Hold Me: Delos Series, 5B1 Read online

  “How? When you close up and go away from me, Beau? When you hide? Do you know how that makes me feel?” She punched her thumb into her chest. “I feel like you’re leaving me. Like I’m making you run away from me, but I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. It’s driving me crazy!”

  Jesus! He stared at her, his mouth open, seeing the anguish in her eyes, hearing the hurt in her low, husky voice. Stumbling, he said, “You are not chasing me away, Callie.”

  “Well, then,” she said, pain in her tone, “you won’t kiss me. We haven’t made love since you arrived here. I know at first you couldn’t. But the doctor has said your lung injury is healed. I so badly want to sleep at your side again, Beau. I felt if I could, those nightmares might go away. I don’t know what’s going on inside you. I can’t get into your head.”

  Crumpling inward, Beau was at a loss for words. He felt those walls around himself, and wanted to hide behind them, avoiding Callie’s concerns. “You’ve got this all wrong,” he began. “Whatever is going on is with me, Callie, not you. Stop blaming yourself for this, will you?”

  “Well, hell! If you won’t communicate with me, Beau, what am I to think? Really! What am I to think about you? About us?” Her voice grew hoarse.

  Beau didn’t want her to cry. He just didn’t. Opening his hands, he said, “I’m trying, Callie. But it’s hard. I’m not used to spilling my guts about how I really feel.”

  “Like that’s an excuse, Beau? Not in my world.” She angrily took a swipe at her eyes. “I wonder if you really love me.”

  It felt as if another bullet had slammed into him. Frozen by her blurted words, all he could do was feel pain roaring through him, nonstop. “No …,” he rasped, “no … that’s not true at all, Callie. I DO love you!” Feeling as if his whole world had suddenly shattered, Beau winced as he saw tears spill out of her eyes, seeing the anger and hurt in them. “This is coming out all wrong,” he said swiftly, holding up his hands.

  She stared at him, her lower lip trembling until she compressed them. “I’m going for a walk. I need to clear my head.”

  She got up to leave, a devastated expression on her face. Then, she marched out and firmly closed the door to the cabin. She was gone.

  That went well, didn’t it?

  He sat there, hands clasped on the table, staring into nothingness, his emotions churning and filled with frustration. His mind raced and he kept going over their heated, defensive conversation with one another. Callie had taken everything he said the wrong way, but he didn’t blame her. He blamed himself. Women talked on several levels. His best friend, Matt Culver, and he had often commented that women were like a bunch of bus stations at a thousand different stops. They could easily hop from one station to another in a split second. And men, Matt had said, were like communication satellites circling Earth. They knew where they were and talked from one satellite to another, in a linear order. They didn’t hop around from one satellite to another across the planet.

  Wearily, he rubbed his face, trying to sort out why their talk had gone spinning out of control. He’d wanted to make sure Callie was okay staying with him. Was it getting to be too much of a burden on her shoulders? Beau knew she was still working through her active PTSD. Things like that did not just go away overnight, or even in a few months. It took years. Years …

  Resting his jaw against his clasped hands, he closed his eyes, trying to sort through everything. It wounded him to think that Callie thought he didn’t want to make love to her. And then, he had a bolt of insight. They were both laboring beneath the burden of PTSD. Both had nearly died. Callie’s daily struggle to deal with her own near-death experience was no less intense than his was for him.

  Opening his eyes, he cursed softly beneath his breath and pushed the chair away, rising. That was the key—well, one of them. The other was learning how to talk “women speak” with her, a subject in which he had no training.

  Would Callie give him a chance, despite him bungling their dinnertime conversation? Pacing the cabin, he wondered where she was now. Beau knew she loved to walk the trails through the woodlands around the property. She also loved the barn, where she had made friends with the ewes that provided his ma with wool.

  The June dusk was deep as he left the cabin, walking across the huge gravel area between all the buildings and the garden. He saw a light inside the barn, and figured Callie was inside. Sure enough, as he opened the door, he saw Callie over at the feed trough, petting all six of the ewes, which adored human attention. They were spoiled rotten by his ma, and they were gentle beings, but Beau had always loved all animals. He saw Callie lift her head and twist around. When she saw him, she frowned. He halted.

  “I wanted to come and talk with you, Callie.” Her hesitant look unsettled him, but he also saw her need for him in her eyes. Opening his hands, he said, “I need to sit and talk with you. We need to try and hash this out and make sense of it all, sweetheart.”

  The moment he’d spoken the endearment, Callie’s whole face changed and he saw her raw love for him. Heartened, he stepped forward. Right now, Beau would rather face a firefight than try to unwind the snarled ball of emotions between them.

  Sitting down on the wooden bench in front of the feed trough that was now empty, he gave her a hopeful look.

  “I’m sorry I left like that,” Callie admitted quietly. “That was childish. You deserve better from me.”

  Beau reached for her hand in her lap, curving his fingers around hers, giving her a long look, seeing the uncertainty in her gaze. “I screwed things up royally with you back in the cabin and I’m sorry too, Callie.” He saw her face sag with so many emotions. “I need your help,” he began, earnestly holding her gaze. “I don’t know how to talk to a woman. It’s not an excuse. I need you to teach me how to stay on whatever topic we start to talk about. Could you do that for me?”

  Gulping, Callie nodded. “I get flustered, Beau, and I sometimes blow things out of proportion, like I did tonight.”

  “No, you didn’t.” He cupped her hand between his, turning it over, sliding his thumb lightly across her palm, feeling her react. “Here’s what I see and you tell me if I’m on the money or not?”

  “Go ahead …”

  “First, we both have PTSD. We both had a life-and-death experience. That’s what is beneath the surface, fueling us, and making us feel unbalanced.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right.”

  Heartened, he added, “It’s like an animal that lives in us, Callie. And sometimes it awakens me and I get these God-awful nightmares or flashbacks.”

  “And mine makes me irritable, short tempered, and then I feel defensive and threatened,” Callie said, nodding.

  “It attacks us differently, but we both get clawed, and we take it out on others around us whether we want to or not.”

  “Yes … you’re right. I got angry at you, Beau.”

  “Rightfully so,” he sighed. “I never expected you to ask me if I loved you or not.” He touched the engagement ring on her left hand. “It caught me off guard, stunned me, I guess.”

  Wincing, Callie whispered, “I shouldn’t have asked that, Beau. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

  “It’s okay. I think I’ve figured it out, but you let me know.” She bobbed her head, and he could see her holding back a lot of feelings. Moving his thumb across each of her fingers, he rasped, “After I got the okay from the doc that I was ready for normal experiences, I didn’t ask you to go to bed with me. You took it the wrong way and I don’t blame you. Callie, I was afraid if I asked you back to bed with me, with all my tossing and turning, you’d never get any sleep. I was trying to protect you from me,” he said, holding her luminous gaze. “I knew you were struggling too. I knew you needed your sleep. But you saw it as me pushing you away, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did. And I didn’t understand why, Beau. You never told me any of this, so what was I to think?”

  “I was afraid to tell you, Callie.” It took everything he
had to admit that to her.

  “Why? I love you, Beau. My God, we’ve gone through so much together already.”

  Shaking his head, he muttered, “How about the monster called ‘male ego?’ Or the other one called ‘pride?’ I was afraid you’d see me as weak, less than the man you fell in love with.” He released her hand. “What it comes down to is that I love you, whatever happens, forever. Never ever doubt that again. I’m sorry I’ve messed up with you, Callie. I don’t mean to, but I’m going through my own hell and everything is distorted. I’m the one not thinking clearly right now. I remember back in November, in that ER at Bagram, when you sat there on the gurney after we were rescued. You looked wild-eyed, like a hunted, captured animal. I stood there feeling helpless, not knowing what to do or say. I wanted to hold you, but I was afraid to, because I thought you might have been raped.”

  “It was a terrible time for both of us,” Callie choked. “You were standing guard over me and you’d been shot in the leg.” She reached out, caressing his stubbled jaw. “Beau, I feel we have to give each other space and room. And I agree, our PTSD pattern is playing hell on us emotionally, as well as, mentally. It’s not easy. Nothing is right now, for either of us.”

  Giving her a searching look, he asked, “What do you want to do about it?” He’d said the words heavily, slowly, because he was afraid Callie would walk out on him and leave him forever. Another part of his mind said that was foolish, he knew that Callie loved him and would be fiercely loyal to him until her last breath. He’d seen it in Afghanistan as they ran for their lives for days and nights. Never once had she whined, quit, or even asked to quit. No, Callie had gumption. She gave, and gave, and gave, until she had nothing more to give.

  “I want to stay with you, Beau. I want to sleep at your side. I don’t care how many times a night you wake me up. I have a feeling if you’ll let me stay with you, you won’t have as many nightmares. I could be wrong,” she said, shrugging, “but I’m lonely for you.”

  Her words melted his heart and fed his soul. “Okay, we’ll do that. I want it, too. Now, as to the fact that I haven’t made a move to love you …”

  Callie grimaced. “Yes?”

  “I was afraid,” Beau said. “My head is wrapped up in anxiety all the time, Callie. In a good moment, I feel like my old self before this lung wound happened. Now, I’m always questioning myself, wondering if I can perform or not.” He looked away.

  “Okay, then let’s take it a step at a time,” Callie began. “You can touch me, kiss me, hold me when you want. You can also tell me when you don’t feel like making love. At least then, I won’t take it personally. I’ll understand that the PTSD has a hold of you. There are times when I’m so wrapped up in anxiety, Beau, the last thing on my mind is sex. We can deal with that if we let each other know what’s going on inside our heads.”

  “Does it strike you like that?”

  “No, it’s different for me, Beau. I have high anxiety buzzing around me 24/7. I’m getting so I know when the cortisol is screwing me over, so I wait to make decisions or statements after it lets me go. At first, when we brought you home, I accepted your wall as just that: anxiety that had you in its grip.”

  “No, I don’t get much anxiety. But I get irritable and hot-tempered. I’m not normally that kind of person, Callie.”

  “No, you’re easygoing and laid back.”

  “I hate this PTSD,” he muttered.

  “I’ll join you on that one. At least we have one thing in our favor, Beau.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have a common enemy: PTSD. We understand it because we live with it. Once we can straighten out our communication with one another, it should become an advantage. If you’re getting crabby, I’ll understand. If I’m getting impatient, I know you’ll give me space.”

  Giving her a thoughtful glance, he said, “I hadn’t looked at it in that way, but you’re right.”

  “We have to devise keywords, or a sign of some kind to let the other know what’s happening inside us. That can prevent a lot of misunderstanding.”

  Nodding, he murmured, “That sounds logical.”

  “We’re in a new world, Beau. Nothing is what it was before these things happened to us.” She grimaced. “We’ve changed, forever. But that doesn’t mean our lives are over. Once we adjust over time, we’ll get back on track with one another.”

  “I hate taking sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds,” he admitted. “I won’t do it, right or wrong.”

  “I won’t take them either. I feel like I’m half-alive when I do. That’s not the quality of life I want.” She sighed. “I may have anxiety a lot, but at least I know when it spikes and what’s going on. And I can tell you when it happens, so we can discuss sensitive issues later, when those spikes have gone down.”

  “Right.” He gave her an appraising look. “You’re a smart little fox. Earlier, after you left the cabin, I’d suddenly had a lightbulb go on in my head. I figured out that our normal pattern with each other had been altered by the PTSD. That helped me understand why we were talking past one another.” He added apologetically, “Callie, I’m going to stumble and fall a lot with you on this talking bit. I know how important it is to communicate, but I honestly feel scared that I’ll screw up so badly, you’ll give up on me.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Beau. We need a time-out word or gesture when we reach a point like we did back there in the cabin. We both have to take a step back and agree to discuss it at another time when we’re not prisoners of our own anxiety and the high cortisol flooding our systems.”

  “I want to do this, but I’m feeling pretty shaky about it,” Beau admitted. “It’s not that I don’t want to try it, Callie. I do.”

  “We’re like two people without a skin to protect ourselves any longer, Beau. At least, that’s the way I feel at times. And when we’re horribly vulnerable, feeling like we’re under threat, we need to tell one another, like you did with me just now. You told me how you really felt. You have no idea how refreshing that is to me. Now, I don’t have to let my wild imagination take me to stupid scenarios that are untrue. At least now, I know you’re feeling like you’re on quicksand. I get that. I can handle that.”

  “But we’re not always going to be perfect at this, Callie. We’re human. I hope you don’t set me up on a pedestal and think I’m not going to slip off it more times than not.”

  “I hope the same thing from you, Beau,” she told him, reaching over, touching his hand. “I know how much patience you had with me before you got wounded.”

  “I still have that patience,” he reassured her. Taking her hand, he kissed it. “I think our love will give us the tolerance we need so long as we talk honestly.”

  “I believe that,” Callie said wistfully. She leaned forward, kissing him on the mouth.

  Beau luxuriated in the softness of her lips skimming his. He closed his eyes, feeling her fingers wrap around his as he leaned toward her. She smelled so good! Her flesh was soft and fragrant. Already, he could feel his erection stirring. It was the first time that had happened since he’d been shot. As he eased from her wet lips, drowning in the luster of her half-open green eyes, he wondered if their talk had removed some of the burden he’d felt every day. The tension that had stiffened his shoulders was suddenly, miraculously gone, too.

  “You’re right,” he rasped, lifting his other hand, smoothing some strands from her temple. “We’re like raw meat thrown out on a hot sidewalk, left to burn on it.”

  She chuckled and sat up, continuing to hold his hand. “That sorta says it all. Quite a verbal visual you gave me, Gardner.”

  Perking up, loving her teasing of him, he gave her a bashful grin. “That’s okay. We have one another, Callie. And that’s all that counts. If I have to have this curse the rest of my life, I’m glad you’re at my side. No other person could ever understand what we go through daily.”

  “And I sure wouldn’t want to have to go through this with someone who
didn’t understand.”

  Some of the ewes crowded over to where she sat, straining their thick, short necks in the direction of her knees, wanting her touch, once more. She smiled and leaned over, dutifully scratching the top of each of their heads. “We have to start over with one another, Beau. We can’t go back to how we were before. We’re in a new world together. We’re going to have to ask a lot of questions and both of us has to be willing to tell the truth. And that takes guts. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, watching each ewe close her eyes with satisfaction as Callie scratched each of their heads. He watched her for a moment, wanted her hands on him. An ache grew in his heart and he yearned to have her against his body, in their bed, naked, warm, and willing.

  Mouth dry, he said, “Would you like to come to bed with me tonight, Callie? Lie at my side?” He saw her eyes fill with joy.

  “I’d love that, Beau!”

  “I can’t promise you anything. I mean, I want to, but I’m scared as hell. I’m scared that PTSD will rear its ugly head.”

  “We’ll talk through it,” she said, her voice choked up. “Let’s just take one step at a time.”

  A huge load slid off his shoulders. Studying her, he demanded, “Are you sure, Callie?” What if he couldn’t get it up? That scared him more than anything else except for her walking out on him forever.

  “What matters is that you hold me close, Beau. I need to lay my head on your good shoulder. That’s all I need right now. It’s more than enough for me.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Callie felt hope racing through her as she stood with Beau in the shower. It was too small to inspire much messing around, but she happily washed his back for him, kissed his nape, and when he turned around, he kissed her long, hard, and deeply. And that told her all she needed to know beneath the streams of warm water.

  They laughed as they stepped out because they could barely turn around in the plastic enclosure without bumping into one of the walls. She towel-dried him, noticing the deep pink of his scar in the middle of his right side, across his ribcage. She pulled a towel across his broad shoulders, wanting to keep him warm because the June night was cool. The steam hung in the bathroom where they stood. “That looks so tender,” she said, placing her fingers lightly across the scar.