Chapter Twenty-two
Kael
“What the hell are you doing here?” I stood up straight, mentally clocking how long it would take me to grab my gun if I needed to.
Phillips seemed to have lost all his rage-induced energy from the other night. His eyes were sunken in, his face more pale than usual, and his cheeks hollow. Purple and blue bruises covered the span of his left cheek all the way down to his jaw, and his neck had a red ring around it . . . all from my hands. To my surprise, he didn’t smell like alcohol and seemed alert, for the most part.
“Can I come in? I don’t have anything on me.” He shook his pockets of his jeans and patted them all.
“Why should I let you in here after what you did?”
His eyes went down to the porch. “I don’t have anywhere else to go and I need my battle buddy.” He hadn’t called me that in so long that it sounded foreign to me.
I looked him up and down, trying to remember the things I used to respect about him, but was at a loss after he’d put Karina in danger.
“You don’t have a battle buddy anymore,” I told him, point-blank. He visibly shuddered at my words. That was one of the worst things a soldier could hear.
“Martin, I know what I did was beyond fucked up. I came to apologize.”
“I thought you came because you don’t have anywhere else to go,” I reminded him, not buying his apology bullshit yet. He’d pulled out a fucking gun in a yard full of people I care about.
“That, too, but the apology is the first reason. Please, let me in.”
Phillips had changed so much since I met him. I had always tried to ignore the subtle shifts in stability, the mood swings, and how easily angered he could become, and put the blame on our circumstance, being at war and trying to stay alive and all.
I stepped aside and let him pass.
In jeans and his gray PT shirt that said Army in black font, he stood in the center of the living room, looking like a teenage boy about to get scolded by his parents. Speaking of parents, I wondered if his parents even knew he was home. I should have called them. But then again, he was a loose cannon now and not my problem. Not anymore.
“Did you tell your parents you’re back?” I asked him, keeping a few feet between us for both of our safety, especially his.
He nodded, slowly and cowardly.
“Did you tell them that you tried to kill your own pregnant wife?”
His eyes bugged out and he moved his body dramatically, like a fish out of water, swaying and flopping while standing upright. “That’s not what that was. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I wouldn’t hurt her!”
“That’s not what it looked like to me. Not only did you almost kill someone, you disrespected her and humiliated her in front of everyone.”
“She’s been cheating on me, Martin. While pregnant with my baby . . . if it’s even mine.” As he said the words, I knew he believed them.
“Fischer wasn’t even around when you got her pregnant, so use fucking logic.”
“Maybe not him, but at this point, who knows what she’s been doing since I brought her here.” He was evidently distraught. “I’m clearly her meal ticket out of her country, a cash cow.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that bellowed out. “A cash cow? You’re a private first class and she’s from France, one of the most developed countries in the world. You know better than this. She isn’t the kind of person to use someone like that, even you .”
“And you know her so well now? You only hung out with her a handful of times before you left and now that you’re fucking that Karina girl—” I held my hand up to save him from what would come if he said another word about her.
“Remember what I said about you disrespecting Karina. This is your last warning. Do not mention her name again in front of me. Do not even think about her name, her face, her existence—unless you want me to rip your tongue out of your mouth.”
I was instantly pulled back to the car ride home from my ma’s, when Karina asked me how many versions of myself there were. This was one she had not and would never see, but ironically, this was the one that came the most naturally.
“Okay . . . okay. You love her, don’t you?” he asked me, looking me dead in the eyes.
I thought about lying, but he needed to know the lengths I would go for her. It could backfire and give him ammunition to try to get back at me through her. If he did, that would be his death sentence.
“I do.”
His thin lips turned into a smile. It wasn’t the one I was used to; it was like a pencil sketch of the outline of the smile I had known for years.
“Is that the reason you’re so nonchalant about my wife cheating on me and leaving me for Karina’s brother of all people?” he asked, sinking to the floor as if he couldn’t bear the weight of his own frail body.
“I’m not nonchalant about it. I don’t think what either of them did is okay. But they did what they did, and I know it must hurt like hell, but risking your life and hers is not going to change what happened and you know it. I won’t make excuses for them, it’s not my place, but I can tell you that if you try to hurt them to subdue your own pain, you will suffer.”
“By my own hands or yours?” he asked, darkness coating his voice like tendrils.
“Both.”
He closed his eyes, taking a couple of breaths. “How long have you known? You were my best friend and you didn’t say a word to me. After everything we’ve been through, you didn’t love me enough to tell me before I was humiliated.”
“I didn’t know either. No one did.”
“Everyone does now. And someone knew enough to tell me online. Can you imagine how embarrassing it was to find out on fucking Facebook? And to have to find a private who owed me a favor to go around stalking them to get proof?”
I immediately realized that the private was the one who’d sent the photo of Elodie and Fischer to everyone on Phillips’s orders. Probably some newly enlisted, easily scared punk.
“You took it too far by having someone follow her around. Why not have a conversation with your wife?”
He scoffed. “They took it too far by fucking behind my back.”
“Why would you tell everyone? Isn’t that more humiliating?” I circled around him.
His eyes followed me. “Too late for that. I was already humiliated, so they should be too. I had a feeling something was going on with her long before I got the Facebook message, but I needed to see it with my own eyes.”
“Unfortunately, Elodie was the only one who was hurt. Fischer couldn’t care less, which makes the whole thing pettier. Anyway, your wife cheated on you, so now what? You can’t control yourself so you spiral and get yourself in trouble, losing your career and fucking up your whole life?”
I did feel for him, and didn’t agree with the choices made by any of them, but honestly, this was the fucking military. Marriages without affairs or scandal were less common than with civilians, and I wasn’t going to feed into his pity party, especially when he had been treating Elodie like shit since he left and likely before. People were losing their lives around us; it was hard to find sympathy for him.
“That’s up to me.” He touched his chest, looking behind me to the wall. “I can’t stop being fucking livid about it.” He paused. “I don’t know what to do with my anger, Martin.”
“You transferred your war mentality to home. You’re so used to being on edge, checking your back all day, waiting to be attacked. When you found out about this, it gave you a new outlet. I’m sure it hurts like hell, but I’m begging you to try to look at it from above. Are you that desperately in love with her and honestly believe your marriage can be saved or would have been fine if this didn’t happen? Or are you used to mental chaos and now you’re transferring that emotion? Be honest with me, or at least yourself.”
I sat down on the couch, no longer wanting him to feel like a caged animal being taunted. I checked my phone to see if Karina had texted me since she’d gotten to work, but she hadn’t yet.
“My marriage was fucked from the beginning.”
“Maybe her relationship with Fischer gives you a proper reason to admit that and come to terms with it. You tried, she tried. I might sound like an asshole, but it’s better to get a divorce now than waste more time. People get divorced all the time.”
Phillips raised a brow at me and came to sit on the other side of the couch. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”
I couldn’t help the smile that took over my face. We were eighteen again and back in Afghanistan, sharing the snacks from my ma’s care package. He was different then; so was I. The harshness of our reality hadn’t developed yet. He was one of the only people I knew who could make me laugh. The memory became fuzzy around the edges, blurring into him holding a gun in Mendoza’s yard.
“It’s supposed to help you wake the hell up before you really do something you’ll regret. Comfort is a luxury that you and I can’t afford.”
He nodded, closing his eyes slightly. It seemed like he hadn’t slept since getting back to the States.
“Are you hungry?” I asked him, noting the shallow dips in his cheekbones.
“Actually, yeah, I’m fucking starving.”
I got up and he followed me into the kitchen. Pulling open the cabinets, I grabbed two ramen packs and a small pot.
“At least you still eat like a broke college kid,” Phillips said when I pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge.
“Some things won’t ever change,” I offered, pointing for him to sit down while I made his food.
He was quiet, complimenting the progress on the place every few minutes. I was feeling extra-hospitable and chopped up some green onion and bacon to add. I grabbed a protein shake and slid it across the counter.
“You’re emaciated,” I told him.
He looked down at himself, seeming surprised. “I guess I am. I haven’t been eating or sleeping.”
I poured the noodles into a bowl and handed him a fork and a spoon. “I can tell.”
“Thanks for letting me in and listening to me, Martin. I thought you would tell me to fuck off or choke me again.” He laughed as he blew on the steam from the bowl.
I didn’t respond; there wasn’t anything to say outside of warning him that if he didn’t get his shit together, I would kill him, but he knew that. After he scarfed down the noodles, I made him a couple of eggs to get his protein up. The color slowly returned to his cheeks as he ate. I didn’t fully trust him and never would, but I hoped our heart-to-heart had made him get a grip on what was at stake.
“Go lie down. I’m going to work some but will keep the noise down as much as I can. If you wake up and I’m gone, don’t come find me. And remember not to do anything dumb.”
He stretched his thin arms into the air and twisted his spine.
“I won’t. I won’t,” he promised, and I hoped for his sake that he would keep it.