Page 38 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)

NASH

Mid-conversation, I fell asleep on him. I hadn’t meant to, but the warmth of the condo and the weird comfort of the conversation got the better of me. He let me and even covered me in a blanket. For a fraction of a moment, it felt like he cared.

When I finally did wake up, Lincoln was up and cooking in the kitchen while wearing nothing more than a pair of black workout pants.

One of the ground rules should’ve been that the man wasn’t allowed to walk around dressed like that.

Since when did being a lawyer require being sculpted?

At my peak in the Army, I looked like that.

It was unreasonable that he did. The fucking tease.

“Morning,” he greeted with a smile. He was too fucking cheery for so early in the morning, and, considering how he laid out food for two on the table, it was clear what he had in mind for our day.

“You’re about to tell me we have to talk more, aren’t you?” I demanded as I sat down at the table. He offered a tight smile. At least we’d gotten the personal shit out of the way. “Fuck.”

Instead of replying right away, he slid a plate of food in front of me. One slice of toast and one scrambled egg. I made a face.

“I know it’s not drizzled in cum, but it’s a good start to building up your ability to eat again,” Lincoln said.

“But what if I want it drizzled in cum?” I demanded, being purposefully difficult. I didn’t need him to take care of me.

“Ground rule number two: no cum-drizzled food.”

“You take the fun out of everything, Melvin.”

“Ground rule number three: never say my middle name.”

“Ground rule number two should be circumstantial at best,” I retorted instead.

We’d agreed that sex was on the table for the two of us, which in and of itself was an oddball thing to throw out there.

But we both decided, why the hell not? We were about to be roommates.

Why couldn’t we benefit from it in that way too?

“Agree to rule number three and we’ll make an addendum to rule number two,” Lincoln replied. The stare he pinned on me screamed with all his attempts to be in control. It only made me want to push harder and see how quickly I could break him of that.

Later, maybe.

No, definitely later.

“Addendum sounds like a real official word there, Linc. I might need a lawyer for this,” I told him. “Don’t want to get fucked.”

“Oh, you’ll get fucked all right,” he muttered as he walked away. The innuendo wasn’t lost on me and made me chuckle.

While he disappeared into his room, I poked at the breakfast in front of me.

It was clear he hadn’t used any seasoning in the eggs, and the toast was plain.

Everything was bland and meant to be easy to digest. What he was trying to do wasn’t lost on me.

While I should’ve taken it like the kind gesture it was, it felt an awful lot like he was trying to fix me.

There’s nothing worth fixing, the voice said, painfully loud.

It was right. It usually was.

Still, I ate the smallest of bites, taking my time chewing it. I was instantly reminded of why I didn’t like eggs. The consistency, the taste, all of it. It was gross. I forced myself to swallow it.

“How is it?” Lincoln asked when he returned. He was dressed in jeans and a tshirt.

“I hate eggs,” I said as I pushed the plate away. After a second thought, I grabbed the toast. Bread, I could eat.

“Good to know,” he replied. I tracked his movements as he made a cup of coffee. “So, we need to keep talking.”

“I hate talking.”

“I know you do, but we need to go over other things about each other.”

“Like what?” Hadn’t I bared my soul enough for this man? What more did he need to know?

“Like,” Lincoln hummed, sitting down across from me, “what do your tattoos mean? That’d be something I would know.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and glanced down at my hands.

Both my arms were covered in sleeves made of forests and geometric designs.

My left arm led up into a compass on my chest. I hadn’t put a hell of a lot of thought into any of them.

“I like nature. I gave the tattoo artist free rein when it came to creating them.”

“And the letters on your neck? They’re very specific letters.”

Fuck. I dropped the toast on the table, my lips pressing together tightly. That.

I didn’t want to tell him about the line of letters down the side of my neck and what they meant. They were scars I carried impossibly deep.

But he was right. They were also things he’d probably know.

“Did anyone ever tell you what led to me coming home?” I asked. “That stupid fucking welcome home parade.”

That day had been miserable. I hadn’t wanted shit like that. It was too much.

“No. Truthfully, I didn’t want to be there,” Lincoln admitted. At least he was honest. “I had studying to do.”

“William, Eli, Carter, Guillermo, Lucas, Duncan, James, Emery, Micah, and Ray,” I told him quietly, reciting the names. They were ones I’d never forget, ones that would haunt me forever. “They were the men I served with on my last tour.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, clearly a mile ahead of my explanation. Still, I made myself finish because that’s what he was waiting for.

“There’s a lot I can’t tell you… can’t tell anyone,” I continued. “It was a classified mission. We were ambushed. I’m the only one who survived.”

Not for lack of them trying. My injuries had damn near killed me. Sometimes, I wished they had.

“That’s…” His voice trailed off, proof of exactly why I never told people about this. No one knew how to handle the conversation, and I couldn’t fault them for that. Most people weren’t equipped or ready to handle conversations surrounding military sacrifice. “Are you okay… after all of… that?”

“No, I’m not fucking okay,” I snapped. Fuck, I didn’t even know what okay was.

You should’ve died with them, the voice said.

I knew that too.

“I’m sorry,” Lincoln said once more. An uncomfortable silence settled between us, neither of us knowing what to say. Or maybe he didn’t know what to say.

Me? I just stewed and stared out the window with my heart raging in my chest. I focused on steadying my breathing as I felt the walls vibrate around me. The tattoo on my neck burned painfully.

W.E.C.G.L.D.J.E.M.R.

William, Eli, Carter, Guillermo, Lucas, Duncan, James, Emery, Micah, and Ray.

While I didn’t care about a lot, I had cared about them.

I resisted the urge to touch the ink in an attempt to soothe the pain.

I knew it was all in my head. A tattoo haunted by the memory of my fallen friends.

Why had I survived and they hadn’t? I had a list a mile long of why they should’ve survived.

Wives. Kids. Family. Big dreams. The list went on and on. I couldn’t compare to them.

And yet here I was… the last one left. I didn’t deserve it.

“What do I call you?” I asked, desperate to stop my spiraling thoughts, desperate to anchor myself to the sound of his voice.

“Hm?” My gaze flicked in his direction quickly enough to catch the way he arched a brow. “What do you mean?

“You know,” I replied, and he shook his head. “Couples call each other things, so what do I call you?”

“Lincoln is just fine.”

“That’s your name.”

“I’m aware.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I walk around calling you by your first name—”

“Rule number three,” he snapped before I could call him Melvin. I smirked. “And what am I calling you?”

“Most people call me Lucky,” I said. Okay, no one had called me Lucky in a long fucking time because I didn’t talk to people.

People don’t want to talk to you, the voice countered.

Touché. It worked in my favor that no one wanted to. It made it easy not to deal with the world and its continuous chaos.

“Is that where the four-leaf clover comes from?” Lincoln asked. I glanced down to where the simple symbol was etched inside my right wrist. It was all faded lines compared to the rest of my ink.

“It was my first tattoo,” I told him. I didn’t tell him that my mom had the same tattoo or that I paid a guy to give me, a minor, a tattoo to remember her after I was stuck in Pine Creek.

That and the guitar were all I had left of her.

When she died, I got a backpack from the state while they tried to figure out where to put me.

I spent a week with a crappy fucking foster family.

I fought like hell to keep her guitar. The fact that my dad agreed to take me in was the only reason I got to.

Everything else… I wasn’t sure what happened to the rest of our shit. Years of memories just… gone.

The system was so goddamn broken.

Maybe it’s just you that’s broken, the voice replied.

“I’d call you something other than Lincoln,” I announced, using Lincoln as a distraction from the dark spiral. “What do you want to be called?”

“Lincoln.”

“All right, champ, I’ll figure out something.”

“No.” The annoyance that dripped from his voice made me smirk. Yeah, it’d be fun to poke his buttons.

“We’ll find something,” I assured him. After all, wasn’t that the point of this whole thing? We had to look real to the outside world.

“Finish eating,” Lincoln ordered. “And then we’re going shopping.”

“The fuck we are,” I retorted. There was no way in hell I was letting this man take me shopping.

“Let me put this in the most delicate way possible,” he began, setting his fork down as he gave me the full brunt of his stare. The intensity in those pretty blues didn’t bode well for what was coming next. “You look like a homeless man.”

“I am a homeless man,” I pointed out.

“But you’re not anymore. You live here,” he said. Fuck. “And, considering how I dress, you can’t dress how you dress.”

I didn’t like that concept at all.

“Rule number one,” I growled.

“I’m not changing you. I’m changing your clothes.”

“That’s changing me.”

“No, that’s making sure you have clean clothes,” he replied.

“I don’t care what you wear, but you need new clothes, Nash.

After, we’re stopping by a friend’s office to get a contract notarized, one that legally makes this your place of residence and expedites our ability to change your address with the postal system.

It’ll also let us take you to the DMV to update your ID. ”

Fuck, I hated this.

“You need a legal ID to get married and to get insurance,” he continued as he read my expression.

“You’re just going all in on this, aren’t you?” I asked. Stupid man with all the details figured out.

“I strive to be efficient and thorough when I set a goal,” Lincoln said. Of course he did. The overachiever. “Now, eat something. We have a long day ahead of us.”