Drive Me Sane (10 page)

The opening of the refrigerator jostled his attention. He hadn’t heard her come out of the bathroom, but the sight of her curvy hips bent over made him lose any remaining irritation. His mind went back to bed that morning. Her sleepy smile had shot straight to his groin. Had her knee rested a little farther to the left, she would have felt how just how much he’d wanted her.

A sudden throb in his jeans had him looking down to see just where his thoughts had taken him. The bulge forming between his thighs said he needed to think of something else.

“Hungry?” he asked with a light cough. “Want to go get something at Merv’s?”

Sera turned, but her attention remained on the contents inside the refrigerator. “Sweet tooth. Maggie and I stopped for dinner.”

“Well, then, I know exactly where we should go.”

She looked at him. “The Dairy Freeze?”

He smiled.

• • •

He barely had time to pull out onto the road when he worried the turbulent day was headed south again.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

In a span of twelve hours they’d gone from waking up looking forward to the day ahead, to arguing, and now back to stilted conversation. Tyler’s eyes slid sideways to get a good look at her, seeing that her face was soft with anticipation of what he might say in response. He’d never been good at staying angry when it came to her, and that hadn’t changed. “I think we both were thrown off by seeing each other again,” he said, hoping to ease some of the tension.

“Yeah.” She smiled with a soft laugh. “I thought I knew what I’d do when I saw you, but it didn’t happen quite like I pictured.” She looked out the passenger window. “Except for the incident with your truck.”

Sensing she was trying to lighten the mood, Tyler asked, “Oh really? How did you think it would go?” He threw her a wink to reinforce his disposition.

Sera laughed louder. “Ugly!” She quieted. “And a lot of yelling and cussing and me telling you what a jerk you were.”

He chuckled. “Trust me. I imagined it quite the same way.”

“I’m such a pain.”

Tyler wasn’t sure how to respond. There was something riding on the edge of her teasing charm that told him she was being more serious than he initially believed. He joked back anyway. “Yes, you are,” he agreed, grinning.

“Why did you put up with me? I wasn’t easy to get along with.”

There was definitely a change; the soft flow of her voice let him know she wasn’t trying to be comical in any way. Pulling the truck to the side of the road, he turned in his seat. Mustering up every ounce of sincerity he’d been holding inside, he said, “I never wanted easy. Easy gets boring.”

She looked down at her hands.

He continued. “You kept me on my toes. Every minute I ever spent with you was worth it. Yes, sometimes you can be a pain in the ass, but with you, I never for a moment doubted that you loved me.”

Sera looked up at him, the truth of what he said reflected in her eyes. Leaning in, he smoothed back the hair straddling her shoulder. He’d been to thirty-nine of the fifty states, and she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Afraid that if he didn’t take the moment she’d just handed him it may not come again, he let his hand linger behind her on the seat. “Our personalities may have been polar opposites, Sera, but loving each other was never difficult. Loving you always came easily.”

He waited for a response. He thought for sure she would at least acknowledge his feelings, but nothing came as she took in a deep breath and turned toward the passenger side window. After another long minute and exhausted from the struggle to get her to open up, he pulled the truck back out onto the road.

Then he heard, “I had my first appointment at the VA with a new therapist this morning.”

• • •

Sitting outside the Dairy Freeze, watching Sera spoon chocolate ice cream into her mouth, Tyler tried to figure out what was going on between them. He felt much like she’d described earlier that morning. One minute angry and annoyed, then the next dying to touch her. He was still recovering from the disappointment of her changing the subject when he’d laid out his feelings. Then to make it worse, she wouldn’t even open up about the VA appointment she’d mentioned, only saying it was a required visit and that it went well. If it was just a routine appointment, then why had she brought it up? Simply because she didn’t want to address her feelings? Well, if she didn’t want to address hers, then why the hell had she asked about his? It was completely unfair that he kept putting himself out there without getting anything in return, yet he knew he’d do it again if she asked, because every day they spent together he saw a little more of the woman she once was.

• • •

On the drive back to Roy’s, Sera thought more about her appointment at the Veterans Hospital that day. It was a requirement to obtain the medication she was almost out of. She didn’t like the meds, but she couldn’t sleep without some kind of help. It was the mood enhancer that bothered her most, though. It felt like a betrayal of her conscience. How was she supposed to fix her life when a magic pill made the ugliness of the world bearable? Maybe that was the point, but it only seemed like a short-term solution because when she quit taking the little problem solver, all the evil would come crawling back.

She hated to admit she’d become jaded when it came to her psychiatric care in the army. Although she knew the military provided as best as it could for the many that needed treatment, she also knew it was greatly overwhelmed and faltered all too often. Yet even with the abhorrence for the prescriptions she’d walked out with that day, somehow her visit had restored a bit of hope that maybe there was still room for progression in her case.

The appointment with Dr. Khazi was different in many ways from the no-nonsense Captain Stallinger, whom she’d seen while still enlisted. Khazi was the epitome of what she thought a therapist should look like. Her first impression after walking into his office was that he reminded her of the children’s television hero Mr. Rogers. Immediately she took a liking to his relaxed and polite demeanor and felt as if she’d known him for years. She’d spent almost a year seeing Captain Gloria Stallinger, who with her tall and lean figure and lengthy brown hair that she kept pinned up to perfection looked more like she’d rolled off a fashion runway instead of a military tarmac. Never once in any of those visits had she felt a shred of the ease she found in Dr. Khazi’s office. Nor did Dr. Khazi make her feel like a revolving door as she had whenever she’d seen Stallinger. The woman barely remembered her name even though they shared biweekly visits for almost twelve months. But most importantly, unlike Stallinger, Khazi had never seen combat. While most would think that it would be hard for a soldier to relate to someone who had no idea what they were going through, she found it comforting that Dr. Khazi couldn’t judge her for something he knew nothing about.

Dr. Khazi asked her how she was transitioning back into being home, and so somehow they ended up speaking more in depth and for longer about Tyler than they did her military work. Sera didn’t make a habit of confiding in others that often, but there was something about Dr. Khazi that made her apt to open up. He was easy to talk to and he didn’t have an air about him that screamed he knew it all. Most importantly, he felt more like a friend than the enemy.

Glancing back up at the road, Sera looked over at Tyler, thinking about what Dr. Khazi suggested in regards to the distance she’d placed between them prior to her deployment. The issue was bound to come up again after the morning’s talk and she hoped that Tyler would be able to find some understanding in what she was only now starting to comprehend herself.

Tyler stopped the truck at the signal of the approaching train. The flashing red lights had him shifting the gear in reverse, but before he could get the truck backed up, Sera placed a hand on his arm, forcing him to stop.

“Tyler. I need to do this.”

He sighed. “Not tonight, Sera.”

Scooting over into the middle of the seat, she placed her hand higher up on his bicep. “Please.”

He stared at her, and she stared back. Finally, with a twist of his mouth, he nodded in agreement.

Sera’s legs shook as the train whistle blew. Her arms shivered with a chill as she wrapped them around her aching middle. Burying her face into Tyler’s shoulder, she tried to think of anything other than that awful moment back in Afghanistan. Palm trees, the blue crystal waters of the ocean, a meadow filled with brightly colored flowers. None of it helped because none of the images lasted. Her mind was like a View-Master, constantly changing pictures with a click of a button, except that the only button was the train that triggered her memories.

Tyler murmured in her ear, “Sera, baby, talk to me. Don’t think about it. Remember good things.”

She forced her face deeper into the opening of his arm, trying to concentrate on the sound of his low voice.

“Honey, it’s all in your head. Listen to me. Think of all the good times we had out here.”

Closing her eyes even tighter, she tried to fight the images, wishing she could talk because she wanted so badly to tell Tyler everything in that moment. She couldn’t, though; it was as if her voice had been ripped out. The fear of what was in her head too much to bear.

“I’m here. I’m here for as long as you need me … remember that time I brought you home late and Roy made us wash his car as punishment? I was so mad at my mom for agreeing with him. Though seeing you soaking wet was pretty erotic for a seventeen-year-old.”

Feeling Tyler’s warm breath spraying across her ear, she fought the blackness. She wanted to go where Tyler’s voice could take her. Good memories. Happier times. A place that if she ever got the chance to go again, she’d do whatever it took to accept it openly.

However, it was the smell of smoldering plastic mixed with the tartness of gun powder that won the struggle in her head. The blistering patches of black intermingled with the streaks of red running down Rollins’s face were all she could think about. The long minutes of seeing his mangled body pinned helplessly under the truck made time feel as if it had stalled. She cried, screaming out for help, all the while thinking it was too late. Smearing the grime around his face, trying to get a clearer picture of what she was dealing with, she finally saw Rollins’s eyes move and in that moment a gush of relief came. She really thought it was going to be okay.

It wasn’t.

His physical injuries healed. The charred skin on his face was restored to barely a blemish. The dislocated shoulder was put back in place. The broken leg made a full recovery. But it wasn’t the physical wounds that haunted her. They were merely a symbol for the damages she couldn’t see. Rollins lived. At least he woke up and breathed air in each day. But she wasn’t sure one was really alive if they did little more than open their eyes. His last few months in the army had been painful. Knowing he was getting out, he didn’t bother to show up for work. Most days when she visited he hadn’t showered or bathed and she could usually tell by the volume of beer bottles lying around how his day had gone. He isolated himself in his bedroom, staring off at the television, but she was sure he never absorbed anything he saw. He might have woken up each day, but he wasn’t really there. At least, not as the man he was before Afghanistan.

Finally pulling out of the darkness, she sank further into Tyler’s arms, burying her head deeper into his side. She wasn’t shaking, nor was she thinking about the train that was now gone. She thought solely of Rollins and what he’d become.

Swallowing back a breath to level the oxygen she’d been denying the rest of her body, she swiped back the hair that had fallen around her face. There weren’t any tears to dry, although she felt the pressure of them building behind her lids. She blinked several times to relieve the heaviness, and after a few seconds, with confidence that the dam wouldn’t unleash, she looked up. Tyler reminded her of the boy he was years ago: gentle and caring, yet full of a powerful desire that knew exactly how to drive her crazy.

“Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispered against her forehead before pressing his lips to her skin.

Her insides sizzled as his warm breath pulled her in again. As tempted as she was to reach up and return the kiss, she didn’t want to use Tyler as a distraction from the guilt of Rollins. Besides, she was ready to address the root of their past problems before she lost the courage to do so.

“I was scared, Tyler.” A soft cry came as she spoke the words that were nearly harder to admit than anything she’d ever done in her life. “I was barely twenty-one and scared to death. I know you’re going to say that doesn’t sound like me, but it was. I didn’t want to go over there. I was so afraid and I didn’t know how to tell you that.”

“I was scared too.” He brushed another kiss against the side of her face.

“I know you were. Which only made it worse. I worried about you worrying about me. If that makes any sense. I couldn’t handle the idea of not ever seeing you, Roy, or my mom again. I didn’t purposely set out to cause trouble for us. I just know every time we talked, it got harder and harder hanging up because it meant one less day I might have. It was easier to say goodbye when I was angry.”

“Sera.” Tyler took her face in his hands.

She tried to look away. She didn’t want to see the gentleness pouring out of his eyes. She’d hurt him, years ago, and again over the past few days. It seemed to be a cycle she couldn’t break and she didn’t deserve his empathy. “Please don’t make this easier for me.”

He pulled her face back up to him, rubbing away the moisture collecting in the corners of her eyes. “What’s wrong with things being easy?”

She heaved in a deep breath, unable to come up with a practical answer. There was nothing wrong with it; it was just something she didn’t feel like she deserved at the moment. Opening her mouth to say so, her words were smothered away when Tyler’s lips found hers. The kiss was slow, fulfilling, and every bit as satisfying as she remembered.