Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Shadows and Roads
Sawyer
The two lanes stretched straight to the horizon, cutting through hay fields turning green in the April sun. I kept one hand draped on the wheel, the other resting against the open window, but my knuckles were white on the leather.
Billings was still an hour off, and every mile closer tightened something in my chest. Eleven o’clock at the VA loomed, and Monique would be waiting with that steady stare of hers, the one that stripped me bare, no matter how hard I tried to hold the line.
Beside me, Easton flipped through a Harley catalog like it held the secrets of the universe. “Check this one out,” he said, jabbing a finger at a glossy page. “Matte black, six-speed, all torque. Man, can you picture me on this thing?”
I snorted. “Sounds like a midlife crisis to me.”
He laughed. “Midlife? I’m twenty-nine. This is prime time. The Riders head out every month—camping, rallies, nothing but open road. No bosses. No rules. That’s freedom.” His grin stretched wide, full of restless energy.
I let out a low chuckle, but envy pinched at me. That wide-open future he saw so clearly? It felt like another life to me. I used to know that kind of fire. Before Mosul. Before the heat and the grit worked under my skin and stayed there.
The steady whirr of my tires blurred into the metallic rattle of a Humvee—dust in my teeth.
Sweat was burning my eyes. The heavy pause before a blast split the air.
My grip locked on the wheel until I forced a slow breath, dragging myself back.
Blue sky. Green fields. Easton was still talking about chrome pipes and wind in his hair. Not a rooftop. Not Iraq.
I flexed my fingers, pretending nothing had happened.
Easton didn’t notice. He kept going, his voice quick with excitement, his plans reckless but bright. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, half amused, half wishing I could borrow that hope for just a minute.
The Billings city limits sign came into view, and my gut sank.
For a second, I saw another night—four fools in a cramped kitchen, clutching a winning Powerball ticket, laughing like life had just handed us salvation.
The money had been a hell of a distraction.
Shiny cars, land, noise to drown out the past. But it hadn’t burned away the shadows. They still came for me in the dark.
I turned into the Harley dealership, and Easton was already out the door, bouncing with that untamed grin. “Text me when you’re done with the counselor?” he called over his shoulder.
“It’ll be at least an hour,” I said.
He jogged inside, hungry for chrome and freedom. I watched him go, felt the ache of wanting that kind of weightless future, then shifted gears and pointed my truck toward the VA.
Eleven o’clock was waiting.
The VA lobby smelled like floor wax and burnt coffee.
I checked in at 10:58, signed my name where they told me to, and sat just long enough to stare at a poster about mindfulness without reading a single word.
At exactly eleven, Monique opened the damned door to the hall and cocked two fingers at me.
“Right on time, Sawyer,” she said.
Monique always looked like she’d just stepped out of a deployment photo—posture straight, hair pulled back, eyes that didn’t miss a damn thing.
Ink curled out from under her sleeves, black lines wrapping her forearms like vines over steel.
Early forties, ex–Army sergeant, all calm authority with just enough warmth that you didn’t feel like you were being interrogated.
I respected her because she knew the terrain. She’d walked her own version of it.
I followed her into the office and took the chair I always took. She settled into hers, flipped open a thin manila folder, and met my gaze. Steady. No nonsense.
“Check-in,” she said. “How’s sleep?”
“Spotty,” I admitted. “Night sweats again. Wake up drenched. Heart hammering hard enough to punch through my ribs.”
“Dream content?”
“Same reel,” I said. “Rooftops. Heat. We’re waiting, nothing moves, and the quiet turns into a countdown I can’t hear, but I know it’s there. Then I’m up and it’s just… sweat. Diesel. Like my own skin’s wrong.”
She wrote a single word and set the pen down. “How many nights this week?”
“Three,” I said. “Out of seven.”
Her eyes flicked back to the folder. “Medication adherence?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m taking it.”
“But?”
I rubbed my thumb over a fray in my jeans.
“Feels like it’s dialing me down too far.
Like the world’s happening behind glass.
I go through the motions, but very little lands.
” I exhaled, jaw tight. “Then at night… It’s like a switch flips.
I get with—” I cut myself off, looked at a spot over her shoulder.
“With her. And suddenly I can feel everything. Too much, maybe.”
Monique didn’t blink. “Say the line that’s in your head.”
“It’s like I’m flat most of the time,” I said quietly. “Nothing gets through… until I’m with her. Then it’s like a switch flips and I can’t get enough.”
“What do you call that?”
“Obsession.” The word tasted like rust. “And I’m not proud of it.”
She let the silence breathe for a beat. “Who’s ‘her’?”
I blew out a breath. “Lilly.”
“‘Just a friend’?” she asked, not mocking—confirming the story I’d told myself.
I nodded once. “Just a friend.”
Monique leaned back and laced her fingers over one knee. “You only see this friend at night. You leave before dawn. You report hyperarousal in that window and blunted affect the rest of the day. I’m hearing a pattern.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know the pattern. I built the damn thing.”
Her mouth ticked, not a smile so much as acknowledgment. “Walk me through how you learned it.”
I stared at my hands. I could’ve kept it surface-level—talk meds, talk sleep hygiene, talk breathing exercises that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Instead, the thing I’d never said out loud rose up fast, like a confession itching to be free.
“Mosul,” I said. “Commander’s aide. Valentina.”
Monique didn’t move. “Go on.”
“It started like anything does over there,” I said. “Short looks. A joke in a hallway. Paperwork that took an extra minute because we both wanted it to. Then one night, a dust storm rolled in, and everything was grit and static. I ducked into a storage room to breathe. She followed.”
I swallowed. The room tilted a degree, and I let it.
“It was hot and urgent. Her hands were in my hair before I even thought about pulling away. We kissed like we could push the world back with our mouths. She bit my lip, and I pressed her against a steel shelf, boxes rattling. It was quick and messy and exactly what it needed to be—fire dropped into a cold place. After that… we stole minutes in the middle of the night where we could. Her mouth on my neck, my hands under her blouse, both of us trying not to make a sound while the base thumped around us.”
I shook my head, surprised at the words coming out. “It was good, yeah. But it wasn’t… it wasn’t what it is with Lilly.”
Monique sat with that for a moment. No judgment. No flinch. “What happened to Valentina?”
“The commander got wind,” I said. “She was reassigned overnight. No warning. No goodbye. I knew exactly why she was gone.” I let out a breath that felt years old. “I told myself it was love. That losing her proved something about me. About what I could still feel.”
“And now?” Monique asked.
“Now I know better,” I said. “Mostly.” I looked at the floor. “It was lust and survival in a war zone. We used each other to make it through the week. Not proud of breaking regs, but… those minutes kept us sane.”
“Seen her since?”
“Valentina was sent back to the states,” I said, palming my hair. “After asking around, I found out she married her high school sweetheart and lives somewhere in Vermont. End of story.”
Monique nodded once, slowly. “You and Valentina used each other to survive. That’s not shameful, Sawyer, but it wasn’t the same as building a life.
” She tapped her pen against the folder.
“It was also against regulations, which braided the whole thing with guilt and fear. That might be why your brain files ‘wanting’ alongside ‘danger’ and ‘loss.’”
I stared at the framed print on her wall—a mountain lake that looked too clean to be real. She let the quiet expand again, then cut through it.
“Don’t confuse the wound of losing Valentina with what you’re feeling now,” she said. “Different context. Different stakes.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Feels like the same animal when it’s charging.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you’re not in a storage room anymore.”
I huffed out something like a laugh. “No. I’m in a kitchen or a bedroom. And then I’m out the door before sunrise.”
“That’s avoidance and control,” Monique said evenly. “Tactics that kept you alive then. Habits that keep you alone now.”
I stared at her. “You make it sound simple.”
“It isn’t,” she said. “It’s work. Which is why you’re here.” She leaned forward a little. “Other than sex, what do you and Lilly share?”
I opened my mouth, closed it again. My first instinct was to say nothing. Then a different picture landed—soft and unexpected.
“She’s got this dog,” I said. “Sunny. Loves that mutt more than life. Talks to her like she’s a person. Sunny watches me, deciding if I’m worth liking.”
Monique’s pen paused, then moved. “And you?”
“You know me,” I said. “Grace. If anyone says her name wrong, I’m ready to throw hands.”
Monique smiled, small and knowing. “So you both love fiercely, even when it hurts. That’s a connection, Sawyer.
Lean on it.” She set the pen down. “Next time you want to see her, don’t show up in the middle of the night.
Ask her to take Sunny for a walk with you.
Or invite her to ride Grace. Connection is built in the daylight, not in the shadows. ”
I looked at the corner of the room and let the idea run laps. Daylight. Not my favorite terrain. “And the meds?”
She flipped to a different page in my file. “I’m going to cut your dosage slightly,” she said. “You’ve earned the stability, but I don’t want you so buffered you can’t access anything but heat at midnight. There are risks—more reactivity, maybe sharper edges—but we’ll watch it.”
I nodded.
“Homework,” she added. “Keep a simple log. One page. Note when you feel numb, when you feel alive, and what seems to trigger either.”
I made a face. “A diary?”
“A data set. Even if it’s just a mental one,” she said dryly. “And one more thing.” She waited until I met her eyes. “Make sure it’s about more than her body. Note what you’d want if fear wasn’t calling the shots.”
My laugh came out rough. “So we’re doing dating coaching now?”
Monique didn’t smile. “I’m not your coach,” she said. “I’m your mirror. You can look away, but it won’t change what’s staring back at you.”
I sat with that. The hum of the building pressed in—HVAC, footsteps in the hall, someone’s cough two doors down. My pulse had steadied. My hands were still.
“You think I can do it?” I asked, and hated how young that sounded.
“I think you already started,” she said. “You told the truth.”
I nodded once and stood. She tore out the prescription and handed it over. The paper was light—its meaning was heavy.
“Daylight,” she said, as I reached for the door. “Walks. Rides. Don’t vanish before sunrise.”
“Copy that,” I said.
When I pushed out into the Montana noon, the light caught me square, bright enough I had to squint. I stood there an extra second, letting the sun sit on my face, allowing her words to land where they needed to.
I headed for the truck, my gut tight with something I couldn’t name — unsettled, yet steadier than I’d felt in weeks. Monique’s words and the slip of paper in my pocket weighed on me, heavy as lead.
Yet it was the picture in my mind I couldn’t shake: Lilly with Sunny’s leash in her hand, me with Grace’s reins in mine, the four of us moving forward together, sunlight on our backs instead of shadows at our heels.
Easton was waiting by the curb when I pulled into the Harley lot, helmet tucked under his arm. His grin stretched from ear to ear as he slid into the passenger seat. The new jacket he wore smelled of fresh leather.
“Man,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s like flying without wings. You twist the throttle, and the whole world just drops behind you. The roar, the wind—hell, I swear I was born for it.”
I half-laughed, half-grunted. “Sounds like you already signed the papers.”
“Working on it,” he said. “Gotta move some things around, but it’s happening. And the Montana Riders—they’re solid. Brothers. They’ve got each other’s backs. Camping in the mountains, riding cross-country, the whole deal. It’s the life, Sawyer. Pure freedom.”
The word stuck like a burr.
Freedom.
He said it like it was easy, like you just signed your name on a line and rode off into the sunset. My mind went to my SEAL brothers, the kind of bond Easton was trying to find. We had it, all right—tight as a steel cable—but it was forged in blood, and every knot in that cable came at a cost.
I missed them every damn day, but I couldn’t forget the weight of carrying them, too.
My phone buzzed against the console. One glance at the screen, and my chest cinched.
Lilly: Can’t tonight. Headache. Nothing to worry about.
I stared longer than I should’ve, thumb hovering like maybe I’d type back something stupid. Relief flickered—Monique was right, maybe space would help me sort my head out. But underneath, disappointment cut sharper than I wanted to admit.
Maybe even hurt.
Easton caught the look on my face. “What’s wrong, man? You look like somebody stole your damn horse.”
I shoved the phone back down and started the engine. “My date canceled. Maybe for the best.”
I kept it vague. Didn’t say her name. Couldn’t.
Easton chuckled, still high on test rides and chrome dreams, filling the cab with talk about wind and roads and a future that looked wide open. I let him carry it, eyes fixed on the highway ahead.
The road blurred into a long gray ribbon, and all I could feel was the echo of Monique’s words pressing in, tangled up with Lilly’s text, leaving me caught somewhere between relief and wanting more than I should.
I had to find a way to make her mine.