Luke preferred eating at the island. The kitchen table was a stuffy relic from his childhood that his father insisted on keeping as the “moral foundation of the household.” His dad got worse as his mother’s health declined. When he was sixteen, he’d gotten in a fist fight at school and had to later sit at that ridiculous table with a black eye while his father ripped him a new asshole. [i]Sam’s going to run a business. What are you going to do, huh? Besides give me a goddamn stroke.[/i] Luke remembered laughing at him. [i]I’m getting as far away from here as I can, and I’m never coming back.[/i]

If he ever convinced Charlie to get rid of some of this shit, the table was going first.

The trouble with the island was that he’d pictured her sitting on it with her legs wrapped around his waist –  more than once. He blamed it on all the time they spent together in kitchen. Proximity. That was all.

The biscuits were slightly underdone, but it made no difference to Luke as he cut into his dinner. His habit of always eating like he never would again made it strikingly obvious that Charlie had barely even taken a bite. Her lack of an appetite critically concerned him, in addition to the fatigue she couldn’t hide. He didn’t address it because the only thing it would likely do was embarrass her. Luke would make her three meals a day for the next several months if that’s what it took.

“Me and Anna are friends.” Now that he was no longer moving, he was acutely aware of how terribly his new scarring itched under his shirt. The angry, red start of it was just visible over the tee’s collar. He pressed a palm to the side of his chest and took another bite of his dinner. “I don’t have a ‘thing’ for her, Charlie,” he teased gently. “I sneak her notes in math class and we make out at the lockers after school, but that’s it.” 

She had a point. He could very well ask Anna to dinner. The likelihood he was going to pass a physical and psych evaluation for another deployment was low. Plus he wasn’t sure how long it was going to take to collect the rubble and get the building blocks of the farm standing up again. He didn’t know what the goal was. When he found Charlie on the back porch, smiling for the hell of it? When the house felt like a home again? When she laughed and it didn’t feel forced?

He conceded. “I will. Later. Not now. I want to…” Luke gestured at the sliding door behind them and the farm beyond that with his fork. “You know.” [i]Fix this.[/i]

The movement caused another sharp pain in his ribs. Maybe it was his ribs. All of it ached, so he couldn’t tell exactly where the problem was. Everything from his shoulder to the middle of his chest was the equivalent of hamburger meat stitched back together. A muscle tightening in his neck was the only indicator that something was wrong. He ignored it. Charlie didn’t need to know that he couldn’t lift anything above his head. She didn’t need to see all the medication in his green duffel that he needed to fall asleep at night. Another reason why he wasn’t drinking as much.  He refused to be another thing she had to worry about it. He could do this. Just a few more weeks and he’d be fine. “I need a game plan before I can – ”

Luke dropped his fork and gripped the side of the island. "Jesus fuck,” he hissed. His small window of ignoring it was gone. He pushed his stool back and put more pressure to the left side of his chest with his palm, taking a moment to breathe and focus on what was wrong. The weight of his hand helped. Jake picked his head off the floor, ears up, a small whine in his throat.

He swallowed and swore again.

“It’s from all the moving and travelling. It’s healing. It seems worse than it is. I tried to leave when they told me about Sam, and I made everything worse and had to get another surgery. I bet he was watching, fucking laughing at me.” He was talking in circular nonsense now – not to Charlie, but to himself. Luke grit his teeth as the pain spread. The stitches had only just barely healed, but the muscle needed much more time.

Dark eyes begged when he looked up at her, voice hoarse. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me. Please. I promise.”