The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

She shifted in the seat and narrowed her gaze. “Your hand hurts that much?”

“Oh, it was a really deep cut. Doc Malloy said I almost severed a nerve.” Okay, so he hadn’t said any such thing, but Jack figured telling a white lie to garner a little sympathy from Meri wasn’t a bad thing.

“Okay. But only if you promise one thing.” She wagged a finger at his chest. “You won’t spend an hour in the power tool section, drooling like a five-year-old in the candy aisle.”

He caught her finger with his good hand. “I promise not to spend an hour in the power tool section. But I don’t promise not to drool.”

At least over the tools. Right now, with her hair loose around her shoulders and those faded denim shorts hugging her thighs, he couldn’t promise not to drool over Meri. Seemed his hormones kept forgetting his brain’s resolve to stay far, far away from her.

“It’s a good thing Nurse Sugar made sure you had plenty of bandages on your hand, should you need to wipe your chin.” Meri slid her finger out of his grasp, then stepped out of the truck and marched into the hardware store before he could even open his door.

Jack chuckled. Seemed Corinna’s flirting had lit a fire under his old flame. For a second he wanted to explore that spark, see where it led. To touch more than a single digit on Meri’s hand, to explore more than just the look in her eyes.

The glass door shut behind Meri’s curvy hips, and Jack’s reflection shimmered before him. He had a day’s worth of stubble on his chin, a tear in the neck of the faded T-shirt he was wearing, and a hole in the knee of his jeans. But like Doc Malloy had said, those outside imperfections were temporal, a mask for the damages underneath.

He closed his eyes for a second, and in his mind he was back on the battlefield, surrounded by dust and diesel fumes and frustration. He could hear the rumble of the engines, the whoop-whoop-whoop of the helicopters above them, and the frightened cries of the wounded. And he saw himself, standing there for a moment, just like he was now, his reflection shimmering in the panel of the Humvee, its back half still sitting as pristine as if it had just been driven off some car lot, while the front driver’s side was gone, erased with a blast.

“Jack?”

His mind was caught in a tumbling wave, spiraling backward, drowning, dark, as if he couldn’t find the surface.

“Jack?”

Then a soft touch on his arm. He jumped, adrenaline shooting through his veins, then his mind caught up with his eyes and his heartbeat slowed, one beat at a time. “Sorry. I was...daydreaming.”

More like having a waking nightmare, but Jack didn’t want to talk about that. Not with Meri, not with Doc Malloy, not with anyone.

“Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” he barked. “Now let me get what I need here so I can get back to work. I don’t have all day to stand around and jabber.” He brushed past her and into the store, knowing he was being an ass and not caring. Because caring would mean explaining, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing that.

She lingered at the back of the store while he grabbed a cart and filled it with the supplies he needed. By the time he reached the checkout counter, guilt weighed on his shoulders. None of this was Meri’s fault. Taking it out on her, simply because she reminded him of his mistakes, was wrong.

Jack shoved the change in his pocket, then wheeled the cart over to Meri. “Sorry for biting your head off.”