Wilde Love (Forever Wilde 6)

And if something happened to him, after losing Moline and Rusnak, I thought I might lose the tenuous hold I had on my sanity.

Two nights later I was awoken from a deep sleep by a private I recognized from the hospital.

“Lieutenant Wilde,” he whispered in the dark hooch. “You’re needed in the ward.”

Despite the panic that suddenly set my heart racing, I didn’t ask why or what for. I’d been a soldier long enough to know better, but I wondered those things. And it wasn’t until we neared the open front door of the building that the private began to explain.

The major had been diagnosed with malaria of all things. It was common enough where we were, but to come down with the symptoms on the same day as our crash was an unlucky coincidence. The nurse said it may have hit him harder because he’d been weakened by blood loss and fatigue already. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but I was damned glad we got him to the hospital to be treated. Any more time in a buggy jungle would have been awful for him.

“So we got the malaria symptoms under control, but now Major Marian is fighting an infection in his calf and won’t settle. He’s been calling for you. Captain Samuelson said you might as well come calm him down if it’ll help.”

My steps slowed. “You sure he was calling for me?” I asked, surprised.

He shrugged. “Kept saying Liam. The captain says you were the only Liam he knew, and you were there when the chopper crashed.”

When I entered the long room of metal-framed hospital beds, I found two nurses trying to hold Major Marian down. My gut churned with anger immediately. “Let him go,” I hissed across the dimly lit space. I didn’t want to wake up the other patients, but I needed them to stop manhandling the major like he was just another pesky patient.

The nurses turned in surprise which alerted the major to my presence. I expected him to look at me in confusion, to clarify, maybe, that he’d been calling out for a brother or childhood friend with the same name, but he didn’t.

He let out a big breath and relaxed into the bed, his blue-gray eyes filling quickly but never looking away from mine.

“You came,” he croaked softly.

My throat felt tight, so I simply nodded and stepped forward, reaching out to grasp his hand. He was a wide man with brawny shoulders and a slender waist. His muscular form looked strange in the narrow bed, and it reminded me of my son Billy’s ten-pound body overflowing the newborn bassinet behind the window in the hospital nursery.

And seeing a gruff, strong major pale and feverish in a hospital bed to begin with was all wrong. It made me feel antsy, almost like I wanted to find a way to sneak him out of there.

I perched a hip next to his and leaned in to speak quietly. “How you doing, Major?”

“Ready for duty.”

I reached a thumb out to wipe a tear from below his eye and smiled like it was no big deal. “Not quite yet, Major, but soon. I came by to tell you to do what these nurses and doctors tell you because I don’t trust anyone else to fly my pampered ass anymore now that I know you can land a dead bird like Superman.”

His troubled eyes searched mine. “I killed them so Charlie couldn’t get you.”

I nodded and knuckled a tear from under his other eye, swallowing hard at the horrible memory from the clearing. “You saved me. Charlie didn’t get me, Major. My kids still have a daddy thanks to you.”

Something shuttered in his eyes and he looked down at his hands, clasping them together and squeezing hard enough to make his knuckles white.

“Billy, Gina, and Brenda,” he said softly. “And Betsy.” He took a breath and looked at me with confusion. “But not Charlie.”

I coughed in surprise. He was either out of it with fever or from pain medicine. “No, sir. Not Charlie.”

The major nodded but then frowned. “The men?”

“What men?” I asked, thrown by the swift shift in topic.

“Moline, Rusnak, Atkins, Sanchez, Sandoval—”

I cut him off, unwilling to have a complete breakdown right there in the quonset hut ward. “Shhh,” I said, reaching out to cup his cheek. I needed him to think of the good instead of the bad. It was the only thing that had kept me sane since returning from the jungle. “They’re at peace.”

“I killed them. Are you safe?”

The words he’d asked me before. The ones that shoved a ragged blade straight into my heart and ripped it open. Those deaths should be on my head, not his.

“Yes, sir. I’m safe. Thanks to you.”

He seemed to drift off, but when I tried to release his hands, he held on tightly. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “Not yet.”