Wild Hearts (Novella) by Tina Wainscott Read Free Book Online

Olympic athlete. And you stayed positive.”
    Chad ran his hand through his short hair. “I have to be honest. I crawled into a bottle for a while, but I fell out of my chair once and was too damned drunk to get back up. I felt as helpless as I had in those months after the explosion, and I swore I wasn’t going to feel that way again. I sobered up before I ever got back to town. Considering your career crashed and burned in a different way, the same could be said for you. You’re not sitting around whining. And you can’t even tell people what really happened. At least I’ve got a story to tell.”
    Saxby shook his head. “Losing my career and my status isn’t the same as losing my legs. Complaining would feel like an insult to you and every guy who got sent home in a wheelchair, a cast, or a pine box.”
    Chad gave a long, slow nod. “I hear you. How about you? You enjoying being one of the top dogs at the company?”
    “I don’t know.” Saxby had gone to college and pulled a 4.0, just as he’d done all through high school. It was expected in the Cole household. During college, 9/11 had happened. Then one of the local boys had gotten killed in Kabul. All the while Saxby had focused on college studies and partying, trying to push all of the tragedy into a box. He was days away from getting his degree so he could step into a cushy job in the offices. Then he’d had … well, he’d call it a breakdown of sorts. Because the box had opened, and everything inside it had exploded like a roadside bomb.
    Life had come too easy, and some deep part of him resented that. Or maybe he just didn’t feel like he deserved it. Saxby had never delved that deeply into his psyche to figure out which it was. He knew only that he couldn’t stay in his comfy little life any longer. He needed to do something that mattered. So he’d gone from having everything handed to him to joining the Navy with a SEAL contract.
    For the first time, he’d had to work his ass off, just like everyone else in BUD/S. He had no privileges, no status. He did get care packages that the other guys envied and teased him about: boxes of Zapp’s Spicy Cajun Crawtators potato chips, a Mardi Gras cake, coffee with chicory in it. The guys stopped teasing when he shared his bounty. Especially when his sisters started sending them care packages, too.
    But that was it as far as spoiling went. Everything else was hard as hell. Not balancing-on-hammocks hard. Not assembling-stainless-steel-grills hard. Ass-kicking, near-drowning, the cold surf washing up over your face, getting screamed at, slogging through mud, running ten miles in a day, hard. And it felt good. When he graduated, one of the fifteen percent of his class who’d survived, he’d earned it.
    “I went to college for four years to step into this job,” Saxby said. “I told myself I deserved it. But I’m not sure I believe it, because it doesn’t feel the same as when I graduated BUD/S or when the team completed a mission.”
    Chad was one of the few Cole men who understood. He nodded. “There’s nothing like being out there, making a difference. It’s hard to be on the sidelines.” He gestured to his chair. “I’m lucky to be alive, but I’m just not ready to be done, ya know?”
    Saxby’s fingers tightened around the ropes of the hammock so hard that his knuckles ached. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
    “But from what you’ve alluded to, returning to combat is as much out for you as itis for me. Even when I get my prosthetics.”
    Sax hadn’t told anyone about Chase Justiss’s offer. No need, when he had zero intention of signing on. He pushed off from the hammock. “Want to hit the weights?”
    Chad spun his chair around on the grass as easily as he did on asphalt. “Sounds good.”
    They went into the gym on the property, a small but proper setup. Saxby tried to think about what he was going to say to Mary Lou that night. Nothing more than “No way in hell” came to mind.