And even if I did have more than a vague idea of who the guy was or why I should care, I’m not about to reinforce Evelyn’s apparent favorable regard for him. I’d cruised by the catering area more than once after I spotted her there, checking to see if the good-looking Aussie seemed anything less than professional with Evelyn. He’d passed all of my investigatory fly-bys, but that didn’t mean I had to like him.
“Is that where you met your friend O’Connor?” Evelyn asks. “Were you in Afghanistan together?”
“No. She served in Iraq. We didn’t meet until after we both came home.”
I know why she’s asking. I know if she’s seen O’Connor’s prosthetic arm and hand, it’s not that great a leap to assume Kelsey is a veteran like me. What Evelyn doesn’t understand is that time in service isn’t the only bond O’Connor and I share.
“We met at Walter Reed, actually. In the amputee physical therapy center.”
For reasons I haven’t stopped to analyze, I haven’t let on to Evelyn that I am anything but whole. I don’t know why. It’s not like me to hide my injury. I’m not ashamed of it and never was. It’s just something thathappened to me, something I survived.
My injury was something I couldn’t control, no matter how well-trained and confident I’d been leading that routine patrol that claimed the rest of my platoon and nearly killed me too.
Yet as I watch Evelyn absorb what I’m telling her, I realize that I do know why I’ve kept it from her. I haven’t wanted to see her shock or horror. I haven’t wanted to see her pity.
I haven’t wanted her to view me as any less of a man.
But fuck all that.
She is not mine, and unless I want to lose my job and my friendship with her brother, she never can be.
I lift the pant leg of my jeans, revealing the lightweight carbon-and-titanium prosthesis that extends out of my left shoe. “The stump starts below my knee. It’s called a transtibial amputation.”
I hear Evelyn’s quiet inhalation and that small sound kills something inside me. I don’t know what I expected her reaction to be, but I’d hoped for something else. I meet her gaze, hardening myself to whatever I’m going to see in her eyes.
I’m not prepared to see mortification, even humor. “I’m such an idiot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“In the garage,” she says, wincing and shaking her head. “The day we met, that stupid thing I said to you—”
I chuckle, remembering. “You mean the crack about me only having the wrong foot?”
“Yes! Oh, my God.” She groans and covers her face in her hands before laughing with me. “You probably thought I was a bitchanda complete moron. Not thatyou didn’t have it coming.”
I’m still laughing, both in relief that she’s not treating me any differently and because the irony of what she said that day is even better now that we can share it.
I lift my other pant leg. “As you can see, no wrong foot here. It’s the right one all day, every day, baby.”
“Stop!” She makes a face and smacks her palm lightly against my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug, not ready to go there yet. Not that we’ll ever get there, not if I can help it. “Why didn’t you tell me about being famous once upon a time?”
Her expression relaxes into one of quiet solemnity. “Because I don’t like people making judgments before they see me for who I really am.”
“Ditto,” I reply, arching my brows.
She nods, a silent acknowledgment of our common ground. Then she glances away for a moment, pensive. “I don’t volunteer anything about that part of my life because I don’t ever want to feel I’m being used for what someone thinks I am, or what they think I should be.”
“That seems fair.”
“It’s the only way I know how to live. It’s the only way I got through a lot of bad times, by putting that part of my life in a box and never opening it again.”
“I’m no psychologist, but that doesn’t sound like dealing with it. How are you going to come to terms with something that hurts, if you only let it fester in a locked box somewhere?”
“What about you? It can’t have been easy fighting in the war, but I don’t imagine it was easy coming home realizing you would never go back, either.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
