Chapter 3
“I worry about him, you know?”
“That’s because you’re his mother.”
“It’s just hard seeing him so distant and closed off. That’s not like him.”
“He’s going through something, sweetheart. He has to work through it in his own time and in his own way. He’s taking the necessary steps. We just have to be there and support him along the way.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose from my place at the bottom of the stairs, listening to my parents’ hushed voices floating down the hall from the kitchen.
It was bad enough that I was thirty years old and living back at my parents’ house, but to hear that conversation?
It made me want to bang my head against the damn wall.
I should have taken Gabe up on his offer to have the spare room at his place when I first came home, but I didn’t want to burden my brother.
I didn’t want to burden my parents either, but until I got a place of my own, which couldn’t happen until I had a job lined up, which couldn’t happen until I worked some things out in therapy, I was stuck.
People probably imagined that being home with friends and family was a good thing, that it would help. But lately, I just felt stressed and lost. I felt like a goddamn charity case that everyone was walking on eggshells around.
I fucking hated every second of it.
I cleared my throat to announce my presence before rounding the corner from the stairs and making my way toward the kitchen. The seriousness of my parents’ voices from moments ago all but vanished, and they were both smiling when I emerged from the hallway.
“Morning, big guy,” my dad clapped my shoulder nonchalantly—he, at least, tried to come off as casual as possible, knowing I wasn’t one who enjoyed being fussed over.
“Morning,” I said, looking between them before moving to the coffee pot.
“Did you sleep okay last night?”
“Yes, Mom,” I lied.
“That’s good,” she responded, but something in her tone told me she didn’t quite believe me. She was always good at seeing right through me. “How about some breakfast?”
“I already ate.” I turned to look at her with a strained smile, forcing myself to soften my tone. “But thank you.”
I knew she meant well, but the way she hovered out of concern made my chest tighten and only filled me with more guilt. I hated that she felt like she had to tiptoe around me, hated that my issues seemed contagious and spread to everyone else.
“Any plans today?” my dad asked.
“Uh, no. I did my run early this morning. Might just hit the gym a little later.” That was one thing that helped clear my head a little—going on runs, working out. The routine made me feel like I had some control, at least for a little while. “Might meet up with Wes and Luke tonight.”
“How was your therapy?” my mom asked solicitously.
“It’s…going.” I sipped my coffee. I started therapy last Monday, one of the “resources” I was offered as part of my outprocessing when I left base.
As of now, I was seeing the guy twice a week.
But I really didn’t want to talk about it right now.
At all. With anyone. “I’ve only had two sessions,” I offered with a shrug, hoping that would be enough to shut it down for now.
“Well, do you…like the guy? How’d the first two sessions go?”
Before I was forced to bullshit that answer, the doorbell rang, and my mom announced she’d get it before disappearing down the hallway. Saved by the fucking bell.
I heard the front door open, followed by Wes’s voice. “Hi, Mrs. Pierson. Can Blake come out and play?”
Both my dad and I snorted at the question, and I shook my head. “Jesus Christ.”
“Bet that brought back some memories, yeah?” I heard Lucas next.
My mom’s soft laugh floated down the hall. “Come on in, guys.”
A moment later, Wes and Lucas walked into the kitchen with my mom, both smiling when they saw me. While Wes leaned against the island counter, Lucas clapped my shoulder. “Morning.”
“Hey,” I said, greeting them both as my parents stepped out to let us talk. “What brings you guys by this early on a Saturday?” It wasn’t that early—just before ten o’clock—but for them to show up felt unusual.
“Well, now that Morgan is back home”—Wes tensed at the mention of her name because they were an entire shitshow of their own—“Callie is with her all day today doing wedding things that don’t need my so-called opinion, so my day is wide open,” Lucas replied with a chuckle.
“You mentioned last weekend that you might be looking into getting a new ride, so we figured, since we had nothing to do, and Gabe is busy schmoozing a client in Charleston today, maybe we could go out and look with you. Something to do, and it gets you out of the house. And then we’ll just go to The Sandbar tonight. ”
And there it was. Gets you out of the house. As if I needed to be managed, pitied.
I must not have schooled my expression fast enough because Lucas straightened up, clearing his throat. “If you want, that is. You don’t have to. We were just…looking for something to do, ya know? And now that you’re back home–”
“The Three Musketeers are together again,” Wes interjected with a sarcastic grin.
“Don’t ever say that again,” Lucas and I said in unison.
I knew they meant well, just trying to keep me occupied, maybe help me open up.
I hadn’t talked about what I was dealing with.
For all they knew, it was just deployment and losing Noah.
That wasn’t completely wrong, but they didn’t know the depth of it.
The guilt I carried. Why I carried it. What I’d done…
or rather, what I’d failed to do. And I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t know if I ever would be.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Yeah, we can do that.”
I could tolerate keeping everyone satisfied if it meant avoiding their searching, anxious glances, the ones that made me feel as if they thought I might shatter any second.
A few hours and two dealerships later, I slid into my brand-new black Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.
Lucas and Wes both tried to get me to look at cars like they had—a Maserati and an Audi—but I’d never been the sports car kind of guy.
The closest I ever had was the Mustang I just traded in, but I considered that more muscle than sport.
Plus, I liked driving on the beach and in the mountains—my family had a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains that I hadn’t been to in years, but hoped to go now that I was back home—and a Wrangler was perfect for that.
“It suits you,” Wes said as he peeked in through the open passenger window. “It’s very rugged. Very Blake.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “Shut up.”
“Hey, since you rode with him in the Mustang all day,” Wes said to Lucas, “I call dibs on being passenger princess in the Jeep on the way back.”
Lucas shook his head with a grin. “Fine.” He held his hand out, and Wes dropped the keys to his Audi into his palm. “Want to grab something to eat and take it back to my place? We can just hang out before we meet up with the others later.”
They both looked at me. “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like a plan.”
While I followed Lucas, every nerve was stretched tight.
At each stoplight, my eyes darted around, scanning.
Every vehicle, every stranger, every unexpected sound.
I’d love to blame the new car, but I couldn’t.
Even at the dealerships, I’d been on edge.
This was the new normal, an invisible vice tightening around me wherever I went.
Hypervigilance was another relentless gift from my PTSD.
“It’s green, man.”
Wes’s voice pulled my attention away from a truck that pulled into the turn-only lane beside me, and I cleared my throat, pressing my foot to the gas.
“You good?”
I glanced at him, giving a nod. “Yeah, yeah. Just zoned out for a second.”
I could feel his eyes still on me as I kept my focus on the road. “So, how’s it been since being back? Everything going okay?”
“Yeah, I mean, other than the fact that I’m thirty and living with my parents,” I quipped.
“I can see how that would be a little rough,” he said with a laugh. “You could always relive your heydays and sneak girls in through the basement like back in high school.”
That earned a chuckle from me. “Eh, doesn’t sound as appealing as it did back then. It was more exciting when the risk of getting in trouble for it was there.”
“That’s very true,” he replied with a grin. He looked at me again. “But for real…how are you doing?”
“Good.” I nodded. “Started therapy last week. Just trying to get some things in order before I find a job, and then I’ll start house hunting.”
I made it sound so simple. Easy. But Wes seemed to know I was soft-peddling. “You know…you can talk to me…if you need someone to vent to or whatever.” He was also soft-peddling, trying to keep his offer as casual-sounding as possible. “Just saying…I’m here.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a nod as I glanced over at him again. “And I appreciate that. But really, I’m good,” I lied.
It was easier to convince everyone else around me that I was fine. Part of me kept insisting that nothing was wrong because I didn’t want them to worry even more.
And maybe some part of me hoped that if I said it enough, I’d start to believe it, too.