, but this time the easy warmth was gone and the flat, hollow look in his eyes chilled Max to the bone.
Chapter Eight
THENEXTcouple of weeks passed Jed by in a blur of painful physical therapy. Carla Valesco kept her promise to push him hard, and her sessions were tough—tougher than he’d ever imagined. He spent four days a week pushing his body to its absolute limits and the rest of his time putting it back together. His muscles burned and his bones ached, but he didn’t mind. For the first time in months, his pain was productive.
And yet, despite significant progress, in his darker moments it was hard not to feel depressed by his body’s restrictions. He felt brittle and weak, like the man who had run cross-country with the weight of full combat kit was gone forever.
The onset of a bitter winter hadn’t helped. At first, the thin dusting of snow was beautiful. It brought with it a brief, awestruck calm, like man and beast were asleep, but the wet Oregon days weren’t cold enough to keep the world peacefully white for long. By day, the slush was halfhearted and wet, but at night it froze to perilous ice, and the real fear of falling unnerved Jed far more than he cared to admit.
His saving grace was Max. Jed left the cabin each morning to find the yard cleared and the truck scraped. He was a little bemused by the unobtrusive care Max had decided to take of him, and he was grateful. Grateful and…something. It had been a long time since he’d been cared for by anyone, let alone another man. One of his buddies taking an extra patrol didn’t count. That was work. Max? Max was… fuck, Jed had no idea.
All he knew was he felt drawn to Max in a way he hadn’t felt since he met Paul. Back then, he’d been captivated by Paul’s easy ways and wicked humor, but despite his addictive, devilish grin and the unresolved complications between them, it wasn’t the same as the way Max’s gleaming eyes made his head spin. Some days it unsettled him to the point where he avoided Max, and yet others, he found he couldn’t get enough. He hadn’t decided which sort of day it was when he drifted out of the hospital one cold afternoon a week or so before Christmas to find Max perched on the back of his truck.
“What brings you here?” Jed reached for Flo and petted her ears. She rose up and put her paws on his shoulders, whining her greeting.
“I heard it was a good day out,” Max quipped, watching Jed dodge Flo’s tongue.
Jed refrained from rolling his eyes, pretty sure Max was as familiar with the inside of a hospital building as he was, and the darkly ironic way it could suck the life from a man. “How did you get to Portland?”
“Bus,” Max said. “I needed some custom parts for the old Sea Ray in the shed, and I figured you could give me a ride home past the grocery store. We have princesses descending for the night tomorrow, and in case you haven’t noticed, our place is lacking the required amount of pink sparkly crap. That won’t wash with the critters. We need to go shopping.”
