Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE_
DECAF
After my talk with Haz a few days ago, he does settle down a lot.
Maybe too much. Contrary to what I said, I do like his flirty nature and his ribbing, because …
I don’t know, it makes me smile. On the inside.
My outsides are very much still in pain and unable to show joy.
Which isn’t really any different to how I normally am, but the pain helps keep that facade alive.
A facade I’ve held for so fucking long. One I didn’t think was possible to crack.
But Hazard has cracked it. Big-time. It’s not even like it’s a Jesse thing because I no longer see Corey as Little Haz. He’s just Haz to me now. It’s hard to know when that exactly happened, but having him at my bedside day in and day out probably has something to do with it.
It’s weird to think that in him asking a million and one questions about his dad, I’d get to know him on a different level.
Like instead of going the officer route like his dad, he enlisted.
He knew from boot camp that the military wasn’t for him, but he pushed through for Jesse.
Jesse was so proud to be in the army, proud to defend his country and be a patriot.
That is, until years of service made him bitter.
There are so many differences between the Hazard men, and while they might be slight and ever-so-small differences, it’s what sets them apart.
Jesse did things for honor and grew to resent it all.
Haz got out as soon as he could and didn’t let himself get caught up in the feeling that he owed Jesse something.
I wish I could be more like Haz. A do what I want with no regrets kind of guy.
All I have are regrets, and I don’t want to do something that will only give me more.
“You all good here before I head off to bed?” Haz asks, his tone missing the spark of fun it usually has.
I hate that I did that. At least, I think it was me. Ever since I got serious with him, he shut down, and I know it’s what I asked him to do, but I didn’t want this. Where he won’t even smile at me or joke about liking him or— I internally sigh. I asked him to stop, so he did.
“I’m fine. Don’t need anything.”
“Scout given you your nighttime meds so you can sleep?”
“He did.”
“Did you swallow them?” he asks, and my gaze narrows. Because how does he know— “I woke up last night to you talking in your sleep, and I’m wondering how much sleep you’re actually getting.”
“I was talking in my sleep? What was I saying?”
He shrugs. “Fucked if I know. Unintelligible stuff.”
Okay, so I wasn’t screaming. Usually, there’s screaming. And that’s exactly why I’ve been palming the sleep meds Scout’s been giving me.
“I figured you were dreaming, but I thought those kinds of meds were the kind to knock you out where you have a dreamless sleep?”
If they are, it doesn’t work on me. Instead, they make me so heavy I can’t wake from my nightmares. I have to endure every second of them.
“Nope. Or, at least, they don’t work that way for me.”
And whether it’s that I’m not getting as much caffeine as I usually do or that it is the meds, either way, I’m not staying above that line between N3 and REM sleep.
It’s the only way I’ve been able to stay sane all these years, by blocking it all out, dreaming as little as possible.
And for a long time, it’s worked. Sure, I’m a crabby son of a bitch because I never get full rest, but I get enough restorative sleep to get by.
Since Hazard, though … it’s been harder and harder to keep the flashbacks and nightmares away. Impossible on these meds, so no. I’m not going to keep taking them. My emotional trauma far outweighs the physical pain.
It’s hard to breathe. My chest is heavy. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth, and it’s hard to see anything through the fog.
If I can run through it and make my way out, I’ll be able to breathe again, but my limbs are heavy, weighted down by something I can’t even see. The fog is only getting thicker and thicker.
I force my legs forward, wading my way through the only path my feet let me go. When I finally get some visibility back, I’m covered in sweat and aching from the weights anchored to me.
Up ahead, there are two figures standing twelve feet or so apart. They hear me approach and turn to me in unison.
“Choose,” one of them says, his voice as smooth as chocolate. It’s one I know well.
It’s this dream again. One of many recurring ones I have. I know how it’s going to go. If I get closer, I’m going to find myself face-to-face with twenty-two-year-old me and Jesse.
Jesse will tell me to choose—him or me—and then I’ll watch as other me raises his weapon and shoots Jesse Hazard dead. I try to run back into the fog, try to run away, but there’s a boundary there now that I can’t get past.
“Choose,” another voice says, only it’s not my own or Jesse’s.
When I turn back around to face the two figures, they’re both clearer now. I’m not standing over there with Jesse. Haz is. And he’s telling me I have to choose between the two of them.
“No. I won’t do it.”
“You have to,” Haz says.
My head frantically wobbles back and forth. “I can’t.”
As if they were both expecting that answer, they raise their hands, guns pointed toward each other. Father and son. Haz bathed in light and Jesse with a dark shadow over him.
“No. No, no, no, no, no!” I scream. I cover my head and look away, but my whole body violently shakes.
“Decaf, please,” Haz whines.
“Denton,” Jesse says more calmly. “Are you really going to choose him over me? Your best friend?”
Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
It’s not working.
“No!” I scream again.
“So that’s your answer?” Jesse asks. “Good choice. I’m proud.”
It takes a second for me to realize what I’ve done, and I throw open my eyes, only to have my head spin.
And then, right there in the middle of the same street Jesse has died a thousand times over in my memory, I see Jesse shoot his own son.
The loud bang of the gun breaks me from my sleep, but when I bolt upright, my nose connects with something hard in front of my face.
“Motherfucker!” Haz hisses.
I’m back. I’m back in the cabin, in the bed in the middle of the living room, and Haz is sitting on the edge of it, holding his nose.
“You might have broken it,” he says.
“You’re one to talk.” Though the sting of mine is already going away. Still, I rub it for good measure. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing? You’re screaming the whole house down.”
Shit. I glance around me. The bed is soaked with my sweat, my clothes are sticking to my skin, and I’m still finding it hard to breathe, but slowly, my heart rate begins to slow down.
When it does and Haz’s hand falls from his face, the relief from my dream not being real fuels me forward. My good arm goes around Haz, and I hold on to him as tight as my injuries will allow.
“Hey, whoa,” he says softly. “Not that I’m complaining, but are you sleep hugging me right now or—”
“I’m wide-awake. I just … I’m sorry. I …” Yet, I don’t pull myself away.
“You don’t need to be sorry. Even if you are drenched in sweat.”
“Shit.” I try to lean back and break the connection, but he doesn’t let me.
“It’s okay. You can have this.”
Even though I shouldn’t, I take what he’s offering because if I let go of him, I know I’m going to see the same face I saw in my dream. His vulnerability. The need to protect him.
The main thing is he’s here. He’s okay. And it was just another nightmare.
Everyone wonders how my coffee addiction came to be, and while many of my Mike Bravo teammates, especially Scout, think it’s an undiagnosed ADHD thing—that the stimulant calms the chaos going on inside me—the chaos has only been there since Jesse died.
It’s possible I could have some neurodivergence going on too, but on missions, my concentration is on point. I don’t think I have a focusing issue. All I know is coffee keeps the dreams away. Usually.
Recovering, being on these meds, it’s fucking up my system.
Haz lets me hold him, but doing it one-handed doesn’t satisfy my need to squash him against me. I can’t get close enough. It’s not reassuring me that when I let go, he won’t disappear.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“Not with you.” I might not intend for this to sound dismissive, but it does.
He pulls out of my hold. “Got it.”
“Wait.” I grab his hand to stop him from getting up completely and walking out the door. “Not because it’s you. I didn’t mean that. I would’ve said the same thing if it was anyone else. I don’t talk about this shit. At all.”
Haz stops fighting to go. “Not even Trav? A shrink? No one?”
“No one. And up until you showed up, I’d never even told them about your dad. Trav knew that I’d lost someone, but that was all he ever got out of me. He didn’t push because he’d been there too. One thing a lot of us in the military know is loss.”
“I guess I wasn’t in there long enough to see it firsthand.”
“I’m thankful you weren’t.”
“Your dream … Was it about my dad?”
I nod.
“It happens a lot?”
I nod again. “Only, this one was so much worse.”
“You don’t have to, but … will you tell me about it?”
In the darkness of the room, his warm hand in mine, it tethers me to him, and I don’t want that to break because it reminds me that he’s here.
He’s safe. For now. I need to focus on getting better so we can get him out.
Out of this life. So to keep him next to me as long as possible, for the first time ever, I truly open up.
“I have a few different recurring dreams. One is more like a straight flashback of what happened. Another is where I’m desperately trying to change the outcome.
And then there’s the one I had tonight. It’s usually me and your dad standing in that street where he was gunned down, only I’m given the choice to save either your dad or myself.
Yet, every single time, no matter how many times I choose to save him, he’s the one who always ends up dead.
This time, tonight, instead of choosing between him and me, I had to choose between you and him.
I saw you die in front of me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
” I don’t register the tears on my cheeks until Haz wipes one away with his thumb.
I’m too ashamed and guilt-ridden to look him in the eyes, but I do lift my gaze, pausing on his plump lips and the couple of days’ growth along his jaw. His breath hits my cheek, and it’s only now that I realize how close he is, only seemingly getting closer.
Is he leaning in, or am I? I can’t tell.
He’s the one who breaks first, though—that I know for sure, because if it were up to me, I might ask to stay that close to him for the rest of the night. Just to remind myself that he’s okay.
His hand disappears from my cheek, and then there’s suddenly the widest gap between us ever.
“The clingy hug makes a lot more sense now.” There’s no judgment in his tone.
Not that I thought there would be, but I was expecting snark.
Maybe that’s still to come. “Why don’t you get up, and I’ll change your soaked-through sheets? I can help you shower if you need to.”
I can’t tell if he’s shutting down because of the dream or because I practically threw myself at him. But that wasn’t sexual. It was …
Okay, fuck, I don’t know what it was. It was a need to be closer to him.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but a shower sounds good. “Y-yeah. I’ll go shower.” I take my arm out of its sling. “I need to cover my cast so it doesn’t get wet.”
“I’ll go get you some cling film and a plastic bag to put over it.” He leaves the room, and it’s hard to breathe again.
I run a hand through my sweaty hair, and that’s when I get a whiff of how bad I smell. Maybe he’s not shutting down at all—he just needed to get away from the stench of BO.
He reappears at the end of my bed, holding a box of cling film and hefty black trash bags. “Okay, let’s do this.”
As much as I should do this myself or even ask Scout to help because I’m conflicted and in a weird headspace where it comes to Haz, I already know I’m not going to.
I’m going to let him get close. I’ll let him help.
And maybe then I’ll believe he really is safe here with me.