It Had To Be You Read Online Free PDF

supper
time to talk about it?”
    Beck swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
Mostly to block out the image that ambushed him: his son cowering
in the foyer closet while Beck had a flashback to Afghanistan and
broke a mirror, the hall coat tree and his right hand. It was hard
for him now to be around the boy. Was it because he didn’t trust
himself?
    “ End of messages.”
    Instead of returning the calls, Beck left the
kitchen, bypassed the large living room, with nothing out of place,
and took the stairs to his bedroom. He headed for the shower and
yanked on the faucet as hot as he could stand it. Water always
seemed to calm him, maybe because there was so little in the
desert.
    Afterward, he lay down naked on the lake-size
bed, which you could bounce a quarter on, and stared at the ceiling
fan. Sometimes, he’d give his right arm if he could fall asleep
easily.
    One shrink had told him, “Think of something
pleasant.”
    Huh. What was pleasant in his life? Linc. The
group at the firehouse. The people who’d risked hiring him. For
some reason, his mind went to seeing Lela Allen this morning. She’d
looked cute in her pink scrubs, hair coming out of a braid and a
little fatigue showing in those pretty, brown eyes. He kept that
image in his head and soon his eyes closed.
    o0o
    Twenty-three-year-old Nick DeBlasio stared
out the window of his new home, counting to one hundred. Sometimes,
occupying his brain was the only thing that got him through the
hour. He used to say, One day at a time, but the length that
he could stay sane had shrunk over the six months since he’d come
back from theater. Images of war had bombarded him from day one
when he arrived on American soil, whether he was awake or asleep,
rested or exhausted, stoned or sober. He and his buddy, Billy,
who’d died in that fucking hellhole, used to get high before they
went to theater, and Nick had begun smoking joints again when he
first got home. He hadn’t been stoned since he’d been at the
Veteran’s Outreach Shelter, and he wasn’t sure which was worse, the
hazy drug-induced state turning into the bitter disappointment of
reality and even physical sickness, or facing his problems head on.
In any case, he’d chosen to come to the shelter after living at his
house for only a week got to be too much for him.
    “ Nick, hi.”
    For a minute, he pretended the voice came
from Amy, his wife, even though he’d screamed at her the last time
he saw her that he didn’t need her fucking help and to leave him the hell alone. Problem was, he did need her help,
and a lot of others’. Too bad he couldn’t force himself to accept
it.
    Turning, he found one of those others behind him. Lela Allen, R.N. Dressed simple in blue jeans and a
pretty pink top, she brought sunlight into the room with her. “How
are you today?” she asked.
    “‘ Bout the same.” One promise he’d made
to himself was that he’d be honest here. But not whiny.
    “ Bad night?”
    He nodded. Little Afghan boys with missing
limbs and hopeless eyes had paraded through his unconscious all
night long.
    “ I’m sorry.”
    “ Were you on the graveyard shift?” he
asked, noticing the smudges under her eyes. “You look
tired.”
    “ Afraid so.” She nodded to the clinic
set up for her on her twice-a-week volunteer days. She did routine
checkups, helped plan the menus in a health-conscious way, dealt
with minor things like skin rashes or referred the men to doctors.
And Nick’s chore (all the residents had some) was to help in this
clinic. He’d get things ready and stay with her throughout the
morning because the staff here thought she shouldn’t be alone with
the men.
    He didn’t mind the task. He couldn’t work yet
because he wasn’t rehabilitated and still went to physical therapy.
Not that he had much of a future anyway. A gimp couldn’t get a job
in the blue-collar world and businesses wouldn’t hire him because
his face looked like it had gone through a meat grinder.