I nodded. She squeezed my shoulder affectionately, raised her coffee at Derrin as her way of saying goodbye and then she was gone.
“Come on,” Derrin said, stepping closer to me. “Let’s get you over there before someone else takes the table.” He put his arm around my waist so my own arm went around his shoulder. His skin was so taught, so warm, it was hard to hide the shiver that went through me. “Not a fan of crutches?” He asked as we hobbled between the tables.
I tried to ignore how close his mouth was to my face, the way his voice shot right through me and right between my legs. “No. Have you ever had to use them before?”
He nodded. “Yes. Broke my leg in Afghanistan. It’s why I was sent home. Tried to use them for about a day until I threw them out the hospital window. It was better to hop around on one foot than to knock over everything you came in contact with.”
I wanted to take that moment to ask him more about the war – something I was very curious about – but knew it wasn’t coffee shop kind of talk.
He eased me down to the seat and I was amazed I hadn’t spilled half my coffee during the maneuver. I was so frustrated being so helpless and awkward these days but I guess it wasn’t so bad when you had a man like him helping you.
“So,” he said, when he adjusted himself in his seat. He leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes staring warmly at mine.
“So,” I said right back. My chest fluttered with anxiety. “Tell me about the war.”
Ah, fuck. So much for “don’t mention the war.” Jesus, Alana, you’re a mess, I scolded myself.
To Derrin’s credit, although his brow lowered, making his eyes seem intense, he didn’t seem offended. “All right,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, how about how you broke your leg? Trading hospital stories might be fun.” But I regretted it the moment I said it. How could what I went through compare what he did? A hit and run, as traumatic, scary and damaging as it was, was nothing compared to honest to god war.
“It was silly, really. We were going down one of the roads – which are nothing more than faded tire tracks in the dirt – when a bomb went off.” I gasped and he went on, his voice monotonous. “It caught the front of our transport and flipped us. The driver died, so did another one of us. I broke my leg from the flip. We all broke something, everyone that survived.”
I felt like a hand had squeezed over my heart. Just the mention of a bomb – the very thing that killed my sister – was a sinister reminder of Violetta’s violent death.
“How could you say that was silly?” I whispered.
He exhaled sharply. “Because we should have known better. We should have seen it coming from a mile away. The road hadn’t been checked and were weren’t using due diligence.”
“Why not?”
“Because we were young kids. Because we’d seen so much, every day, that after a while you become desensitized. You stop caring. And you think you’re invincible. Until it happens to you.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” he said. “This was a long time ago. I use due diligence now.”
“But you’re no longer in the army.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not. But it doesn’t mean life isn’t waiting out there to get you unaware.”
I raised my brows and took a sip of my coffee while I mulled that over. He was sounding a lot like Luz. Perhaps they had more in common than they thought.
“So how old are you?” he asked, seeming to want to change the subject. I couldn’t blame him. I was sorry I brought it up to begin with.
“Twenty-four,” I told him. “Going on forty.”
He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
I shrugged. He may have brought up his battles but I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring up mine. The fastest way to scare a guy off is to tell him your brother is the leader of one of the most powerful drug cartels and aside from your twin sister, the rest of your family was murdered in related incidents. Violent, messy, disgusting incidents.
“I’ve always felt older, that’s all.”
“No boyfriend? No husband?”
I tilted my head and gave him a wry look. “Do you think I’d be out here with you if I had either of those?”
“I don’t know,” he said, leaning back in his chair. His chest muscles moved smoothly under his tank. “Maybe you’re in one of those open relationships. You never know with Mexicans.”
“Hey,” I warned him. “If I wasn’t so cripple, I’d reach over and smack you right now.”
“Good thing you’re a cripple then. You seem to be part wildcat.”
I made a claw scratch motion with my good hand. “You have no idea.”
That got a smirk out of him so I turned the tables.
“All right, hot shot,” I said to him, “what about you? Girlfriend? Wife?”
His lips twisted sourly and for a heart-stopping moment I was afraid he actually did have one or the other. But he said, “No, I don’t.”
Yet there was more to it. I quickly glanced at his hand and didn’t see a ring or even the tanline of one. I knew already he didn’t wear a wedding ring – it was usually one of the first things I noticed about a man – but I had to double check.
He caught me looking but still didn’t say anything.
“Ex-wife?” I asked.
He hesitated and by doing so was already telling the truth. I think he knew this because he looked down at the coffee in his hand and exhaled.
After a moment’s pause – which felt like eternity – he said, “Yes. I was married once.”
And it was quite apparent he didn’t want to talk about it. But like the blumbering, stubborn fool that I was, I pried further. “Are you divorced?”
There was a barely visible shake to his head. “No. She died.”
And once again, I was an idiot. This poor fucking man.
“Shit,” I swore. “I’m so sorry. How did she die?”
At that he looked up and stared me dead in the eye. “Car accident,” he said, completely emotionless. Somehow, maybe because the way he was staring at me was almost a challenge, like he was calling me out on lying about something, I knew it wasn’t the truth. But I guess it didn’t really matter. When someone was dead, they were dead.