Chapter 4
Chapter Four
JETT
BACK IN THE STATES
Come back to me.
I tried to get her out of my head, but it was impossible.
It was as if I could hear her calling to me, her pleading voice full of anguish.
I was trying to do the right thing for her and Griffin, but was I hurting them more by staying away?
If I went home—something I was now free as a bird to do since being discharged—I wasn’t sure I could handle watching her live a life without me right by her side.
But I was as damaged now as I was back in that run-down shithole the bastards had held me captive in months ago.
While I may have been cleared by the military to move forward, to create a new life for myself, I had no clue how to do that or what that even looked like.
And it wasn’t just her in my head. It was the terror-filled voices of my teammates, their cries of agony as they died but tried so damn hard to be strong, and the guilt swimming constantly in my gut because I couldn’t save them.
I hadn’t really saved the only other one that made it out beyond myself. I thought about Dusty, that guilt I harbored thick as molasses, sinking deep into my stomach once again. She may have been alive, but she would never live the same life she had, or the one she wanted.
Blowing out a ragged breath, I worked to untangle myself from the blankets twisted around my body.
It was how I woke up every morning after a fitful sleep full of raging nightmares.
Throwing my legs over the side of the lumpy mattress, I dragged myself out of bed and padded to the bathroom to shower.
Yup, I was holed up in a seedy motel in Texas, letting the days slip by as I wallowed in the grief of the fucked-up shit running rapidly on an endless loop through my mind. There was no off switch.
Even if I desperately wanted one.
Did I deserve any better anyway?
After yanking off my boxers, I tucked myself under the hot spray, praying it would wash away everything I was thinking, even if just for a second. A reprieve from the horrid memories would be a blessing.
And anything to help with the ache from missing Patience, Griffin, and my family would be a godsend.
It didn’t work. Images of my best friend, the one I loved beyond reason but hadn’t told, emerged. With those came Champ’s words that had shocked me to my core. “Daddy, when are you coming home?”
Griffin had sounded so hopeful, and I had crushed him—Patience too from the sounds of her soft cries in the background—by not being able to tell him when I was coming home.
In my mind, a voice was asking, Am I ever going home?
But I didn’t have the heart to voice that.
Not to anyone. I knew my sister was crushed too after I asked everyone not to come, and I kept stalling about when I’d be returning.
Fuck!
I hit the shower wall with my fist, and someone on the other side pounded back.
Yeah, yeah, I get the message. They wanted me to be quiet, and who could blame them?
It was probably the crack of dawn since sleep was hard to come by.
Hell, it could be the middle of the night for all I knew; I hadn’t looked at the time.
Never did I bother pulling open the hideous, thick, pea-green floral curtains in the room, so it was always dark.
You would think after being held against my will in a dark room that I’d want to bask in the light, but for some fucked-up reason, that wasn’t the case. Something my therapist liked to explore—along with a million other things—when I had my sessions.
We repeatedly talked about medication, but I’d refused so far.
Would it help? Maybe. But I didn’t like the idea of taking anything after watching my mother use whatever she could get her hands on for the years I had been with her as a child before she’d dropped me on Gramps’s doorstep at the age of eight.
However, I couldn’t help but wonder if they would help the anxiety, nightmares, and this feeling of despair always pumping through me.
Leaning my head against the fiberglass wall, I let the water cascade over me as I prepared for the day.
It wouldn’t be a lot different from the other ones I had recently.
I’d go see my therapist—a bit reluctantly, but I wasn’t completely ignorant to the fact it was necessary—before I checked in on Dusty, then tried chasing the demons away by running six miles, and lastly, I would wallow in a beer at the bar close to the motel before I tried to get some sleep.
Thinking of sleep made me imagine what it would be like if a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl were cuddled up next to me in bed. Would lying next to her chase the nightmares away?
I couldn’t take the chance.
What If I tried and I hurt her? That was why she needed to find a good man, not one crippled with PTSD. The thought of her with someone else was like a dagger to my heart. I was almost twenty-three and had never been with a woman.
Because none of them had been Patience.
There had been opportunities, but I’d wanted nothing to do with a single one. She’d been it for me and always would be even if I couldn’t be with her.
On that depressing thought, the water ran cold—another shitty aspect of the crappy motel— and I shivered in misery.
“Don’t make me walk over there and smack you; I’m tired.”
I stared down into the frothy, amber liquid that the bartender slid in front of me and thought about my conversation with Dusty earlier in the day.
The girl was tough, and I had no doubt she would have made her way over to me to do what she’d threatened to do. I’m sure I would have deserved it if she had; I just knew she was tired. I’d stopped in just as she had finished physical therapy.
So, I moved closer to her. That way she didn’t have to come to me if the desire to hit me truly struck.
“Nice of you to make it easier if necessary.” Dusty chuckled. “When are you going to pull your head out of your ass?”
I raised my brows.
Dusty sighed. “Go home to your girl, Jett. Stop dicking around and do what you had planned to do before things got fucked up.”
Not sure when the last time I’d laughed was, for some odd reason, one burst free. “You really got a potty mouth on you.”
“Did you honestly just say potty mouth?” Now she was laughing.
For a second, the laughter between us was freeing, but then I sobered.
I thought about Griffin and all the kids at home. We had to watch what we said to set a good example, and the guys joked about us watching our potty mouths. We really had to watch it with Embry around, hand out, waiting to collect money for her swear jar at every turn.
“I see that look, so I’ll say it again. Go home.”
Blowing out a breath, I tried to think of something to get out of the conversation. The look in Dusty’s eyes said that wouldn’t happen. “Who's gonna watch out for you if I go?”
She reached out and touched my arm. “Me, myself, and I. You did your duty and watched out for me when I needed it most. Jett, I’m alive because of you. You saved me.”
Looking down at the floor, I started to say, “I didn’t—”
“Please don’t. Just accept that you were my hero and leave it at that.” She sniffed and I looked back to see tears swimming in her eyes. “Besides, soon I’ll be home, and who knows, maybe one day we will see each other again.”
“Of course we will,” I told her, no doubt that one day our paths would cross again. We’d been through a lot together, and she was not only my teammate, but a friend.
She gave me a small smile.
As far as the hero part, I didn’t believe that, but she seemed to need to say it, so I left that alone and said what else was on my mind. “I’m not the man she needs, and I don’t know if I can watch her with someone else at some point.”
Dusty grasped my hand. “Patience has been and will always be lucky to have you. You deserve to have the life you hoped to have.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes before I decided it was time for me to go. I could tell she was getting tired. Dusty was still on her way to recovery, both physically and mentally.
As I said goodbye and headed for the door, she said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope never to see you in here again.”
I grinned even though she couldn’t see me. Couldn’t help it. Dusty always said exactly what was on her mind.
“And Jett?”
This time I turned around.
“Thank you for what you did for me.”
Choked up and struggling after hearing those words when I felt so much like I failed, I just nodded before walking out the door.
Wrapping my hand around the handle of the mug, I took a pull of the cold beer and let it slide down my throat. And then I sat there as I always did, nursing the one I allowed myself—only one, again because of my mother—and thought about everything Dusty had said.
Along with Dusty’s voice in my head, I also couldn’t stop reading the text that had come through weeks ago from Patience.
Patience: I will rescue you. Please come home.
I hadn’t replied. Because what was I supposed to say? I didn’t know that I could go home, be rescued, or was even worth rescuing.
Movement had me stirring from the replay of our conversation as the stools on each side of me at the bar were pulled out. I looked to the right and then looked to the left, taking in the men who had occupied the seats.
Well fuck.
It looked like my time alone was up.
“Fancy meeting you here,” the one on my right said.
I rolled my eyes. Yup, actually rolled them. I blamed my sister and her friends for that move because I’d grown up seeing it so many damn times.
“Did you just roll your eyes?” the guy on the left said.
Grumbling something unintelligible under my breath had them laughing.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” My gaze scanned the bar. “Or are there more of you lurking around somewhere I haven’t seen yet?”
That got more chuckles out of them.
I didn’t know why they thought they were so funny, but I knew I wasn’t getting rid of them any time soon.
Nope, Lyric and Gyth were on a mission.
And there was no stopping them until they finished what they came for.