Walker #3
“Not the same thing as someone trained in fighting for their life,” I finished for him with a wince.
There was no need to address his hypothetical idea about his mother; she wouldn’t stand a chance.
Worse yet, both would probably have tried to reason with Cade while he was in that state, not understanding the danger.
I’d been through enough to know a threat when I saw it, and although I had known it wasn’t Cade choosing to attack me, I had realized it didn’t matter either.
While he was in that state, he wouldn’t understand reality because his reality was something completely different, and while in that state, he was going to see people as threats when they weren’t.
The only option would be to retreat or to fight back, and for your average person, fighting would not help them.
“Exactly,” he said, shutting his eyes tightly. “What if it had been them?”
“Okay, well, you should know that playing the ‘what if’ game is asking for trouble,” I reminded him gently.
“But…why is it happenin’ now? Why was it with you? I mean, I guess it was better that it was with you ’cause you could handle it, but,” he said, hanging his head and shaking it, “don’t make any sense. I ain’t never done this sorta thing before, so why now?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. There could be many reasons.
Maybe on some level, some deeply unconscious level, you knew you were with someone who could handle themselves, and that meant you could let go of the brake a little.
Maybe my being around has been more of a reminder of the team and the memories attached to them, and it’s pushing more to the surface.
Or…I don’t know, Cade. I’m a failed soldier who turned into a failed, I don’t know…
journalist? Blogger? Problem? I’m definitely no psychologist.”
“Maybe…maybe Isaac was right,” he said with a frown. “Maybe I should’ve been talkin’ to someone. Especially now.”
I was reluctant to agree, mostly because I had always avoided going to a professional.
Not that I thought they were frauds, or as one person I’d talked to a handful of times had insisted, I didn’t believe they were collecting information to pass on to some shadow cabal waiting to take advantage of our vulnerabilities.
I just didn’t see much point; there were things I had seen and done in my life that your run-of-the-mill shrink wasn’t equipped to help with.
That was just as true for Cade, more so really, but it also wasn’t my place to dissuade him, not when he was struggling for some sense of normalcy and control.
“They have them here,” I said, remembering there were a few on staff.
He shifted uncomfortably. “I dunno if they’re the ones I wanna talk to. I see ’em, and kinda talk, but to like…talk to ’em? I don’t think I could do that.”
“What, like, you’ve become too comfortable with them? Like they’re too familiar?”
“Yeah.”
I thought about that for a second. “Well, there’s always a chance we could talk to one of the shrinks, or to Reggie, I suppose.
They say that if there’s anything we need that they don’t have here already, we should contact them to arrange something.
We could make Reggie put his money where his mouth is, I guess.
Find someone you think you could talk to. ”
He grimaced. “Ya think that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never bothered with shrinks before; I just…
never felt like they were going to do me much good.
I’m not going to say it wouldn’t work for you.
I mean, probably the only way for it to work is if you’re willing to try, which you sound like you are, so maybe that’s all that matters. ”
“I guess,” he mumbled as he ran his fingers back and forth over my hand. “I’m really—”
“Quit apologizing,” I said with a groan, reaching around him to grip him by the chest and yank him backward so we both ended up on our backs on the bed.
He glanced at me, blinking rapidly. “Seriously?”
“What? Am I supposed to act like you’re going to explode at any moment?” I asked with a chuckle. “Give yourself some credit.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get why you’re okay with this. I could’ve hurt you.”
“That’s because you didn’t see my moves,” I said with a smirk.
He clearly wasn’t impressed by my supposed moves, but that was okay; I had handled things just fine on my own.
Not that I enjoyed having to fight him, I could have hurt him as surely as he could have hurt me.
The difference was that I was in a clear state of mind and could hold back from truly risking hurting him in my defense.
Which I already knew put me at a disadvantage, because he had been willing to use whatever skills he still possessed to hurt me, clearly believing me to be an explicit threat.
That could have gone in a worse direction, and perhaps there was some merit to him needing help that I couldn’t provide.
Sometimes the best way to help someone else was to understand the limitations of your own abilities and let them do what they needed to do.
“This is serious,” he said in a pained voice that made me sigh as I inched closer, burying my face in his neck.
“Tell me how I can help,” I said. “If you want, I’ll message Reggie right now or call him. Or we can take a shower, or we can fuck, or we can talk, or we can—”
“Walk?” he offered hopefully, as if I hadn’t just literally told him I was willing to do whatever it was he needed.
“Then we walk,” I said, getting off the bed and hunting for my clothes. “I kind of forgot that was always your thing back then.”
“Walkin’ lets me clear my head,” he said as he pulled on his clothing as well while we hunted down our shoes. “Clay was always wantin’ to work out when he was havin’ a bad day, but that’s always been a bad idea for me. He always overdid it, but I knew I’d be worse.”
“I can’t say shit, because Lord knows I’ve been guilty of overdoing it when I’m in a mood,” I said as I shoved my shoe on and grabbed a bottle of water each.
“Thanks,” he said as we stepped out into the hallway. “I used to do this a lot. Especially the first time I ever came here.”
“Walk around in the middle of the night?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said with a soft smile. “It’s, uh…different at this time of night.”
That was true. I had never journeyed out of whichever of our rooms we crashed in after a certain time, and I realized the lighting must be on a schedule.
It was normally well-lit, even in the darker parts of the resort, but now the lights were low, giving everything a strange but comforting glow.
It made more shadows, but they were softer somehow as we walked, coming to a stop at one of the large walls of glass.
Even with the moon out, glowing bright and big, it was a little hard to make out much in the distance.
The valleys of the mountain range looked like yawning black holes that stretched for miles.
Only the snow caught the moonlight, making everything sparkle and glitter as we stood there, watching a few light flakes drift down.
“Somehow creepy and comforting,” I said as I peered down into the black abyss below us. “I guess it depends on your perspective.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “That’s what I thought the first time I saw it like this. It’s a lot creepier when there isn’t any snow, or the moon isn’t big. Ends up looking…I dunno, ominous?”
“I can definitely see that,” I admitted as I leaned forward to see if there was more. Instead, I was met with that infinite blackness, and I stepped back to gaze up at the sky. “That’s pretty, though.”
“Yeah, it makes me wanna go out there, stand and look at all the stars. I asked once if we could, but they don’t really have anywhere for people to do that. Kind of a shame.”
“They’re probably worried that a resort full of guys who are not having a great mental health time might decide to throw themselves off the edge of something, just a thought.”
He was silent for long enough that I finally looked at him and had to hold back a laugh when I could see the look on his face, twisted in confusion and then realization. When he glanced at me, he sighed. “I didn’t think about that.”
“Well, I’ll take that as a good thing,” I said with a chuckle. “It means I don’t have to worry about whether you’ve been thinking about…that.”
He leaned back in surprise. “I…no, I guess I haven’t. Closest I ever got was wonderin’ if maybe things might be quieter if I was dead. But it’s not like…I dunno. It just never crossed my mind.”
“Well, you won’t hear me argue with that,” I said with a smile. “There’s not a lot in my life to be happy about, but knowing you’re still alive and wanting to be alive can be one of those things.”
“I dunno, it’s not like I want to be alive sometimes…but I don’t wanna be dead either,” he said with a frown. “Which don’t really make much sense.”
“No, but I understand what you mean.”
There might not be much difference between the two, but actively wanting to be dead, or at least considering if it might be a lot better if you were miles away from wondering if life was worth the struggle and heartache.
I knew what it was like to wake up and go through the day, wondering if this was all there was left in your life.
To wonder why so many people kept clinging to life when it just felt like one bit of drudgery and suffering after another.
Other times I would wake up and wonder what my malfunction in the days before had been, because while things weren’t exactly bright and sunshine, they weren’t nearly as bad as I had been making them out to be.
“What about you?” he asked. “Did you or do you ever think about…endin’ it all?”
“There was a time when that was all I could think about,” I said quietly, and it surprised me how easily that admission came. “I’ve never told anyone about that.”
“Tell me?” he asked, and I felt his hand slide into mine and squeeze gently.
“Not much to tell,” I said with a shrug, but I kept his hand in mine as I stood there, staring out into the twinkling abyss.
“It was months after I was finally discharged from the Army. I kept waking up every day, wondering what the point was, what was worth fighting for because that’s what every one of my days felt like, a fight to keep going.
Fighting with myself, fighting against the world, fighting to keep breathing when, really, it didn’t matter.
The team was gone, you were…I didn’t know where you were actually, and there was just… nothing.”
“Your sister?”
“Oh God, it would have broken her heart if I’d actually gone through with it.
I know that. But it got to the point where I thought maybe she would eventually get over it.
Not that it would be easy, and she would be pissed at me for the rest of her life, I’m sure,” I said with a laugh.
“God, she would come to my grave or wherever they dumped my ashes and bitch me out the whole time. I know that. But it wouldn’t destroy her, it wouldn’t stop her life, and she would have gone on with life, with her family. ”
“Well, ya didn’t do it…what changed your mind?”
“I got mad.”
He looked at me with wide eyes and then let out a laugh. “You’re tellin’ me that what kept you livin’ was that ya got pissed off at somethin’?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said with a grin.
“I started thinking how miserable my life was, and how there were so many other people out there just like me…just like you. Left to fend for ourselves, to deal with the weight of things we had little say in, even though it was painted like it was a choice. And I realized that if I went off and killed myself, I would just be one more number, a statistic for people to collect and post about on the internet. I’d end up being one of those poorly edited photos on Facebook, but that would be about it.
Everything else wouldn’t matter, not why I lived, not why I fought, or what led to my death. ”
He looked at me in amusement. “Spite? That’s what kept ya goin’?”
“It did,” I said with a shrug. “I realized I could just throw myself off a bridge, pop more pills than was necessary, or whatever poison you wanted to pick. I would just fade into the background, and that would be that. But if I really wanted, I could choose to be a problem. So that’s what I did.
I aspired to become a problem, maybe even a noticeable one, but I’d be happy just being annoying if it came to that. ”
He snorted. “I think ya managed that just fine.”
“You think?” I asked, unable to stop myself from being a little hopeful.
Cade arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t ya say that the men in suits came knockin’ on your door, threatenin’ the people ya cared about and brought ya here after makin’ ya look crazy to everyone else? I’d say that meant ya were bein’ a big enough problem as far as they were concerned.”
“You know what? You’re right. I guess being a problem wasn’t all it was cracked up to be since they took over my life and threw me in here,” I said and then glanced at him. “Which isn’t a total loss.”
He glanced at me again, smiling and ducking his head. “I guess there’s some good, huh?”
“There is,” I told him fondly, laying my head on his shoulder again. It was strange to find comfort in someone else’s presence in a way I hadn’t done in a long time. Yet with him, it came all too easily, as though it were something I had been doing my whole life rather than just the past month.
“And that’s kind of okay, ain’t it?”
“More than kind of.”
“I think… I wanna stay here a little longer.”
“That’s fine by me.”