Forever Girl Page 4

  “Sleep.” He rested his back against the end of the bed and pulled her against his chest, one arm posed in the air as if he was actually leaning it onto a gun.

  “Jazz,” she whimpered because she knew how much he had to hurt, how uncomfortable he had to be.

  “You’re safe, Tess.” She felt how he pressed his lips the top of her head. “It’s my fault you’re here,” he then added and she held her breath. “Missed you too damn much.”

  “God, Jazz.” She couldn’t keep the words in, but felt how the one arm around her tightened. Struggling to sit up, she crawled unto his lap until she was right in face, framing it.

  “Come back to me, Jazz. Right now. We’re safe. You’re in the hospital, but alive. You’re out of this hell, and that’s why I’m here with you! Look at me, Jazz! Come on!” She wasn’t ready to let him sit there and be afraid for his life… or hers. “Corporal Connor!” She was shaking because he was trembling under her hands, wincing as if he heard shots, but his eyes were on hers and she grabbed his hands to place them on her hips.

  “Here, Jesse. Hold onto me. Can you feel that? Jesse…” She kept repeating his name over and over until he suddenly was gasping, his fingertips digging into her hips almost painfully while his head rested on her shoulder. She kissed his neck, not daring to move.

  “Fuck, Tess. Shit, it’s freezing.” He pulled her closer, his arms enveloping her completely, and she held him tight.

  “Of course it is. Nothing comes close to desert heat,” she gave back and he shook his head, still holding onto her.

  “I felt it burning down on me. The sand was crunching between my teeth. It’s everywhere… it was everywhere. It’s terrible, because whenever I flash back I know you can’t be there and yet…”

  She kept stroking his hair, staying silent while he gathered his wits. She felt how his heartbeat returned to normal. It took forever, and yet she wished it would take just that bit longer.

  Exactly then he pushed her back, nearly making her tumble off the bed. “What in the fucking world are you doing here? It’s what? Midnight?”

  “Half past one. You were terrified and calling out my name. I was here to get you out of it before you hurt yourself. It was supposed to calm you down.”

  The tender moment between them was broken. She saw it on his face and felt it in the way his fingers angrily tried to make her leave, pushing into her side as if that would make her run.

  He was fully back in this hospital room, and no matter how painful it was to see him glare at her like he did, it had been worth it. In the end he hadn’t hurt himself… or woken up screaming, and that was a small victory in itself, wasn’t it?

  Tessa left and Jazz let himself fall back into the pillows. The memories of the nightmare he’d just gone through still lingered on the corners of his consciousness and he felt exhausted as if he’d run a marathon. For the first time, though, since the day in the desert he hadn’t woken up ready to throw up.

  “Must be a new record, Corporal Connor.”

  That fucking doctor of his, the one who always looked at him as if he actually wanted to say more than he did, stood in the door. Couldn’t Jazz have his peace at least at night? After the nightmares, that was.

  “Record?” he echoed and the guy nodded, sitting at the end of the bed. Light was spilling in through the open doorway and Jazz wanted to jump up and find Tess, just because she might return the calm to him he’d need to get some decent hours of sleep.

  “You’re never waking up without a scream, and usually it takes you three hours. Three hours of twisting and turning, panting and wincing. This night terror was merely an hour long, and you’re clear as a lake currently.”

  “And yet it was almost worse than all the others.” He had no idea why his lips didn’t stay sealed. His tired mind seemed ready to talk just once. “Having Tessa there… it’s unreal. I know she’s not there. I know she wasn’t there, either, so why in the fucking world does my brain torture me with both real and fake memories?” It was the one thing he couldn’t understand. He knew all about PTSD and flashbacks, haunting memories up to the point of reliving the pain each and every time anew, but he couldn’t figure out what Tessa’s presence meant in those moments. As much as this should remind him that he was, in fact, having a flashback, it didn’t work.

  “I’m not your psychologist, Corporal. I’m sure he would do better with a theory,” Dr. Spencer cautiously stated and Jazz swallowed, his throat hurting worse than it had all day, and as much as he tried to tell himself it was only phantom pain, he knew he was still recovering from the injury.

  “Just throw it out there, or leave my room. It’s now or never, doc.” And he had no idea why exactly he was ready to talk now when for four weeks people had tried to get to him to do just that.

  “Fine. Call me Ryan. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Okay, so I have no idea who exactly Miss Rowan is to you, but the way she reacts and talks, I’d assume she’s at least a close friend… or used to be. Either way, in your mind, your thoughts, she’s clearly ever-present, and no matter what you tell yourself you feel about her, she’s your safe place. I’m going out on a limb here and assume back where you were, you thought about her when things got crazy. That’s probably how she got mixed up with the memories, because in your mind she’s been there.” Jazz watched how the doctor shifted uneasily on the bed.

  “What is it?” he demanded to know and Ryan took a deep breath.

  “You left your room, Corporal. You were walking out of here with her behind you, threatening people if they should think about touching her.”

  Heat, sand, and nothing but flatness stretching for miles and miles…

  His heart started racing. He just needed to find one spot where he wouldn’t have to worry, one single place.

  There, the rock formation…

  An orange ocean all around them, but if he just could get Tessa…

  “Corporal Connor, focus!”

  Snapping out of it, Jesse nearly winced. It was too easy to get lost in those damn pictures, and the fear that accompanied them.

  “I just walked out? Was I awake?”

  “Awake yes, conscious? Not really. She brought you back here.”

  “She snapped me out of it, too,” he muttered, feeling her hands framing his face again. Her voice had penetrated his haze, had cooled him in the unbearable heat beating down on him, until he’d suddenly only seen her face and then felt her body against his. Real. Strong.

  Shivering.

  Had she been afraid of him, or rather for him?

  “Why was she here at that time of night?” He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

  “I called her,” Ryan announced, standing. “It’s her name you’re calling out at night, and my job is it to make sure you suffer as little as possible, meaning you need to get out of those dreams.”

  Jazz gaped at him. “Promise me you won’t ever call her again.”

  “Take your medication, stop walking around, and best yet, stop screaming until you get the doctor’s okay and I won’t. You sound like an old man who smoked all his life and bathed in whiskey day in and day out.”

  No, he wouldn’t take those pills, not as long as he had a choice. He’d tried alcohol for a while, but the flashbacks were worse then, more intense and bloody. He could only imagine what pills would do. “No can do,” he whispered.

  “Then no, I can’t promise you that.”

  Turning away the doctor left and Jazz grabbed his head, closing his eyes, expecting blown-up jeeps and bleeding comrades to fill his mind.

  Instead a tiny blonde with chocolate eyes invaded him, filling him with warmth he didn’t deserve, and yet couldn’t live without.

  Tessa sat in the car for more than ten minutes, her hands shaking too bad to be able to drive. Checking the clock on the dashboard she realized that at least she’d make it back in the timeframe Hilary had given her. Starting the car, she made sure to follow every speed limit this time, focusing on every turn she
had to take, on every curve that came up, every stop sign along the way.

  When she reached the house, she realized the living room lights were burning brightly. Knowing what it meant, she wiped her hands across her cheeks, hoping to erase all evidence of sadness from her face. Leaving the safe cabin, she unlocked the door, being greeted by the screaming of a baby. Dropping her handbag and shaking out of her jacket, she went into the living room, finding Hilary walk up and down with the infant in her arms.

  “Shit, what happened? He was asleep when I left,” Tessa muttered, guilt crashing into her tenfold.

  “I don’t know. I woke once he started. I changed him and everything, but he wouldn’t calm down. I’m so sorry.”

  Tessa wasn’t, because this was distracting Hilary enough to not have her ask for the trip to the hospital. “I got it. Go back to bed. I promise, I’ll calm him down.”

  “You should be the one sleeping,” Hilary protested and anger bubbled up in Tessa.

  “No, I shouldn’t. I should be the one covered in spit and walking around the living room at two in the morning. After all, I am his mother. Thank you for everything, but other women raise their children alone, so… I need to get used to juggling it all… no matter what.”

  “Well, here’s the thing, you aren’t alone, and as much as I hate saying it, his father is back in the States and should be helping you, no matter if he’s married or not. He cannot stick his dick into you and—”

  “Cut it out, Hils.” It hadn’t been like that. They had used protection. Hell, besides the condom she’d been on the pill, too. It wasn’t his fault the damn thing had broken. It wasn’t his fault, either, that somehow with all the time changes and everything Tessa had lost nearly two days while taking the pill. He hadn’t known, and neither had she until the doctor had announced she was expecting.

  And it definitely wasn’t his fault she hadn’t told him about that in a letter. After all, he was supposed to be gone for some months only. Not ten months, and returning only because he had been severely injured.

  Life had gotten in-between, and Tessa didn’t think throwing that little piece of info at him after he had a panic attack—or while being in another woman’s arms—was the best idea.

  Toning down her anger because it was even less Hilary’s fault than anyone else’s, she took a calming breath. “Look, I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me that you’re there, helping me, watching him when I have to do my show, or runs to the hospital, but this is not your child. I cannot be the mother I want to be for him if I keep handing him off. You shouldn’t have to watch over him or me for that matter.”

  Hilary threw her hands up in exasperation. “Do I need to remind you that you’re here with me because no one watched out for you? That you would probably just have returned home with Johnny here had anyone bothered to—”

  “No, I know. I remember. I was there.” The day at the hospital, the reason why she’d been out for such a long time, having a break in her show. Involuntarily, but still linked with happiness.

  She gritted her teeth, the little boy in her arms wailing louder the more the women argued. It was definitely true that babies reacted to the feelings of their mothers more than was usual. She realized they shouldn’t be fighting or he wouldn’t be in as much distress. “I’m sorry, Hils. I’ll be here the next nights, not return to the hospital.”

  Her friend eyed her suspiciously, then huffed. “And why is that? Didn’t work the way the doc wanted?”

  Lifting the infant so his head was cradled against her shoulder while Tessa cupped the back of it with her hand, she shrugged. “I don’t know. I got him out of the nightmare, or flashback, or whatever it was, and I swear, Hils, it was exactly how it had been before he left. He held me, and calmed down, but then, suddenly he pushed me away and… as if he remembered that I shouldn’t have been there to begin with.”

  The expression on Hilary’s face said it all:

  No, you shouldn’t.

  No, his wife should be.

  No, because it hurts you.

  “Wasn’t exactly the best moment to mention the fact that you’re living here now, was it?” she asked instead though and Tessa nearly burst into tears, feeling so grateful.

  “No.”

  “Tessa… why you? Why is he calling out your name when he’s over you?”

  Tessa pressed her lips against her son’s head, turning that question over in her mind. She couldn’t say what it was, but the way he had picked her up just this morning, and the way he’d held her after coming out of that dream didn’t fit the fact he was now married and therefore supposedly over her. Unless…

  “You know, his flashbacks mix reality and memory. It’s weird somehow. He thought I was with him, have been down there in whatever hell he’d been in, so maybe what he’s feeling for me is just remnants of those weird feelings. What if everything he’s now thinking about me is just… because his mind can’t distinguish between the now and the then?”

  She didn’t even dare to voice the worry that maybe, after all, he didn’t have any feelings left for her.

  “This is fucked up,” Hilary finally declared. “What if I go and see him? Talk to him about what the hell is going on?”

  “What if I focus on anything but Jazz? There’s so much good in my life right now, even without him there. It’s time I embrace that fully and find my inner peace again.”

  For the longest time Hilary watched her, then she pushed off the sofa and crossed over to kiss her cheek.

  “That’s the fighter I wanna see. Put him down and sleep, Tessa, and tomorrow we’ll tackle happiness.”

  Hilary went up the stairs and Tessa looked down at the bundle in her arms. The blue eyes were hidden from her view because her son had fallen asleep.

  Deciding to follow her friend’s suggestion, she turned off the light in the living room and then went up the stairs herself, putting Johnny in his bed before crawling under the sheets, falling into an exhausted sleep which turned restless the moment her brain gave her visuals of what Jazz might have seen down in his personal hell.

  Nightmares sucked, but even worse were those dreams that had followed after Tessa had woken him from his hell, because then she’d played the main role. Tessa out in the sun. Tessa laughing. Tessa snuggling into him, her head resting above his heart on his chest.

  Rubbing that exact place, he got off from the bed and went down to do pushups. He shouldn’t, he knew that, but he needed to burn of the excessive energy coursing through his veins.

  With every time he lifted himself off the floor, his ribs screamed out in agony until he dropped, curling into himself right where he was on the floor. Fuck, only one had been broken, and it had been three and a half weeks already. Why in the world was he still suffering from that?

  Because your organs were hurt and badly bruised, you idiot, and you haven’t given them time to heal properly, just like your rips. Those things take time, his mind provided angrily and he breathed through the blinding haze until coming out on the other end, finding familiar blue eyes locked on him, sitting in a face framed by hair as dark as his own.

  “Kris,” he forced out, pushing himself off the floor.

  “What the hell happened, Jazz? You need me to call a doctor?”

  Glancing behind his sister he sighed in relief when he didn’t spot his mother. That would’ve ended rather badly for him.

  “I’m fine, sis,” he promised, winking at her to calm her down.

  “The hell you are,” she snapped.

  “Language, Kristine!” He knew that sharp command, and rubbed his chin. Damn, he needed to shave, even though Tessa’s fingertips in his beard had felt—

  “Mom, hey.” He needed to focus on anything but her, and didn’t see his mother until she’d stepped to the other side of the bed, looking down at where he and his sister sat on the floor.

  “What are you doing down there?” she inquired and he shifted uneasily, pushing to his feet, his side burning like it hadn’t in
a while

  “I had my cell under my pillow and it’s not there anymore. I thought maybe it fell off the bed last night and I was looking for it,” he lied smoothly, glancing at his sister while hoping she wouldn’t rat him out.

  “It’s right here on the nightstand. And now try again. What happened?” his mother demanded to know.

  Getting up to sit on his bed, he clasped his hands together between his knees. “I need to move. I’d go running now if I could.” He had picked up that habit down in the desert, running around the entire base camp whenever the situation overwhelmed and his heart was spilling over with yearning or worry.

  Kris sat down next to him, ancient wisdom in her eyes. He was back in the US for less than a week and already all people around him appeared exhausted. Or maybe that had always been the case and he only now realized it because he no longer looked at the world as a happy-go-lucky place.

  “Run from what?” she asked and he felt how the mattress shifted as his mother sat down with the back to him on the other side of the bed. He’d realized she often faced away from him, and he knew it was because she thought she could hide the tears and sorrow, but that wasn’t true. He knew the way her shoulders were shaking and knew what it meant, too.

  “This hospital. I shouldn't be here.” No, instead six others should, but alas, they weren’t. And it was his fault.

  Gritting his teeth and digging his blunt nails into his palm, he lifted his head so he could stare out of the window. He wanted to walk over and stand there, but the pain radiating through him stopped him from following that urge.

  “You should because you’re injured and they are worrying since your internal organs don’t heal as well as they should. And yes, I talked to your doctor. I’m your mom so I get the information. I also know that they worry about… your… mental health.” His mother’s voice quivered and Jazz closed his eyes while Kris placed her hand on his thigh.

  “Mom, I told you I’m fine,” he reassured her again, but even to his own ears his voice was flat.

  “You’ve always been the worst liar ever,” Kris pointed out, leaning into him, and he wrapped her in his arms, kissing the top of her head. It reminded him of last night, and the way he’d done the same with Tessa. Then he’d needed the touch to comfort himself, now he was doing it to ease someone else’s worries.