Left Behind (9 page)

My eyes started to tear up like they normally did when I thought about it. I turned so he wouldn’t see. A minute later , I felt his arms come around my waist.

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard everything has been for you.” He
whispered as he kissed the top of my head.

I wiped my eyes and turned back to him.
‘
So, tell me about being a Green Beret. What did you do?’
I signed.

“Well, I specialized in surveillance.” He said as he sat back down on the stool. I went back to the counter to prep the food, while I listened to him describe what he did. I could tell he loved it.
“My team worked the special reconnaissance missions. We had to go in undetected. I won’t go into detail of the things we did, but I liked it. You could say I fulfilled my ambition of being a super-secret spy.”

I turned to him and huffed out a silent laugh. He had always said he was going to be a spy when he got older. What had made that funny is that, at the time, he couldn’t sneak up on a deaf person without getting caught. He had had no stealth and was usually the reason we four got caught d oing the things we did . Like I said before though, they never let me take the fall with them.

“Yeah, I know. They trained me up right nice though. I bet I could sneak up on you and watch you for hours without you knowing, now.” That sent a chill down my spine. Not because he scared me, but because that’s what I thought Blain was doing to me. I always felt like he was watching me.
Luckily, Troy didn’t notice my reaction and continued. “The Berets aren’t spies, technically, but what we did was basically the same thing. I’ve been stateside for a while now, though. I had gotten injured and came back to recuperate, but before I could come here, Toby got injured and had to go through his rehab. Damn if he didn’t get better and we find out about Tory. I think it was fate telling us it was time to come home, and now I can see why. If we can just get Tory to wake up…”

I turned to him, wiping my hands on a dish cloth and then signed,
‘
I told Toby, and I’ll tell you that once he gets home, he’ll get better. Toby said he still has his brain function. That tells me that he’s just waiting for something. Maybe he just needs to stay asleep long enough for his body to heal up, I don’t know, but I have a feeling that once he gets home, he’ll wake up. I have fa ith in him. He won’t leave us.’

“You are an amazing woman, you know that?” I looked down, blushed,
and then turned back to the pasta I was making. “You truly are. It’s like you ’
re ‘the glass is half full’ type person, even with everything going on. I wish I could be more like you, sometimes.”

I finished cooking and we decided to pop a movie in and eat in the den. We ended up having a ‘Dusk Til Dawn’ movie marathon, though I wasn’t really into them after the first one. If it didn’t have George Clooney in it, I didn’t care about it, but I watched anyway.

I went to the kitchen during the second movie to take my pills and get some Red Bull to be able to stay awake. Troy came in as I was doing this, and questioned me about it in sign language so my brothers would not hear.

‘I don’t like to sleep.’
I explained for what felt like the millionth time.
‘
I have nightmares every time I close my eyes, so I stay awake as long as possible.’

“Don’t you think that just wears you out to the point that it’s harder for you to wake up when you do have a nightmare? And did you think that maybe the nightmares would decrease if you slept more often?” He sighed. “
I don’t mean to lecture, but it’s probably your fear of sleep making you have the dreams in the first place.”

‘
How would you know? You can’t imagine what I go through every time I just close my eyes. It’s been almost two years, but when I close my eyes, it seems like it just happened. When I actually sleep, I can feel everything he did, all the pain is fresh, and it takes a few minut es after waking for it to fade.’

“I do know, Cupcake. I went through it after my injury until I had some
counseling .”
He answered back.

‘What happened to you?’
I asked.

“We were checking out a village that another team had just cleared of guerrillas. It was cleared from what we gathered, but we weren’t to have any interaction with the locals. A boy, who couldn’t have been older than fourteen, caught sight of us and thought we were part of the guerrilla group that had been there. He had a gun and opened fire on us. I was the only one hit. He g ot me in the side of the head; if he’d been a better shot, I’d have been dead.” He shook his head of the memory and took a deep breath. “Anyway, when I woke up I had problem with my sight. I have no peripheral vision, and I get shaky when I’ve been too active. I got an honorable discharge due to my injuries, so I won’t be going back.”

‘
I wish I’d been there for all of you
.’
I looked down. So many things could have been avoided if I just waited on them, and had been there for them when they called or came home on leave. They probably thought I had left them. In a way, I did. I had given up on them after my dad died. I looked back up to him and knew I owed it to him to tell him the truth.
‘
After you all took the extended tour, when you had the option of quitting and coming home, I thought that you didn’t care for me anymore. I had just lost Daddy, and I was so lonely. I started school, but didn’t really socialize that much. I joined an online book readers club just to have someone to talk to . I figured that I didn’t really know them, and we were just talking about book s we’d read or wanted to read. That’s where I met Blain Robinson. We chatted back and forth, just about books at first, but then somehow we started telling about our lives. He said he’s just lost his brother in a drunk driving accident, and had turned to books as an escape. After about six months of chatting online, and speaking on the phone, I finally agreed to meet him. It was good at first, but he started trying to rush it.
He was trying to talk me into the S &M lifestyle, but I knew that wasn’t for me, so I politely refused him. After a couple of time s of him trying to get me to do more than I was willing, I told him if he couldn’t wait then he’d have to find someone else, that I wasn’t ready for th at. He apologized and said he’d wait for as long as I needed to, but then, on the next date we had, he kidnapped me. He said he was a seasoned Master and knew what was best for me.’
By this point, I had tears coming down my face, and my hands were shaking.

Troy took me in his arms, hugging me tightly. After I had calmed down some, he asked, “How’d you get away?” He must have realized that the time Blain had me was the details I couldn’t talk about.

‘
After the last time he lost control, which is when this happened to my face and neck, he unchained me a s I was out of it, and he left.’
I stared at a point on the other side of the kitchen, not being able to meet his eyes.
‘
He had given me morphine for the pain, so I was able to walk to some degree. It took a while because I was still moving slowly, but I was able to make my way out of the house. When I made it to the street, I collapsed. I woke in the hospital after two days with both Jordan and James with me. They had been searching for me and had the police involved. I ended up writing a statement to the police of the whole thing. They told me later that Blain Robinson didn’t exist. The house I’d been held at was an estate house, the owners having had died, it just hadn’t been sold at that point. They never found the person who I knew as Blain.’

“And now you think he’s back?”

I nodded.
‘I know he is.’
I grabbed his hand and took him to my room. I got out copies of the letters he’d sent; the police had the real copies. I didn’t have to look. I had them all memorized, especially the last one from two weeks ago .

You will lose everyone you love.

If I can’t have you, then no one will.

Blain

Troy had suggested exorcising our horses
this morning
to help get my mind off everything else. I think it was more to help him. He just about lost it last night when I had shown him the letters. I should have guessed what his reaction would be, but I hadn’t thought about it before I showed him. He calmed down as soon as I started to hyperventilate. I had started panicking when Troy was yelling at Ja m es and Jordan about what needed to be done.
My panic attack wasn’t really Troy’s fault , i t happened any time I heard yelling, but he still felt really bad about it.
We had spent the night in the den watching TV
. Well, I did. Troy had fallen asleep.

I was
sa
dd
ling Nosey up for a ride, while Troy got Moe ready. We were working in silence, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. I was actually enjoying being with someone who didn’t feel the need to talk just to fill the silence, l ike Jordan and James normally did . They always felt the need to talk when they were around me. Usually it was about nothing, like they just felt the need to make up for me not being able to talk.
Between the three of us, I had always been the most talkative. They would just listen to my rambling most of the time, so since they suffered through me back then, I did it gladly for them now .

When the horses were ready, we led them out of the stables. I stood there for a minute, just listening to the sound of nature around us. It was just the two of us. Troy had called ahead and given the hands the day off so I’d feel more relaxed and not have to deal with being around people I wasn’t familiar with.

Troy came to me to help me up on Nosey’s back. “Where to, Cupcake?” He asked.

I thought about it for a minute.
I had packed a picnic lunch for us, but we wouldn’t need that for a couple of hours.
‘
Let’s just ride your land and take the trails, se e what changes there have been.’
I answered.
‘
It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. Then we can have lunch b y your side of the creek later.’

“Sounds good.”

We rode all through his land and mine. We found a camp someone had set up not too far from my land, but it was on the part that was the town preserve. Fort Mill had gone through a couple of expansions, and a lot of land had been cleared for housing developments, strip malls, and schools, so the Town Council had set aside a bunch of woodland to be able to preserve the trees and wildlife of the area . No one was supposed to camp here, but it happened all the time. Nobody was at the camp when we passed, so we just moved on.
We ended up going back to the creek around one o’clock.

After we let the horses drink from the creek for a while, we unloaded the saddles and tied them with enough slack to be able to graze in a nearby clearing. We went back to the creek to splash around and cool of f a little before going to set up the picnic. We sat side by side while we ate, and then when we were finished, Troy loaded everything back into the basket. We ended up sitting cross legged, facing each other with our knees touching. Troy leaned down to me and kissed me.

“This is what I’ve missed so much for so long,” He said as he sat back up. “Spending time with the people I care most about in this world. Just us, wasting the day away, doing nothing more strenuous than riding our horses.”

I nodded.
‘
Me too.
’
I signed.
‘
I had felt so alone there for a while. I’m very sorry for giving up on all of you and not waiting.’

“It’s not your fault, Cupcake.” He trailed his fingers down my cheek and over the scar on my face. “We had been selfish in our decision making. We should have talked to you about it. We didn’t once think about what extending our time in would do to you.”

I looked down, gathering my courage, just as I had with Toby. I
wanted everything out in the open with all three of them. When I looked back up to him I told him how I felt.
‘
I love you Troy. I love al l three of you. I always have.’

A huge smile broke over his face. “I know, Cupcake. God knows I love you, too. We all do. We have talked about it a couple of times, and we know that we need to sit down and talk with you about it. We’ll figure everything out once Tory wakes up.”

‘
I can’t choose between you. I wouldn’t even if I could. I would never want to be the cause of any problems between you guys.’

“I know that, and I’d never make you choose. I know you love us all, and I’m
alright with that. As long as I’m part of your life , and have you in my life, I’ll be a happy man. You were too young when we left, and we had wanted you to be able to experience life and have the opportunities all teenagers get to have.” He picked me up and sat me on his lap sideways. “I never imagined you being put in the type of situation you went through , or I would never have left you. Inheritance or not, I would have stayed with you to keep you from what you’ve had to suffer.”

I looked up into his
face
and saw all of the love I felt for him reflected back to me through his eyes. I tilted my head up to kiss him while one hand held his cheek, and I snaked my other arm around his back. This kiss lasted a few seconds before I felt his tongue asking entrance. I granted it to him and tangled my tongue with his slowly. It was a very passionate kiss , slow , but heartfelt and building.