Page 96 of Warrior's Walk
The guys place a large gift box on the table next to the book. I take the urn from him and place it beside the bouquet and the box. “Open it, babe.”
“What’s this?” Rhett asks, looking over the box curiously.
He lifts the lid and his eyes go wide. “This is what ya’ll were workin’ on? The super-secret project I wasn’t allowed to see?”
Brandt helps him pull it out of the box. “Yup. We all helped.”
“Each of us made a square,” Mandy adds.
The hand-knit afghan is a colorful hodgepodge of different stitch patterns and types of yarn, yet it all blends together perfectly, a lot like the Bitches.
“Thank you,” Rhett says gratefully, wrapping it around his shoulders.
My guy wears his heart on his sleeve, my total opposite. I couldn’t love him more.
“Warm up onthe treadmill before we get started.”
Rhett is dressed in black athletic shorts and a black T-shirt that says, ‘This is BS! Bitches With Stitches,’ in a circle around a ball of yarn. Straight from the BALLS gift shop. We have trained nonstop for this day.
I’m so fucking proud of you.
Rhett has been relentless in his pursuit of recovery. Swimming, running laps around the lake, hitting the gym almost daily. I’m sure he’s worked out a lot of his grief on these machines.
The shorts show off his scars, which have now faded to a dull pink. He’s a warrior, he’s fucking badass, and he’s mine.
As he loosens up, the Bitches crowd in. Their loud voices can be heard from down the hall, joking and bickering.
“Yo, Rhett. You gonna kick ass today?” McCormick asks.
“Maybe he’ll kick yours,” Jax snickers.
“Everyone wants to touch my ass,” McCormick grins.
“I’m good, thanks,” Brandt insists, shaking his head.
McCormick shoves him playfully. “Your loss.”
I bring the peanut gallery to a close with five words. “Let’s go, Rhett. It’s time.”
Rhett hops off the treadmill and joins me at the parallel bars. He cracks his knuckles, twisting his neck from side-to-side to work out the kinks.
“Listen up!” I say to the crowd. It’s not just the Bitches, but Margaret Anne, Brewer, and some of the other vets who regularly work out with Rhett. “This isn’t just any Warrior’s Walk, this isTHEWarrior’s Walk. This soldier is a fighter. I met him a little over a year ago, on the battlefield. It was one of the worst days of his life.”Aside from losing his mother, and the day they evicted him from Bragg.“And he braved it like a warrior. I almost lost him that day, but there was something special about him. I saw it immediately.”I looked into his eyes and fell hard for him. “And I vowed to do anything necessary to make sure he pulled through.”
Rhett has this dopey grin on his face that makes his dimples pop and I just want to kiss it off his lips.
“Weeks later, I showed up in his hospital room in Womack and told him he had two choices. He could either do nothing, stay where he was, and rot, or he could get off his ass, move here, and let BALLS put him back on the road to recovery.” I grin at him and wink. “I’m glad he made the right choice.”
The guys cheer and clap. “My BALLS saved me,” Nash laughs. “Can we put that on a shirt, Margaret Anne?”
Shaking my head, I grin and tell him, “Rhett, show us what you’ve got.”
He waits for the whistle before bracing his weight on his arms and using his hands to walk the length of the bars without letting his feet touch the ground. His upper body strength has improved greatly during his training and he traverses the ten feet fairly easily, but slightly winded.
“Next up, the mile. Can you beat your best time of 9.4 minutes?” He once told me his fastest time before his injurywas 6.3 minutes, and it was 17.8 when we started training this spring. He’s come a long way.
Rhett looks determined. “I’m gonna smoke that time.” He winks at me and hops on the treadmill.
He starts off quick almost as if he’s sprinting, trying to cover as much distance as he can in a short amount of time. His breathing is labored and besides the slapping of his sneakers hitting the treadmill, it’s the only sound in the room.