Wounded Heart

By John Luciew

WOUNDED HEART is being hailed as the next THE FAULT IN OUR STARS!

Only, the fault in these two young lovers’ stars is a suffering soldier’s PTSD...

Jake Tyler is a wounded warrior with a terrible secret. He has returned home to Pennsylvania, looking to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Tessa Knight, a sheltered college freshman from Pittsburgh, is aching to begin hers.

They meet-cute amid the idyllic grandeur of central Pennsylvania's Old State University. And from the very beginning, one seems to heal the other's broken places. But it's a cruel, dangerous world and theirs is fragile fortress, so hard to protect.

To remain together, they'll have to survive the unexpected fall-out from their colliding worlds, which weren't meant to be shared.

Is love enough? Can a soldier injured so grievously in war ever learn to feel again?

Or are some wounds just too deep?

READ JOHN LUCIEW’S STUNNING NEW NOVEL OF HOPE, HONOR, LOVE AND LOSS.

ON SALE NOW AT A SPECIAL PRICE FOR A LIMITED TIME.

*This full-length e-book contains 62,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Luciew
• Release date: Jul 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311128379

John Luciew

BREAKING NEWS!! All five of my full-length mystery/thrillers are coming soon in unabridged audio form. ZERO TOLERANCE and KILL THE STORY are already out for 2013 from Audible.com. SECRETS OF THE DEAD is up for full sound-recording treatment next, followed by FATAL DEAD LINES and my newest mystery, LAST CASE. I hope you will check them out. Some serious voice talent has been brought to bear to turn my best ripped-from-the-headlines page-turners into a can't-stop-listening, white-knuckle audio mystery experiences. Now, a little more about me and my books: Journalist John Luciew is the author of numerous ripped-from-the-headlines fictional thrillers that mix politics, corporate power and pulse-pounding suspense, including: KILL THE STORY, ZERO TOLERANCE, SECRETS OF THE DEAD, FATAL DEAD LINES, CORPORATE CUNNING, and now, LAST CASE. His non-fiction titles include the true-crime account, SUSPECT/VICTIM, and the real-life medical thriller, "CATASTROPHIC." FROM THE AUTHOR: If Hollywood was ever going to make a movie of one of my books, KILL THE STORY would be the one. It has everything -- a high concept, a deepening mystery rooted in actual events and more off-beat but convincingly real characters than you can count. This is journalism as I saw it -- both from the outside looking in and the inside out. It says nearly everything I have to say about the state of media today -- all without slowing the non-stop action one little bit. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it. Lenny Holcomb, my first literary character, spoke to me in much the same way the dead people of his obituaries speak to him. But after my first book, FATAL DEAD LINES, I found out Lenny and the dead people from his obits had more to say. Much more. SECRETS OF THE DEAD, a specially updated sequel, completes Lenny Holcomb's intriguing saga, finally presenting his incredible story in full. I hope you enjoy it, discovering the many narrative arcs that bridge both books and come to a full and satisfying resolution by the final page. ZERO TOLERANCE Is probably my most unique and unconventional book -- a thriller set in the cloaked, cloistered world of juvenile justice. Namely, a youth reform camp set in the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pa. It also stands as my most researched novel to date. As a journalist, I spent years covering the Pennsylvania juvenile justice system at a time when the penalties and punishments for young offenders were being ratcheted up. All that authenticity is here -- along with a highly original plot that will have you guessing until the very last page. LAST CASE, my newest thriller, is set in 1978, just as acclaimed horror director George A. Romero is gearing up to shoot his zombie cult classic "Dawn of the Dead" in the Monroeville Mall, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was a bit too young back in 1978 to offer my able body as one of Romero's delightfully desiccated corpses in "Dawn of the Dead." But I will never, ever forget watching the Monroeville Mall - a place where I shopped for school clothes and cruised for girls - turned into a splatter-filled shopping fest for the undead. I guess you could say it's haunted me all these years. --jcl, Feb./2013

Book preview

Chapter 1

It snowed in State College the second week of November of my freshman year. The Old State campus, tucked in the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania, became a blindingly white winter wonderland. And we students were transformed into children again. That first weekend day, there were snowball fights and many snowmen and snowwomen built – anatomically correct, of course. One snowwoman had such a rack on her, she wore a pink bra. Triple D, no doubt.

But the flush of those early hours of child-like winter enjoyment soon dimmed into the Tundra-like reality of what winter here would actually mean. Namely, frigid walks from far-away East Halls to reach the main body of the campus and the downtown that lay beyond. The wind whipped. The temperatures lashed. And college students, wrapped like Eskimos, bowed their heads against the unkind elements.

The first day of class following the storm, it was as if I and my fellow students no longer saw each other amid the wonderland white-out. The elements had isolated us. There was no more time for casual conversation. There was no point in walking side-by-side with someone, either, as our mouths were covered with scarfs and our heads were bent down against the wind. It was every student for himself or herself. At least until the weather broke.

Maybe that’s what made me notice him, as my class of a couple of hundred disgorged from a lecture hall. The biting wind stung our faces as soon as we crossed the threshold to leave. But before I swung my scarf around my face and pulled my hat down low, I noticed him, there across the quad.

He had no hat, no gloves. His coat was zipped down low on his chest. And he wore a smile on his chiseled but cold-reddened face, as if oblivious to the biting chill that had cowered the rest of the campus. And his eyes – those emerald green eyes of his – gleamed with wonder, the simple joys of just being alive.

Those eyes of his shown like jewels amid the stark, winter-white landscape. And once I glimpsed their sparkle, I was powerless to escape their pull. As if commanded by a higher force, I was drawn to him, as he raised his grinning face and gleaming eyes to the towering, snow-adorned oaks that lined the lawn of Old Main like old, loyal soldiers protecting a general’s quarters.

I donned my hood and cinched my coat at my neck. But I didn’t bother wrapping the scarf over my face. I knew from that very moment that I must speak to this person. I needed to know what made him so oblivious to the weather – and therefore so different from the rest of the thousands of teeth-chattering students on campus.

As I walked toward him, he turned in a tight circle, gazing up at the towering trees’ snow-burdened limbs. Just then, a light snow began to fall in big, heavy flakes that wafted down on the wind. This completed the postcard-like perfection of the scene.

It felt as if I were inside a snow globe. There was the stately, old college building, that line of long-limbed oaks, the white cotton of the snow covering everything, and those big, fat snowflakes, lazily lofting downward, each in its own sweet time.

And there at the center of it all, was the smiling man in the half-opened, olive green coat, his arms outstretched to the gray heavens above, as if he had summoned it all.

It was a scene that I came to appreciate more and more the closer I drew to him. My eyes lifted from him to the trees, to Old Main, to the overcast sky flaking with white, as if confetti.

I followed this man’s line of sight and saw the world anew in that brief moment. But my attention – my fixation – kept being drawn back to him, to his face, and that sly, knowing smile of his. The sparkle in those eyes. His wide open arms, as if trying to hold the whole world.

What did he know that I didn’t? That the rest of us, who found the weather little more than an annoyance or inconvenience, did not?

He was far from the campus’s shoveled sidewalks, standing in about eight inches of snow, smack in the middle of Old Main’s large lawn. I followed his footprints in the deep, heavy snow. I trudged towards him, off the beaten path, but he didn’t seem to notice my approach. So when I got close enough, I spoke.

I did not choose my words very carefully, uttering the first thought that entered my mind. You see, I had grown accustomed to the sardonic, ironic, sarcastic and dis-interested dialect of college students. I should have known that this was not his language. I should have known many things back then. Things I know now, because he would teach me. Only, along with that precious knowledge would come other information. Information I would give anything to banish from my memory. Because sometimes in life, it’s what we don’t know that frees us, making us ready and allowing us to love -- fully, jealously, completely. With all of our hearts, minds, bodies and souls.

I believe that you get just one or two of these kinds of total, unknowing loves in your life. The kind that stands as a fortress against the world and all its harsh truths. The kind where any problem can be held bay by the sheer power of your togetherness. And where the misunderstanding of judgmental friends and doubting parents only intensifies the bond between the two of you. To the point where it seems as if you are the only true couple on the face of the Earth.

No one has loved like you, expect, perhaps, for those mythic loves that inspired classic books, unforgettable poems and indelible paintings, adorned with words and images so haunting, true and enduring it’s as if the language were plucked from the sky where it had always been written in the universe.

The very first time I stepped off the beaten path of that shoveled sidewalk and into the deep snow of Old Main’s lawn, following in this bemused and bewitching man’s footsteps in the snow, I felt it.

I felt as if he and I were the only ones. The only ones who saw the truth. The truth of life, of love, of happiness. In just that glimpse of him as I left that droning lecture on that dreary day, he had opened my eyes.

And I would not close them again. I would not go back to sleep. I would not sleepwalk through my life, as all those seemingly smart but zombie-like college students, who walked with their heads down all around us, continued to do.

I looked at him, gazing up. And then my eyes followed his to the un-seeable sky, which was shrouded in clouds, as was our own future.

Then, I spoke those ill-considered first words to the man I would come to love like no other – before or since.

You’re going to die, I said.

And without breaking his gaze or even altering that knowing grin on his handsome face, he answered, Yeah. So?

I mean, you’re going to catch pneumonia, I clarified. It’s freezing.

My eyes retreated back to earth, focusing on him.

I know, he said, his smile only widening, not wilting. Isn’t it great?

I didn’t know what to say to that. And before I could think of a response, he opened his mouth wide and stuck out his tongue. He proceeded to catch those fat snowflakes tumbling down, as a five-year-old might, on his tongue.

I looked around, glancing self-consciously back to those shoveled sidewalks, upon which the unseeing students schlepped along, as if we weren’t even there. No one noticed us, even as I felt embarrassment for this grown man, acting like a kid.

Got one! he cheered, after craning his neck to gulp up a flake. The delicate white snowflake melted and disappeared on his tongue like a communion wafer. And without looking to me, he called, Come on. You try.

I took a final glance at the blind students trudging to class, oblivious to us and indifferent to the world, and then I did not hesitate. I went to him. I went to him without reservation, as if this had been pre-ordained and written in the sky. The sky we could not see, but for the clouds.

Still looking up, he reached out for me and pulled me into him, my back to his front. I glanced uncertainly back at him, but his gaze was heavenward. He probably felt my uncertainty in the stiffness of my body. But his strong, confident hands settled so easily, so naturally, around my waist, pulling me close.

Lean your head back, he instructed.

I did, cautiously at first.

Way back, he added.

And then, letting go, I leaned back, my weight pressing into his strength, my head settling on his left shoulder. In that moment, I relaxed, and the rest of the world went away. It was only the two of us then. His arms tightened around my waist. My head pressed against his shoulder. And I felt completely secure in his arms. Yet, I didn’t even know his name.

Now open your mouth and stick out your tongue, he said.

For the first time, he glanced down, his cold-brightened face turning to me. I looked at him. There were snowflakes on his lashes, and they made his eyes sparkle all the more.

Something in the way he looked at me made me sense that he had known all the while that I would come to him. He knew that I would see him and watch him from across the quad. He knew that I would be drawn to him. And his knowledge wasn’t abstract. It was as if he knew me, specifically, by my name, by my face -- and by my soul.

Go ahead, he couched, watching me with bemused satisfaction. Open your mouth.

I gave him another curious look, then rested my head on his shoulder, turned my face to the sky and opened my mouth to the gently falling snowflakes above.

Come on, he urged. Your mouth can open wider than that. Go for it. It’s a big sky.

Again, without hesitation, I craned my neck way back, then opened my mouth like a lion yawning.

That’s it, he cheered. Now stick out your tongue.

I did so, without restraint.

Now that’s a landing zone, he said. Okay, ground control, guide one in.

Above, the falling, floating flakes streaked the gray sky, landing all around us. I lunged at a couple, but they wafted just out of reach. Then, a fat one floated straight down, settling ever so gently on my tongue in a touch of cold that immediately gave way to a spot of wet.

Touchdown, he said, his strong arms giving me a squeeze.

I felt sheer happiness and a sense of fully embracing humanity, nature and the world in ways that I hadn’t since I was a little girl. Nothing mattered then. Just us. Just those snowflakes. And that moment. A magical, unforgettable moment in which seconds could stretch to infinity.

Because what is time, really? It’s such a human invention. Because the world, along with our souls and the love we freely give to others, abides forever. At least, this is what I now believe.

This special man would teach me this and so many other lessons of life and love. And should life’s lows ever cause me to doubt his wise instruction, I need only to close my eyes, tilt my head back and stick out my tongue to the sky.

Then, as if by magic, I was back in that moment, tasting the cold, then wet, snowflake on my tongue.

Tasting it as if this were my communion with life, love and the unfathomable depths of human and spiritual intimacy.

Chapter 2

I was dizzy.

The snow fell on my face like cold, wet kisses from a slate gray sky that looked like a low, painted ceiling above us. I was cold. Yet this only enlivened my senses, making me feel even more alive, so aware of everything going on within each and every second.

My ears heard the creaking of the snow-burdened trees and the chirps of the winter birds perched high on the limbs. I was aware of each rustle of our jackets, and the rhythm of his breathing just beside my right ear. I could even feel the warmth of him on my right cheek. So much to take in. So much in every moment to notice and appreciate. But how many moments do we really fully tune into during our lives? Lives spent in worry about the future, regret over the past or idling away the present looking at a smartphone screen. All out of sheer boredom and the theater of the mind that blocks out the present, canceling our awareness of all that is around us and available in each and every moment of our lives.

If only we would simply open our minds, our hearts and our eyes to the everyday richness of the world.

It’s like you’re eating the world, isn’t it? he whispered, his breath so warm, so urgent on my cheek.

His words mixed perfectly with my thoughts. And I closed my eyes and nodded my agreement, wishing this feeling of waking to the world would never end.

I swear, I could hear the sound of each micro-weight snowflake landing ever so gently on my face, then dissolving into a speck of water the very moment it encountered my body heat. I could have stayed there all day. But this man, this interesting man, who zigged while the rest of the world zagged, had other ideas. And in that moment, I would have followed him anywhere, though I still didn’t know his name.

Let’s go get warm, he whispered. What do you say?

My eyes still closed against that gray sky of falling snow, I nodded but didn’t move to go. I felt his beard stubble nuzzle against my chilly cheek. His arms tightened around my waist. He didn’t want to let me go either. I liked that feeling. I liked it a lot.

You’re a snow angel, all right, he said into my ear. But I don’t want you to freeze. Let’s get coffee.

I opened my eyes and turned to him. His was an open, yet mysterious face that seemed weathered, somehow. Not so much by the years, though he appeared a bit older than the average underclassman. It was the mileage. Experience. Those things he had seen, done and endured.

I don’t even know your name, I said to him.

And yet here we are, embracing like lovers in the middle of campus on a wicked-cold, snowy day.

And yet, I repeated.

The name’s Jake, he said.

Tessa, I said.

He smiled. Tessa, he repeated the word, as if momentarily debating whether my name fit the soul that he already seemed to know.

I like it, he concluded.

Jake, I said, going through the same debate. Reminds me of an old movie I watched with my father. ‘Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.’

His kind, yet weary eyes wrinkled at the corners, as if not understanding one of the most famous movie quotes in all of film history, the closing line of Chinatown, with Jack Nicholson as private detective Jake Gittes. A cop utters those words to Jake just after his client and love interest is shot dead while racing away in her car.

What’s it supposed to mean? he asked.

I shrugged. It’s just something from a movie.

He remained perplexed.

Hmmm, he hummed. Maybe. Maybe not.

How about that coffee? I asked, an involuntary shiver shuddering my body at that precise moment.

But Jake was still distant, still far away from me and the snowy Old Main lawn. Then, all at once, he was back, eyes alert and gleaming again.

Coffee, he repeated. Right. Let’s do it.

He took my hand, as natural as anything. And we walked that way, hand in hand, toward downtown.

When we reached the main street, I moved to go in one direction, toward the fancy coffee shop, where all the students lazed with their lattes and laptops in stuffed chairs and upon couches, sometimes amid the gentle strumming of acoustic guitars. But Jake turned in the opposite direction, until we pulled against each other.

He turned to me. This way, he said.

Aren’t we getting coffee? I asked, jerking my head toward the fancy coffee shop down the street.

Yep, he said. Right up here. He nodded toward the next block.

I shrugged and followed. But I stopped short when he proceeded to enter the McDonald’s.

Here? I asked. It just wasn’t what I had imagined. Not even close, in fact.

He turned. Coffee’s just as good as the fancy place down the street. And it only costs a buck.

I was too cold to argue. I shrugged, and we entered.

Jake ordered us two large coffees, with cream, at the counter, then we walked to seats in the rear. The place was overrun with retirees – silver-haired men and women sharing the restaurant’s newspaper and debating the issues of the day. I was ready to turn back, figuring Jake wouldn’t want any part of this AARP convention when one of the seniors called out his name.

Hey, Jake, an old codger called. We about gave up on you today.

Like your schedule is so busy, Jake retorted. I want you guys to meet someone.

Jake gripped my hand and motioned me forward. I stepped before the gaggle of gaping senior citizens.

This is Tessa, Jake said. We need to warm up.

Came to the right place, said an older woman, standing up to free a table for two. Name’s Peggy, she said, extending a hand. I shook it.

And then everyone was introducing themselves to me. It was a torrent of outdated names like Margaret, Maggie and Wally – along with a collage of wrinkled faces that I wouldn’t remember if given a quiz. But everyone was so nice. And they all knew Jake. I mean, they really knew him. All about him. Like he had been coming there for months –