Away From You (Back To You Book 2) (22 page)

I hadn’t
realized that I’d stopped breathing, but when he paused to take a sip of his
coffee I did, too. Even though it wasn’t a surprise that the attack happened,
finally hearing the story was harder than I thought it would be. I was
picturing the events as he described them, and it made me want to cry imagining
him running for his life from rapid gunfire.

“We made it
into the hangar and took cover behind some crates. They were firing at us from
the other side of the room, and we were firing back. That’s when I got shot. It
was a mess, and I don’t really remember a lot of that part. I know for sure
that I killed one of them. I remember the blood splattering on the side of the
jet he was standing next to. I can still see his face. I can still see the
blood.”

My worries
confirmed
,
I brought my hand to my heart. It ached for
him. No wonder he had been having such a hard time. I let myself assume the
worst, but the fact that he was close enough to actually see the man’s face
that he killed was frightening. He’d come so close to dying, but that wasn’t
the part that had him in turmoil for months. He’d taken a life and could still
see his face. My sense of guilt over not being able to help him through it deepened,
but I stamped it down. It wasn’t the time to feel sorry for myself or guilty
over how I handled it.

“After that,
everything was a blur. Brooks was hurt really bad, and my own wound hurt so bad
that I couldn’t focus on anything. In fact, that’s something that we’re still
working on in my sessions with Dr. Brann. Everything between worrying about
Brooks and waking up in the hospital is just blank. He’s hopeful that it’ll
come back to me. The parts where I was conscious, of course.”

“Wow.” I
didn’t know what else to say.

“I know.
It’s funny how easily that all came out just now. It’s probably just because
I’ve been talking about it so much with Dr. Brann, but I had no idea it was
going to be that easy to tell you. I’m sorry it took so long.”

“Oh, Matt,”
I got up out of my chair and went to him, sitting on his lap and putting my
head on his shoulder. “Don’t apologize for that. I’m just glad that you were
able to now. I don’t care how long it took.”

“Thanks,
babe,” he answered.

I picked my
head up and leaned back, biting my lip. “So, I did some reading on PTSD back
when I first thought you might have it.”

“That
doesn’t surprise me.” He smiled.

“A lot of
the symptoms they described, like the mood swings and other stuff that I
witnessed, made sense. But uh, did you have flashbacks and hallucinations, too?
I never wanted to ask.”

He looked
away. “Sometimes. And to be honest, that hasn’t really gone away; even though I
swear I’m doing a lot better with the lashing out and anger stuff. Dr. Brann
said that occasional flashbacks and stuff might never go away, I just need to
learn to deal with them.”

“And what
about the mood swings?” I asked.

“He said it
has to be worked on with talk therapy if I want to stay in my job field. I had
the option to get on mood stabilizers, but I wouldn’t be qualified to handle
explosives anymore so we’re trying it this way first. So far it’s working out,
but it’s a day-by-day thing.”

“What kind
of stuff are you doing in talk therapy to help it?”

He shrugged.
“I don’t remember a lot of the technical terms, but he’s basically just trying
to teach me how to handle situations in a way where they don’t make me angry.
Cognitive something, I think.”

I searched
my brain for the term that I remembered hearing in my psychology class the year
before. “Cognitive-behavioral therapy?”

“Yeah,
sounds right. The gist of it is to just think about the situation in a
different way so that it doesn’t piss me off. It sometimes takes me longer to
respond to things because I’m so busy calming myself down about it, but he says
I’ll get better at it with time. The whole thing is going to just take a long
time, Liv.”

“That’s
okay. It’s important stuff.” I worried suddenly that he might be trying to tell
me that he still needed time away from me, but then I remembered that the first
thing he’d brought up today was that he wanted to date me. However, he hadn’t
said when he wanted to
start
dating,
so maybe he did need more time.

“What’s
wrong?” He asked, his eyes searching my face.

“Do you need
more time away from me?”

He quickly
shook his head. “That’s the last thing I need. What I need now is more time
spent with you. I know I’m kind of assuming that you want to be with me, but
I’m hoping I’m not wrong about that.”

I rolled my
eyes. “Of course I want to be with you. I told you to let me know when you were
ready.”

“Well, I
am.” He squeezed my thigh to punctuate his words and furrowed his brow,
examining my body closer. “You really have been going to the gym.”

I giggled.
“You didn’t believe me?”

“Not really,
no. You look great, though.”

“Thanks. It
was all part of my plan to convince you to be with me again.” I joked.

He smiled,
knowing that I wasn’t serious about that being a factor in this. “It doesn’t
hurt, that’s for sure.”

I rolled my
eyes playfully. “I’m sure it doesn’t.”

“So, this
dating thing… I want to do it right.” He said, suddenly serious. “I want real
dates and getting to know each other again. I definitely think we could easily
just slip right back into our old life together, but Dr. Brann thinks that
might bring on the old fights or tension.”

“Okay.” I
agreed.

“This first
date was a success, I’d say.”

“I’d say so.
Except for one thing… I’ve never done this before… so is it bad to kiss on the
first date?”

His eyes lit
up. “God, I hope not.”

A parade
could have passed by us in that moment and we wouldn’t have noticed. He grabbed
my face with both hands and brought my lips to his, and I brought my own hands
to his face. The kiss was sweet, but also urgent and fierce. I tasted the chai
flavoring from his drink. It reminded me of our coffee dates when we were first
dating and sharing some of our first kisses. Dating again was going to be very
fun.

Matt

I
brought the hammer down on the nail with a hard thwack. “How many more of these
do we have to do?”

Spencer counted the pallets in the stack that we’d
already finished and then glanced at the two-by-fours on the ground nearby. “I
think we need three more pallets. Hopefully we have enough boards.”

I shook my head. “And tell me again why we didn’t
just use pallets that are already made? They have them for cheap at Home Depot
I think.”

“Because Ellie said they didn’t look handmade
enough. I told her that’s because they weren’t handmade. But she insisted that
these signs had to look like the ones on Pinterest, so that’s what we’re
doing.”

The theme of the wedding was some kind of DIY
country western thing, so Ellie was having us make all kinds of rustic things
that fit with her décor. Spencer’s dad practically had a hardware store in his
garage so we set up shop there with a few beers. Today’s project consisted of
nailing a bunch of two-by-fours together to make signs that she was going to
place around the reception area. I had no idea what they were supposed to say,
but that wasn’t my job so I didn’t ask. Apparently Olivia would be the one to
paint the words on, and the thought of her made me smile.

“You look giddy.” Spencer observed.

“Thanks. I feel giddy.” I smirked back at him.

“I’m glad you guys talked. That’s a big step for
you. I know I joke around a lot but I am taking this shit seriously, just so
you know.”

I nodded. “I know that man, no need to explain. You
and Brooks have really stepped up for me lately and I appreciate that.”

“Yeah, well. What’re friends for? Anyway, have you
guys figured out the plan for my bachelor party yet? Are we going to Vegas?”

I chuckled, concentrating on not smashing my thumb
with the hammer as I put in another nail. “You’ll find out the night of,
buddy.”

“I’m going to take that to mean that we’re
not
going to Vegas, then. Because if we
were I’d need to fill out an out-of-bounds chit, and I can’t do that the night
of.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but you can blame your wifey
for that one. She text me out of the blue and said Vegas was off limits.”

He scowled. “Ball and chain.”

“It’s not too late to back out!” I offered.

“Some best man you are.”

I held up a hand. “My best man was pretty against
my marriage if I remember correctly.”

His mouth dropped open in mock horror. “What an
asshole.”

“Tell me about it. Anyway, the girls are having the
bachelorette party on Saturday, too. Are you cool with some cross-over or
should I make sure that doesn’t happen?”

“Whatever, man. I don’t really care as long as it’s
a good time. And I always have a good time with Ellie, so if we happen to see her
I’m not going to run away.”

“Cool. Liv says they’re doing crafts and shit for
the wedding today, too.” I mentioned, heaving the completed pallet onto the
pile and grabbing a few more boards to get started on another. “I know I didn’t
ask at the time, but did you see her a lot when we weren’t together? Like
hanging out with Ellie or whatever?”

Spencer shook his head. “Not a lot. Ellie obviously
saw her a lot but since they’re both off base that didn’t really include me
often. Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just weird having
this chunk of time where I don’t know what she was doing or what her life was
like. Forget it, I’m just being dumb.”

“Nah, man, that makes sense. You guys have been
together for a damn long time. Even though we weren’t together I kind of felt
that way about Ellie when I fucked up in Florida and we didn’t really talk for
a while. It makes sense.”

“I guess. We’ve gone on three dates now though and
I thought that she was going to come home with me after, but she didn’t. Isn’t
that how it’s supposed to work? You have sex after three dates?”

“I mean, I got Ellie on the first date.”

“Well, what the hell then? We’re married for God’s
sake. What’s the hold up?”

Spencer shuffled his feet a little. “I mean, not
too long ago you basically kicked her out of your house and told her you wanted
a divorce in front of a bunch of her friends. She might be willing to be with
you again and everything but I bet she’s still kind of holding back a bit. That
probably hurt her, you know?”

“I’m sure it did. But I told her I was sorry and
everything…” I thought for a minute. Wait, had I told her I was sorry? I knew
we talked a lot about what I’d been working on to get better, but I didn’t
think we’d ever actually brought up the night we’d broken up. I nailed in a few
more boards, going over every conversation we’d had since we started talking
again.

“Fuck.” I said after a few minutes.

“What?”

“I never apologized to her for that. I meant to,
and I thought I had, but I guess not. Maybe that’s why.”

Spencer shrugged. “Girls don’t think about things
the same way we do, so I bet it’s not even just sex that she’s holding back
because of it. I bet she wouldn’t even move back in with you until you guys talk
about that night.”

He was right. No matter how much we talked about my
progress since we’d been apart, she probably still held onto the humiliation
from that night. I needed to apologize in order to move forward.

“Well, thankfully I have another date with her
later tonight. We can talk about it, then.”

*

“You look amazing,” I told Olivia as we made our
way into the restaurant.

She smiled shyly. “Thanks.”

We were shown to our table and I actually started
getting nervous. I’d been excited for tonight before my talk with Spencer, but
after realizing that I hadn’t apologized to her yet, there was a cloud over our
night. I hoped that she couldn’t sense it. I didn’t want her to think that it
had anything to do with her. In fact, it was just the opposite. I felt like a
jerk all over again for not leading with that when we first started talking.

We ordered coffee and I opened my menu. It had been
Olivia’s idea to eat breakfast for dinner, so we were perusing the breakfast
menu at Denny’s. “What are you getting?”

She smirked. “I’m not sure yet. But you might as
well put down your menu since you always get the same thing.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Not always!”

“Yes, always. You might say you’re going to get
something else, but as soon as the server asks what you want you tell them
‘chicken friend steak.’ It never fails.”

“Well, I’m just going to prove you wrong and get an
omelet, then.”

“You say that now, but just wait until the server
gets here.”