“Gentlemen,” Miller greeted the men.
They didn’t spare him a glance, instead focusing all of their attention on me.
Porter, Brock, and Maine had been with Second Chances for a little over seven months now.
They were all from different branches of the military, and had all suffered life altering injuries that took them out of their military careers abruptly.
Brock was the first to speak. “We’ve been waiting for you to come in.”
I smiled slightly.
“I wasn’t ready,” I admitted.
He nodded, his head turning down to look at the table as if he really wanted to say something, but was telling himself he shouldn’t.
And I was thankful. I didn’t really want to start that here and now. Not yet, anyway.
There was going to be a time and a place to bring that up, but I wouldn’t be doing it after I just had a very exhausting first session with my therapist, and braving the public for the first time since the incident.
Brock looked up, and I was struck speechless by the look in his eyes.
Brock had become a great friend when he started on at Second Chances.
He was tall with brown hair, muscular, and tanned. He was normal in every way.
Or at least with all of his clothes on.
Brock was missing a leg.
He’d been shot in the leg over a year ago, and had caught an infection in his bone.
In order to keep the infection from spreading, they’d had to amputate his leg from the knee down.
He walked perfectly well, though.
You’d never know he was even missing a leg at all unless he wanted you to know.
A version of the same thing had happened to Porter.
Except for Porter had an above the knee amputation.
Porter was quiet, and I didn’t know much of his backstory.
Only that he’d been released from the Marines on medical disability, and the life he’d thought he was going back to was no longer there anymore.
At least, that’d been what he told me.
Porter was the strong, silent type.
He had blonde messy hair, beautiful skin, and blazing green eyes that reminded me of a wolf’s.
“Maddie says hi,” Maine said softly.
Maddie was Maine’s fiancé.
They’d met shortly after Maine had moved here.
“Tell her I said ‘hi’ back, and that I’d like to do lunch sometime next week to see when she wants me to go try on bridesmaid dresses,” I said softly.
Maine was sweet.
By far the most well behaved of the group, he was the one who tried to keep the others in line.
He was on the shorter side, around five foot eight. He had black shaggy hair, and looked to have some Chinese ancestry that gave him an oriental hint to his features.
He reminded me of Bruce Lee.
Maine had severe PTSD, and struggled with it on a daily basis.
He’d just started being able to go out in public, but loud noises still scared the shit out of him and sent him into a fog of memories.
Which was made more than apparent in the next few seconds when the doors to the kitchen banged open.
The waitress who’d taken our order was in the process of going in with a large tray of dirty dishes, and the inevitable happened.
One second the dishes danced precariously on the edge of the tray, and the next they crashed loudly to the ground, causing Maine to freeze.
He didn’t remain frozen for long.
The next second he was spinning around and crouched down, hands covering his ears as he took in the restaurant with sightless eyes.
“Shit,” Porter hissed, standing up.
“Don’t touch him,” I ordered them all. “Brock, call Maddie. She’s at work and not far away.”
Maddie was a sales representative at the local Dixie Star Boutique down the road. She owned the store, and hopefully had a few of her underlings there so she could come up here.
I’d found out that it took Maine a very long time to come out of his episodes. The longest one I’d witnessed, to date, was over an hour long, and the only one able to break him out of it was Maddie.
Miller stood to the side, staring at the man, waiting for him to go crazy.
But he also had a sympathetic look on his face, one that told of a dark understanding.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He turned his eyes to me, those gorgeous blue eyes, and shook his head. “Yeah, fine.”
Ten long minutes later, Maddie came running around the side of the building, and rushed in through the front door.
She approached Maine slowly, eyes haunted as she walked up to him slowly.
“Maine,” she called from a few feet away. “Baby, guess what.”
Maine turned his head, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge her presence.
So there we sat, waiting on pins and needles for him to come out of his fog.
Something he did long minutes later when Maddie whispered something in his ear.
“You’re shitting me,” he rasped.
She shook her head, hugging him around the neck. “Nope. Found out this morning.”
“You’re gonna give me a baby?” He whispered fiercely.
She nodded, tears running down her cheeks as she threw herself into his arms.
He caught her easily, and whooped loudly. “I’m gonna be a daddy!”
Brock and Porter were grinning ear to ear, as was Miller.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t.
My mind was on my own life. My own little could be.
That just brought another possibility up. One I’d been studiously ignoring since the moment I’d refused the morning after pill.
A pill that was against everything that I was, against everything I’d learned from the moment I was old enough to go to church.
A pill that would’ve kept me from feeling like I was right this very second.
I could be a mom.
To a baby that wasn’t created out of love, like it should be, but out of hate.
A baby that was made by a man that had raped me.
Though shall not kill- that was what I was thinking when I’d refused that little pill.
All of a sudden, all the things that I’d been ignoring crashed into me.
I stumbled back, but I didn’t fall.
Why? Because Miller was there to catch me.Chapter 6Brothers are good for two things. Drinking your beer and watching your back.