Chapter 22
Deacon
My shoes pounded against the wet pavement, the rain, constant since the night before, cutting against my skin.
I’d kissed her. I’d pulled Willow against my body and felt the press of her against my chest, I’d relished how her tentative tongue slid against mine, and the way she groaned when I gently tugged her hair to angle her face.
“Fuck,” I repeated to myself, increasing my speed.
I kissed my best friend’s little sister.
I kissed her while we were drunk. I looked ahead at the steep hill and leaned into the rain, ignoring the ache in my lower back.
The music in my earbuds paused with an incoming call, and I glanced down at my Apple Watch.
It was Cruz, and I silenced the notification.
He’d called earlier, too, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer.
Even with the worst video connection in the world, he’d see the fucking guilt on my face.
I groaned and started up the hill at full speed, arms and legs pumping at a sprint as my muscles burned in protest. I’d been in a fog since last night, between Emi and Marcus both announcing they were leaving and then kissing Willow.
Sweating like this, pushing my body to any limit I could find, was the only way I could think.
I sucked in a breath, inhaling the icy rain as I neared the top of the hill.
After lifting that morning, I’d already run several miles, but slowing down meant thinking, and if I did that, things got dark.
I skirted around a puddle and slowed at the top of the hill at the red light.
My career demanded peak physical conditioning, but I still knew how overtraining felt, and my muscles screamed at me as I slowed, stretching and bouncing on my heels while I waited for the traffic to clear.
I’d always competed with Cruz—in training, we competed with everyone, but once we became friends, he was the person who got the most from me.
We motivated each other. My phone buzzed once more against my arm, and I stared at the oncoming traffic with hands on my hips as I paced in small circles, refusing to look at his message.
He’d visited me a week after the surgery, after my parents had flown home with promises to check in periodically. There had been forty-two ceiling tiles in the room, the ones right above me dappled with spots of water damage that looked like a rough rendering of Peter from Family Guy.
“You look like shit,” Cruz had said, because what else would your best friend say to you after spinal surgery? I wanted to laugh, but I caught sight of the gash over his eye, the one he’d gotten doubling back for me, and I looked away instead.
“Got your own room,” he said, glancing at the empty bed on the other side of the divider.
“Should make it easier to seduce hot doctors and nurses,” he said casually, but his eyes were on the tubes and wires attached to me, studying and inspecting how bad it was.
When I didn’t say anything, he kept going.
“Of course, this whole cutting open your spine thing might slow your game. You might have to date Ms. Rosy Palm like you did back in basic until you’re off your back. ”
I chuckled just once. It wasn’t funny, but it was normal.
“Women like being on top with me,” I said, finally turning my head toward him.
“They enjoy looking at my pretty face.” My voice croaked—I hadn’t been using it other than to tell the physical therapist to fuck off and thanking the nurses for pain meds.
Cruz handed me the cup of water sitting near the bed and held it so the straw was near my mouth.
When I didn’t move, he nudged it forward, adding, “Fucker, I will not beg you to suck on anything, no matter how laid up you are.”
I laughed for real then and took a drink of water, feeling the wash of it through my system. I coughed into my shoulder and waved it away. “You dream about begging me to suck,” I said finally.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the side of the bed.
“Told you a thousand times, you arrogant dick, you’re not my type.
You’re too big a motherfucker.” I was pretty sure I was the only one he’d told he was bi—even today the military wasn’t always a safe place to be out, and it had taken years for him to tell me. “I like my men svelte.”
I laughed again at the term and motioned to my body, bulky under the blankets with my size and the equipment and pillows keeping me in place. “You’re saying I’m not svelte?”
We laughed until it faded into the ordinary sounds of the room—the monitors and compression device groaning. “You scared the shit out of me,” he admitted, looking down at his own hands, and I let my gaze trail to the stitches and bruising down his neck. “I thought you were dead.”
I tried to move my toes, and I watched the small shift under the blankets.
It took so much effort, completely exhausting me, but I kept doing it.
Kept checking. “I thought I was, too,” I admitted, not adding that lying in this bed, staring at the ceiling, I’d wondered if I was better off.
I didn’t want to be dead, but this felt like limbo.
“Rakes?” Someone knocked on the door and walked in, interrupting my spiral. “We need to get you up on your feet.” The man was tall and thin and clapped his hands together, plastering on a smile despite my continued attitude. “It’s time.”
“Respectfully, fuck off,” I said, looking up at the ceiling. He technically outranked me, but I couldn’t be bothered to care. “Not today.”
“Sooner you get back up on your feet, the closer you get to walking again.” Instead of backing out of the room, he stepped forward.
The tumor suppressing my spine was still being tested, the prognosis up in the air.
What I knew was I could barely feel my legs.
He held out his hands and spoke in an accent that made me think he’d spent time in the South, just enough to adopt a rounded lilt to his voice.
“Just gotta work on taking a step. That’s all you need to do today. ”
“No,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, feeling how that pulled on the staples running up my back. “I said not today.”
The physical therapist, the last name on his tag read “Gerald,” shot a look at Cruz and down at my form, still under the blankets.
“Can you give us a minute?” Cruz asked, and Gerald nodded.
“But I’ll be back in five minutes. It’s not optional today, Rakes.”
I continued fixing my stare on the ceiling until the door clicked shut.
“What was that?” Cruz stood and walked to the other side of the bed to catch my gaze. “You’re scared to try?”
I huffed and stared him in the eyes. “I’m not scared.”
“Sure as fuck sounds like it. The Deacon Rakes I know tackles shit head-on, no matter how scary it is.”
“I’m not scared,” I repeated.
“Bullshit.” He snagged my arm when I tried to recross it over my chest. “And you should be. This is scary, but you can’t just give up. I’m here to help.” He took my hand in both of his. “No wind.”
I didn’t say anything, looking up at the ceiling instead, tracing the outline of the water spot. It was one step—weeks earlier, I’d scaled the side of a cliff and run for miles. And now I couldn’t even walk—Cruz was right; I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it.
“No wind,” he repeated, his voice firm.
When I didn’t respond again, he dropped my hand. “Is there any damage to your neck?” The question took me off guard, and I turned toward him.
“No, all lower. T11 and T12.”
“Issues with your breathing after extubating?”
“No.” I wished I had somewhere to go, because his sharp shift was throwing me off. “Why are you asking?”
And then he’d reached back and punched me in the jaw, not hard enough to knock my teeth out, but it hurt like a motherfucker. “You told me once that’s what it takes to get you to listen sometimes.” He sucked in a breath and held out his hand again. “No. Wind,” he repeated.
I’d fumed, but as I rubbed my jaw, I focused on that pain and the new injury and looked up into my best friend’s face.
I thought back to the hundreds of times we’d pushed each other, to that night at karaoke when I begged him to trust us, to trust me, and I looked away from the ceiling.
“No rain,” I said, finally taking his hand.
There was a knock at the door, and Gerald walked in.
“He’s ready,” Cruz said, clutching my hand still and not looking away. As Gerald gave some instruction, Cruz leaned in to help me out of bed, and I whispered that PT Gerald was kinda svelte. Cruz’s laugh filled the room, and I smiled the way I always did when he laughed like that.
“When you take ten steps, I’ll ask for his number,” he’d said.
I shook my head at the memory, running a hand over my jaw where he’d hit me.
I’d threatened to hit him back when he wanted to chicken out of calling the physical therapist. Now, a horn honked, and I noticed the light had changed, and a car was waiting for me to cross.
I waved them through and instead walked toward a nearby tree to get some shelter from the rain and checked my phone.
Cruz: Get back to me.
Cruz: Gonna be out of range for a while.
I swallowed. They were sending them out, and if he was giving me a heads-up, I knew what that meant. I looked ahead into the rain and hit the video call icon, walking the short distance back to a neighborhood park where there was a shelter.
“Hey,” I said, looking at the pixelated image on the screen. “Sorry, was working out.”
“Don’t have much time but we’re—” The next few words were garbled with the poor connection.
“How long?”
“Unknown,” he said as the audio connection cleared. “Take care of Willy. She doesn’t always understand our mission and she worries.”
I was pretty sure she worried because she understood.
I thought it but didn’t say it—I’d spent two years on this side of it, being the one at home waiting for news instead of the one out there doing the rescuing, and it sucked.
“Sure,” I said instead. “I’ve got her.” Then, for no reason, or because the guilt was eating at me and he’d once punched me in the jaw in a hospital, I added, “She’s pretty great. ”
“She is,” he said, looking off-screen. “That’s why I’ve warned you to keep your hands off her.”
“I’m not that bad,” I said, making a joke, even as the urge to confess I’d kissed her climbed up my throat.
“I’m actually a pretty decent guy. Even G admitted that once I stopped telling him to fuck off about the physical therapy.
” The two had a kind of situationship while I was in the hospital and then for a while after.
His first name was Antonio, but calling him by his last name or G always felt right to me and kept Cruz’s privacy a little safer.
“You’re one of the best guys I know,” he said. “But you don’t stick around. You’re not a relationship guy. I’m not, either. I know you and you cut and run. Even if you wanted to stay, you’ve never had the option.” He sighed and looked at his watch. “And Willy deserves someone who is all in.”
Those words hit me like that punch in the jaw had two years earlier. He knew me better than anyone. “You’re right, man.” I looked at the screen, which froze for a moment.
“Shit. I gotta go,” he said. “Tell her I love her? She’s not answering her phone.”
“Roger that,” I said, holding up the phone. “Take care of yourself, brother.”
“No wi—” he said, the connection freezing again mid-sentence, though this time not coming back.
The downpour around me continued like I needed a visual reminder of the presence of rain.
Maybe Willow was my person, but Cruz was my brother, and he was spot-on—I left.
I was leaving. I couldn’t let her get the wrong idea.
I couldn’t let myself get the wrong idea, considering how motivated I was to leave just like my roommates.
Cruz’s face was still frozen on the screen, and a drop of water dripped along the surface.
“There’s plenty of rain,” I said to no one, but hoping the reminder to myself was what I needed.