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  These sorts of injuries were difficult to recover from under the best of circumstances, but to lose something that had been purpose and life for so many years, to know that all the plans that had been made were gone...something like that could break even the strongest of men.

  That, I'd learned far too young.

  My heart twisted painfully as the memories came forward.

  I was fifteen when my older brother, Logan, enlisted in the army. Right out of high school, he was gone. Proud of his country. Proud to fight. He'd done well in boot camp and had told us that his instructors thought he had promise. He'd wanted to go career, move up through the ranks to command his own unit, to keep the country safe.

  He'd written letters to me about that, about how he'd felt called to serve and protect, to make the country safe for me and for our family. For the high school girlfriend he hoped to marry in the near future.

  His first tour had come up almost immediately, and he hadn't been kept stateside. He hadn't even been sent somewhere safe like Korea or one of our other outposts. No, he'd been sent right in the thick of things.

  And he'd loved it.

  My bossy, often over-bearing, way-too-protective big brother had thrived under the pressure. He'd been great at his job, receiving accolades from his commanding officers and respect from his fellow soldiers.

  Four months later, his convoy was taking medical supplies to a village that had recently been decimated by some local warlord. His truck had been in the lead and he'd been riding shotgun. They'd hit a roadside bomb and that had been it.

  Four members of his unit died that day. One ended up with permanent brain damage. And Logan lost his right leg from the knee down.

  Before he'd even come back to the States, his girlfriend had written him a Dear John letter.

  I'd gone to her house, slapped her, and said a few choice words. And I'd ended up with a restraining order. It'd been worth it.

  They'd called him a hero when he'd come home, but all he'd been able to see was the future he'd lost. It had been that, as much as the loss of his leg, that had changed him from my brother to some stranger.

  X was a hero.

  Granted, he hadn't done any of that stuff overseas, but he'd still saved the lives of two people. He'd put himself in danger to protect others. The newspapers were all calling for medals and recognition. They'd been parked outside for two days now, asking everyone who came and went if they knew anything about X. Of course, none of us answered, but that hadn't stopped them from trying.

  In fact, just last night, I'd caught a reporter dressed in scrubs trying to sneak into X's room to get a picture. Since then, the hospital had brought in a handful of extra security to watch the burn unit doors and check credentials thoroughly and often. The army was keeping fairly quiet about it, issuing a single statement to acknowledge that X was indeed a member of the military, but not adding anything else. Local law enforcement officials were being equally close-mouthed, refusing to say anything about the two people X had rescued or what had caused the fire in the first place.

  In true paparazzi fashion, some of the less reputable news sources – and I used that term loosely – had taken to coming up with their own reasons for the silence. After reading part of one article that was claiming X had blown up the building himself to try to take out some sort of terrorist cell, I decided to ignore the media completely.

  If X woke up, there'd be some answers. But I honestly didn't care about the whole story. I cared about him waking up. About him living.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and let out a slow breath. When he woke up. It couldn't be if. He had to survive.

  A noise made me open my eyes again and I immediately jumped to my feet. X's eyes were open, panic flooding them.

  “It's okay, X,” I said quickly as I moved to his side. I hit the nurse call button and then grabbed his uninjured hand. “It's okay. You're in the hospital. Relax. It's okay.”

  His fingers tightened around mine and some of the panic receded. I could tell that he wanted to talk, wanted to ask questions, so I kept talking, trying to think of answers to what he might want to know.

  “You were in an accident and had some smoke inhalation. Your throat and lungs were singed enough that we put in a tube to help you breathe.”

  His pulse began to slow.

  “My name's Nori Prinz. I'm a nurse here at the medical center. You're still in San Antonio. This is the burn unit.”

  The door opened and Dr. Fellner followed one of the other nurses in.

  “It's okay,” I repeated, squeezing his hand. “We're going to take good care of you here.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Xavier

  Her name was Nori.

  The brunette I remembered from before. That was her name.

  She'd told me her last name, but I couldn't remember it.

  I focused on trying to remember. It was the only way I could make it from minute to minute. Something to focus on, to try to keep my mind off the excruciating pain tearing through me.

  Prinz.

  That was it.

  She said her name was Nori Prinz. She was a nurse. And she'd known to call me X, not Xavier.

  I'd met a couple other nurses in the last few hours since I'd been awake. I didn't remember anything about them other than blurs of faces, all armed with meds and charts.

  My doctor was Catlin Fellner. Dr. Fellner. Early fifties. Smart. Didn't pull any punches.

  I wasn't sure if I should be glad for that or not.

  She told me that she wanted to keep the tube in at least until tomorrow morning, just to be on the safe side. I'd agreed, but not because I wanted to. My brain was scrambled, but not so much that I didn't know that I wasn't really in a place to make any real decisions. So I'd trusted her judgment.

  Then she'd told me why half my body felt like it was on fire.

  Because it had been.

  She'd listed off my injuries in a matter-of-fact manner, but she hadn't been cold about it, just professional. She'd told me of all the things I had to look forward to over the course of the next few months. What it would mean for the rest of my future.

  Without the army.

  She hadn't needed to tell me that part. I wasn't stupid. I knew these were career-ending injuries.

  After all I'd been through, there were two things that had saved my life and the army had been one of them. I didn't know what I was going to do if I couldn't be a soldier.

  Except I wasn't even sure I needed to think that far ahead.

  The doctor was optimistic about my chances for survival, but there was caution in her voice. I wasn't medically trained, but I knew enough to know that it was far too early to tell for sure that I was going to make it.

  And I wasn't sure I wanted to.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to push the darkness away.

  Not the darkness that came with drug-induced sleep, but rather a different kind. The kind I'd experienced a few times before in my life, but not in a long time. I didn't want to go back there.

  I had to think of something else.

  Focus.

  One detail, then the next. That was the way to do it.

  Fuck, my arm hurt.

  No, I wasn’t a detail to focus on, no matter how true it was. Because if I thought about how much it hurt, then I'd start thinking about what was wrong with it and what that meant for my future...

  Home.

  Philadelphia, not the base. I'd been at different bases and stationed all over the world. But none of those were ever home.

  Even with all the bad memories Philadelphia held, it was familiar. It was home.

  I tried picturing the different parts of it in my mind.

  The graffitied buildings and rusty basketball hoops of my childhood.

  The cobbled streets and small shops of Germantown.

  When I'd been there last, I'd walked for hours, imprinting the images in my mind.

  The various shapes and kinds of fish marking the sidew
alk and buildings in Fishtown.

  The rainbow flags that showed the transition into another neighborhood.

  The trains that ran from one end of the city to the other.

  Local theater. Historical monuments. The Liberty Bell. The famous steps that everyone wanted to run.

  Hell, I'd run them more than once.

  I wondered if I'd ever be able to run them again. If my lungs would heal enough to let me run like that again.

  And there I was again, back to the pain.

  I couldn't think about Zed or my men, or the base, because then I'd be thinking about my life without any of those things.

  If I didn't have the army, what did I have?

  The girl from the other night? What was her name? Naomi? Nancy? Nance. Right. She'd been fun, but that wasn't a relationship.

  I didn't have someone to sit by my bed. No family. I was sure Zed would come by as soon as he was able, but it wasn't like he had some nine-to-five job. He'd come when he could, but that was only until he was shipped out again. And we were friends, but he wasn't family. I trusted him to have my back, but I wasn't his responsibility.

  I didn't want to be anyone's responsibility.

  Fuck it all!

  How the hell had it come to this? I'd survived a hell of a lot, and this was how it was going to end?

  But maybe this was how it was supposed to end.

  The fragments of my dreams and memories from when I was first injured came to me, reminded me of what I'd been thinking during that foggy haze of time. That I deserved this.

  Mea culpa.

  Was this just karma's way of fucking me over like I deserved?

  I didn't doubt it.

  A flash of movement caught the corner of my eye and I tried to turn my head to see, but the stupid tube prevented it. It was unnerving, not being able to see, not being able to protect myself.

  But I didn't need to protect myself.

  No one could hurt me here.

  Movement again, coming closer this time. I waited for it to come into my line of sight.

  For a moment, I hoped it was her, the brunette. Nori.

  She'd sat next to me. Held my hand. I'd heard the doctor talking to her when I first woke up and it sounded like she'd been here with me quite a bit.

  I wondered why.

  I didn't know her.

  I was sure I didn't.

  I wasn't one of those men who went through women so fast and so loose that he couldn't even remember their faces. And I knew I'd remember hers. It wasn't just because she was pretty either. I remembered how she'd kept telling me to hold on, kept encouraging me.

  The fact that she'd done that for a complete stranger intrigued me.

  Hell, she was pretty much the only thing that intrigued me at the moment.

  Then the person who'd come into the room stepped close enough that I could see who it was. My heart twisted, suddenly too full of emotions.

  Tall, muscular despite his age. Dark brown hair streaked with white. Emerald eyes that looked sadder than they had in a long time.

  “Oh, kid. What'd you do now?” The old man shook his head as he pulled up a chair.

  Father Doron O'Toole. The closest thing to family I had.

  My throat felt like it was tightening around the tube, and my eyes stung. I appreciated the fact that he was here, but I didn't want him to see me like this. Weak. Helpless.

  Destroyed.

  I motioned with my right hand. We'd been pretty much sticking with the 'blink once for yes, twice for no' line of communication, but this wasn't something I wanted to play a guessing game with. I'd had one thought repeating over and over in my head since I'd woken up. I'd tried to push it away, tried to think of something else, but now that he was here, I needed to tell him.

  After a moment, he saw what I was doing and found a pad of paper and a pen. He set it on my bed and put the pen in my hand. It took a moment before my fingers could grip it correctly, and even then, I knew my handwriting was shit. It didn't matter though, as long as it was legible.

  When I held it up for Father O'Toole to read, I knew I'd managed at least that much.

  Four words.

  Four shaky words.

  I want to die.

  Continues in Dom X Vol. 2.

  Dom X - Volume Two

  Dom X

  Chapter One

  Xavier

  I wanted out.

  I glared at the wall. The same fucking wall I'd been glaring at for the past three fucking months. It was still an off-white or gray shade, the sort of mediocre color that was supposed to be soothing or some shit like that. It had started to drive me nuts by the second week, and I was pretty sure it'd only taken that long because I was too out of my mind on pain meds to notice until April.

  I'd spent my birthday staring at the damn wall. Not that I'd wanted to celebrate. Or even had anything to celebrate. One year shy of thirty and I was done. Done with everything.

  Zed came to talk to me right before he and the rest of the unit shipped out in the middle of April. For the first time since I'd met him, he wasn’t smiling. I knew I should've reassured him. Made some joke about him being the pretty one now. Everyone knew that's what people in my position were supposed to do. Make the person who came to see them feel better about the situation.

  I knew he felt guilty about what happened too. He told me as much. Somehow, he thought that if he'd been hanging out with me instead of hooking up with the yoga instructor or whatever the hell she was, I wouldn't have been in this bed. I knew that wasn't the case, and I didn't blame him. I told him that much, but I knew he wanted more from me.

  I hadn't been able to give it to him. I didn't have anything left to give. It was taking everything I had just to make it from one minute to the next.

  I was relieved when I heard the unit was moving out. I considered Zed my friend, but I didn't want to see him. I didn't know if I'd ever want to see him – or anyone else – ever again. I put up with the people here looking at me because it was their job, and I knew they'd seen worse. None of them looked at me the way everyone else did. Or the way I knew everyone else would. The way people looked at every disabled vet or any victim of a horrible accident. That combination of pity and revulsion, followed by shame at their disgust.

  At least, the first lieutenant who'd come to see me last month had been able to keep his face blank with military perfection. He'd expressed his sympathy and then started to discuss my options.

  What fucking options?

  See if I could transition into some sort of desk job? Become a poster boy for the military: protecting us at home as well as overseas? Recruiting? I didn't blame the army for what happened to me. Hell, it was my own damn fault that I’d ran into that burning building. I had no one to blame but myself.

  I still loved my country and my military. If someone asked me if I'd sign up again, knowing where it had led me, I'd answer yes without hesitating.

  But I didn't want to be a fucking recruiter.

  I was a soldier.

  From the moment I signed those papers, it was all I ever wanted to do, all I ever planned on doing. The army had given me a sense of purpose, a direction. They were the closest thing I had to a family for a decade.

  But I was no good to them anymore.

  I was no good to anyone.

  I started to turn my head, feeling the now-familiar tug of the scar tissue tightening around my cheek and jaw. It wasn't pleasant, but it also wasn't painful anymore. Not really.

  Maybe I'd just gotten used to the pain.

  I supposed that was part of it. Oh, it was still there, though not as bad as it had been when I first woke up, but present enough to still need pain relief every once in a while. I'd had them wean me off the drugs as quickly as possible, but there were times it was too much, particularly at night. I'd never slept well, and all of this made matters worse. Much worse. Those were the times I wanted meds.

  Well, as much as I wanted anything anyway.

  I heard the
sound of footsteps slowing slightly and knew someone would be entering my room in a few seconds. The faintest hint of interest sparked inside me at the thought that it should be time for Nori's usual shift.

  I finished turning my head, waiting to see the dark-haired nurse who was one of the few people I didn't mind seeing. The other nurses and doctors were all fine, but there was something about Nori that somehow managed to find a crack in the darkness I'd pulled around me. The darkness that wasn't a cloud, but rather a fucking shell.

  From the moment I'd heard how badly I'd been injured and what it meant for my future, I'd lost interest in pretty much everything. Except her. I didn't know how or why, but that damn girl got to me more than I wanted her to.

  It wasn't Nori, and I settled back under the black.

  Dr. Catlin Fellner had been my primary doctor in the burn unit, and she was the one to give me the bad news. In her early fifties, she was a plain woman, but something about her demanded attention and respect. She was a little under five and a half feet tall, but I had a feeling she could've given some of our biggest drill sergeants a run for their money.

  “I looked over all of your charts and progress reports,” she began in her matter-of-fact way. “No infections. The dressings on your arm, as well as a couple places on your chest and back, still need to be applied.”

  I tuned her out, knowing the rest of what she'd say. Nothing much had changed over the past few days. There'd been some concern in the beginning about how the skin on my arm and my broken bones would hinder one or the other from healing. I didn't know all of the medical jargon or explanations for any of it, but I did know it hurt like hell and the mess of scar tissue I had left wasn't pretty. It hadn't been my arm, however, that had kept me here this long. That award went to my lungs since I needed regular breathing treatments for longer than they'd expected.