Mac’s attention returned to her, guarded.
“You don’t know me. You don’t know what kind of woman I am anymore. But that’s not what I’m looking for—or even capable of. I’m not interested in love. I don’t want it. It’s damn near killed me already.” With a last bitter look, she pushed out the door.
Chapter twenty
Mac
PHANTOM PAIN
Macwokeshrieking.Hekicked and arched, flailing himself out of his cot, landing on the floor covered in sweat, his body and brain on fire. “Kota!Kota!”
Fucking hell.
Fuckinghell.
Panting against the floorboards, drops of sweat falling from him, his heart beating so fast he wasn’t sure he wasn’t having an attack of some sort—other than the one in his mind—his eyes frantically sought out the darkest corners of the room.
Everything was all right.
Except him. He was fucked up.
With an angry yell, he lashed out, kicking his cot, sending it flying against the wooden wall. It tumbled over his footlocker. He smashed his fist into the floor three times, screaming as he did so.
Pushing himself to a sitting position, he sought out the figurine Grady had carved, making sure he hadn’t destroyed it in his rage. It was okay, sitting on top of his footlocker unharmed. He dropped his head into his hands.
His back throbbed, phantom pain; his brain taunted.
Polytrauma, they called it; he’d been labeled. They had thrown everything at him they could to keep his symptoms under control—anything to keep the suicide numbers down. He was given a crisis number to call.
Didn’t work. Pills made him crazier, slowed him down, depressed him when they didn’t have him manic. The phone number caused more anxiety than anything else, the name creating a crisis in his brain.
They’d sent him to VAs specializing in treatment, but he didn’t take to it. No two people experienced their traumas the same way, and it didn’t help. Not him. He resented it all. Did it work for others? Maybe. But poly had a devastatingly wide swatch—or rather, war had a devastatingly broad effect on his brothers and sisters in arms—and he hadn’t come home with a spinal cord injury or missing limb. He was better off than so many. He knew that.
It didn’t mean his brain hadn’t been seriously fucked with because it had.
Did he want to die?
Not today, and that was good enough. Not that it hadn’t been a consideration before, but it wasn’t something he was going to dwell on. Today it wasn’t a consideration. He’d re-evaluate tomorrow.
But when moments of clarity happened and the fog lifted and he realized his fucking situation, was in tune with his pain, he only wanted to escape his goddamn reality.
What helped? Isolation, drinking, and fucking.
Not being burdened by someone else’s shit.
Like Cassidy Teague.
Fucking catastrophe, that one.
Dragging himself to his feet, he ran a hand over the top of his head as he caught his breath, his pulse moderating.
That damned bewitching woman had stood in his doorway and dressed him down for his assumptions about her; berated him. He’d been close to throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her back into the cabin to test her resolve.
He wanted to; he’d wanted her since he first saw her. He’d been tempted that day she’d shown up on his porch, full of vinegar over his trespassing. Fucking sexy, she’d looked, pissed and disheveled. Her attempt to protect her modesty by slapping an arm over her chest had emphasized more than it hid, pressing the material to enhance her pert nipples. It’d been damn hard not to get hard.
Almost sexier than when she appeared on his doorstep in the middle of the night.
And now she’d gone and challenged him.