Born To Protect

“Will he be able to walk back to the bus?”

“Comfortably? Probably not. We’ll see how he does once we get some ice on that ankle.”

She nodded absently, her smooth, blond brows drawing together.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack said. “It was an accident. Could have happened on anybody’s watch.”

“I know that. It’s just the children are my responsibility, and I feel…”

“Guilty?”

She frowned. “Concerned.”

Jack leaned against the tree trunk at his back, satisfied he’d provoked her into forgetting all about his camera and her worries. “I didn’t want you to fret about what I was thinking, that’s all.”

She looked at him like he was something scraped off the bottom of her royal shoe. “I am completely indifferent to what you think.”

He grinned. “You don’t look indifferent. You look—” he paused, enjoying her frost “—annoyed.”

Another woman would have blown up at him. But Princess Cupcake held it together, held it in. Training, he thought. Not his kind of training, but he could still respect her discipline.

“Not at all. I appreciate your help with Eric.” Her smile glinted, cool as water over rock. “And if he can’t walk, I’ll appreciate it even more.”

An hour later, it was time for the kids to return to the bus for lunch and the ride back to school. And Eric couldn’t walk.

Shouldn’t walk, Jack told Christina. The pain was his body’s way of warning him against putting weight on that ankle.

“All right.” She didn’t argue. He liked that about her, too. “Can you get him to the parking lot?”

Jack wanted to tell her it would be a piece of cake. He used to run holding a one-hundred-seventy-pound rubber boat over his head. He used to do sit-ups cradling a two-hundred-pound section of telephone pole. But then he’d been able to rely on his swim team. Then he’d been able to rely on his shoulder.

He looked at the white-faced Eric. One hundred thirty pounds, tops. “I can try.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Stay out of our way.”

Jack dumped ice by the side of the stream and retrieved his jacket from the ground. The kid couldn’t hobble half a mile, even with support. A piggyback ride was out of the question. The docs who had stitched Jack together had carved a nice chunk from his back to replace the missing muscle in his left shoulder. But if he took the kid in a fireman’s hold, he wouldn’t need to rotate the shoulder. He could distribute the weight over his back and hips.

He lowered himself to one knee. “You’ve got to put your arms around my neck.”

Standing behind him, Eric hesitated. “Maybe I could walk.”

“Don’t be a hero, kid. You’ll regret it in the morning.”

He heard his own tone, harsher than he intended, and saw Christina’s eyes narrow. Watch it, Flash. Christina was sharp. Too sharp. He didn’t want her guessing what was wrong with him. He didn’t like her knowing there was anything wrong.

“Tell you what, next time you can carry me,” he suggested lightly.

He was rewarded when Christina relaxed and Eric leaned against his back. Jack gripped the boy’s arms against his chest and pushed to his feet.

And the first part of the trail was easy. He’d been working out, hadn’t he? Lifting weights, just like the physical therapist had told him. Developing his damn range of motion. His legs were strong. And he was pumped to be in action again.

After they passed the quarter-mile mark, though, he could hear Eric puffing in discomfort. The hold put pressure on the boy’s chest. It had to be pulling on his arms, too. He hung, a dead weight on Jack’s back, his left foot occasionally bumping Jack’s legs. Jack felt the stretch reach deep into his shoulder as scar tissue gave. Despite the cool temperature under the trees, he tasted sweat on his upper lip and felt it at the base of his spine.

Don’t quit. Don’t be a quitter. The words had kept him going during weeks of training on the beach at Coronado, during months of physical therapy in a well-lit room that stank of antiseptic and pain. And they’d worked then, because then he had believed that if he didn’t quit he could be everything he wanted to be. He could be a SEAL.

He knew better now. He wasn’t working for anything now. But he still didn’t quit.

“Can we stop a minute?” Eric huffed in his ear.

Jack unclenched his jaw. “Sure, kid. Let me get to that log up there…” Fifteen steps, he thought. He could do another fifteen steps. No problem. “…and we’ll take a break.”

It was twenty-two steps, and when Jack lowered the big eighth grader onto the fallen tree, pain knifed from his shoulder to his hand. “Referred pain,” the therapist called it. Jack had another word, but he couldn’t use it in front of the kid.

He glanced down at the boy. Eric’s face was really red. His mouth worked as he struggled not to cry.

Reluctant sympathy moved in Jack. “Breathe in through your nose,” he instructed.

The kid, near tears and embarrassed, kept his head down, focusing on his wet, bare ankle.

“Come on,” Jack urged. “In through your nose for a count of four, hold it for seven, breathe out for eight.” He demonstrated. “Helps with the pain,” he explained.

“How would you know?” the boy muttered. His eyes were wet.

“It worked when I was shot.”

Eric looked up, diverted from his sulks and his swollen ankle. “Really?”

“Yeah. Try it. In, two, three, four. Hold…and out slow, six, seven, eight. Good. Again.”

They matched breaths a couple more times, until the kid’s shoulders relaxed and his unhealthy color faded.

“That’s it,” Jack encouraged. “Never let ’em see you sweat.”

The boy swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re sweating.”

“Yeah, well, that’ll be our secret, okay?”

Eric gave him a shaky smile. “Okay.”

“Is everything all right?”

Princess Cupcake had backtracked along the straggling line of students. Intent on the boy, Jack had not heard her approach. God, he really was slipping.

Concern warmed her big blue eyes. Jack stiffened. He didn’t want her pity.

And he wasn’t sacrificing the kid to her compassion, either. He remembered too well what it was to be thirteen and afraid that your voice or behavior would let you down, to have a man-size ego and feet, and a child’s need to please.