Take Me Big Boy (Modern Vikings #3)

Prologue

Matt

“Galloway, what’s that—”

I jolt awake, my body screaming in protest. A deafening beeping noise pierces through the fog in my brain, pulling me back before I can sink into a dark and comforting abyss.

Pain crashes over every inch of my body.

My skin is damp and achy. My limbs feel heavy, like leaden weights anchored to the bed.

I try to move, to shift, but it feels like too much of an effort.

Bed?

What am I doing in bed? Last thing I remember is...

Fuck, I can’t think when that annoying beeping sound won’t fucking stop. Did Johnny sneak a phone into the base again? We’re not supposed to be using them for another couple of weeks at least. Not while we’re deployed in...

Goddamn it, Johnny! Turn the fucking thing off.

I open my mouth to tell him to get the damned thing away from my ear, but...nothing. My lips part, and the words are at the tip of my tongue, but nothing comes out. Not a sound.

Slowly, I try to open my eyes, but they feel glued shut.

When I finally force them apart, I’m assaulted by blinding lights.

I squeeze my eyes shut, a groan escaping my lips.

I try again, this time cracking them open just a sliver.

The room swims into focus—sterile white and muted color, blurred at first, then sharpening as I blink.

My gaze drifts, searching for the source of the sound, and it’s…

a heart monitor? My brows furrow as I follow the tubes snaking from my body, disappearing beneath the sheets.

I try to lift my hand and push off the sheets when a sharp, stinging pain shoots through my arm and I realize I have an IV line.

What the fuck is going on?

Confusion claws at me as I try to recall how I got here.

The last thing I remember is leaving the base with my squad and then.

..nothing. Fear, cold and sharp, begins to creep into my awareness.

I’m here, but where is here? And where the fuck is everyone else?

Johnny? Miller? Did I fall sick before we could leave?

Still, this doesn’t look anything like the hospital back at the base. Was I flown out?

“Good, you’re awake.”

I turn my eyes to follow the shadow of a woman that takes form as she steps into the room.

She’s older—gray-streaked hair pinned back, kind lines around her mouth, the steady manner of someone who has worked nights for decades.

She walks to the side of my bed and scribbles something on the notepad she’s carrying.

“Your vitals are good,” she hums as she lifts her gaze, blue eyes meeting my brown ones, and gives me a kind smile. “The doctor should be with you soon.”

“Water,” I croak.

“Of course, but just a few sips to wet your throat. I’m sure it’s sore. You can’t have anything to eat or drink right before your surgery.”

The straw she puts between my lips feels like a lifeline, and as the cool water sweeps along my dry throat, I begin to feel human again. The fog in my head clears slightly, and my voice feels less scratchy when I clear it. “Too loud,” I manage with a tired sigh.

“We can silence the heart monitor now that you’re awake.

The doctor...” Her voice trails off when the door opens.

We both turn, expecting to see a man in a white coat walk in, but instead, someone else enters, and the familiar face gives me a terrible start.

Seeing my unit leader in a wheelchair sends my heart galloping in my chest with fear unlike anything I’ve felt before.

“Miller.”

“Had enough beauty sleep, Galloway?” There is a grin on his face, one that borders on relief, but there is something else behind those green eyes. “You’ve been sleeping for days, man. Your heart stopped a few times and gave us quite the scare there. I thought you’d never wake up.”

“Coma?”

“Four days,” he says, wheeling to the side of the bed. His entire left leg is in a cast, and there are bruises all over his face. This makes no fucking sense.

“What happened?” I croak out. “Your leg…”

“I was lucky,” he responds, a grim look crossing his face. “We both were.”

“What happened?” I repeat, more urgently this time.

“You don’t remember the attack?”

“Remember...”

Attack seems to be the magic word—as if a switch flips in my brain and brings to light my last memories.

They come in flashes, rough and brutal. Punishing.

Suddenly I remember the drive, the laughter in the Humvee as we rode down a familiar path we’d taken over a dozen times before.

Then the screaming. The chaos. The yelling and the pained grunts before everything went black.

“They believe that our unit hit an IED planted on the road. The explosion—”

“How many?” I cut him off.

“Galloway.”

“Tell me!”

“Three of us made it out. William had his surgery this morning, and he’s in recovery.

You had the worst of the injuries—your heart kept stopping.

You suffered wounds to the left side of your body with damage to your left shoulder and left knee, but the doctor said if you woke up, then you’d make a full recovery with surgery and physical therapy—”

“Fuck that!” I hiss.

The nurse takes one look at the two of us and steps quietly out, pulling the door closed behind her. Smart woman.

“Where am I?” I bite out, the question landing late, but I need the answer.

“Landstuhl,” Miller says. “Germany. They flew us out three days ago for the surgical units.”

That much, at least, makes sense. Landstuhl is where wounded operators go when stateside hospitals are too far. Means I’m stabilized enough to have survived the flight. Means I’ve been here, unconscious, while my squad—

I can’t finish the thought.

“I’m not having any fucking surgery!”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Galloway?”

“Five men are dead!” I roar, my voice scratching out of me and burning my throat, but I don’t give a damn about my own discomfort anymore. I can’t fucking think beyond the weight in my chest. The memories in my head. The screams that won’t stop replaying. “It’s my fault—”

“It’s not!”

“The explosion—”

“There was no way of spotting the IED in time to avoid it. This is no one’s fault but the monsters who planted it on the road.”

“It was my job to find it,” I mutter, my eyes burning.

I close them, but instead of black, all I see is Johnny yelling to watch out seconds before the Humvee went airborne.

Eight men in that vehicle, and only three made it back alive.

I was the lead scout. Bear, my canine partner, and I had walked that stretch of road a dozen times—that’s why we took it again, because I’d cleared it before.

The IED had to have been planted that morning.

And I missed it. Bear missed it. My chest seizes again at the thought of Bear and the realization I’ll never see him again.

Thankfully he hadn’t been in the Humvee with us, but I know without being told I’ll never see him again, never return to active duty again. “I should have died with them.”

“Stop!”

Miller is much closer than he was before; those hard eyes on mine.

“Every soldier that is deployed to a hostile territory understands that there is a chance they may not make it back home in one piece. It is the consequence of war.” If possible, his eyes harden further as they do when he’s locked in combat.

“You were my LPO, Galloway. You ran point with the best dog in the platoon. No one walked that road cleaner than you did, and every one of those men knew it.” He doesn’t let me look away.

“You have a duty to our fallen brothers to live and heal. You insult the men whose lives were lost by choosing to wallow in guilt over something you had no control over. They died so you could live. Do not waste their sacrifice!”

I turn away to stare at the ceiling. I knew every single one of those men in that Humvee—had spent years serving with them.

Had walked that road ahead of them with Bear at my side, my best dog, the one I’d trusted more than my own eyes.

I trusted them with my life as much as they trusted me with theirs, and I let them down.

They’re dead, and I’m not.

We don’t say another word until the doctor arrives minutes later, and I only speak when Miller practically pushes me into giving verbal consent to the surgery.

My mind barely registers the words the doctor speaks; it’s all white noise to my ears.

I can’t hear anything beyond the horror replaying over and over in my mind.

“Galloway!”

I turn when someone pats my good shoulder to find Miller watching me with something akin to worry. I can tell that it’s not the first time he’s called my name, and something on my face must be alarming enough to shake even the unit leader. “What?”

“The surgery…” He shakes his head, letting out a low, tired sigh. “Where do you plan to go once you’re out of the hospital?”

Right. Because I can’t go back to base. Not until I’m better and can fucking walk. Something tells me not even then. I suppose there’s only one place left to go. “Utah,” I grunt, turning away to glare at the ceiling. “I’m going back home.”

With my world crushed to pieces, it only makes sense that I would go back to the rocky desert of the only place that would accept a broken man like myself.

The same hometown my brother begged me not to leave twenty years ago when I joined the Navy and shipped out for basic training.

All I have left in that place is my brother.

Twenty years later, I’m going home a broken man.

Aren’t I lucky?