Chapter Fourteen
Now
“No! No, please,” Wyatt cried. “Take me instead!”
Piper shot up, blinking back sleep, searching for something to protect her from whatever must be invading their shelter. They’d
gone to bed early when the wind and rain started again, and it was apparent rescue wasn’t coming today. In the dark beside
her, Wyatt whimpered, his arms thrashing at an invisible monster. Lightning cracked close by, and in the suspended flash,
she could see his eyes were shut, his face screwed up tight.
He must be having a nightmare.
As her heartbeat returned to normal, Piper’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. Out on the open beach, the clothes they’d strung
up on tree branches bucked in the wind like wild ponies staking their territory. The sea, stygian and murky, matched the black
sky, except for the undulating waves against the horizon, making it hard to tell where the sky ended and the ocean began.
She hoped their palm-thatched shelter would be enough to protect them when the fresh torrent of rain hit. From the clap of
thunder nearby, she guessed it would be soon.
Wyatt moaned again. “Stop, no. Make it stop, please!”
His anguished voice constricted Piper’s chest like an iron band and made her heart ache. Whatever he was dreaming about, it
sounded awful. She couldn’t listen to him cry out like this all night without doing something.
She shook his shoulder. “Wyatt, hey. Wake up.”
He bolted up with a start, his eyes wild and searching in the dark.
“You had a bad dream.”
He continued swiveling his head, searching for a hidden threat.
“Wyatt, it’s okay. You’re okay,” Piper reassured him.
His feral stare found hers in the dark. Then, to her horror, a guttural sob broke from his chest, and he hung his head between
his legs. Chills ran down her spine. This wasn’t your average nightmare. It was something far scarier. Could it be PTSD? She
knew little about his experience in the army, but she imagined a plane crash could trigger even the slightest case. Or a boom
of thunder rocking the ground.
Wyatt’s shoulders shook with his sobs. She extended her arm to pat his back but stopped short, her hand suspended in the air,
unsure if she should comfort him or leave him alone. His pain ricocheted through her body, tearing her in two. Tears welled
in her eyes, and Piper bit her lip, clenching and unclenching her hands, not sure what to do.
“Wyatt, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He didn’t answer, that awful choking sound emanating from his body. Instinct took over, and she pushed herself to his side
of the shelter. Hesitating only a moment, she enveloped him in a hug, her desire to take away his pain overtaking everything
else.
Wyatt buried his face in her neck, still shaking. All Piper could do was hold on and try to absorb some of his suffering.
She whispered all the comforting things she could think of, rubbing his back in slow, soothing circles. A bouquet of sparks
lit up her insides every time his warm breath fanned her skin.
The storm shifted closer.
Eventually, Wyatt collected himself, wiped his face, and sat back, hugging his knees into his chest.
Piper gave him some space but kept a hand on his knee. “Are you okay?”
Wyatt took in a shaky breath. “I will be. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“What happened? You were talking in your sleep. Do you remember what you were dreaming of?”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “I wish I didn’t, but I sometimes get these awful dreams, memories really, of my deployment.
It’s been a while since I’ve had one, but it’s like I’m back there every time. It feels so real.”
As if on cue, thunder cracked nearby like a branch breaking from a tree, and Wyatt jumped, his eyes sliding back to a haunted
place.
Piper shivered. She knew about PTSD in the secondhand way that everyone from her generation knew about it, but witnessing
it up close was bone chilling.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with that.” She meant it. This wasn’t something she’d wish on her worst enemy, a descriptor she’d
have tagged Wyatt with only days earlier, but it no longer fit as snugly. “Is there anything that helps?”
“Not, really. I have to ride it out.” Wyatt sat back against one of the larger tree trunks that made up the back corner of
their shelter, cracking his knuckles one by one, his whole body taut. “I promise I won’t wake you up again. You can go back
to sleep.”
Piper curled her mouth to one side. “And you’re, what? Going to sit here all night?”
“If I close my eyes, I’ll see it again.” He hung his head like the image weighed him down. “And I can’t go back there.”
The muscles in his cheek bulged where his jaw locked tight, his fists clenched by his sides. She couldn’t imagine what he’d
seen overseas. He hadn’t had an easy childhood leading up to the military, so his nightmares probably made hers look like
a Disney movie. It wasn’t fair. He carried so much alone—and he didn’t have to.
“Then I’ll stay up with you.” She wouldn’t get much sleep with this storm, and every nerve in her body was wide awake from being pressed against Wyatt moments earlier. “Does talking about it make things better or worse?”
Wyatt rubbed his eyes. “It’s hard for me to talk about, but my therapist says the more I let things out, the less power I
give the memories to take over my brain. Trust me, though, you don’t want to hear about everything going on in my head.”
Piper hardly recognized the shell-shocked version of Wyatt sitting in front of her. Where was the strong, confident, annoyingly
sure of himself guy she’d witnessed these last few days? His vulnerability made her arms ache to wrap him in another embrace.
“How about you try me, and then we can decide,” she challenged him.
The rain trickling through the treetops grew steadier, a pitter-patter becoming a constant drone. A few drops made their way
through the thatched covering of their shelter, but most of the water ran off the sloped surface above them. Both of their
water tumblers, positioned under the rain flow in anticipation of fresh water, were almost full again.
To avoid the splatter of rain on his back, Wyatt scooted in closer. Piper mirrored him, hyperaware of his proximity in their
shared space.
“Understand that joining the army was one of the best decisions I ever made,” Wyatt began, taking a moment to find his words.
“It was tough, and there were brutal early morning hours, but it gave me direction and purpose. I’d never had much I could
be proud of before, but working with my unit, and rising in the ranks, was something I could call my own. No one could take
that away from me.”
Lightning flashed again, matching the fierceness in Wyatt’s eyes. “Being deployed, that was a whole other beast. Mostly it was pretty boring. A bunch of dudes in the desert with spotty internet and minimal food choices is not the big war adventure you think it will be. It was hard—I had all this anger and fight inside of me and nowhere to put it.”
That confused Piper. “You were hoping for a fight?”
“We’re trained for combat. You see movies and think you know what to expect. You think you want that and can handle it. But
when the war reaches you, you realize it’s nothing you can prepare for.”
He took a deep breath and dragged a hand over his growing stubble. “We realized we were in a war zone when grenades flew over
the walls of our compound. The mission had been a simple recon for evidence of foreign troops in the area because there were
rumors their numbers were growing. They caught us off guard. So many men were hit, but we had to move out fast to keep the
rest of us alive. Those of us who made it out set up a base slightly south where they couldn’t reach us, pushing them back
with gunfire of our own.”
Wyatt stumbled over a lump in his throat. “All night, we could hear our guys... calling out for us to come back. To help
them. But shots rang out anytime we moved to go back in. In the morning, when we could see the full extent of the damage,
all but one of them was dead.”
Piper gasped. “Oh, Wyatt. That’s...” She couldn’t find the words to convey how traumatic that experience must have been.
Tears dripped off her face, mixing with the raindrops on the ground.
Wyatt rubbed his jaw and continued. “Once backup arrived, we moved into their camp to reclaim our men. Their troops fought
back, but we obliterated them. It should have been satisfying to extract justice for our brothers, but when it was all over,
I saw it was a bunch of teenagers, kids really. Kids trained for war, but kids all the same.”
A tear trickled down his cheek, and he balled his fists into his eyes. “War isn’t something that humans are supposed to endure. And I’m one of the lucky ones. An explosive went off near my head a few weeks after that awful encounter and partially damaged the hearing on my left side, maiming me just enough to get me honorably discharged but leaving me otherwise unscathed. Besides the demons in my head,” he added with a mangled smile.
Picturing Wyatt in a near-death and dangerous situation made Piper physically ill. It was intolerable imagining a world in
which Wyatt hadn’t survived. His careless behavior in high school had wounded her deeply, and sometimes she’d wished him the
same level of pain he’d inflicted on her, but she’d never wanted this.
She cupped her hand over his bad ear. “I’m glad you made it out alive.” In the cover of darkness, it was easier to speak the
truth.
He startled at her touch, then placed his hand over hers and kissed her palm, like a reflex. “Me too,” he whispered.
His lips scorched her skin, his steady gaze piercing her soul, unearthing old emotions. Emotions of intoxicating love mixed
with unbearable hurt. Emotions she wasn’t ready to process. She sat as still as a rabbit caught in a hawk’s line of sight,
held in his penetrating stare, her hand still burning where he’d kissed it.
Wyatt pointed toward the sky above the blackened water. “Oh wow, check that out.”
She thought it was a lame attempt to break the weird vibe that was humming between them, or maybe that was all in her head,
but when she looked where he pointed, Piper gasped. In the distance, lightning danced from cloud to cloud, igniting the sky
with brilliant purple streaks.
She angled her body to face the storm clouds, sliding closer to Wyatt. Jagged bolts of light sliced through the dark like a knight’s lance winning a joust. The sky came alive with sizzling energy, making the hairs on Piper’s arms stand at attention with every crack of light.
Mesmerizing.
“It’s putting on a show for us.” Piper stared up in awe. “It’s so beautiful.”
“It truly is.”
She peeked at Wyatt, swallowing hard when she noticed his attention focused squarely on her instead of the glittering sky.
His gaze flicked to her lips like he might kiss her. And, for a fraction of a second, she leaned into him, wanting him to.
But a louder clap of thunder knocked her back to her senses, and she scooted away, putting a few more inches between them.
Because kissing Wyatt with those heartbreaker eyes would be completely insane.
Right?