Chapter 10 #2
"This happen often?" Laine asks. Her tone is conversational, like she's asking about the weather.
"No. Sometimes. Depends."
"On what?"
I lift my head enough to glare at her. "On whether anyone's shooting at me."
Her hands pause for just a second. Then she's back to work, expression unreadable. "Combat's different."
"Yeah, no shit."
Wiley chuckles. "I knew a guy like that. Toughest son of a bitch in our unit. Could drag a wounded man through a mile of jungle without breaking a sweat. But you put him in front of a needle?" He shakes his head. "Out like a light."
"Great," I mutter. "Nice to know I'm a fucking type."
Laine finishes wrapping Wiley's foot, never gagging despite how fucking gross it looks.
The woman has a gut of steel, apparently.
She gives him instructions—keep it clean, stay off it, get to a clinic tomorrow or risk losing the foot—and helps him hobble over to one of the warming stations near the fire drums.
When she comes back, I'm still sitting on the ground like an asshole.
"You planning to stay down there all night?" She's fighting a smile. I can see it tugging at the corner of her mouth, and even though I fucking hate my body right now, I don't hate that look on her face. I'll take her smile any day, even if it's because I'm a fucking wimp.
"Maybe. Ground's not so bad."
"The ground's freezing."
"Builds character."
She actually laughs. It's a small sound, barely more than a breath, but it hits me like a freight train. I haven't heard her laugh in months. Didn't think I'd ever hear it again, at least not anywhere near me.
"Come on." She offers me a hand. "Get up before you freeze to your spot and I have to explain to Danny why one of his volunteers turned into a popsicle."
I take her hand. Her fingers are cold—she's been working without gloves, because of course she has—and I have to fight the urge to wrap both my hands around hers and warm them up.
Instead, I stand, letting her take a little of my weight, then let go the second I'm on my feet, shoving my hands back in my pockets where they can't do anything stupid.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it." She moves back to the supply table and starts reorganizing the bandages I apparently knocked over when I grabbed the edge for support. "So. Intestines, huh?"
I wince. "Fuck."
She glances at me sideways. "Did he make it? The guy you were holding together."
The question lands like a punch. I should've expected it—of course she'd want to know the outcome—but it still catches me off guard.
"No." The word comes out flat. "Bled out before the medevac got there. Took about six minutes."
Laine's hands still on the bandages. She doesn't look at me, but I can see her processing, filing that information away.
"Six minutes is a long time to hold someone together."
"Felt longer."
She nods slowly. Picks up a roll of gauze and adds it to the pile. "What was his name?"
"Cortez. Miguel Cortez." I haven't said his name out loud in years. "He was twenty-two. Had a kid back home he'd never met—girlfriend got pregnant right before we deployed."
"Did he know? About the baby?"
"Yeah. Found out about a month in. Showed everyone the ultrasound picture.
" I lean against the supply table, staring out at the camp instead of at her.
Easier that way. "He was so fucking happy.
Made all these plans. Gonna marry her when he got back, buy a little house, coach the kid's soccer team. Whole nine yards."
Laine's quiet for a moment. Then: "What happened to them? The girlfriend and the baby?"
"Don't know. Didn't keep in touch." It's a lie.
I know exactly what happened to them. Maria Cortez married a high school teacher two years after Miguel died.
The kid—a boy, named Miguel Jr.—is eleven now.
I've sent anonymous money every year on the kid's birthday, enough to help but not enough to raise questions.
She's watching me with that steady gaze again. The one that sees too much.
"How long were you deployed?"
"Which time?"
"How many times were there?"
"Four tours. First one was eight months, then two six-month trips, then another eight." I do the math in my head, even though I already know the answer. "Just under two and a half years total. Not all at once."
"That's a lot."
"It's about average for that era." I shrug again. "Some guys did more."
"It's still a lot." She presses her lips together. "Reid doesn't talk about his service much."
"Reid's service was different." I pause, trying to figure out how to explain without saying too much. "He was support. Logistics, medical assist, that kind of thing. Important work, but not—"
"Not what you did."
"No."
She looks at me then. Really looks, the way she did that night in my workshop, when everything went sideways. But this time there's no fear in her expression. Just... curiosity. And something else I can't quite name.
"What did you do, Blake?"
The question hangs in the cold air between us. I could deflect. Make a joke, change the subject, find some excuse to walk away. That's what I should do. That's what would be smart.
But Laine's standing there in her too-big jacket with her cold fingers and her steady eyes, and she's asking me a real question. Maybe the first real question anyone's asked me in years.
"I broke things," I say finally. "And people. That was my job. Being good at breaking things."
The words hang there between us, and I can see her trying to piece together what I'm not saying.
Like how sometimes our missions didn't make the news because they weren't supposed to exist. How we'd go into places where the line between good guys and bad guys got so blurry you couldn't tell which side you were on anymore.
How I got really fucking good at things I can't talk about, even now.
"Some of it was the kind of work that keeps people safe," I continue, my voice rough. "But some of it..." I stop, shake my head.
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away.
"And now you fix them."
It's not a question. It's a statement, simple and direct, and it hits me so hard I forget how to breathe for a second.
"Trying to," I manage. "Not sure I'm very good at it."
"You're here." She gestures at the camp, at the people huddled around fires and heat lamps, at the whole messy sprawling chaos of it. "That counts for something."
I want to tell her it doesn't. That showing up to hand out blankets and hold clipboards doesn't erase the things I've done, the people I've hurt. That being here tonight doesn't make up for what I did to her, to Reid, to whatever chance they had at being happy.
But before I can figure out how to say any of that, someone calls Laine's name from across the camp. She holds up a hand in acknowledgment, then turns back to me.
"I have to—"
"Go. I've got the station."
She hesitates. "You sure? There might be more blood."
"It wasn't the blood. Mostly. It was the smell. And the pus." Yeah, I gotta stop thinking about that. My knees don't fucking like it.
That almost-smile again. "Try not to pass out while I'm gone."
"No promises."
She walks away toward whoever called her, and I watch her go. Can't help it. The way she moves through the camp, stopping to check on people, adjusting someone's blanket, crouching down to talk to a kid who shouldn't be out here in this cold—
She's something else. She really is.
And she's not mine. Never was, never will be. She's Reid's, or she should be, and the best thing I can do is make sure I don't fuck that up any worse than I already have.
But watching her out here, doing this work, being exactly who she is—
Fuck. It hurts.
It hurts more than Cortez bleeding out in my arms. More than the dreams that still wake me up at 3 AM. More than any of the shit I've been through, because at least that pain made sense. At least I earned it.
This? Loving someone I can't have, someone I don't deserve, someone whose life would be better if I'd never walked into it?
This is the kind of hurt that doesn't heal.