Anything For You: A Coming Home Short Story (3 page)

“What is what?” he asked carefully.

“Vasectomy, Shane?” Her voice broke over the fury in her words.

He said nothing, struggling to find the words he needed to make her hear him out. He covered the bacon and set it in the microwave, then set the timer.

It was another moment before he turned to face her. “So, yeah, about that.”

He was not prepared to see tears shining in her eyes. His heart tightened in his chest. Fuck, he’d hurt her. All because he’d been a coward and hadn’t found the words to bring it up. “Jen—”

“Were you even going to talk to me about this?” Her eyes glittered brightly, but there was no vitriol in her words. Just hurt. “What is this, Shane?”

“It’s an appointment.”

Her bottom lip quivered. She bit it. Hard. After a moment, she spoke. “So, were you just going to let me show up from work one night and see you sitting on the couch with a bag of peas?”

He swallowed and took a step toward her. In the entire time he’d known her, he’d never seen her this upset. Not angry. Hurt. “Can we just talk about this?”

“What are we going to talk about? About the fact that you don’t want to have children? Or is it about my cancer, Shane? Is that what this is about?”

He wanted to hold her, to soothe the ragged pain in her face. He hated seeing her hurting. It was worse, knowing he was the cause of that hurt. He rounded the island in the small kitchen and tried to pull her to him, but she stepped away. Shane’s temper broke. “Of course this is about your cancer,” he snapped.

Her face fell, and he instantly regretted his words. “Not like you’re thinking.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t lay awake at night worrying about your scars or the fact that you were sick. I worry that you might get sick again.”

“Shane, I’m not dead. I’m not dying. I had cancer once. I might never get it again.”

“And you might get it again next week,” he shouted. “I can’t control if you get sick again. But I can control if we get you pregnant and that makes you sick again. I’m not willing to risk that just so we can have a kid.”

Jen froze, shock and horror moving across her face. She took a step backward, then turned away, but not before he saw a single tear slide down her cheek.

He took a step toward her, but she stiffened.

“Jen—”

“You should probably go,” she whispered, speaking words he’d feared: asking him to leave. The sound of her voice breaking ripped his soul to shreds.

“Jen—”

She said nothing. She simply walked out of the kitchen and climbed the stairs. He could have followed. He could have climbed those stairs and followed her down the hall, but the resounding slam of the bedroom door echoed like a vault.

So he let her go. Watching her walking away from everything they’d built was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

*   *   *

“I am pretty sure the man is an idiot.”

Jen barely heard her friend’s words, but she accepted the hug that came with them. Laura Davila wrapped her arms around Jen and pulled her close.

There were two pints of ice cream on Laura’s living room table. Laura had taken one look at Jen when she’d pulled into the drive way and known immediately that conversation and ice cream—not necessarily in that order—were needed.

Jen’s eyes felt like they were the size of golf balls, and she could barely breathe from crying so hard. All day, she hadn’t been able to stop. She’d tried. She’d tried to step away from the hurt of finding the paperwork and look at it from a rational point of view, but the tears kept coming.

It hurt that her cancer still screwed with her life years after she’d beaten it. All she wanted was a normal life. A life where the man she loved didn’t look at her like she was going to drop dead next week.

It was a long moment before Jen straightened, then reached for the spoon.

Laura pushed the cardboard pint closer to Jen. “But if he’s an idiot, then so, m’dear, are you.”

Jen paused mid-scoop. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am.” Laura dug a spoonful out of her own pint of coffee ice cream. “But I also know that man loves you more than life itself, so there has to be a rational explanation for why he didn’t talk to you about this.”

“He says he didn’t do anything yet,” Jen said.

“Yeah, well, Shane’s a pretty honorable guy, so if he says he didn’t do anything, then he probably didn’t. Plus, I don’t think you guys would be doing the nasty if he’d just gotten neutered.”

Jen choked back a laugh. “That’s so not funny. This...this hurt.”

“It only hurt because he didn’t talk to you about it.”

“No. It’s more than that.” She let the ice cream melt on her tongue. “It’s like me getting sick again is always in the room.”

Laura looked at her for a long moment. “Maybe it’s always going to be,” she said softly.

Tears filled Jen’s eyes once more. “I don’t want to be a cancer patient anymore,” she whispered. “I just want to move on with my life.”

“Oh, honey.” Laura wrapped her arm around Jen’s shoulders.

Jen leaned against her again and tried to stop her eyes from leaking. “We’ve talked about kids before.”

“We’ve talked or you’ve talked?”

Jen straightened, narrowing her eyes at her friend. “We’ve talked. We talk about Ethan and Emma. About having some of our own. Someday. And now this?”

“Honey, you had cancer. He’s probably still wrapping his mind around everything that entails. Your life isn’t something he’s going to risk on a whim.”

“Pretty
sure having a kid is not a whim,” Jen said.

“Neither is a vasectomy. Trent used to tell me stories about the guys who had them. Some of them acted like they’d, well, had a ball removed, and others were like it was no big deal.” Laura’s voice took on a wistful tone. “That was before he decided he was never coming home again.”

“He’s still volunteering for training while the investigation continues?”

“He’s at NTC this month. You’d have thought a man under investigation would have to stick closer to Fort Hood than he is.” Laura sighed. “I’m starting to think it would be easier to catch bin Laden than it is to wrap up the investigation against my soon-to-be-ex-if-he-would-just-sign-the-damn-papers spouse.”

Jen wiped her eyes again and sank back into the couch. “I’m sorry things are so crappy with Trent.”

“Thanks, but don’t be. I’ll be okay.” Laura shifted on the couch, tucking one leg beneath her. “You know, now that I think about it, this whole vasectomy thing is kind of romantic.”

Jen raised both eyebrows. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“The man loves you enough to let his balls be sliced open. How do you not see the romance in this?”

Jen smothered a horrified laugh. “You’ve been hanging around Nicole too much.”

“No, but I do know this.” Laura lowered her spoon. “I know he’s scared and men like Shane don’t do well with fear. Not this kind of fear.”

“He’s been to war. Cancer is not scarier than war.”

Laura lifted one shoulder. “Yeah, it kind of is. Shane knows what to do in war.”

Jen sniffed and leaned forward to set her ice cream down. “You know what I don’t understand? Why does he get to do this so he doesn’t have to be afraid? I’d never ask him to give up the Army, even though the thought of him deploying again scares me so badly, I almost have an anxiety attack when I think about it. Why does he get to do something about his fear while I have to live with my fear of him dying in combat?”

“He’s a soldier, honey. That’s who he is. You knew that when you got involved with him.”

“And I won’t take that away from him. But he’s trying to take kids away from us.”

Laura shook her head slowly. “No, he’s not. He’s just trying to take away biological kids. There’s a difference. Shane is one of the best men I know. Trent would follow him anywhere, any day of the week.”

Jen sniffed and leaned her head on the cushion behind her. “I want kids, Laura. I thought he did, too.”

Laura shot her a baleful look. “Then adopt. Just because they don’t come from your body doesn’t make them any less your child.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say,” Jen said quietly. “You have Ethan and Emma.”

“Trent and I talked about it. A long time ago, before he took his dick and went AWOL from our lives.”

Jen choked back a horrified laugh. “Really? He took his dick and went AWOL? Is that a euphemism for some kind of strange coping mechanism you have now?”

“Yeah. We had a hell of a time getting pregnant and staying that way. I miscarried three times. We’d given up when I got pregnant with Ethan.” Laura leaned forward for the Kleenex and handed Jen the box. “All I’m saying is, you can still be a parent without causing Shane a mental breakdown from anxiety, and without risking your own health, either.”

Jen looked at Laura sharply. “Not you, too?”

Laura shrugged. “Maybe I worry a little bit. Maybe we all do, because we love you and we’d like to keep you around a little while longer.”

Jen chewed on the inside of her lip and said nothing.

“So yeah, maybe you should go talk to him? Just hear him out, okay?”

Jen nodded, wrapping her arms around her knees and pulling them to her chest. Laura was right.

Knowing she needed to hear him out wouldn’t make Shane’s words any less painful.

*   *   *

Shane ran. He didn’t care that he wasn’t cleared to run. He ran until the bones in his legs burned. He ran until his lungs screamed. He stared at the little red numbers on the treadmill that marked the distance and he ran, burning off the frustrated hurt and anger that tore at his chest.

Watching Jen walk away from him a few hours earlier had been hell. The hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

Harder than walking into combat the first time.

He’d hurt her. He’d known it the moment he’d turned around and seen the tears filling her eyes. He could still remember the first time they’d talked about a future, a real future together.

“Jen Garrison.” She smiled up at him. “I think I can get used to the sound of that.”

He rolled until he laid between her thighs, her face cradled in his hands. “You better get used to it,” he mumbled, nibbling on her lips.

She gasped quietly when he rocked his hips into hers. There was something deeply sexy about her every reaction. It was like she was surprised by the tiniest pleasure.

“What about kids?” she asked.

He suckled on her neck. “What about them?”

“Do you have any objections to kids?”

He bit down gently on her ear. “I never really thought about it.”

But he’d thought about it since then. He’d thought about it since he started looking up whether or not she could have kids. He’d thought about it every time he rolled on a condom before he loved her. It was no sacrifice to wear a condom, but he worried every time. What if it broke? What if something went wrong?

He couldn’t face the prospect of life without her.

He’d never known true happiness before. Not like this. Not this feeling of right. Of fitting together. It wasn’t a storybook ending—those didn’t exist. But what he had with Jen was something special.

Now he’d ruined it, because he’d been a goddamned coward and hadn’t been able to talk to her before she’d drawn her own conclusions.

Fear wasn’t easy for him to admit. He wasn’t used to fear. Frustration, yes. Anger, sure.

But this? He’d rather walk unarmed into an ambush than live with that fear for the rest of his life. He needed to mitigate it, to find some way to reduce the impact of it. To reduce the likelihood that something would happen to Jen and that he would be the cause.

He swiped at the sweat running down his forehead and then pressed the incline on the treadmill. Jen would probably tear him a new one if she caught him running. He was supposed to be running gently and sparingly, not doing long distances that hurt so badly, he thought he’d die from the pain.

But he kept running. Because it was better than the pain slamming through him with every beat of his heart.

Carponti walked into the room wearing a lime green tracksuit, an assault pack slung over one shoulder.

“I have good news,” Carponti said, leaning on the treadmill next to Shane’s.

Shane continued to run. “What’s up?”

“I’m cleared to return to full duty.”

He glanced down at Carponti. His friend was trying to play it off, but there was a gleam in his eyes. Maybe pride. Maybe something more. “That’s really great,” Shane said. “Are you going back to Reaper Brigade?”

Carponti grinned widely. “Oh yes. I’m trying to get down to Death Dealer battalion. I’ve got some salt to pour on Sarn’t Ike’s self inflicted wounds.”

Shane grinned. Reza Iaconelli had taken over Shane’s platoon after Shane had gotten blown up. Ike and Carponti…well, they hadn’t really seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things.

Ike was a good infantryman when he wasn’t drunk or detoxing. It was everything else about him that Shane couldn’t stand. He was reckless. Shane had seen what happened to reckless one too many times.