Wicked Intentions (Steele Secrurity Book 4) (3 page)

“Drive carefully, honey. I love you. See you tonight,” the nurse cooed back.

The guard left without a backward glance, making Rashad feel more secure in his quest. As he strode down the hall, he cut his eyes to each open door, blatantly disregarding the person’s privacy as he looked for Heather. When the last door came into view, his pace slowed while he considered his next move.

“I see you found the vending machines,” Becca called from behind him.

“Yes, I’m afraid I found a few too many treats,” he replied with his charming smile intact.

“Who are you visiting?”

He hesitated for a heartbeat, knowing he couldn’t lie about a patient name. “A family friend. I’m just giving them some privacy for a few minutes.”

“What’s the name? I’ll check to see how long it’ll be before you can go in.”

As luck would have it, a nurse exited from a room a few doors down just as she asked for the name. “Looks like I’m good to go in now,” he inclined his head toward the open door. “Thank you for the offer, though.”

She smiled and nodded her head, but he recognized the suspicion in her eyes. She wasn’t moving on to continue doing her job. She was waiting him out, testing him, and calling his bluff. He had no choice but to walk into the room and at least try to stay long enough to make her believe he was actually visiting a patient. He only hoped in doing so, Heather would finally make an appearance.

Rashad walked into the room apprehensively and watched the lady lying in the bed. She appeared to be in her later sixties and was obviously once very beautiful. But the pallor of her skin expressed the severity of her condition. He took a seat in the chair beside her bed and watched her sleep for several minutes, keeping up his ruse. When she stirred and opened her eyes, she started at seeing him in her room.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Greg. Would you care for a snack today?” He lied, trying to use her confusion to his advantage.

“No, I don’t want anything. I’m too sick to eat.”

“Okay, I’ll let you get some rest and check back with you later today.” He rose, snacks in hand, and left the hospital by taking the same route he’d followed in. The suspicious nurse was back at the nurses’ station as he passed, but she was too busy to notice him walking out.

B
raxton tried
to sleep with the rhythmic rocking of the bus as it continued eastward, but it was no use even to try. He could’ve taken the option to fly to the South Carolina base for his basic training, but he wasn’t required to be there for several more days. He decided to take his time on the trip and hopefully clear his head before the intensive two-month training program began.

He would be several hours into the fifteen-hour trip before Heather woke and found his letter. She would have no way to contact him and no indication of where he was headed. He’d planned it that way intentionally so she would be forced to move on with her life. Even at eighteen, he knew when she looked at him, all she saw was a constant reminder of the worst day of their lives. After all their years spent side by side, it killed him when he saw the regret in her eyes that left no doubt in his mind she wished she’d never fallen in love with him.

He had to face the fact he had become no more than an expensive growing pain, a lesson that life had to teach them, but they were both stubborn and had to learn the hard way. For the sake of her sanity and her happiness, he had to be the one to leave. That took all the strength, drive, and courage he could muster. She’d have to be the one to file for a divorce, though. That’s where he drew the line. Regardless of what the future held for him, another marriage was nowhere in the cards.

She would be his one and only love until he died.

“Where are you headed?” the older man across the aisle asked aloud.

Braxton cut his eyes toward the man to see to whom he was speaking. Most everyone on the bus was asleep since it was still dark outside. When their eyes met, the man smiled at him and waited for a reply.

“Army basic training in South Carolina. You?”

“Visiting my daughter and her family in Georgia. My son-in-law is in the Army and stationed there,” the man replied. “Name’s Larry, by the way.”

“Braxton,” he replied and accepted the offer to shake hands. “Good to meet you.”

“Good to meet you, son. You’re awful young to join the Army, aren’t you?”

“I’m eighteen. Legal to sign my name on the dotted line and give away the next four years of my life to them.”

“So you’re not making it a career?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” Braxton admitted. A career in the Army may not be such a bad idea. Travel the world. Associate with the best men and women, serve his country, and leave Texas behind him for as long as possible.

“What does your wife think about that?” Larry asked.

The corners of Braxton’s eyes squeezed together, and his head slightly tilted in question. “What?”

Larry pointed at Braxton’s left hand where his wedding ring was still prominently displayed. “You’re married, right?”

“For now,” he shrugged. “It didn’t work out. She made a mistake marrying me.”

“Marriage is hard, there’s no doubt about that. My wife and I married young, too. Everyone told us not to, said we should wait until we were older. But we were headstrong, and we knew better than they did,” Larry laughed in reply. His gaze drifted to another time and place as his mind’s eye relived the events of the past. “After the first month of living together, we were both ready to call it quits.

“But we stuck it out. You see, we had too many people to prove wrong. More than that, we meant it when we said those vows. For better or for worse is what we’ve lived by all these years. Don’t give up on her just yet, son. There may still be hope.”

Braxton’s only reply was a lopsided smile that didn’t reach his eyes. There was no point in telling the man that all hope was lost and had been dead for months. Three months, to be exact. Three months since he failed Heather in a way she could never forgive him, and he could never forgive himself. In a way he knew he didn’t deserve forgiveness.

“It’s none of my business, and I’m just a nosy old man, I know,” Larry said warmly. “But I know the look of a tormented young man. I saw it too many times in my own mirror when I wasn’t much older than you are now. You’ll come out of basic training a different man, Braxton. You’ll be harder, more focused, and more disciplined. Use that discipline to help your marriage, son. Not hurt it.”

“I will,” Braxton promised. Though he didn’t elaborate on how. The only way he could help his marriage was to be disciplined enough to give Heather a real chance at happiness, far away from him. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

“Then you’re a good man, Braxton,” Larry replied. “Never forget that.”

Larry settled into his seat and was asleep within minutes. His words played over and over in Braxton’s mind. More times than he could count, he considered telling the bus driver to stop and let him off. He’d find a way back home on his own. He’d find a way to work things out, regardless of what had happened. But every time he started to rise from his seat, the weight of his failure held him down. With a heavy heart, Braxton closed his eyes and let sleep overtake him.

The bus shuddered to a halt, waking Braxton from the most sleep he’d had at one time in the last several months. “We’ll take a thirty-minute break here, folks. Grab a bite to eat, stretch your legs, and be back on the bus at half past the hour.”

Braxton’s eyes surveyed the area after he exited the bus, trying to determine where they were and how much longer they had to go. The roadside diner had obviously been built first from the age of it. The truck stop next door was newer, bigger, and had a full range of facilities to cater to truck drivers. He felt someone move up beside him and knew who it was without looking.

“Want to grab a chicken sandwich and fries at four in the morning?” Larry asked with a chuckle.

“Sounds like the ultimate breakfast to me,” he joked in return. “Maybe we can have apple pie for dessert. Breakfast dessert.”

“That’s the spirit.”

The two men walked together into the diner and sat in a booth along the front windows. After the waitress took their orders, an uncomfortable silence crept into the booth, and Larry fidgeted nervously. Braxton sensed the older man wanted to resume their earlier conversation but wasn’t sure how to broach it.

“It’s a long, sad story.” Braxton decided to save Larry the hassle. “We started out as best friends when we were kids. We finally became an official couple when we started high school. A lot of things went wrong. I’m not getting into all of the nitty-gritty details right now, though.

“In a nutshell, every day of my life that I can actually remember, I’ve loved her in one way or another. We were neighbors for a long time, but then her dad got one promotion after another at work. With his newfound wealth, he bought a bigger, nicer house in a ritzier neighborhood. Suddenly, I wasn’t good enough for his daughter anymore.

“That didn’t stop her, though. She loved me, so we stayed together despite his protests and threats and bellowing.” Braxton paused and stared at a droplet of water as it slid down his glass. “As soon as we were old enough and didn’t need anyone’s permission, we got married. We had a go at it for a little while, tried to make it work. This is where I leave out the private details, but it all boils down to the fact that she’s estranged from her entire family because of me. Especially her dad. He won’t have anything to do with her as long as I’m still around.

“The stress of everything is killing her. She’s torn between being with me and being with her family. I just can’t stand by and watch the beautiful woman I love wither away to nothing. So, I left and made it easier for her to move on with her life.”

“Did you ask her if that’s what she wanted?”

The waitress returned with their orders, momentarily saving Braxton from answering what should’ve been an easy question. When the waitress left, Larry took a bite of his sandwich and waited for Braxton to answer.

In between bites of his food, Braxton continued recounting his story. “She’s not the kind of person who would say she wanted me to leave. She can’t stand hurting anyone else, so she’d take all the pain just to avoid inflicting any on someone else. Her dad or her mom called every day, pressuring her to come home, keeping her on the phone for hours at a time. She became more and more withdrawn from me. Selfishly, I hung around longer than I should have, but I just couldn’t let her suffer anymore.”

“Did you file for a divorce before you left?”

Braxton shook his head from side to side. “No. I won’t be the one to do that.”

“You really do love her, don’t you?”

“It’s always been her. It’ll always be her.”

“You know, other guys your age don’t think like that.”

“Those guys haven’t met Heather.”

Larry leaned back and studied Braxton, taking in his words and his overall demeanor. Braxton felt the appraising gaze, knew he was being sized up and measured, but he didn’t care. The talk with Larry brought all the memories flooding back, tormenting him with mental pictures of the best and worst times of his life. His guts churned, the chicken sandwich and fries turned to lead in his stomach, and he had to work to swallow past the ball of emotions stuck in his throat.

“For the record, I think you’re making a big mistake by leaving like this. She sounds like a great girl.”

“She’s the best.”

“Girls like her aren’t that common. Love like you just described comes once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. You won’t find another one like her, Braxton.”

He looked up and met Larry’s gaze directly. “I know I won’t. And I won’t be looking for another one either. Especially not after all I’ve been through.”

The waitress appeared with their checks. Larry picked up both at the same time and insisted on paying. “It’s the least I can do for a young man who’ll be serving our country. My trip ends at our next stop, so this is the last chance I’ll have to do it.”

“It’s not necessary, but I appreciate it. Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself, Braxton. I hope everything works out for you.”

At the next stop, Braxton felt a deep loneliness when he said goodbye to Larry. The older man had been the first friend he’d really talked to about his predicament. He’d talked to his father often, but familial bias tainted their discussions. His friends were his age and didn’t understand any of what he’d already experienced. Larry was the first person who wasn’t related, wasn’t too young, and didn’t have any preconceived notions about their relationship. He listened, he grasped the depth of their love, and he offered advice without being condescending.

The ride from Georgia to South Carolina was both the longest and shortest of his life. He’d watched the sun rise and visualized Heather still asleep in their bed. He longed to be there with her, to hold her while she slept, to kiss her when she woke. As the bus pulled up to the station, he wondered how much longer it would be before she found his letter. Would she move out of their apartment right away, back in with her parents? Or would she wait a while to see if he came back?

“The truth is it doesn’t matter what happens. Our courses are set now. In two days, I have to report to the base for basic training,” he muttered to himself. He hailed a cab to take him to a hotel close to the base. After checking in and stowing his stuff, he set out on foot to take in the sights and spend the rest of his free time alone until the very last second. The two days passed by much too quickly, and it was time to check out of the hotel.

Before leaving his room, he called his mom to talk to her one last time before basic training started and all communication was cut off.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom.” His tone was deflated, like his heart. “I’m about to leave the hotel. Just wanted to say I love you. I’ll let you know when graduation is in case you and Dad can make it.”

“Of course we’ll be there, Brax. I love you, too, son. And I’m so worried about you.”

“I’ll be okay, Mom. Don’t worry.”

She paused for a heartbeat before replying. “Heather called this morning. She’s worried to death about you, Braxton.”

“Did you tell her where I am?”

“No, I didn’t. You asked me not to, but you know I don’t agree with how you’re handling this.”

“It’s for the best, Mom. I have to go. Tell Dad I love him. I love you. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Your father and I are so proud of you, Braxton. I want you to know that. We love you more than life itself.”

August 2001

“Where did my little boy go?” Braxton’s mother, Jackie, asked as she grasped her son’s face in her palms.

“He left as a boy, and two months later, the Army gives us a man,” his father, Bryan, beamed. “He even had a birthday while he was in basic training.”

“You look so handsome in that uniform,” Jackie commented through her tears. The pride and admiration she had for her son shone in her eyes and resonated in her voice.

Braxton scanned the crowd milling around the soldiers who had just graduated from basic training, searching for another familiar face he’d hoped to see. Without asking, Bryan knew exactly who his son was looking for.

“She’s not here, son.” Bryan placed his hand on Braxton’s shoulder and squeezed to show his support. “She said…” He paused to consider his next words before he continued.