Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance (30 page)

“T-t-t-ten….weeks.”

The corpsman eyes me. “Keep her talkin’, man. Keep her fightin’.”
 

I stand there, asking any question I can think of—except questions about her family. I don’t know the situation there; don’t know if I want to know.
 

Then, I feel her. Niall. Moving in beside the paramedic standing at Tori’s head. She examines the head wound. Glancing at me. Calling for an IV pole. Ignoring me as she looks over Tori’s leg and arm. They aren’t good. I know that much. I haven’t looked too closely, but I know there are breaks in the bones.
 

I don’t know how long Niall, the corpsman, and the paramedic work, or how long I remain, even after the IV pole arrives and I don’t need to stand there anymore. I pulled Tori out of the wreckage. I know her name. I know she loves kitties and puppies, but kitties even more. I know she’s six years old, and in first grade. Her favorite color is pink. Her favorite show is something called
P.J. Masks.
She likes macaroni and cheese, and PB and J. I know she knows how to ride a bike, but only with training wheels.
 

My throat is thick. My chest aches. My eyes burn.

I feel a hand on my arm. I look away from Tori and find Niall staring up at me.
 

“We’ve done all we can,” she murmurs. “Now she has to do the rest on her own.”

“Will she…will she be okay?” I hear myself ask.

Niall nods. “I think so. The wound to her head is pretty bad, but you kept her awake, so I’m not as worried about the concussion. She’s lost a lot of blood, that’s what’s most worrying. But I think she’ll make it.”
 

“Good,” I manage. But that’s all I can get out.
 

Embarrassingly, I feel close to a nervous, weepy breakdown. I’m about to start bawling like a little baby.
 

I clear my throat, blink hard—against both the tears and the visions of the bodies I’ve seen today. “Good work. I—shit.”
 

I have to turn away, and get out of the tent, out from under the blaze of the kliegs. Into the shadows. Find some wreckage, shelter in the lee of a still-standing wall. Sit on a pile of rubble and shake. Tremble. Feel vomit surge against my teeth, hot, bitter, acidic. My eyes burn, leaking hot salty tears. Fucking crying. Jesus. But I can’t stop it. My shoulders heave, and I’m fighting the breakdown with everything I have. I can’t keep the bile back, and I bend at the waist, head between my knees, and let it stream out between my lips into the dirt at my feet. I spit. Gasp for air.

I feel her again. Sitting beside me, hand on my back. “Quit fighting it, Lock. After a day like today, you’ve earned it. Nothing wrong with letting it out. No one will think less of you for it, I swear. Least of all me.”
 

I can’t fight it. My shoulders shake, and I’m crying silently. Niall just smooths her hand in circles on my back, pulls my hair loose of the ponytail and strokes her fingers through it. She doesn’t say anything, because she knows from experience there’s nothing to say.
 

When I’m finally able to exert some control, able to breathe and sit up and wipe my eyes, I turn to look at Niall. She’s filthy. Still wearing the blood-covered apron. Clean hands, rubber gloves abandoned. Pale. Circles under her eyes, staring skyward at the stars. Into the distance, into memory.
 

“You used to do this every day, didn’t you?” I ask.

She has her knees drawn up, arms crossed on her kneecaps. She drops her head between her arms, nodding sluggishly. “Worse than this.”

I can’t even fathom what could be worse. “How could it get worse than this?”

She looks up and laughs a bitter bark. “This was a natural disaster. No one
did
this. It was quick, a few minutes of Mother Nature’s violence, and then it’s over and you clean up. Tend to the wounded, sort the dead, and start organizing the mess. Not minimizing the horror of this, but…compared to what I’ve seen? This was…” She shakes her head, trailing off, hangs her head once more. Raises her head, passes a hand over her face.
 

“I was stationed in Africa. The Central African Republic. There was a civil war. One tribe against another. Nothing new, but messy as hell all the same. That was…god…so fucking awful. We’d get trucks full of bodies. Two-tons, like those the guardsmen came in, but piled with bodies. Missing limbs, stomachs ripped open, guts falling out. Brains leaking out of bullet holes. Just…bodies. And it’s not just the bodies that’s so terrible, it’s knowing people are doing this to each other…
on purpose
. Over a difference in beliefs. Gunning each other down. Setting off car bombs. Pipe bombs. Leveling entire villages. Killing pregnant women and children. Raping and slaughtering everyone. Just…massacre. And we’d get them all, half-dead, already dead, dying. We’d spend thirty, forty hours at a time, tending to them. Truckload after truckload of bodies to fix.”

“Jesus Christ, Niall.” I’m speechless, trying and failing to understand what she’s witnessed.
 

A shrug. “It’s what I was good at. I never froze, never panicked, never puked. It helped that I was an ER nurse in LA first. I had experience with that kind of scenario. But nothing can really prepare you for dealing with the massacre of an entire village.” A deep breath. “I had Ollie. He was my rock. No matter how gnarly it got, he was there. He was strong. I could just…look at him, and know it was going to be okay. Even when it wasn’t okay, it’d be okay. As long as Ollie was there.” She sniffles. Coughs. Breathes in deeply, lets it out with a shudder. “Today was…the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Doing it without Ollie…I kept looking for him. I kept
seeing
him. It’s the first time since he died that I’ve done trauma work.”

The only thing I can do is wrap my arm around her waist and pull her closer to me. She hisses as I tug at her, wincing away from my hand. It’s not as if she doesn’t want me to touch her, but more as if she’s hurting.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you hurt?”
 

She seems to realize for the first time that she’s still wearing the apron. She unties it, tosses it aside. Then she lifts her shirt up, revealing her ribs, baring the bottom edge of her bra…and a wicked bruise along her side, along with a wide, deep cut across the edge of her ribcage, crusted over with dried, scabbing blood.
 

“Holy shit, Niall! When the hell did that happen?”
 

She drops the shirt, twists, rotates, stretches. “When the two-by-four went through the windshield, it didn’t entirely miss me.”
 

I feel faint with…a complicated mix of emotions. Don’t know what they are, or what their names are, but they are unpleasant, and powerful. “Why the hell didn’t you say something?”
 

I get a glare from Niall. “What could you have done? I’m a trained medical professional, Lock. I knew I was fine. It hurt, but I was fine, and there’s not much to be done for this kind of thing anyway. And if I’d told you about it, you’d have gotten all macho-overprotective and tried to make me stay in the truck or some shit. I didn’t have time to be hurt. I had a job to do, so I did it. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
 

I waver, hesitate. She’s right. I would have…well, done exactly what she said. And now, looking back, I’m realizing how incredibly tough she is. She worked, god, I don’t even know how many hours nonstop, on her feet, with a nasty injury. Never said a word, just dealt with it, and got the job done.
 

I feel so inadequate around her, sometimes. She’s just so damn…
tough
.
 

“Fuck.” I wipe my face with both hands. “You’re something else, Niall.”

“Not really.”
 

I take her hand. Squeeze. “Yes, you are. You never hesitated. Even hurt, you dove in and took charge. Fixed everyone who came through that tent. You’re amazing.”
 

She eyes me. “You did the same thing, Lock. You stepped up. You saved that little girl. I heard about what you did. Went into that hole after her, got her free, and even saved her cat.”
 

“I just did what had to be done.”
 

“That’s all heroism is, Lock. Doing what has to be done.”

I shake my head forcefully. “Don’t say that. Not about me. I’m not…that. I don’t even want to say the word. You’re a hero. Oliver was a hero. Me? I’m…not. Don’t know what I am, but I’m not…that.”
 

She turns toward me, her knees bumping mine. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Lock. You’re a better, stronger man than you think you are.”

I don’t know how to answer that. “I don’t feel like it. I just…don’t see it. At no point in my life have I ever been strong. Or courageous. I was selfish. Afraid. Not of dying, because that was inevitable. Or maybe I
was
afraid. I don’t know. Maybe I was afraid of dying, even if I’d accepted it. But I wasn’t strong or courageous about it. I ran from it. Lived on my sailboat and drank to get away from it. Did crazy shit, because I didn’t care if I died in the process. I was gonna die anyway, so why not go skydiving or cliff diving? Why not race motorcycles and…all the crazy shit I did.”
 

“Lock—”

“And then I got…” I tap my chest, over my heart…Oliver’s heart— “this. And now I have a life to live all over again. And I don’t know what the fuck to do with it.”
 

“You live.” Her eyes meet mine, blazing, piercing. Seeing into me, seeing my weakness, my fear. “You love. You do what needs doing.”

“You make it sound so easy. Like, oh just do it! Life isn’t a goddamn Nike commercial.”
 

Niall shoots to her feet, paces away a few steps, then stops and turns to speak to me from where she is standing. “It’s
not
easy, Lock. I mean, shit, if it was easy, I wouldn’t be hiding out way the hell down here in fucking Ardmore, Oklahoma, taking temperatures and blood pressure, would I?”
 

I stand up now, too. Close two of the steps between us. “Niall—”

She stabs a finger at me, angry now. “You think you’re the only one who doesn’t know what to do with their life? You think you’re the only one afraid of letting someone in? I lost my
husband
…I lost
myself
, Lock. He was—Ollie was—” She tips her head back, blinks hard, pinches at her tear ducts as if to physically prevent the tears from falling. “He was
everything
to me, Lock. He was all I had in this whole world. He died, and I couldn’t cope with being alive and alone. I still don’t know how to cope, but I want to
try
. I want to live again.
You
make me want to try.” She says the last sentence so quietly I almost miss it.
 

She’s closer, somehow. Her breasts are brushing against my chest, and she’s staring up at me, eyes wide and the exact shade of green moss on brown tree bark. She’s not blinking now, just breathing deeply, her tits swelling in that tight orange tank top. God, I just cannot help checking her out. Old habits die hard, I think. But fuck, is she beautiful. And the way she’s looking at me? It hurts so goddamn bad, cuts me right to the bone, to the marrow, to my very soul, because there’s…hope in her eyes. Belief. Desire.

All directed at me.

Hope that I can…what? Be the kind of man that could deserve a class act, tough-as-nails, hot as hell, hardworking, talented woman like Niall James?

Can I be that man?
 

Shit, I want to be. So bad, I want to be.

But am I? Can I become that?
 

Hell if I know.

“Me?” I ask, the word a whisper, a breath, disbelieving.

“You, Lachlan Montgomery. You.”

“Why?” I scrape my hands through my hair and fight the onslaught of emotions, but they come out of my mouth anyway. “I’m empty, Niall. I’m no one. I have no career. No marketable skills. I walked away from you, shit, I
ran
away from the best thing I’ve ever experienced, from the most amazing woman I’ve ever met, because I’m afraid of my own emotions. Why would I of all people make you—make
you
want to live again? It doesn’t make any sense, Niall.”
 

“Because you’re…
alive,
Lock. I don’t know how else to put it. You’re…vibrant. Vital. Larger than life. You’re just so…
much.
”

We are faced off, now. As if we’ve both run out of words, momentarily. And then Niall sways in place, blinking, as if she’s been struck by sudden dizziness. I grab her; hold her close, mindful of her side.
 

“When was the last time you ate?” I ask her.

She shrugs in my embrace. “I have no idea. It’s been a while.”
 

I steady her and we walk back across the street, to a long tent erected over several picnic tables. There’s a food and drink station set up on one end, with repurposed livestock water troughs full of ice, soda, and water, and another small table piled high with handmade, plastic-wrapped sandwiches and little bags of chips. I guide Niall to a bench, fetch us food, three sandwiches each, soda, and some chips. We dig in with gusto. I honestly don’t remember the last time I ate either. Probably yesterday, sometime. I left in a hurry, stopped in this town for gas, and was planning on hitting the diner when both Niall and the tornado hit town. And that was hours ago. I don’t know what time it is, either. Past midnight. Nearer to dawn, maybe? The sky beyond the jagged horizon is tinged with lighter shades of black and gray, the precursor to impending dawn.
 

Apropos of nothing Niall glances at me over her sandwich, alarm on her face. “Where’s Utah?”
 

I jerk a thumb at my truck, parked in the grass beyond the cluster of HQ tents. “Asleep in the back of the truck.”

“I heard talk about her, people saying she was helping find people in the rubble.”
 

I nod. “She’s amazing. She’d sniff around, listen, and if she found someone, she’d go crazy, pawing and digging. She never ceases to amaze me. I’ve never had a pet before her.”