21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales Read Online Free Page B

21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales
Book: 21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales Read Online Free
Author: Heather Long
Tags: Marines, Romance
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school rebuild. Insurgents tossed a few grenades, brought down most of the unfinished building. Mike took shrapnel in the leg helping the workers get out. It was bad. They airlifted him to Germany, and he spent ten weeks getting pins in his leg to rebuild it. Then they sent him home.”
    Fear squeezing her heart, she waited. A muscle ticked in his jaw and they were gliding down the exit ramp. He took a left at the light and blended in with the evening traffic. Lights from the strip malls illuminated the truck, reflecting off his angry, tortured visage.
    “What happened, Luke?” She couldn’t stand the silence.
    “Three weeks after he got home, he shot Shari and then himself. The reports said he suffered from severe PTSD. Shari had spoken to a chaplain about his violent mood swings and nightmares, but the day before the chaplain’s scheduled visit, something in Mike snapped. He was a good man, he loved his wife. What happened to him overseas, the war, the injury, changed him and he didn’t get the support services he needed. I know he shot himself because he killed Shari, but it doesn’t change the fact that his little girl is now an orphan. She’s barely eleven and she has no one, no family. Mike’s Place can’t save everyone, but kids like Amy Nowiski shouldn’t have to bury their parents, and guys like Mike should have a place to go to get better while women like Shari have the support they need to be there for their spouse.”
    Her tears fell freely at his words. What a horrible story . “You should tell people Mike’s story,” she sniffled. Damn it, she’d always been a crier and the flow of damp grief stung her eyes. “You should tell them Shari’s story and Amy’s story. It’s terrible, but it makes it more real for those who can’t imagine what that’s like.”
    “Aww, hell, Becca, I didn’t mean to make you cry.” His grief stricken expression dissolved in self-recrimination. He shifted to put his left hand on the wheel, his right capturing hers and lifting it to his lips. The tender brush of a kiss across her knuckles damn near brought her to sobbing.
    “I can’t help it. You miss Mike. You’re pissed at yourself because Mike went home and you weren’t there to watch his back, to protect his family and save him from himself. But it’s not your fault.” The words hiccupped, but she didn’t care. He swung the truck into a dark parking lot and shifted into park before twisting in the seat.
    Between one breath and the next, he’d snapped off her seat belt and tugged her across the bench until she crushed up against him. It was a mistake to hold him like that, to let him hold her. But he needed her.
    Hell, I need him .
    She sobbed all over his nice dress shirt. Her arms slid around him, her hands going to his hair. Still cut high and tight, she missed the gentler waves where it would tumble in his eyes. He’d come back a bigger, harder man, but cocooned against him, the years slipped away.
    A rumble shook through him, a low laugh tickled her and the bubble of tension inside her popped. Laughing through tears was the best emotion and the more he laughed against her, the more laughter punctuated her tears.
    “Why are you laughing?” She chuckled, pulling back enough to look at him. But the circle of his arms trapped her close. His forehead drifted down to rest against hers, his eyes dark and unfathomable in the next to nothing light.
    “This is so not what I meant when I asked you to come with me. I never wanted you to cry.”
    She shrugged, no easy feat this close when it brushed her chest to his and her nipples stiffened. A lazy thread of desire unwound from the tension, zinging along half-forgotten nerve endings. Eleven years and his proximity still turned her on.
    Who am I kidding ? She’d loved this man her whole life. When he asked her out on a date the day of her sixteenth birthday party, she’d written in her diary that she’d been born to love him. Eleven years and heartbreak

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