It didn’t matter that his stump was hurting like a son of a bitch and that the sleeve was itchy as hell, he just didn’t believe he could do it. He thought he was ready, but he wasn’t and soon panic flowed through his veins; his heart rate was out of control. His lungs threatened to seize the longer she looked at him, waiting to help him however she could.
He wasn’t fucking ready.
She saw it. The open acceptance on her face quickly turned to sadness the longer he hesitated, and he was helpless to stop it. He wasn’t ready to bare everything. Because if he did, then that meant she would have questions, and he would have to talk about the shit he went through. Why he was living with his best friend and not anywhere near his family.
Slowly getting to her feet, she kissed his cheek lightly. “I have to get home anyway,” she told him.
When the relief hit him, he felt like absolute shit for not only making her want to leave but for wanting her to leave as well. He needed to breathe, and because he felt so exposed already, he didn’t imagine he could accomplish it with her here any longer.
“Uh, yeah, sure. Let’s go.”
She smiled sadly at him before heading out the door they’d walked in only minutes earlier, waiting by his truck for him to help her climb in.
Once they were on the road, neither said anything. Ev didn’t call Case on his unwillingness to talk to her or show her who and what he really was. And she should have, too. With the way he’d forced her to open up to him, she should have fucking demanded everything from him.
Now he was left wondering why she hadn’t. He had to know what was going through her mind. If only he had the courage to ask her.
Where the fuck are your balls, Private? He could practically hear his old sergeant screaming in his ear. Did you suddenly grow a fucking vagina? Boy, you best get back in line and check yourself at the door! This is a balls only squad.
He hadn’t heard those words in more than fifteen years. It seemed appropriate they would come back to haunt him at a time where he felt like the pussy his sergeant used to accuse all of them of being. It wasn’t a phase in his life he missed all that much, but no matter how many times he’d been called a pussy, the Sarge was always right. Time to man the fuck up.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted into the quietness of the cab of his truck as he drove into the city limits. Fuck! He’d waited the whole hour. Casey, you fucking moron.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” was her soft reply.
Isn’t there?
“You aren’t ready,” she continued.
Fuck that I’m not!
“One day you will be,” she kept going.
I’m ready now!
“Hopefully,” she looked to him, “it will be sooner rather than later.”
Wait a fucking minute!
“I live down in Ellwood Park, the first complex off Jefferson St.,” she instructed, and his anger blossomed tenfold. What the fuck was she doing living in that hellhole?
Ask her, you mute dickhead!
“I work the rest of the week. Maybe I’ll see you around?” She smiled sadly like she thought they were over as she hopped out of his truck and ran through the so-called security door to her building.
They weren’t fucking over!
What the fuck is wrong with my voice?
She ran from Case before he had a chance to shatter her already fragile heart. His silence was damning. Not a single word on the hour’s drive from his home to her complex. She was confused about why he’d shown her his leg when he clearly wasn’t ready. Or maybe he was but regretted it. She was shocked. She hadn’t expected it. With no warning about it, she thought she’d handled it well. Clearly, he didn’t like her knowing.
With every word she spoke, his face seemed to grow angrier and angrier. She had a hard time holding her tears at bay, and for the first time since moving her sister and nephew in with her, she felt relief at being home.
Home.
What a joke.
She hated where they lived. Hated the neighborhood. Hated nearly everything about her life except for dancing, Andy, and a few moments where she entertained the idea of what she and Casey could have been.