Chapter Eleven #2
“Those hotshot Army pilots came swooping in anyway. One chopper landed . . . well, kind of hovered over this huge boulder . . . and six Delta Force operatives leaped out of the helicopter, surrounded me, and basically carried me back to the chopper. The whole rescue took less than thirty seconds. One second I was a walking zombie, sure each step would be my last, and the next I was lying on my back, staring up at the men who’d come to get me as we zoomed away from the China–North Korea–Russia tripoint.
“I was taken straight to a military hospital in Yokosuka, Japan. I still feel sorry for the nurses who had to clean me up. I was a mess. I was unconscious for days, apparently hours away from death. The bacteria level in my body was off the charts and was doing a number on all my organs. I’d lost about twenty-five pounds in a week, and my feet were in such bad shape, I couldn’t walk for ten days while they healed.
“My shoulder had been torn from its socket, and I’d broken not only my collarbone, but three ribs as well.
I did have a concussion, and some bleeding on the brain.
The doctors kept telling me it was a miracle I was alive.
I started hearing the word hero being bandied about when I woke up, and it felt . . . wrong.
“I’d done nothing. Soldiers in World War One and Two were heroes. Vietnam. Operation Desert Storm. The men and women who led their fellow civilians out of the World Trade Center were heroes. The firefighters and police officers who died on September eleventh were heroes.
“Me? All I’d done is hang on as my plane ejected me and then walk for miles, hoping against hope someone was tracking me and I’d be picked up. I shit on myself, ate fucking dirt like an animal, and they were calling me a hero? It was a joke.
“The worst part was, that was the last time I was ever in one of my beloved jets. The Air Force decided my injuries were bad enough that I wouldn’t be able to safely fly again.
They were right, as my arm and shoulder don’t have the range of motion they used to, and my left eye sometimes still goes blurry at random times.
But it hurt. Having what I loved most taken away from me, and having the humiliation of what happened to me repeated in my head every night when I close my eyes . . . it affected me. Badly.
“I don’t sleep. Not more than an hour or two a night.
I go to sleep, but wake up from nightmares of being pounced on by soldiers as I’m lying in the dirt.
Or I wake up feeling as if I’ve shit myself again.
Or with the taste of dirt in my mouth. My mind relives that week over and over, the second I’m asleep. ”
“Have you talked to someone about it?” Harper asked gently.
She was still stroking his hand, and it kept Linc grounded. The fact that she hadn’t let go of him, even after hearing the depths of his humiliation, was a balm to his soul.
“Just the facts. Not what I was feeling or thinking. It was mandatory for me to talk to an Air Force shrink. I actually had to talk to a few. One was horrified by what I told her about the crash, then tried to pretend she hadn’t made such awful faces when she heard what I went through.
I never went back. Another seemed uninterested and just prescribed me narcotics, even after I told him I didn’t want to take drugs.
The one good therapist I saw was nice, but she honestly didn’t say anything that actually helped.
I finally gave up. Talking about what happened didn’t help. It only made my nightmares worse.”
“Have you talked to your brothers? They would probably understand better than anyone.”
“No. No one knows. No one but you. I don’t want them to look at me differently. I’m their big brother. They’ve always looked up to me. I don’t want them to have the image of me eating fucking dirt with shit running down the inside of my pants in their head.”
“Has anything worked?” she asked with a frown.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You,” Linc told her, taking a deep breath and looking into her eyes as he said it.
“Me? What’d I do?” she asked, sounding completely confused.
“You let me hold you while we slept. That night, when we fell asleep in the chair? I slept. For five solid hours. I don’t know why you seemed to keep my nightmares at bay, but you did.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she got that determined look on her face that he loved so much, and said, “Well, tonight seems like a perfect night to try it again. To see if it’ll work for a second time.”
The relief Linc felt was intense. If he’d been standing, he was afraid his knees would’ve gone out from under him. Tonight had started out with her opening up to him, sharing the worst thing that had ever happened in her life, and somehow, she was the strong one right now.
“I’m sorry I worried you.”
She rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter now. How much sleep did you get last night?”
“Uh . . . about forty-five minutes.”
“And the night before that?”
“The same.”
“Linc, you can’t function on that little amount of sleep. No wonder you’ve been baking so much.”
“I think I’ve proven that I can function on very little sleep,” he said dryly. “I have no choice.”
“Well, that stops now. You’re going to sleep, damn it! I mean it.”
Linc couldn’t help it. He laughed. Then he got serious again. “Does it make a difference? I mean, with us? Now that you’ve heard all the disgusting stuff I did?”
“Does it make a difference now that you know how Kash was conceived? How stupid I was?”
“No,” Linc said firmly. “It doesn’t make one damn bit of difference. I love that kid. He’s funny, smart as hell, considerate, and protective of you. He’s awesome. As are you. And you weren’t stupid. Maybe a little na?ve, but that’s not the same thing.”
“And you didn’t do anything disgusting. You survived.
There’s a huge difference. And I don’t think any one of the doctors, nurses, or those Delta Force and Night Stalker guys cared that you were covered in dirt and poo.
I bet they were all in complete awe that you’d made it out alive, without being captured.
They were probably proud of you for doing what you had to do in order to survive. Just like I am.”
A huge weight felt as if it had been lifted from Linc’s shoulders.
Tonight had been a night for revelations, and for the first time, he truly felt as if he could start over with Harper.
The slate had been wiped completely clean once and for all.
They were two humans who’d been through the worst of the worst, and had somehow found each other.
Maybe that had been their fate all along. To know each other as kids, to experience the lowest of the low, and then come together once more, changed. Stronger together than apart.
“How about we shower away our respective experiences? I don’t know about you, but I feel dirty after talking about what those men did to me,” Harper suggested.
“And I feel disgusting after reliving what I went through,” Linc agreed.
“Yeah. I’ve been dying to check out that huge shower,” Harper said with a shy smile.
This woman. She was amazing. But as much as he wanted to shower with Harper, this didn’t feel like the right moment.
“There’s nothing I want more than to see you slicked up with soap and feel you against my naked body, but right now . . .” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to explain what he was feeling.
“It’s okay. You just unloaded a lot of stuff, and I’m being selfish. Thinking about my own needs and wants.”
“It’s not that . . . I just . . . when I see you naked for the first time, I want it to be after a good night’s sleep. Not when memories of the mountains are so fresh in my head. I want nothing to taint our first time together.”
Linc could see understanding and affection in her eyes, and it was a huge relief. He brought one of her hands up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. Then he did the same with the other hand.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” Harper told him. “I would’ve been horrified if you did something you didn’t want to.”
“Make no mistake, Harper. I want you. We’ll shower together and more. Much more. But not tonight.”
He loved the blush that tinged her cheeks pink. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Go ahead and take your time in the bathroom. I’ll shower when you’re done.”
She nodded. And after a small nod and shy smile, she turned and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind her.