He rubbed his hands roughly down his face as he admitted, “I don’t know what to say to him.”
“You don’t look at him.”
He sighed heavily, suddenly wishing that he hadn’t put Aidan in a headlock and threatened to beat him within an inch of his life if he didn’t tell him where Danny was staying.
“I look at him,” Ethan said, wondering when the medicine was going to kick in and knock this small woman out and put him out of his misery.
“No, you don’t,” Jodi simply said, not sounding mad but curious. “Why?”
He chuckled without humor as he double-checked to make sure the door was locked and then walked past the small woman, pausing only long enough to pat her on the head simply because he couldn’t help himself, and sat on the couch. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Why?”
He rubbed his hands down his face and leaned back against the couch as he studied her. “Will you remember any of this in the morning?” Ethan asked, watching as the small woman walked over to the bed, sat down with a wince.
“Remember what in the morning?” Jodi asked, looking adorably confused.
Chuckling, Ethan asked, “Has Danny ever told you how he ended up a Marine?”
She shook her head, cringed, and flopped down onto her side with a little sigh.
“Danny was a cocky kid, but a good kid. I never had to ask him to help his mother or look after his brothers and sister. He always got good grades. Didn’t do drugs. Never caused any real problems, and then…” Ethan looked off, shaking his head, still unable to believe how badly he’d screwed everything up.
“Then, the first time he’d fucked up, seriously fucked up, I lost it. He’d scared the hell out of me and I reacted poorly. I was so determined to make sure that he never did anything that stupid ever again and I ended up making everything worse. I dragged the poor kid out of the ER and made him take his SATs when he should have been taking it easy and getting an earful from his mother. Instead, I pushed him and when he fucked up his SATs, I kept pushing him. I was so goddamn angry that he did something so fucking stupid that could have cost him his life,” Ethan ground out, flexing his fists and wishing like hell that he could go back to that morning when he’d found his son barely breathing on the bathroom floor and do things differently.
“When he joined the Marines…” Ethan paused, taking a deep breath as he locked his trembling hands together, “I was terrified for him and that didn’t stop until he was brought home three years ago when they shipped his body back to the States. Then my terror turned into something that there are no words to describe.”
He looked up to find her worrying her bottom lip as she watched him. “Did you know that they’d shipped him home to die?”
She shook her head against the mattress.
“He got shot saving his unit as well as a medical unit along with a truck full of patients. He should have died in the shitty hospital they’d sent him to, but his CO called in some favors and once he was stable enough to travel, they sent him home to an even shittier hospital.”
“My son was dying, Jodi, because of me,” Ethan said, rubbing his hands down his face. “I took him out of that hospital, brought him to mine, and for the next two months, I put his body through hell to make sure that he not only lived but walked again. I kept him in a coma so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain and to give him a better chance to survive what we had to do to him.”
“The best moment of my life was when he opened his eyes, but it was also the worst because I knew that there was nothing that I could say to make up for what he’d been through.”
“You love him?” Jodi asked with a sad smile.
He met her gaze head-on as he said, “More than my own life.”
“I see,” she said seconds before things took a turn for the worse and the small little woman that made his son smile for the first time in years showed him what hell on earth really looked like.
“Stop crying! Please, stop crying!”
“What the hell?” Danny mumbled hollowly, ramming his keycard in the card reader as he struggled to hold all the bags of food in his other arm.
Terrified that she somehow managed to hurt herself while he was gone, Danny shoved the door open, walked into the room and nearly tripped over his own two feet when he spotted Jodi, bundled up in a blanket and curled up on his father’s lap, crying hysterically.
“What did you do to her?” Danny demanded, dropping the bags on the coffee table so that he could kneel in front of her. He ran shaky hands over her neck and arms, looking for a reason behind those tears.
“I didn’t do anything to her!” his father yelled, sounding a bit hysterical as he handed her over to him. Danny happily took her in his arms and stood up so that he could sit on the couch next to his father.
“Shhh, Tinkerbelle, it’s okay,” Danny said, throwing his father a questioning look only to find his father blindly stuffing french fries in his mouth.
“One minute she was fine,” his father said, between shoving food in his mouth, “and the next, she was crying hysterically and wouldn’t stop!”
“I-It…it was so…sweet!” Jodi said, sobbing hysterically against his chest. “It’s so sad!”
