Heart of a Soldier. Belle Calhoune

The news left him feeling unsteady on his feet. It felt like a kick in the gut. He felt so selfish for thinking it, but there it was, settled firmly around his heart. Why hadn’t she told him? His hands were trembling like a leaf. He felt such incredible disappointment in her decision to withhold something so important from him. As a person who’d been caught in a web of lies ever since he was born, he was a big believer in the truth. And Holly had seemed so open and forthright in her letters. Had he been mistaken? Everything he’d dreamed of building with Holly had crashed and burned in a single instant. And he felt nauseous. Sick with loss and grief and dashed hopes. And he also felt devastated for her. Sweet, loyal Holly, who’d written to him over weeks and months without fail. She’d sent him care packages filled with treats and books and stuffed animals. Holly had kept him in her prayers, and in return, he’d asked God to keep her out of harm’s way. Wonderful, brave Holly, who’d no doubt been through so much pain and tragedy in her young life. Yet in her letters she’d always projected such positivity, like a strong ray of sunshine beaming down on him in a war-torn, unstable land.

      Still, it didn’t sit well with him that she hadn’t come clean to him. It made him question every single thing he knew about her. He’d traveled all this way to meet her, all in the hopes of starting a life with her. In his mind, he’d begun to think of her in a forever type of way. The ring, the white picket fence, the kids, promises of forever. Once again, he’d been a prize fool. Counting chickens, his mother called it, and she’d been warning him against doing so ever since he was knee high to a grasshopper.

      And there was something else. Holly being in a wheelchair brought him back to a place and time where he himself had been disabled. A roadside bomb in Afghanistan had blown the Humvee he was driving to smithereens. Two soldiers in his unit had been killed, with another losing his sight. The injuries he’d sustained due to the IED had been life threatening. In the beginning, he’d been told he might never walk again. But, over weeks and months he’d crawled his way out of the dark, black hole and gotten his life back. And to prove a point, he’d volunteered for another tour, just to show he hadn’t been beaten. He was still standing.

      “I’m sorry you came all the way here only to be disappointed.”

      Holly’s melodic voice dragged him out of the past, so that his feet were solidly planted in the here and now. And even though he wanted to run from this situation, he had no choice but to face it. “No, it’s not about that. It’s just—” Just what? How could he explain it to Holly without hurting her or making her feel more ashamed of the information she’d withheld? He needed to be sensitive to her feelings, but at the same time, he couldn’t sugarcoat things. He had to be honest with himself as well as Holly. So far, things were not playing out as he’d imagined.

      “I suppose you had a preconceived notion about me, right? Cute. Blond. Blue-eyed. Standing on two feet.” She breathed out a tiny huff of air. “Wheelchairs don’t exactly come to mind when you’re painting a picture in your head of someone, do they?”

      He let out a ragged sigh, then raked his fingers through his military cut. “I don’t know what to say, what to think.” He rocked back on his boots, then looked away from her intense scrutiny. She seemed to be studying him, and it made him feel slightly uncomfortable. With a groan he turned back toward her. “I’m being honest here. If I’d known from the beginning, I’m sure I wouldn’t be feeling this way.” He shook his head, trying to rid his mind of all the jumbled thoughts. “Okay, that’s not true. Or maybe it is. I don’t know how I would feel, Holly. I just feel a little caught off guard. You weren’t straight with me. Don’t you think I deserved to know? It makes me wonder if you were ever planning to come clean with me.” Although it pained him a little to press the point, he felt he deserved an explanation.

      Holly nodded, and he saw a soft sheen glimmering in her eyes. Those incredible blue eyes he’d been dreaming about gazing into were awash in tears. For the first time he noticed how pretty she was, and if it hadn’t been for the wheelchair, he might have recognized her right off. It had thrown him, since he’d never been given a single hint about her condition. And he hated to admit it, but he’d looked right through her. The wheelchair had served as a barrier to the truth.

      He’d been under the belief that there wasn’t a single thing about Holly he didn’t know. She was his champion. His Texas rose. The woman he’d been so wrapped up in for the past twelve months. But when she’d greeted him at the door, the wheelchair had served as a buffer between them, and it made him feel a little small to realize that he hadn’t even really given her more than a cursory glance.

      “Of course you had a right to know, especially when we started discussing the future and meeting one another in person. And I did plan to meet you...on my own terms, when I was ready to tell you everything.” Tears slid down her face. Her chin trembled and quivered. Despite it all, she held her head up high. Her countenance said a lot about her. She was strong. She’d had to be, he reckoned. Being paralyzed at the tender age of eighteen didn’t leave one a lot of choices, did it? He had a hunch Holly had dug in deep and persevered, relying on her faith and family to sustain her.

      “Believe it or not, I’m pretty courageous in most other aspects of my life. For some reason, I just didn’t have the guts to tell you the truth. I kept promising myself I would with each and every letter, but as time moved on, it became more and more difficult to do so.”

      Suddenly, the tables had turned. Just like that, his anger fizzled. Instead of feeling upset with her, he was now feeling badly for Holly. It was confusing, since he was the one who’d been deceived. He was the one who had no idea where he went from here. With no job, four months of rent paid up to Doc Sampson and nothing going the way he’d imagined, his future was seriously in question. All he knew was that he wanted to comfort this woman he’d grown to care about.

      “Hey, don’t cry, Holly. My mama always told me a pretty girl should never cry.” He got down on his haunches beside her chair, then leaned over and brushed her tears away with his thumb.

      “At least you think I’m pretty,” she joked, the corners of her mouth creasing in a slight smile. Her dry comment made him want to grin back at her, even though the circumstances didn’t exactly call for it. Wheelchair or no wheelchair, she still had withheld vital information from him. She hadn’t been half as transparent as she’d seemed on paper.

      Holly was far more than pretty, he realized. Beautiful, even. He started to tell her so, but he stopped, determined not to go down that road. Not today when so many things were up in the air between them. Not when his stomach was tangled up in knots and he couldn’t seem to think past this very moment. The intense feeling holding him in its grip was easily recognizable. It was fear. Because even though he was a decorated soldier who had served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, the thought of Holly being in a wheelchair sent anxiety racing through him.

      And even though he still cared about her, he wasn’t certain he saw a future for the two of them. Call it crazy, but ever since Holly had come into his life, dreams of them together forever filled his head at night as he drifted off to slumber. Although he felt a stab of guilt for even thinking it, he couldn’t deny the doubts coursing through him. He’d just made it home from a combat zone after seeing his fellow soldiers and civilians broken and bloodied and lifeless. He wasn’t sure he was up to any more challenges. Did knowing he might not be able to handle this make him a bad person?

       Dear Lord, please give me some clarity. Holly is such a sweet, warm person, but I don’t want to plunge headlong into a situation I can’t emotionally handle. And I’m still really confused about where we go from here. A huge curveball was thrown at me when I wasn’t expecting it. Life has shown me that everything happens for a reason, yet I can’t fathom why I’m here. And I can’t wrap my head around Holly being a paraplegic. It reminds me so much of everything I left behind in Afghanistan. Am I strong enough to get past this deception?

      “What are you going to do now?” She looked at him sorrowfully, her expression full of regret and a hundred different emotions he didn’t want to analyze.

      Dylan shrugged as reality set in. He really didn’t have anyplace to go. With his mother having recently moved to New Mexico