Casualties of Love by Denise Riley Read Free Book Online Page B

for women, especially Black women.  The woman hadn’t supported Jessica’s decision to attend West Point at all. His life was deeply entrenched in family tradition. Her small family barely got along. With the loss of her mother, her father and maternal grandmother cooperated solely for the purpose of seeing Jessica reared. Jessica had indicated that there wasn’t a great deal of love between those two.
    None of it had mattered though, not a whit. They had made each other happy and Tyson had known at the young age of twenty that he’d never want anyone else the way he wanted Jessica Watts. He had known that she had been made to be his wife, to be the person he would spend the rest of his life with. He had never loved any woman that he wasn’t related to, but he had loved Jessica totally and completely and supremely. And he had known that she loved him - in the way that she lit up when she was with him, they way she touched him and looked at him, the way she said his name when he made love to her and the way she smiled at him. There hadn’t been anything that could tear them apart... until there was. He had never imagined that the thing to break them up would be her.  Even now it hurt thinking about it and not knowing where they’d gone wrong. To bad it didn’t stop him from wanting to see her, to touch her, again.
                  “Hey.” 
    Tyson turned and watched as Marcus wheeled himself back into their hospital room. The other guy had been moved and it was just Tyson and Jones in the space now. Soon Tyson would be there alone. Marcus would soon be able to go back to the barracks. He would transition to crutches and finish his “vacation” in his own room. They’d already been told they weren’t being moved anywhere. Even needing to stay in the hospital a while longer, Tyson wasn’t going to be sent anywhere else for recovery. They would stay in Afghanistan until they were well enough to get back to work or until it was time for them to go home.
                  “Hey,” Tyson replied to his friend.
    “I’m about wheel myself down to see Collins. You want me to see if they’ll let you go?”
                  “Hell, yes. I need to get out of this room.”
    He needed to stop pining after Jessica Watts.
                  After a several minutes of growling and throwing his Captain status around, plus the additional minutes of fussing about how to get him in a chair so he could get to Collins’ room, he and Marcus were talking to their teammate. Collins was a little worse for the wear after the attack but he was in good spirits.
                  “Cap, it’s good to see you.” Collins slightly inclined in his bed. His skin was a little pale and gray, but there was a smile on his face.
                  “You too Collins, you too,” Tyson said gripping the man’s offered hand.
                  “It was too bad about Lassiter. Hell, I still can’t believe he’s gone. It was like I went to sleep, woke up, and he was dead.”
                  “Yeah,” Tyson said. It had felt the same for him and he knew Marcus was taking it hard, too.
                  “How you holding up, Jack?” Marcus asked Collins.
                  “What? The foot? Man, shit. I’m just glad to be alive. I’m gonna trick that thing out with some titanium and steel and rock a Lt. Dan.” 
    They all laughed. Collins was referring to his amputated foot. Despite the efforts in the field and in surgery, the doctors couldn’t save the badly damaged extremity. But, Collins always took stuff, however it came, with the most positive outlook he could. In the life of a warfighter, there really wasn’t any other way to remain sane.
    “Seriously, though. I get to go home to my family still breathing. I’m grateful, man. I’m bummed the foot’s gone, but I’ll get over it at some point. Don’t know how I feel about