Chapter 2
Grant Carter
I leaned against the fence and watched as Lucas Everett and Noah Scott, my friends and former Navy SEAL teammates, lifted the horse they’d been working with into the trailer.
The animal wasn’t fully mobile and needed extra help, but she’d be a perfect therapy animal. After some training, she would be on her way to helping someone with PTSD make the most of their life. But the horse wouldn’t be doing any heavy farm work. She could barely move this morning.
Just like me.
I was actively trying to push back the anger seething under my skin, but it was hard when I was watching my friends do things that I wanted to with the same ease they did. Instead, this fence post was holding me up.
When I woke up this morning, I knew this day was going to be shit, and I’d predicted correctly.
Some days were fine, and I was able to move and do whatever the hell I wanted without any pain or effort. And then there were the days when my lower back ached and I was limited, but relatively okay.
Then there were days like today, when it felt as if someone were pressing a white-hot knifetip into the base of my spine. Even the smallest movement blew fire up my back. It sucked.
Even worse, the others knew. That was the problem with being family.
We all knew enough about each other’s demons to help fight them when we could and, more importantly, to make sure we were a collective team here on Resting Warrior Ranch.
Wanting to help fight emotional and mental demons was part of the reason a half dozen of my former Navy SEAL team members and I had started the ranch—to assist with our own PTSD, while also being of service to others.
We provided the wide-open space of the ranch for people who needed a chance to unplug and wanted to come stay. Various cabins were located all over the property. But mostly, we raised and trained emotional support and service animals—horses, dogs, hell, even alpacas and sheep.
Resting Warrior was a full ranch with long days and a lot of work, but we all loved it.
Knowing I was the guy on the team who wasn’t pulling his own weight and whom everyone had to cover for…that sucked ass.
Dr. Rayne Westerfield, Resting Warrior’s resident psychiatrist, would tell me that considering myself a suck-ass burden wasn’t a great way of thinking—she had told me that more than once when I met with her—and I should reframe.
After all, I didn’t control the shrapnel that sat in my spine.
But reframing and good thoughts and singing “Kumbaya” didn’t help anything when you were in pain and feeling useless—especially pain that couldn’t be helped by taking anything. The basic painkillers wouldn’t touch this, and I wasn’t about to start taking the hard-core pain pills. Then I’d be useless and high rather than just useless.
I was so damned tired of not being able to do what I needed to do, no matter how much everyone around me was understanding and supportive. It might have been childish, but there was only so much I could take of the warm and sympathetic looks and the immediate offers to step in and help.
Right now, I wanted them to get as mad at me as I was frustrated at myself. Because at least that would feel real.
The sound of the trailer being closed brought me back into the present. Noah looked me up and down before coming over, and Lucas waved before hopping into the cab of the truck. “You all set here?”
“How could I not be? You both did all the work.”
He smirked. “Yeah, your lazy ass was just watching like a benevolent duke from days of old.”
I rolled my eyes, careful not to move and send any more pain through my body. “You’ve got to stop watching the historical romance channel.” But I appreciated Noah’s willingness to give me a little shit.
“You all right to get up to the lodge?” Lucas asked from behind the wheel.
“I’m good,” I said. “But you guys need to get going if you’re going to make the delivery on time.”
Noah bumped his hand on the fence next to where mine rested. Because he knew even the slightest touch would hurt me. Damn it. “See you tomorrow?”
“Yep.” I said it through gritted teeth but tried to sound cheerful.
He jogged around the trailer, and that was enough for me. I needed a drink. The lodge had a fully stocked bar, and even though it was a touch on the early side, I was going to make use of it.
Fuck. Even shifting my weight away from the fence sent searing pain down my legs and up my spine. Whatever that little piece of goddamn metal was doing today, it needed to stop.
The walk to the lodge from the stable took me ten minutes on a good day. It was nearly half an hour before I dragged myself up the porch steps and inside, sweating like I hadn’t worked out in a year, despite the cool weather. It would be great if someone could just hit me over the head until this little session of agony was over.
All I wanted was to do something. Go for a run. Work with one of the horses. Go to the gym. Anything. Frustration was the only fuel I had now—and it was a pretty shitty power source.
Daniel Clark and Harlan Young, also former SEAL teammates of mine, were sitting at the kitchen table, talking about something I was choosing not to care about at the moment. They both turned and looked at me. I felt and ignored it as I walked straight to the bar in the corner.
“That good a day, huh?” Harlan asked.
“Yup.”
Whiskey. That’s what I needed.
“How’s the pain?”
I glanced over my shoulder and instantly regretted it. The twisting motion was one of the worst. And yet, years after the injury, I still couldn’t seem to train myself out of just…moving like a human.
I downed the first two fingers of the alcohol then poured myself another. “It’s in the mind your own business range.”
Daniel chuckled, unoffended. “You know it’ll pass. You’ll be back at full speed before you know it.”
Making my way to one of the chairs near the fireplace, I sat, conscious of the fact that they were watching me way too closely. “I’m sure it will. I’ll just sit here being useless until it does.”
“Grant, it’s fine,” Daniel said.
No, it wasn’t. But I didn’t bother to argue.
Harlan stood and came over, leaning on the back of the couch. “Anything we can do to make it easier?”
“Go back in time five years and make sure I don’t get blown the hell up.”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Anything more along the lines of actually possible? Something we can do to help?”
Daniel had been our team leader in the SEALs—an excellent one. The man liked to be able to fix the problems at hand and was fantastic at planning a course of action that ended missions in success.
But I wasn’t a damned mission.
“Yeah, I get it. Everyone wants to fucking help. But it doesn’t change the fact that you all have to keep picking up my loose ends. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“We all need help sometimes, bro,” Harlan said quietly. “That doesn’t make you weak.”
He knew that statement intimately due to recent events. His fiancée got on the wrong side of a greedy son of a bitch and ended up nearly dead in an abandoned mine because of it. We’d had to pull them both out of it before it exploded.
“This is not the same. Nobody can pull me out of my own body in a stunning one-time rescue and make everything okay.”
“When was your last appointment with Rayne?” Daniel was scrolling through his iPad, no doubt multitasking ranch business with this discussion. The man’s brain never stopped. It was no wonder that we kept him in charge of everything here like he’d been in the SEALs.
I let my head fall back on the chair. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“A couple weeks ago.”
He looked up at me now. “And your physical specialist?”
I felt tightness in my chest, a fuse getting ready to burst. I needed to leave before I said anything stupid. These were my friends, and I knew their intentions were good. But I just…couldn’t right now. “I don’t need a mom, Daniel.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You want to be pissed? Fine, that’s your right. But if you’re not actually taking care of yourself, this isn’t going to get better, and you’re just going to end up in a spiral. That affects us all.”
I forced myself out of the chair and walked toward the door. The normal stride almost broke me out in a sweat, but there was no way I was going to show them how bad this hurt right now. “Fine. I’ll take care of it. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?” Harlan asked.
“Home.”
They didn’t stop me, which was good. I made my way carefully down the stairs to my truck and slid into the driver’s seat. I rested for a moment.
Shit.
I was going to need to apologize to them later.