Chapter 6
TUCKER
THE CEILING fan spins slowly, lazily, almost mockingly, as my heart beats so hard it feels like my torso is shaking, and my body is covered in sweat. Connecting my waking thoughts with the images that were just in my head before I opened my eyes is like trying to thread a shaking needle.
Even when awake, I can still hear Matthews moaning on the stretcher next to me in the MEDEVAC, and the pain in my leg in the dream doesn’t go away when I wake up. I can still feel the injury from nearly a year ago like it just happened.
Before that day, I could wake up clear-headed and be up and ready to go in seconds. Now it takes nearly ten minutes to wade through the bullshit that clouds my thoughts to get to mostly clear-headed. Fucking hajis and their fucking bombs.
The smell of bacon and eggs floats across my nose, and I can hear babies screaming and laughing in the house. Just like clockwork, every morning at breakfast, I hear small footsteps thumping in the hall, and they stop outside my door.
A small hand slaps against the wood, and I hear my nephew, Beckett, yell through the door. “Uncaw Tuck!” More banging on the door that makes me smile. “Mommy said come get beckfast.”
Some days, all the kids we have in the house now grate on my nerves, those are bad days for me and is not their fault. But most days, they are a distraction from the shitshow my life has become. Their innocence and complete fucking honesty remind me what the world can be like.
The doorknob rattles in the slow way of a toddler trying to turn the knob, but I always keep the door locked. I can’t risk them coming into my room while I’m still asleep. I would never forgive myself if I accidentally hurt one of them.
“Just a second, buddy.” I yell and throw the covers off me.
“Okay!” he always sounds like he’s excited. He’s almost four, but he’s sharp as a tack, happy as can be, and talks like an adult half the time, except he has trouble pronouncing his Ls and Rs.
My leg is stiff, and the pain shooting up to my hip and down to my ankle almost makes me want to lie back down. Breathing through the pain, it takes half a minute, but I finally get upright.
Unlocking the door, I open it, and a three-foot human runs past me, grabs the comforter on my bed as he hikes his leg up on the sideboard and climbs up like a monkey.
He spins around and sits on his ass with an ornery as shit smile that looks just like my brother Mason.
His black hair and green eyes are straight from his mama, though.
“Hold on, buddy, I gotta take a pi… Uhm, I need to pee.” I say as I ruffle his hair and slowly go to my bathroom.
“Okay!” He’s bouncing on the bed as I shut the bathroom door while shaking my head with a grin.
Ten minutes later, I limp into the chaos that is our kitchen with Beckett on my back, his little arms tight around my neck.
My sister, Marley, sees me walk in, I’m trying to hide the limp, but she narrows her eyes as she watches me and turns to the cabinet next to the fridge with my two-year-old niece Niki on her hip.
Her belly is like a beach ball with another nephew.
She looks like she’s about to pop any day, and I wonder how she is able to hold Niki on her hip like that.
The little girl has blond hair just to her shoulders and ice-blue eyes like her daddy, who is sitting at the breakfast nook with her twin, Sofi, in his lap.
It looks like they are scribbling with highlighters on sticky notes that are next to a set of plans for the house they are building on the property.
“There you are! I’ve been looking for you.” The weight on my back is lifted as Mason grabs Beckett and stands next to me at the kitchen island with the boy on his hip. “How’s the leg today? Kinley said you were in quite a bit of pain last night.”
“I’m fine,” I grumble before a glass of orange juice is pushed in front of my face and Marley holds her hand out to drop some pills into my hand.
I fucking hate it when they talk about me like I’m a kid that needs to be taken care of. I’ve considered moving out on my own more and more lately. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but the smothering pity and the fussing over me makes my fucking head want to spin off.
Marley’s big blue eyes look up at me. The silent mom message that she’s perfected since our own mom passed away when we were kids is clear - take the damn pills.
Popping them into my mouth, I down them with the glass of orange juice, partly to get her off my ass, and grab a biscuit and a few slices of bacon, putting them together before I walk to the back door.
“That can’t be all you’re going to eat, it’s not enough.” Marley’s eyes are narrowed at me as she hands a tippy cup to Niki.
Pinning her with my own glare that’s probably a little too heated, I clip, “I’ll be fine.” As I’m walking out the door, I see Jax get up from the breakfast nook and walk to Marley. I probably hurt her feelings. She’s been emotional from pregnancy hormones, and it doesn’t take much.
The familiar feeling of being the biggest fucking asshole in the room washes over me, and I slap my ball cap on my head and walk out the door to go to the barn. All the fucking pregnancy hormones are like walking through a field of emotion landmines. I never know what’s going to blow up in my face.
Somehow Marley, Kinley, and Sloane, who is Mason’s wife, managed to get pregnant within months of each other. So, welcome to my own personal hell.
Marley was right, even though I was a dick to her, I needed the pain pills. I tried to hide it, but she saw my limp when I walked into the kitchen. The walk to the barn is on a downhill slope, but each step feels like someone is sticking a hot poker into my thigh.
Just a year ago, I was being dropped into hostile territories, celebrating successful exfils with booze and babes, waking up in different countries regularly, and loving my fucking life.
Now I’m going to the barn to load feed and hay onto the tractor to move to the main stables and Marley’s stables.
Woo-fucking-hoo.
The life I gladly walked away from when I turned eighteen has pulled me back. I never wanted to work the farm. I grew up in this barn, helping Dad, Gray, and Mason, looking forward to the day I could fly away.
Sliding the big barn doors open, I grab my leather gloves from the wood rail in front of the pallet of feed and limp to the tractor to get my day started. Even with the fucking pain, and my dislike of working in the barn, I would rather do anything than sit in the house feeling sorry for myself.
That evening, as soon as I see Dad and Gray walking to the house for dinner, I don’t say anything to them, I go right to my truck and head into town.
The days I go to PT are always the worst pain-wise, and I try to distance myself from my family as much as possible.
I hate snapping at them. But I usually end up going a couple of other days through the week as well.
It’s bad enough that I wake up every morning and wonder what purpose my life is possibly serving, or I wonder what that fucking bitch, Karma, is serving me, the last thing I want to do is make my sisters cry and have the added weight of feeling like a complete dick.
All the downtown parking places clear out after five o’clock, and it’s easy to get a spot close to Stony’s Pub. It’s small, old as the town itself, and they offer dinner, so I come here a few nights a week to get away from the crowd at home.
“Evenin’, Tuck,” Stony says as I walk through the door. “You want your usual?”
I nod and sit at my usual table toward the back corner of the room facing the front door.
When I see who’s waitressing tonight, I groan inwardly.
Trudy and I had a short fling about six years ago.
At the time, I thought it was a mutual friend with benefits thing, at least that’s what I told her the first night she eagerly climbed on top of me in her car.
I’m pretty sure she thought she would be able to change my mind and got pissed when she didn’t. She’s hated me since.
What got my attention when I first saw her was her big tits and wide hips. I love an hourglass figure on a woman, and she was eye candy from the first moment I saw her. She was also clingy and jealous right up to the point of demanding. It took weeks to shake her after I nipped it in the bud.
She sets a coaster on the table and puts my beer on it. “Tuck.” The greeting is terse, but at least she’s not calling me a lying bastard anymore. Even though I never lied about anything. She’s just a vindictive bitch who didn’t get what she wanted.
I don’t respond and I don’t look at her, I just nod and take the beer as she turns away. I’m not here to be social, and I don’t give a fuck anymore who is mad at me and who isn’t, as long as she doesn’t fucking spit in my food.
The beer is cold in my throat as I drink half the mug, and the bitter flavor on my tongue reminds me of the days when I would drink with my team.
Rage starts to bubble in my gut, so I down the rest of the beer to help dull the shards of anger and hate that like to slash open every wound I try to keep closed.
Seven beers, three hours, and a chicken-fried steak dinner later, most everything is comfortably numb, and I set my empty mug on the table. I’m not surprised when my brother, Mason, sits in the chair across from me and Gray stands behind him with his thumbs hooked in his pockets.
He sets his elbows on the table and clasps his hands as we stare at each other. I’m the first to break the silence. “Stony call you?”
He nods. “He was worried about you driving, said you just finished your seventh mug.”
Glancing over Mason’s shoulder with a deep sigh, I look at Stony, but he refuses to look at me as he wipes down the bar. Chicken shit. Sliding my irritated gaze to Gray and then back to Mason, I say, “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I know you don’t, but we don’t mind giving you a ride.”
Keeping my voice low and even, I pin him with an angry glare. “I don’t need a ride either.”
We sit like that for several minutes, eyes locked in a battle of wills, before he says, “Look, how about we skip the argument, you admit that you probably shouldn’t drive, and we all go home together. Easy-peasy.”
Pride and my buzz are telling me to tell them to fuck off, but my common sense, what’s left of it, says to go peacefully or we’ll end up making a mess of this pub. It’s one of the few places I can go to stew in my shitshow of a life in peace. I like it here, so I don’t want to get banned.
Taking my wallet out of my pocket, I toss a few bills on the table and scoot my chair away as I stand.
The beer has taken the edge off the usual throbbing pain that happens when I stand after sitting for a while, but even if it had felt like my leg was being cut in two, I wouldn’t let my face betray that to my brothers.
“See, wasn’t this easier than an argument?” Mason says with a smile and lifts his hand to pat me on the back. When I lock angry eyes with him, he thinks better and lets his hand fall to his side.
Smart move.