Her ex shouldn’t still have the power to hurt her. She didn’t love the bastard anymore. But still, his defection when she’d needed him most cut deeper than any surgeon’s knife. “Been there, done that, got the scars and divorce papers to show for it.”
“Ah—” he popped open the container of cookies “—so you’re a card-carrying member of the Marriage Sucks Club, too, huh?” He shoved a cookie in his mouth and offered her one, as well.
“You could say that.” She selected a cookie and weighed her words and finally asked the question that had been nibbling at the edges of her mind the same way she nipped around the cookie. “Want to tell me what happened with the legs?”
He swallowed his treat. “Hurricane Katrina cleanup was hazardous.”
The simple words painted a vivid picture. “I’m sorry.”
Nola could also tell from his stony face the subject was closed. She understood the reticence well and had to respect the boundaries.
She should probably pack up and go—cookies delivered. Mission accomplished. Page turned and book closed. Except… She couldn’t make herself get up off the uncomfy sofa.
“When do you get sprung from this place?”
“Soon.”
“You’re such a crummy liar.”
He shrugged. “I really am out soon. I just have to hire a babysitter and then they’ll cut me loose.”
“I take it from your tone you don’t think you need one.”
“Don’t want one.”
Awkward silence settled, kind of like that first meeting, but they’d already exhausted the wrong-first-date topics. She reached for her purse beside her. “I should go and let you get a shower or something.”
Shower? Sooo not a memory from the past she needed right now with him all sweaty and hot beside her, with her going on five years of abstinence, with his touch the last she’d felt. She clenched her fists to keep her hand from protectively covering her scarred breast. Yes, she’d had reconstruction, but she wasn’t the same by any stretch.>He’d been a crap father to his daughter, always on the job, barely a presence in her life. He wouldn’t let this wounded little girl down, too. Even if the best he could do was recover her dead body for burial…
Rick gritted his teeth. “Five more minutes, Sergeant, and I’ll be done.”
“Roger that, Major.”
He would reach the end of this walk without falling. Not like before.
Step.
Step.
Pain. Penance. Step. The sound of airplane engines had hummed in the background much the same as the heater now. Gusting wind over him. The antiseptic scent of the hospital as unwelcome a stench as the stench of…worse than muck…
Death.
Except the child had been alive, even if barely. He’d seen the doll flutter as if tugged.
Walk now. Run then.
He’d pulled the girl out, a child maybe four. They’d even made it to the emergency personnel where he’d passed her off…just as rotten boards gave way underneath him.
Agonizing pain razored through him. The ground sucked him in. Nails and boards cut into skin and muscle. Bones snapped. Wood tore into his legs. Ripped tendons.
Reach up. Out. Trudge. Don’t give up.
His vision tightened the tunnel until he could swear he saw the load ramp at the end of his metal bars. How damn ridiculous was that? Maybe it was just some of that visionary crap the shrink was always telling him about.
Picture what you want. Yeah. That was it. He wanted his job back.
Hell, he wanted his life back.