Chapter 24
Reese is curled against me, her head resting on my chest and one arm draped across my ribs like she’s holding me in place in her sleep.
Her breathing is slow and even, a soft rise and fall that should pull me under with her, but it doesn’t.
My eyes stay fixed on the ceiling of the tent, watching the shadows shift as the lantern outside flickers low.
This isn’t what the desert is supposed to smell like. It’s supposed to reek of sweat, diesel, and gun oil. Yet, my nostrils are flooded with the sweet scent of vanilla. Of her. Closing my eyes, I almost feel like I’m somewhere else.
Outside, I can hear the low hum of conversation—Jagger’s easy laugh, Gunnar’s quiet grunt of response.
Damon’s voice murmurs something about a patrol route.
It’s nothing unusual for a mission, but the normalcy of it feels alien.
Because I can’t stop thinking about the woman in my arms and all the years I spent convincing myself I’d never hold her again.
She shifts slightly, her thigh brushing against mine, and warmth seeps into every place I’d thought had gone cold.
I tighten my arm around her, splaying my hand against her back and wishing the thin cotton of my T-shirt wasn’t keeping me from touching her creamy skin.
She sighs softly, almost a moan, and something in my chest twists so tight it’s hard to breathe.
“I was going to marry you,” I whisper to myself as she sleeps. Maybe that’s for the best. I don’t think I could handle seeing her eyes if she had heard that—wide, shining, and full of the kind of I don’t know if I have anymore. The memory slips in before I can stop it.
The heat is brutal, leaving the air drier than usual.
It’s thick and heavy, making every inhale feel like breathing through sand.
I squint against the sun as I take advantage of the rare day off, making my way through the small crowd downtown.
It’s my last chance to make this trip before we head home in a couple of weeks. Until I get to see Reese.
She sent me a photo last week: my gorgeous girl trying on her cap and gown. Her smile was so bright, I could almost feel her warmth through the screen of my laptop.
Underneath it was a short message: “Don’t you dare miss this. You promised.”
I did. I promised I’d be back from this deployment in time to watch her graduate. I wouldn’t miss watching her walk across the stage at NYU for anything.
A few kilometers outside the base, I duck into a little shop, the kind of building that looks out of place amid the dust and barbed wire.
Air conditioning rumbles inside, and the glass counters gleam under the fluorescent lights.
Behind them stands a wiry Afghan man in a suit far too warm for this heat.
He opens the display for me, pulling out a few trays for me to look at.
It doesn’t take me long, because the perfect ring finds me the second it hits the glass counter.
It’s not traditional, not even a diamond.
The princess-cut emerald is the color of Reese’s eyes, and it couldn’t be any more perfect. It’s different, but so is she.
“For someone special?” the jeweler asks with a smile, setting it in a small velvet box.
“The only special someone.”
Tucking the box into my pocket, I see the life I wanted. Reese finishing college. The two of us buying a little house wherever she finds a job. Anywhere, as long as it is far from sand, blood, and ghosts. It’s not just the life I want, it’s the life I want with her.
Just a couple more weeks, and I’ll never have to choose between the job and her again.
I blink up at the canvas roof, feeling the weight of the years pressing against my chest. That ring never made it onto her finger, because a few days later, my world split open.
Mattis got hit by the IED blast on our final mission.
I can still hear the explosion and feel the ground shake beneath us.
But more than anything, I can taste the copper tang in the air as his blood fills the Humvee.
He was my brother long before he was my tech genius back home, and nearly losing him…
I thought that would be the worst thing we saw that night.
But it wasn’t. Not even close.
We walked in on Abby, our twenty-three-year-old support lead, being brutally assaulted in our tent. I can still feel her pained eyes as she silently begged Jagger and me to save her.
Even that wasn’t the worst.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to ward off the places my thoughts are drifting to. But as sleep takes me, my brain doesn’t listen. It never does.
Under the moonlight, I pace by the Humvee, my boots kicking up sand with every step. We are kilometers from base. From anything. Abby sits in the rear passenger seat, staring up at me through her swollen eyelid, her feet dangling out the side of the SUV.
“Are you sure you want to be here for this?”
“If you’re doing this, we’re all doing this,” she counters, her eyes flitting over Damon, Gunnar, and Jagger standing not too far behind me.
The three of them standing over Robinson, Garcia, Jackson, Harris, Wright, Flores, and Baker as they finish digging their graves, literally.
These men thought they could take what they wanted without paying a price, but they’re quickly learning it’s a debt they can’t afford.
“Okay.” I nod, giving a brotherly squeeze of her knee.
The knife in my hand is heavy, but I wield it without hesitation.
I take the first man fast, pressing the knife to his skin and hearing the squelch when it gives way beneath my blade.
Plunging deep, I cut Harris from navel to sternum.
His body falls onto the harsh desert ground, life spilling from him and staining the sand beneath him a deep crimson.
His cohorts tremble beside him. Some watch in horror, others too scared to look up, and one prays to a God whose religion he apparently only adheres to when it relates to men.
Harris gets off easy, bleeding out in minutes.
The others aren’t so lucky. Their screams go unheard into the void as the moon crosses the night sky, as we use every tactic we know to draw information from the enemy.
Only, they aren’t the enemy, and we already know everything we need to.
This is about punishment. Vengeance. Penance for their crimes.
And God help me, everything about it feels right.
By the time the sun rises, our fatigues are no longer just stained with Mattis.
They are saturated with the evidence of what we’ve done.
The feeling of justice is fleeting. When I look at Abby, I’m still filled with rage.
It didn’t end when they stopped breathing.
It crawled inside me and took hold, readying to spill death on my life like I spilled blood in this desert.
The darkness follows me home, to Reese. And it steals the one thing I really wanted… A life with her as my wife.
“Chris…” A soft voice, barely more than a whisper, cuts through the darkness. The vividness of my dream fades slowly, but my fists are clenched so tightly my palms ache. “Chris, wake up…” My name trembles over her lips. “You’re talking in your sleep.”
Her hand touches my cheek, tentatively, shaking a little. My eyes snap open, and the tent comes back into focus, faint morning light bleeding in at the seams and Reese’s worried face hovering inches above mine.
For a second, I can’t move. The aftershocks of the nightmare still grip my body, my heart hammering hard enough I feel it under her palm, where sweat slicks my chest. “You were… saying something,” she whispers, tenderly brushing the damp hair off my forehead.
Her eyes search mine, soft but guarded. “You sounded scared.”
I swallow hard, voice low and rough. “I’m fine.”
She doesn’t buy it. Of course she doesn’t.
She’s seen me like this far more than I would like.
“You’re okay,” she comforts, studying me for a long moment before laying her head over my hammering heart.
This time, so is hers. That wasn’t the case every time she woke me; the one time I mistook her for a threat before waking fully. The night that drove me to leave.
We lie in silence, her fingers tracing aimlessly over the ink swirling across my chest as I collect my composure and find my breath. “You said…” she stammers with the uncertainty of continuing her thought. “You said you were going to marry me.”
The air catches in my throat.
“Did you mean it?” She sounds fragile, like I just broke her heart again. “Or were you dreaming?”
I stare down at her, at the woman I never stopped loving, and feel the words crawl up my throat before I can stop them. “Yeah,” I rasp. “I meant it.”
Her face tips toward mine, and her eyes glisten in the dim light, but she doesn’t press.
She just exhales quietly, her thumb tracing a line along my jaw like she’s memorizing me all over again.
I catch her hand before it falls away, holding it against my chest as my pulse stutters beneath her fingers.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper, my voice rough.
She nods, shifting closer until her temple rests against my collarbone, her breath warm on my skin. “I would’ve said yes.”