Broken Hero

I’m nailing down a shingle when a familiar voice shouts from below.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Morris! Do you need a hand?”

I look down at Logan. “There are no wires up here. Nothing electrical at all.”

He shakes his head. “I know how to wield a damn hammer.”

Well then. I recognize the look of a man who needed something to do well enough. I saw it in the mirror most days.

“Grab some shingles and climb on up.”

Logan tosses his t-shirt next to mine and grabs a handful of nails. A minute later we’re working away in silence under the blazing sun. The shingles are hot under my hands, sweat beading along my neck and back. It feels good to be outside again-to work with my hands.

Logan’s movements are jerky at times, and the tension in his shoulders is clear. He lines up a nail but stops at the last second. “Fucking Whittaker Installations,” he says.

I snort. “You’ll hear no argument from me.”

“They don’t do electrics. That’s not their field. And yet…”

“Gavin Whittaker does it on the side. He’s not trained for it, but you know how it is.” I shrug. “People have known them forever.”

Logan shakes his head. “It’s not safe. And then he has the audacity to say to people that I’m unlicensed? Ass.”

“You’ve worked since you were what, sixteen?”

“Fourteen,” he mutters. “I know this shit like the back of my hand.”

I hand him a shingle. Logan was never the most talkative of the guys in my unit, but he had come to me with his troubles from the start. During our first posting together, we’d been at sea for nearly seven months straight and shared a tiny bunk bed. When they asked me if I had any requests for men I wanted under my command later, well… Logan was a given.

“You’ll get more work in this town. People will see the truth.”

“They better.”

I don’t know much about his childhood, but from what I know, he’s used to being on his own.

Well, not in Claremont he won’t. I’ll put the full force of the tired, battered, overused Morris name behind him.

“Gavin’s an ass, anyway.”

“He always was, I’m sure.”

“Have you heard from Larry recently?”

“Yeah. I heard he got married out west.”

“Fuck off!”

“I’m serious. With some girl he grew up with back in Oregon.”

“Shit.” I find it difficult to see the fun-loving guy I remember-who spent most of his leave hanging in bars, picking up women with that wide grin of his-settling down. “Good for him.”

Logan hands me another box of nails. “He always was a lucky bastard.”

I’m silent for a minute, thinking of his words. Lord knows the chance for happiness in this world is slim. If there is even a slight chance to attain it, you have to go for it.

“How’s Mandy?”

Logan brings the hammer down hard. “How’s Lucy?”

Well-played, brother. I line up another nail and strike it down in one smooth motion. We continue our work in silence, brothers in arms again beneath the blazing Texas sun.

When I woke up and Oliver was gone the next day, I wasn’t surprised. My aunt and uncle were already hard at work in the kitchen below and it made sense that he slipped out before. Imagine explaining that!

The only reminder that he’d ever been there at all was the masculine scent that clung to my sheets, and a pleasant, tingly soreness all through my body.

Oliver Morris. I’d slept with him, and I’d be damned if it wasn’t everything I’d fantasied about and more. I already looked forward to seeing him again.

But he wasn’t at the ranch when I arrived later.

He wasn’t there the next day, either.

And he didn’t text me.

He didn’t call.

When I asked Mandy if he was in his office, the third day after the fair, she said he was at a supplier meeting out of town. I could take a hint.

I thought I knew a lot about humiliation. It was the reason I’d left Dallas in the first place, but I just wished it didn’t hurt so damn much. It wasn’t just because the sex had been amazing, even though it had. Some of the things I had done and said-that he had done!-made me blush just to think about.

But it was the way he’d looked at me afterwards that haunted me most. I had thought, for a brief moment, that he would let me in. That I’d been granted a view of the unguarded Oliver. He’d held me as I slept, and I had let myself dream of a future where that could become a regular thing.

And then… nothing.

On the third day of avoidance, I was hurt.

On the fifth, I was pissed.

Thoughts of him refused to leave me. They stayed with me daily, the great letters spelling Morris taunting me when I biked past them up to the ranch. He was everywhere, even if he was nowhere to be found.

I hadn’t left Dallas for this. And even if he regretted what we had done, despite how hurtful hearing it would be, he should be able to tell me. I could accept that.

Even during my massage work-one of my favorite things to do-my mind refused to cooperate. It kept running through what happened, thinking of where I went wrong. Oliver’s attempts to avoid me were getting comical. We work together, for Christ sake.

I run my thumb over a painful knot in the client’s right rhomboid muscle.

What’s Oliver thinking, anyway? That we’ll just never meet again? I could text him, but I want to see his face when we talk.

The knot is moving, but it’s not coming undone. I apply more pressure.