Read Online To Have and to Hold by Serena Bell - Free Book Online Page A

lawn.
    The can was on a shelf at the back of the garage. He didn’t recognize the shelf, but he recognized his own craftsmanship, meaning he’d built the shelf sometime in the fog lost to amnesia.
Jesus
. It gave him the creeps, the way things could fall into that gulf.
    The mower itself was a different model than he remembered. With the old one, he’d yanked the cord and it had started. This one wouldn’t start.
    A slow ache crawled across his skull. He rested his head on the handle of the mower.
    His left hand clutched two rods together and his right reached for the cord again. The mower started up with a roar that he felt like relief.
    Dr. Stephens had told him there was more than one kind of memory. This kind was called…
procedural
. If you’d done something before, you could remember
how
to do it, even if you couldn’t actually remember ever having known how.
    Maybe that was why she was familiar under his hands in the dark, too.
    He mowed straight lines into the lawn, and even with his head pounding, the simple work gave him a sense of satisfaction.
    He finished the backyard, then tackled the front. His headache began to recede. Maybe it was the steady rhythm, or the mere fact of being productive.
    Or the not thinking. Not trying to remember the dark, ominous heart of his nightmare, not trying to ask himself what the hell he’d been doing last night, kissing her, and then, afterward, reveling in it, when he knew how much his rejection of her must hurt.
    He cut the engine.
    He would have to be very, very careful not to let that happen again, not even when sleep had made him muzzy and weak. Mindless lust, as he’d proved once, was the worst possible base on which to build anything—
    And
that
was assuming that he was in any position to build. When all he wanted to do was retreat into a corner, lick his wounds, and probe the lost corner of his psyche.
    “You missed a blade,” a voice said from the street.
    He looked up to see three men on fully loaded touring bikes, stopped in front of his house. It took him a moment to recognize the speaker.
    “Nate!”
    Nate Riordan had fought in his squad before an RPG had laid Nate out and killed his friend J.J. Nate had been retired a couple of years, living in the Seattle area with his wife, Alia, running a nonprofit.
    “What the
hell
are you doing here, man?” He let himself be pulled into a hug. Nate was easygoing, loyal, competent—the sort of man every soldier wanted at his back—and Hunter had missed him these last couple years.
    “We’re on this crazy-ass bike tour Jake dreamt up—trust a guy with only one leg to want to go harder core than the rest of us can stomach, right? He’s like, ‘We’re not fucking
wounded
warriors, we’re weekend warriors.’ ”
    “Two legs. Just happens one is meat and one is man-made.” The guy closest to Nate—who made Nate look small in comparison—tapped his prosthetic leg, then stuck out his hand and grinned at Hunter. “Hey, man. Jake Taylor.”
    Hunter shook it. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you. Knew a few guys at Walter Reed who were headed your way.” Jake ran a veterans’ retreat. Some guys weren’t ready for normal life right after getting out, and retreats like Jake’s made the transition easier. Nate had spent time at R&R—that was where he’d met his wife, actually.
    “Headed Alia’s way, then,” Nate said. “She’s filling in for him so he can kick our asses to hell and back.”
    “And Nate’s jealous because he knows what she can do with those hands,” the third guy said.
    “Shut the fuck up, Griff,” Nate said. “This is Griff. We let him come along to make us feel better about ourselves, and because someone has to bring up the rear.”
    Griff swatted Nate across the back of the head and the two scuffled good-naturedly before Griff stuck out his hand in greeting and Hunter shook it.
    “I’ve got some beers in the fridge,” Hunter said.
    “Wouldn’t go amiss.”