“Yeah, right. That’s why you’ve turned the same color as the ash in the fireplace. Do you want me to get you some meds?” Jed remained stubbornly silent. Max took advantage of his lack of resistance and slipped an arm under his shoulders. “Fine. Have it your way, but you’re going back to bed.”
It took a moment for Jed to be able to move. Max rubbed a tentative circle into his back. He’d seen Jed suffer with pain in his leg before, but he’d never seen him so immobilized by it. He helped Jed into his room and eased him onto the bed.
“Thanks.”
Max smiled at the muttered, reluctant sentiment. He knew from experience how irritating it was to need help. “No worries.” He peered beyond Jed out to the tempest raging outside. “You might as well stay there now. That storm’s here to stay.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“On whether you let me take care of you or not. If you’re gonna be a stubborn git, I’ll watch TV all day on the couch. If not, I’ll watch it in here with you while you rest.”
Jed grinned in spite of himself. “You do take care of me, every day. Doesn’t mean I can’t get up.”
Max gestured again to the window. “Why bother when Mother Nature is telling you not to?”
He won the argument in the end, but only because Jed didn’t put up much of a fight. Instead, he swallowed the tramadol Max fetched for him and put his head in Max’s lap. And that was pretty much how he stayed for the rest of the day.
ITWASdark when Max watched him wake up. Though a little stoned by the tramadol, he seemed considerably more himself, and Max finally got some hot tea down him. After, he remembered the message on the machine. He recounted it to Jed. Though his short-term memory often failed him, somehow, he remembered the woman’s heartfelt plea word for word.
Jed listened silently, rubbing a hand over his unshaven jaw. “Olivia is Paul’s wife.”
“The soldier who died?”
“Yeah. He died a while ago. I didn’t make it to the funeral.”
That made sense. Jed had been in Iraq up until he was hurt, then, as far as Max could tell he’d been laid up in a VA hospital in Boston, in no state to go anywhere. “Were you close?”
Jed didn’t answer. Instead, he got carefully out of bed and retrieved the bag Max had fetched in from the truck. He pulled out a large, battered envelope, came back to the bed, and tipped the contents onto the comforter.
Max stared at the scattered pile of photographs. Some were old and crumpled, and many were torn. A few even had barely legible inscriptions scrawled on the back. Jed turned one over. It was of him, naturally, hunched over a ferocious-looking gun, smeared with oil, a week of beard on his jaw and a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips.
Bloody hell.
Max licked his own dry lips. He hated smoking and loathed guns with a passion, but the image was incredible. Obviously a few years old, Jed was heavier in the photo, his face round with youth. Max chanced a glance at him now, noting that he’d grown leaner and harder with age. His face was thinner, his features more pronounced. It wasn’t better or worse, just… different.
Max took the photo and flipped it over to read the writing on the back.
Fuckin’ poser!
“I take it you didn’t write that?”
Jed smiled faintly. “No. These are Paul’s. Olivia gave them to me.”
Max put the photo down and reached tentatively for another.
Jed pointed to one with the words “pied pipers strike again….”scribbled in smudged black ink.
Max turned it over. It was Jed again, and this time he wasn’t alone. He was crouched on the ground in front of another soldier and surrounded by hordes of malnourished children. The other man was older than Jed, quite a bit older, but good-looking in a rugged kind of way.
“Who’s that?”
Jed peered at the photo. “Glenn.”
“Is he your friend?”