Book of the Month: CARRY ME HOME
#bookofthemonth #carrymehome #cominghomeseries
CHAPTER TEN
The phone. Please, sweet baby Jesus, tell her the phone wasn’t ringing. Claire rolled over, groping for the buzzing object. Vibrating steadily on the floor next to her bed, it paused, only to start up again a moment later. The only reason she’d heard it at all was because it had fallen on top of her uniform belt. The hard plastic vibrating against the metal was obnoxious enough to wake the dead.
She squinted, then closed one eye until the number came into view. She didn’t recognize it. “Yeah?”
“Claire?”
She scowled and blinked, struggling to see the digits on the readout more clearly. She couldn’t have heard that voice right. “Evan?”
“Wake up, Montoya, I need a ride.”
Claire dropped her head down onto her forearm and groaned. It wasn’t even two a.m. and they had to be back on the range in less than six hours. She tried to look on the bright side. At least Evan was talking to her again. She remembered what time it was. No, that was not a bright side. It was borderline criminal. “Is someone dying?”
“Nice.” She heard water running in the background before it abruptly stopped. She had the strongest suspicion that he’d just finished in the bathroom. Honestly, she didn’t know how she felt about that. “I need a ride. Before Iaconelli and I spend the rest of this little boondoggle in jail.”
What exactly was Evan doing out with Reza anyway? And where were they that they needed her to come and get them? “Are you drunk?”
Evan sighed hard. “Look, you don’t honestly think I’d call you if it wasn’t important? I’m half-cocked and Iaconelli, ah, Ike’s had a hell of a night. I can’t drive and if I don’t get him out of here in the next hour, the bartender is going to call the cops, which means all of Fort Carson is going to know about this by tomorrow. Later today. Hell, whatever day it is.”
Claire sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, concern motivating her to actually move. She rested her forehead in her hands. “Captain America went out drinking. How ’bout that.”
“Are you coming or what?”
“Yeah, I’m coming,” she grumbled, and disconnected the call.
Iaconelli could have been in hell and she would have gone in after him. She’d done it plenty of times before. But Evan? Evan was another story.
But the fact that Captain America had not only gone out with the resident bad boy and had gotten too drunk to drive roused her curiosity. The firefight at the shoot house must have screwed him up more than she’d guessed
She swallowed and dragged her hand through her hair, then started digging through her clothes for a bra. Iaconelli was family, damn it. And while she didn’t know what Evan was to her, she knew couldn’t leave him.
That much she did know.
* * *
Half an hour later, Claire walked into the old railway car that had been converted into a bar by some enterprising soul. She wasn’t entirely sure what she expected from a bar called The Greasy Tube, but it definitely looked greasy and tubelike. The air was cold and thin, the kind of thin that made her lungs hurt from having to work too hard to pull oxygen from it. Even the thick smell of cigarette smoke was thin here, slinking into her hair and lungs like a sneaking thing.
She peered around the darkness, scanning faces that looked far too old and run down to be in a place that Reza would frequent. He liked energy this kind of seedy energy. Craved it. This place felt like a funeral. Or a wake.
The bar, such as it was, crouched at one end of the railway car. A couch that Claire suspected had a good chance of having fleas and several bodily fluids she’d rather not think about sat against one wall beneath barred windows. A stack of what looked like broken chairs and the tattered remnants of a table filled the space between the bar and the couch.
Reza was passed out, slumped over the arm of the couch, covering his eyes with one hand and snoring quietly. Impressive. It took a lot to drink Reza under the table. Claire flinched as the stench of old beer assaulted her nose and resurrected ancient memories.
The bartender was a tiny woman who looked like she was every bit of sixty, the kind of sixty that suggested hard drinking and even harder drugs. She was busy reading someone the riot act at the bar.
Evan. Slumped over the bar and leaning hard on his elbows to stay upright, he looked unsteady on his wobbly stool. She made her way over to him, squeezing past a couple who were swapping heavy doses of spit in a corner. Claire felt scuzzy just from being in this place. She approached Evan carefully and tapped him on the shoulder, careful to step back in case he was too drunk to realize it was her. She’d never been around a truly intoxicated Evan, and she didn’t know what to expect.
“Hey.” His smile was warm and welcoming. No, Evan wasn’t a violent drunk. Apparently, he was an extra-relaxed, charming drunk. Wasn’t that interesting?
He shifted and leaned his head on his hand, bracing his elbow against the bar. The movement stretched his T-shirt over his chest. Claire forced herself to look away. She didn’t do drunk sex, even with an charming, slightly intoxicated Evan.
“You have some serious explaining to do,” she said lightly. There was no judgment in her tone. She was more relieved than anything. She’d been worried when she hadn’t been able to find him after the shoot house. Maybe Evan hadn’t come through the war unscathed, but she hadn’t expected to find him drunk at the bar. Not when he’d been giving her hell about Reza’s drinking. She could not—no, she would not—judge either of them. Something had snapped in Evan today, and she of all people could understand that.
* * *
“I think we need to get Iaconelli home.” His voice was thick and harsh, as if he’d spent the night shouting over loud music or mortar fire. He always lost his voice when he spent time on the range. He studied Claire carefully in the smoky light.
She had come. He was surprised. Maybe he shouldn’t have been. She sat down next to him on a crappy bar stool, looking every inch a warrior goddess. A chair scraped against the beer-soaked wood floor and Claire’s eyes snapped toward the sound, instantly on guard.
“What happened?” she asked. He was surprised at what he didn’t hear in her voice. Anger. Blame. No, it was more mild curiosity, tinged with . . . resignation? As though she’d done this a time or two.
“Some of the local boys decided they didn’t like the way Iaconelli looked. Then they heard me use his name and they were sure he was a terrorist who was here to bomb this shit-hole bar halfway to Wyoming.”
He watched a myriad of emotions flicker across her face as he spoke. She would be an avenging angel to those who wronged her friends, and there was no doubt that the flagrant racism of the local rednecks pissed her off.
“So did someone at least end up in the hospital?” she asked. He could see her choosing her words carefully.
“Hell no,” the bartender rasped through a gap in her front teeth. “That would require Jenkins to talk to the cops. And he’s not really what you might call a fan of the authorities.” She set a glass down on a towel to dry. “But if you don’t get your buddy out of here soon, I’m not going to be able to stop the cops from dragging him off to jail.”
Evan glanced at Claire, who was scanning the bar for any signs of trouble. Her hair fell forward, dusting along her temple. He reached for it, stroking it behind her ear before she could stop him. She tensed but didn’t pull away. He smiled. Progress, he thought. Maybe she wasn’t still mad at him. He could hope.
He shifted again and angled his body toward the woman behind the bar. “Thanks for not calling the cops,” he said simply. “I’ll make sure he takes care of the damages.”
“Well, thanks for your service.” The woman sniffed and focused on wiping down the glass in her hand. Her smile looked like a tear in cracked leather. “Get your friend some help before you bury him. A man shouldn’t be able to drink like that.”
He fisted one hand on the bar, bracing the other against the worn oak as he prepared to stand. Ignoring the burning questions in Claire’s eyes, he pulled a twenty out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter.
“Sure.” He pushed the stool closer to the bar and stood. “Ready?”
The silence between Claire and Evan was awkward and heavy, the kind of silence that sucked the air from his lungs. He hadn’t wanted to call her, but there hadn’t really been a lot of options. He wasn’t even entirely sure how they’d ended up here. He’d gone downstairs to the bar in the lobby. Of course Iaconelli had been there. And Evan had been too wound up to care that he was drinking with his former platoon sergeant. The next thing he knew, he and Iaconelli were pounding shots at The Greasy Tube. Then the local dickheads had succeeded in ruining a perfectly good time. Evan had already started sobering up by the time he called Claire. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as Iaconelli, but he’d never get behind the wheel of a car after drinking. Never again, anyway. He drank because it was a way to deaden the pain, to stop the bleeding. But he’d never drink and drive.
He was glad she had come. The last thing he wanted to do was try to drag Iaconelli out of here by himself. And regardless of whatever this was between them, she’d never leave Iaconelli. That much, he knew with absolute certainty.
He tried not to be jealous. He failed. He was jealous of their trust, their easy friendship. The way she relaxed around Iaconelli but not with him.
They managed to get Iaconelli strapped in the backseat of the rented SUV without any significant injuries. He had no idea how much Steel Reserve Reza had pounded before blacking out, but it had been a hell of a ride prior to that.
“How much was the damage?” Claire asked softly as she started the truck and pulled out onto the main road.
He slammed the door shut and buckled his seat belt automatically. “Close to a thousand bucks,” he mumbled, dragging a hand over his face.
“Lovely.” Beside him, Claire maneuvered the big truck out of the parking spot. ”Hope he has some deployment money saved up.”
Evan snorted and slammed his head back against the headrest. “Tell me about it.”
They rode in silence for a long time. Evan wished he could find some pleasure in the moment—in being with Claire, even under these circumstances—but all he felt was a rising sense of doom that the person he’d worked his ass off to become was one thread away from unraveling. It had nothing to do with Iaconelli sleeping off his latest bender in the backseat. It was much more subtle, like a nagging sense of foreboding tickling at the base of his skull that his control was slipping away.
“So you’re not going to ask what prompted my drunken escapade?”
“I don’t think you’re nearly as drunk as you want me to think you are.” Claire glanced over at him, then turned her attention back to the road. Her fingers tensed on the steering wheel. “Want to talk about it?” she asked after a long moment.
He sniffed and stared out the window, scrubbing his hand over his jaw and trying to figure out what to say next. They drove in silence for a few minutes, the neon signs occasionally lighting up the inside of the car as they passed tiny hamlets of civilization. Iaconelli mumbled in the backseat and then promptly began snoring again.
“Stop the car up here,” he said quietly.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no place to pull off the road.”
“There’s a turnoff.” One he knew all too well.
He hadn’t planned this. Hadn’t left the lodge with this in mind. But as much as he’d tried to avoid the pain of coming home, part of him needed this tonight.
He glanced at her as she pulled into the barely plowed turnoff. The tires crunched through the snow. A hundred feet from the road, bathed in the soft glow of the headlights, stood a gnarled, twisted oak. He heard Claire’s hiss of breath the moment she made the connection.
Grinding his teeth, he stepped into the bitter cold of his memories.
* * *
Evan stood in front of the old oak, hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded jacket. His cheeks were red from the cold but Claire doubted he could feel it.
The old tree was more misshapen than the tattoo on his back. More bent and twisted with time. She thought she saw a glint of metal gleaming from the bark, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Casey was always a bit wild.” He sniffed, rubbing his jaw briefly before stuffing his hand back in his pocket. “My dad worked a lot. Which left me to look after her. Mom didn’t really know what to do with her. I guess Mom’s answer was to do nothing at all.”
He released a shuddering breath. It froze, glittering on the night air. “Is it weird that I don’t hate her for that?”
Claire could barely speak past the knot in her throat. She shook her head, mute. Listening. Just listening.
“I’d snuck out to a party a week before Halloween. I thought Casey was at home. She wasn’t. She,” his voice wavered and broke and he sucked in a long, hard breath, “she’d gone out with a couple of seniors from another high school.”
“Oh, Evan.” Her words were a whisper, a caress of sympathy.
“I got to her before anything happened.” He smiled, but the smile was carved with sadness, raw and uncut. “I thought I was some kind of badass, and that I was going to get my little sister home safe.“ His breath caught again and he bowed his head. “Except that I’d had a couple of beers.”
Claire placed her hand on his shoulder, right over the scar that had ripped Casey Loehr’s name from his skin.
“I thought I was sober enough to drive. We were hit by a tractor trailer. He drifted into my lane and I jerked the wheel into his lane to try and avoid him.” The muscles on his back clenched and knotted beneath her touch. “Casey died before the airlift helo could get her to the hospital.”
She heard the recrimination, the self-loathing in those whispered words. The memories twisting into him. “I killed my little sister.”
He bowed his head, looking away from the tree. Avoiding her gaze until she stepped in front of him, cupping his face gently in her palms, his skin frigid cold beneath her touch. Waiting until he met her gaze. “Evan,” she whispered, knowing her words were useless.
There was nothing she could say that would erase the thirteen years of guilt he’d carried with him. She traced her fingers across his forehead, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes.
It terrified her, seeing this side of a man she thought of as a rock. Steadfast. Reliable.
But tonight he was shaken, his grief so real and raw, he might have been standing at the scene of the accident after it just happened instead of in a field of snow-covered memories.
“Look at me,” she said. He turned to her with dark eyes filled with sadness. She brushed her lips against his. “Evan. You can’t keep punishing yourself.”
His breath froze against her skin. Slowly, so slowly, the memories retreated.
“Evan,” she repeated, her breath mingling with his. She brushed her lips against his again, hoping to chase away the demons that danced at the edge of his soul.
A ragged breath rushed from him and he buried his face against her neck. She wrapped her arms around him. “I can’t go home. My parents can’t even look at me.” He lifted his face from her neck, stroking her hair from her face. He smiled weakly. “So much for Captain America, huh?”
Claire cupped his face in her hands. “I call you Captain America because you’re such an honorable man. But now I know why you work so hard to be perfect.” She stroked her thumb over his cheek.
He was lost. Adrift in a field of memories. And he might have been looking at Claire, but he was speaking to the memory of his dead sister, who hadn’t lived long enough for him to make his apology.
“You can’t change what happened,” she whispered. “You’re a good man, Evan.”
He closed his eyes, lowering his forehead to hers. “How can you look at me and say that knowing what I did?”
She shifted, pressing her lips to his closed eyes. “Because I know all about making mistakes that will haunt you for a lifetime.”
ONE CLICK CARRY ME HOME TODAY…
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