Finesse: A Radioactive Tale of Love, #2

By Nikki Prince

Indelible scars and memories chase us like ghosts.

He was supposed to be coming home. But not like this, never like this. I'd always dreamed that one day Quinton Grayson would be mine. Now he's back and we're both dealing with paralyzing guilt. Does wanting him make sense when I have the responsibility to take care of my nephew? Quinton is holding back; dare I find out why?

When you're on the sand you're supposed to leave everything there. Unfortunately, I've brought it back to Arlington Heights and Lyric Scott's doorstep. My body reveals all the scars for everyone to see, but the ones on my soul are graver. Will she even look my way? What can I possibly offer her other than to keep the promise I made to her brother, my best friend who I couldn't bring back?

We're a ready-made family now, how can I walk away? But how can I allow her to deal with the demons at my door?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nikki Prince
• Release date: Feb 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215336137

Nikki Prince

Nikki Prince is a mother of two, who's always had a dream to write. Her passion lies in raising her children as readers, gaming, cooking, reading, and her writing. Her belief is that love is love and that everyone should see themselves mirrored in the pages of a book. She is also exploring other avenues of fiction (horror and speculative fiction).

Book preview

Chapter 1

Kabul, Afghanistan

Quinton

Hell, I’m dying.

Shouts drown out the words in my head as I’m loaded on the helicopter. Pain pierces through the chaotic noises and sears through my broken body. My mouth opens to speak but nothing comes out. The pain makes my head swim. Nothing makes sense except the sensations pummeling me. Cold. Hot. Sweaty. Nauseous. Throbbing. Stabbing. Searing.

Stay awake. Stay awake.

Breathing is hard. Almost impossible. But if I continue my chant to the rhythm of the chopper blades, I can take small breaths between each word. My heart feels as if it is in my throat and threatening to explode. It’s like a bad sonnet reverberating through my numb brain. A few more chants and I’m tired. So fucking tired. My eyes drift close. A voice breaks through my reverie. I don’t recognize it and turn my head in the direction of the voice. It’s the medic who’s working on me. I’m almost twenty-seven and I’m going to be another statistic.

Sergeant Grayson, stay with us.

I open my eyes again and stare at him as he hovers above me.

Fuck! Why won’t this bastard let me sleep?

Then it hits me. There was an explosion. Where is my unit? Did the others make it out safely? Where is Steven Scott? Donovan Colburn, Miguel Cervantes, Johnathan Watson, and George Cheval? We’d all been surveilling the perimeter when an IED was triggered. I wasn’t sure who’d tripped it. All I remember was being thrown back and hearing Steven screaming and then the smell of blood and smoke filling my nostrils. Chaos.

The metallic taste spread like a raging fire in my mouth and the smell of burnt flesh, telling me I was hurt as well. The next thing I heard was shooting and more inhuman cries of pain and terror. A trap. We’d stepped into a fucking trap. What that boiled down to was that I’d let my soldiers walk into a trap. Pain spread like a wildfire through my body. That didn’t matter though, what mattered was the five guys I was in charge of and their wellbeing.

It was then that I remember cradling Steven in my arms after the bomb. He’d looked pretty bad, worse than I did. I had told him to keep talking to me. That help would be coming and soon. I kept him talking as long as I could. He told me to make sure to take care of his family that he wasn’t going to be coming back. I’d told him that he was wrong, he’d be coming back and he’d take care of them on his own. It had seemed like forever before the rhythmic beating of the choppers were heard over the screams and cries for help. I passed out quite a few times, I remember that because I kept coming to. The one thing I did was to keep holding on to Steven and vaguely remember them removing him from my arms when the Medevac arrived.

Why are they working on me and not him? Where is he? My mind starts drifting again and I find it easier to zone out.

Wake up, Sergeant.

Fuck. Doesn’t he understand that sleeping would feel so much better than everything else?

The medic is still trying to get me to keep my eyes open. My eyes are so heavy, I don’t want to stay awake. I want to fall into a blissful state where the pain disappeared and everything was back to normal. I just want to drift along on the tide of pain into the oblivion. I try to do just that and then another voice interrupts my drifting. Maybe, just maybe if I had something to hold on to, to focus on.

Sergeant Grayson, you have been through the worst of it. We need you to focus so that what we’re doing isn’t in vain.

Focus.

I suppose those words were supposed to comfort me. But they aren’t comforting. I can’t remember anything past holding Steven in my arms as I radioed in that we needed help. My mouth feels so dry. I need to ask them what happened to Steven. I have to know what happened to him. He was my best friend since high school. I’d gone into the military and then a year later he followed me in. We swore to each other we’d come home together. We swore.

He has to be okay. The other option isn’t acceptable. He has to be okay and we’ll go home together. Perhaps a little beat up, but we’ll go home together all the same.

We’d made promises, he and I. So many promises of things we would do, places we’d go. What we’d teach his son. Steven wanted to make enough to take care of his son and to help his sister Lyric out with the bookstore she had been dreaming about since she was a child. The one thing Steven didn’t have to ask me was to help out Lyric or his son. It was a given that I’d do it. Lyric was the girl I’d left back home that I wanted and felt I couldn’t have.

One of those promises involved me making sure that we both made it home. The other was a promise to take care of his son and sister if I couldn’t keep the first promise. We wanted to open our own business. We decided that we’d work together once we got out of the military. A sandwich shop that sold the biggest and best subs. Steven and I were lovers of subs, salads, soups, and hoagies and had always said we’d open our own shop and put the other shops to shame. We said it would be next to his sister Lyric’s bookstore and coffee shop so we could get the lunch crowd that flowed out from her place.

He’d wanted a stable job for after the military, something that he could be just as proud of. We’d both wanted something where we could get our hands dirty and would involve our love for food. I told him only if we made sure to have different drinks to go with them. Dreams. Such lofty dreams. Something to give his son. Something to keep us busy after active duty. A dream that I wanted him to remember so that he’d be coming home.

It was supposed to be something that kept me grounded. Stateside, all I have left is an older aunt who’d decided it was her job to take care of me when I was younger. I sent money home to her for her care as she was staying at Sunnyside with a bevy of nursing staff and doctors who could care for her. My father and mother had moved to the Philippines when I graduated from high school. They’d been stationed there before I’d been born and had fallen in love with the island and the people. They’d always said they’d go back when they got the chance.

Although they came home every two years, it’s been a while since I’ve seen them because I’d gotten deployed. The last time I saw them, they’d been so proud of me for making the choice to protect our country. Knowing that my parents were happy with my choice in a way helped me to get through the fact that we hadn’t been able to meet up as much. It’s amazing how busy you can get in life and how war makes you appreciate the smaller things.

Steven’s family had become mine as well. He had to be fine to come back home with me. To do everything that we had planned and more. Of course, we’d also been practical and had told each other that if one of us died over here we’d still do the shop and we’d talk to each other’s family and give them the letters we’d written. He carried mine in the jacket pocket of his BDUs and I carried his in mine. We also both carried a note for each other detailing what we wanted the other to do if one of us didn’t make it back. The pact we made said we couldn’t open our letter without delivering the other letter to our family members. No. He is fine and I won’t have to give the letter to Lyric.

It’s hard to swallow. My mouth feels so dry. Licking my lips, I push out words for the medical personnel to hear. I have to find out where the others are. I have to know that Steven is okay and that I won’t have to go home and tell Lyric that I failed to bring him home. I’d talked to her once on the phone a few months ago when Steven had called and she asked me to make sure we both landed on American soil together the next time she saw us.

Cor... cor... cor... I stop in frustration. I can’t get my mouth to finish the word Corporal. So, I say the next best and easiest thing.

My unit. Where?

Sergeant, we need you to stay focused so that we can get you stabilized.

Need... need to know. Coughing racks my body so hard that I taste blood and groan.

Stop him from getting all riled up! The order is barked out, but I can’t tell who said it. Suddenly, there is a face peering down into mine.

All of your men are here. Now, Sergeant, do as you’re told so that we can take care of you.

For some reason, his words don’t ring true. However, as a good soldier, I do as I’m told. I stop talking, though my mind is far from lucid. I’m weary and wanting to give in to the swirling chasm of the black hole that is filling my head. Maybe I wasn’t remembering the situation correctly. Just maybe, that blast and hit to the back of my head had me remembering shit wrong. Just maybe, Steven and the others were fine. He wasn’t called Felix for nothing. It was always said that he had nine lives and always bounced back no matter what he was hit with. Steven Scott was going to land on his feet just as he did every other time in his life when something went wonky. This would be no different, right?

Right.

I’m drifting again, I feel it. It’s like my brain is shutting down and refusing to think. The issue is, is that I want to think. I want to know where my unit is. I want to know that we’ll all be okay. It’s like being in water that is quickly turning into quicksand and I’m sinking. Sinking slowly into an abyss of complete agony, the pull is so strong. I need rest. I need to just close my eyes for a second and then everything will be back to normal.

No matter what the person who keeps telling me to not fall asleep says. It has to happen. This was a bad dream, a dream that if I went to sleep, I could break free from. I feel it. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I have to close my eyes and keep them closed. The quicksand is tugging me down and fogging up my brain.

Hurry! We’re losing him!

Losing who? Am I actually dying? No matter how much I’m in pain, I didn’t think it was me they were talking about. The urgency came from another part of the helicopter. Turning my head toward a sound other than those working on me, I finally see where they’d taken Scott. He was next to me as the medics worked furiously on him. For a moment, hope spread through me.

He’s alive! Thank God, he’s alive!

The medics moved at a furious pace as they worked on Steven. I remember that my friend had received the brunt of the bomb. All I can see is one boot-covered foot. There is no other boot in sight. He’d, if anything, had lost one of his legs. The amount of time that it took them to get to us and the blood that had been everywhere proved that there was no turning back from this. Please, don’t take him from me. Tears fill my eyes and I cannot take the pain any longer and decide that it is time to just let go.

The last thing I hear is Code Blue as I’m swallowed into obscurity.

Chapter 2

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. ~ Tecumseh

Lyric

M a’am, you should sit down. You look like you’re about to fall.

The voice is too kind. Much too kind for the dark pain that I feel drowning me and taking me under. As the service member reaches out to steady me, I move away as if he will burn me and sit down hard in the chair in the living room of the house I shared with Steven. I take a deep breath to get my nerves under control. Physically, I feel ill; mentally, I feel close to breaking.

The shaking of my hands is proof that my body is going into overload. I want... no, I need to cry. I need to scream out at God for taking my brother from his son. A man who was doing what he thought was right for his son and country. The letters I had been holding happily in my hands not even fifteen minutes before flutter into my lap.

Steven.

Gone?

No. No. No fucking way. This is some horrible joke.

I stare down at the letters in my lap. His bold script on the envelope causing my heart to tighten painfully within my chest. A letter for me and a letter for his son as he’d always done since leaving for Afghanistan, fifteen months before. He’d come home after six months and swore that when it was all said and done, he’d have the means to take care of his son and help keep them solvent.

Breathing is hard. Living is hard. Steven was the only one I had left in this world other than his son Stevie. My brother had been the one I would bounce ideas off of through our back and forth letters. Tears flood my eyes as I try to comprehend what I’m being told. This has to be some cruel joke. Although the crisp dress uniforms that the service member and the chaplain are wearing begged to differ. All I can think about was the last time I saw Steven and he’d said he’d be coming home before I knew it and we’d work on the plans that we’d made.

Lie. He is coming home alright. In a body bag and coffin.

I’d been mad that he’d joined. I told him that we didn’t need the money. Steven being who he was had argued back, stating he loved his country and joining was the only way he could prove it. He’d also wanted to be able to take care of his son with a job in the military.

His son.

Oh, Lord help me, what am I going to tell his son? I’d just received two letters from my brother a few hours before the knock on the door. A letter for me and a letter for his son. Something that he’d always done since deploying. This cannot be real. One of the letters falls to the floor and I scramble to my knees in an undignified manner to catch the letter but I miss and it drops silently to the ground. The floodgate of tears finally falls as a wave of queasiness washes over me, brought on by the deep sadness I feel.

He’d had so much he wanted to do and now that was gone. In a blink of an eye, he was taken from his son and from this world as if his life had not meant a thing. He was supposed to be coming back this next month. At least, that is what his letter said. Not coming back in a box, not at twenty-six. Another thought hits me. Steven was never far from Quinton if he could help it. What had happened to Quinton? Is he dead too? I know the two in front of me won’t be able to tell me. One way or another, I have to find out for myself. Although I’m not sure how I’m going to perform that feat when I can’t even get my ass up off the floor. I know I look ridiculous, but I don’t give a flying fuck. I’m sure they’ve seen and heard worse.

Ma’am...

I look up at the outstretched hand. No, I don’t want to take the hand. I really should get up on my own steam and yet, I don’t want to get up at all. If I don’t take it, I can just stay right here on the floor and get swallowed up in the darkness and the ache. Roiling pain deep within my chest cutting off my breath makes it hard for me to think beyond it. This is a dream, an awful, awful nightmare. What will I do if they’re both gone? What will I do if Quinton is gone as well? The pain of that thought makes a sob escape. A numbness comes over me and I try to wish the day