Chapter Ten

Kyle could overlook the implication of make love to me. He could ignore Aimee’s request to let her share his pain. But he couldn’t set aside the declaration of her love, or the sudden fierce need to confess his own. He stifled the words by tangling his hands in her hair and deepening their kiss. If he told her, if he went down that never-ending chasm, he would bleed to death. Even if they could somehow go back to the place they’d been before her miscarriage, once she came to realize what he had done to Denton, all the love in the world wouldn’t bring her back to his arms. Better to keep the raging emotion silent and let her walk away in a week, than drag out the inevitable.

Still, he couldn’t abuse her love and allow her to believe tonight might end in reconciliation. She loved him. She made no attempt to hide that all-consuming feeling. He couldn’t hurt her more by taking her to bed, enjoying the heaven of her body, and then leaving her with unanswered questions. Once had been enough. He wouldn’t commit that wrong twice.

Wrapping his good arm around her waist, he edged her out of his lap and slowly drew the kiss to a close. He lifted a shaking hand to cup the side of her face in his palm. With his thumb, he stroked her cheek, her swollen lips. “Go to bed, Aimee,” Kyle whispered.

Her ale-brown gaze searched his face for answers he wasn’t willing to give. “Come with me.”

Kyle shook his head, let his hand fall to his lap. “I can’t. We can’t.” The words pained him more than signing his divorce decree had. Then, he hadn’t sat in front of her and looked her in the eye. He could pretend she didn’t care. Now, all her emotions poured out through her crushed expression. She cared all right, and he would carry that damning knowledge to his grave.

To escape the flood of guilt that threatened to drag him under, he reached for his glass, tossed back the last of his wine, and eased to his feet. “I’m going to try that bath on my own.”

“Is that…wise?”

Damn her. Just once, couldn’t she think of herself and stop worrying about taking care of him? If he slipped and broke his neck, it would be better for them all. He echoed her earlier answer to his similar question. “I’ll be fine.”

He didn’t give her opportunity to question him further. Cane in hand, he limped to the bathroom and locked himself inside. Tradition had been a bad idea. Where he’d sought to savor the memory, now he faced a night of self-induced relief and longing he couldn’t deny. If Walsh had left him there… If Walsh hadn’t come to…

Kyle thumped a fist against the wall. Damn it all. He wanted to fucking die all over again. Coming home had been the worst mistake. Not the first, by far, but the worst. He’d known it would be, but in his wildest dreams, he never would have imagined Aimee would still be here. Waiting on him to return. Determined to break through the walls he had erected. Committed to loving him.

The pipes shuddered as he turned on the faucets. One hand on the porcelain basin, the other braced on the wall, he set his good leg over and stepped into the tub. Extending his right so his heel touched the bottom, he levered himself into the inch deep water. Aimee’s sweet flavor still lingered on his lips, and closing his eyes, Kyle leaned against the back of the tub to relive the memory.

His body tightened at the imaginary press of her gentle curves, the glorious fall of her long thick hair. She came to life in his mind, sitting in his lap, lowering her body in time with the lifting of his as he slid deep inside her warm, wet haven.

As the sound of running water filled his ears, Kyle wrapped his hand around his flagging cock. He couldn’t have her, but he would always have the memory.

****

Aimee lay on the bed that had once brought them so much happiness and stared at the ceiling, forbidding her rising tears to fall. Months had passed since she cried over Kyle. So much time she believed she had finally moved beyond the heartache. His silence, his refusal of her, brought all the confusion of the past year to the surface.

The touch of his hand, the tenderness that glinted in his eyes, spoke truer words of love than any verbalization. Yet, for some unexplainable reason, he was determined to keep them apart. Why? It didn’t make any more sense tonight than it had the day she’d opened the door to find the sheriff on her doorstep, divorce petition in his outstretched hand.

We can’t.

Why the hell couldn’t they? What had crawled so far beneath his skin that he would throw away six years of solid, happy marriage? It couldn’t be just the nightmare of Afghanistan and the mysterious man in the photographs. Kyle had filed in January, two months before his injury. Up until she received the papers, they still had regular phone conversations. None of which hinted at trouble beyond his new habit of keeping the slightest detail about his missions under wraps.

For the thousandth time she wracked her brain for something that he’d said before he deployed, a tiny hint at what might have triggered Kyle’s gradual retreat that ended in complete withdrawal.

Try as she might, nothing raised a red flag. The day he had shipped out had been full of the same vigor and life as the day he’d come home the last time. He had laughed. Held her hand. Kissed her goodbye with every bit of passion he possessed.

She rolled onto her side and stared out the window at the bright silver moon. Christmas was a day away. The one holiday she treasured seemed doomed to end in disaster. Every time she thought she was making progress, Kyle did a one-eighty, and she was back where she’d started when he walked across the tarmac.

Common sense told her to quit. To stop fighting a battle she couldn’t hope to win. Kyle had set the rules, they combated on his home territory. While she couldn’t begin to fake it, he held the upper hand with his mastery of deception. Breaking a Delta Force operative was more impossible than cracking open a safe. Hell, they were trained to keep themselves bottled up tight.

Vows she’d made, oaths she’d sworn, and too many years of hard work and devotion refused to let her throw in the towel. She didn’t know how to give up on those things. On the life she’d built.

Aimee sniffled. Renegade tears slid down her cheeks to soak into her pillow. She closed her eyes, tamping down a choking sob. She had watched men die. Held women’s hands as they took their last breath. She knew the words to say to bring them comfort, knew how to suture a wound so bleeding would stop. But she didn’t know how to fix her shattered life. Somewhere, answers waited. Damned if she could find them. If she could even find the grove of rocks to begin her search.

****

Kyle’s leg twitched as he tucked a towel around his waist. Getting in the tub proved easier than getting out, but after he had flipped himself around so he faced the back wall and his left side could support his weight, he had finally managed to exit the bath. Now, his exhausted limbs and sated body screamed for sleep.

First, however, he faced navigating the stairs. He couldn’t spend another minute in the sweats that trapped Aimee’s sweet perfume. If he had to sleep with that warm sugar aroma filling his nose, he might as well spend the night outside in the cold for all the rest he would get.

He opened the bathroom door, letting the warm steam into the hall. A chill breeze wafted in, and he reminded himself to turn up the heat before he stretched out on the couch. Goosebumps pebbled his skin, the ache in his knee flared.

Gritting his teeth, Kyle struggled to keep himself upright as he made his way to his cane. He leaned on the brass-tipped polished wood and pulled in deep breaths to force the throbbing ache aside. Damn, he’d really pushed himself today. It had been a good two months since his knee protested to this degree.

At the base of the staircase, Kyle grabbed the railing tight. The twitching in his muscles intensified as he lifted his leg, propped his foot on the bottom tread. Bracing as much of his weight as he could on the banister, he hauled himself up the step. As he prepared for the second, a slow burn spread into his calf. He pushed past the discomfort and took another stair.

By the time he reached the middle, his entire leg felt as if someone had doused it with acid. Only the pain came from the inside, a bone-deep ache that didn’t make it to the surface of his skin. Muscles that hadn’t fully healed, pressing against skin that didn’t know it existed. A strange combination that no matter how he rubbed the base of his palm against his flesh, it refused to ebb.

He hiked himself up another step and disaster struck. White-hot fire arced up his spine, and his leg gave out. Kyle dropped to his good knee, slid off the step. Only his tight grip on the railing prevented a full-out backwards fall. Grabbing at the banister to adjust his hold, his fingers slipped. Before he could regain any modicum of balance, he laid face-first on the stairs, eating carpet fibers.

Defeated, he remained motionless. Shame and humiliation stole in to make his eyes burn with tears he had buried when he pulled the trigger and sent Denton into the arms of angels. Desperate to stop the flood he knew he couldn’t control if it broke free, he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted the coppery tang of blood. He would not cry. Not now, not ever. This was his rightful punishment for surviving.

And he’d be damned if he called out for Aimee’s help.

Pushing to his elbows, he shifted his weight until he had centered himself on the stairs. Then, hand-over-hand, he crawled. Up one step, then the next, and the next, until the landing stretched before him, and he sprawled onto the floor panting.

Kyle rolled onto his back, his towel somewhere on the steps below, and stared at the ceiling. What he would give for one of the heavy-duty painkillers the doctors in Germany had wanted to prescribe. He’d refused, unwilling to open himself to the risk of addiction. At the moment though, obliterating his conscious awareness sounded damn fucking good.

How pathetic. Once he’d been able to crawl miles. Now, he couldn’t manage a few steps. It made no difference whether those mile treks came with the use of two good legs, and now his left strained from compensating for the right. The simple fact remained: he failed.

No way in hell would he make it back down to the couch. Which left him with the floor.

His gaze slanted to the top of his head and rested on the darkened doorway to his bedroom. Or the bed. With Aimee…

Fuck it. If he slept on the floor, tomorrow would bring just as much agony to his leg. He needed to rest it, and even the couch hadn’t allowed the full out stretch his muscles required.

Kyle flopped back onto his belly and sucked in a deep, fortifying breath. Twenty feet, and he could stretch out on the mattress. Forget the humiliation. Escape.

Rising to his knees once more, he threw his weight into his good leg and began the slow trek to his bed. Months of limited workouts and even longer months spent cooped up in a bed took a toll on his strength. An aching tang spread through his shoulders, down his arms. Nothing like the agonizing throbbing in his right leg, but enough to add to his disgust. They’d warned him to take it slow, even suggested he consider a chair, and he, determined to prove he could stand on his own, had ignored the advice. If he was lucky, that fall hadn’t destroyed the last surgery.

At the edge of the bed, unfathomable relief swamped over him. He summoned the last of his strength, grabbed the mattress with both hands, and through sheer force of will, dragged himself on top of the down comforter. Using his good hand, he pulled the bedding from beneath his battered body and slid under the sheet. The soft pillow beneath his head called out for him to close his eyes. Wanting nothing more than to flee the humiliation, Kyle surrendered.

A movement to his left, however, had his eyes opening again, and his head turning to gaze at Aimee. In sleep, her features softened like an angel’s, but the moonlight shone across her face, accenting faint mascara stains that marred her pretty cheeks. His gut twisted at the evidence of her own hurt. He had put those tear streaks there, he and his determination to protect her from the truth of what he had become.

Once again, as he sought to protect her, he brought her pain.

Compelled by a force he could not name, Kyle twisted awkwardly onto his side and captured her hand in his. She wriggled deeper into the pillows, but to his immense relief she didn’t wake. Contented by the innocent contact, he shut his eyes once more.