“I’m going to change,” she said, smiling. “I’ll come right down.” She slipped free from his hold and trotted to her porch. Rocco made his way to the bunkhouse. He tossed his hat on the table.
It hit him then, the answer to the question he’d asked himself earlier.
Nine months. He’d last been with his wife
He ripped at the buttons of his shirt, tearing it from him, checking his arms for the ghost flesh that he felt sticking to him as tears made hot tracks down his cheeks. He kicked his boots off and stripped out of his T-shirt, jeans, briefs, and socks, leaving them where they fell in the hallway to the bathroom. He flipped on the shower, feeling the burned flesh drying, shrinking, pulling at his skin. The smoke choking his lungs.
He lunged into the shower stall. Grabbing the soap, he fell to his knees, swiping the bar over his arms, building a thick, white lather to wash away the burned flesh. He reached for the washcloth and began scrubbing the dead skin from his arms, even as his mind gave in to the screams that had haunted him since that day.
Mandy took a quick shower, dried her hair, and pulled on a sexy babydoll. It was sheer white, with satin push- up cups and lacy briefs that matched. She’d bought it a couple of years earlier, but had never worn it-hadn’t even removed the tags until tonight. She started out of her bedroom, feeling very naked walking through the house in something so revealing. At the door, she paused. What if she stayed the night there? She couldn’t walk back to the house in the daylight dressed as she was.
She slipped into a pair of flip-flops, then grabbed her raincoat and shoved her arms through the sleeves as she hurried from her house down to the bunkhouse. She knocked on the door. No answer. She cracked it open and realized Rocco was taking a shower. She stepped inside, feeling suddenly very shy. She took her coat off and wandered into the bedroom that he used, wondering which was his bed. Neither of them looked as if they’d been used lately.
It seemed terribly bold waiting for him in one of the bedrooms. She went back into the small living room. One of the armchairs had been pushed into a corner. She sat in it. His shotgun and a box of shells were on the floor next to it. That seemed odd, but she didn’t give it much thought. Sitting still seemed to highlight her nervousness so she went to stand in the shadows by the kitchen. That was best. She felt better standing up.
Still he showered. From her vantage point, she could see the clothes he’d stripped out of on his way to the bathroom. His space was otherwise very tidy. She smiled, imagining his haste to get showered before she came over.
The water kept running. Like before, when he’d taken that long, freezing cold shower. Something wasn’t right. She ventured down the hall and knocked on the bathroom door. No answer.
“Rocco? I’m here.” No answer.
She poked her head around the door, expecting a room full of steam. It was cold, like a grave. Rocco was in the shower, washing himself with a red washcloth. She pulled back, realizing he hadn’t heard her. No sooner had she shut the door than it dawned on her that she hadn’t provided any colored linens. The towels and sheets she’d stocked the bunkhouse with were all white.
She hurried into the bathroom, and pushed open the sliding shower door. “Oh, my God. Rocco stop!” Cold water lashed across her back as she reached inside and grabbed hold of Rocco’s hand, stilling the white terrycloth that was red with blood.
Chapter 9
Rocco looked at her with unfocused eyes. Mandy wasn’t certain he saw her.
“I have to get it off.”
“Get what off?”
“The blood. The skin. I have to get it off.”
“Rocco, you’re making yourself bleed. Come out of the shower. Let me look at what you’ve done.” She kept the cloth pressed to his forearm as she helped him to his feet and out of the stall. Lowering the lid on the toilet, she had him sit there. Kneeling before him, she prayed he hadn’t slashed his wrist as she peeked beneath the cloth. He hadn’t. The blood was from an abrasion farther up his forearm.
His knees bounced nervously as his feet jiggled against the cold tile floor. His face was pale, his lips blue, his breathing uneven. She was afraid he was going into shock. She grabbed his free hand and wrapped it around the bloodied cloth, squeezing his grip to hold it tight. She pulled a couple of thick towels from the shelf and covered his shoulders and legs with them. She flipped on the hot water tap in the shower, thinking that would heat the little room quickly-unless he’d already emptied the hot water in the tank. Fortunately, he hadn’t. Steam began to fill the room.
Finally, she turned her attention back to him, easing his hand away, murmuring low, soothing words as she would to a spooked horse. “Okay. You’re okay. I’m going to take a look. Turn your head away. I don’t want you to see this.”
He looked at one arm, then the other. “I know it isn’t there.” She straightened the towel over his shoulders. His eyes were still dilated.
“What isn’t there?”
“The black flesh. It sticks to me. I see it. I can feel it. I can smell it. But I know it isn’t there.”
Mandy couldn’t make any sense of that at all, so she didn’t respond. She needed to see how bad his wound was before she could begin processing his strange words. She peeled the washcloth away. He’d rubbed his skin raw on both sides of his left forearm. It bled freely but wasn’t deep.
“It’s going to be fine, Rocco. It’s only a scratch. You’re going to be fine.”
“No, I’m not. I’m too goddamned fucked up to be fine.”
She brushed a thick, wet lock of hair from his face, then pulled his forehead down for a kiss and held him against her mouth. “I’m not lying. You’re going to be fine. Don’t get up. I’m going to grab some Neosporin spray and bandages. Close your eyes. Focus on breathing.”
She hurried to the medicine cabinet and took out the items she needed. She gave his scrapes a quick spritz of the Neosporin, opened a couple of packages of gauze pads, then covered them with a sticky wrap that would keep the whole works in place on his arm.
Still kneeling on the hard tiles, Mandy smiled up at him. “All done.” The room was feeling comfortably steamy. Her gorgeous babydoll clung to her like a second skin, limp and dull. “What happened here?”
He shrugged. “This is why they kicked me out of the Army.”
She let out a short huff of air. “Hallucinations have a funny way of freaking people out. Suppose you tell me why you’re having them?”
“If I fucking knew, I could get it to stop.”
She stroked a hand over his chest, beneath the edge of the towel. “Do you see the flesh now?”
He looked at himself. “No.”
“Do you smell it or feel it?”
“No.”
“That’s good. Neither do I.” She rubbed her hand up his uninjured arm and back down. “You know, I don’t scare very easily. Maybe you could trust my eyes, for now, just until you can trust your own again. If I see flesh sticking to you that isn’t yours, I’ll tell you. And unless I do, you can know that it really isn’t there, that you don’t need to get it off of you, okay?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t refuse either. Tears welled in his eyes. She felt them pool in her own eyes as she stroked her hands up and down his arms. “When did this start happening?”
He shrugged. “Landstuhl-the hospital in Germany. I was out of my head. I had to be restrained. I’d been speaking Pashto for so long, I forgot to speak English. No one understood me.”
“Were you injured in Afghanistan?”
He nodded. “Remember that explosion I told you about?”
It all clicked for her. “Ohhh. That makes sense.”
