21. Dom
The wind screeches outside, and sand hits the walls of my makeshift barracks, sounding like rain that isn’t hitting the roof. Only the windows and sides of the buildings are pelted with it. Just like everything else in Satan’s asshole.
Instead of sleeping, like I should be, I pull out the latest in a long line of letters that I’m sending home to Emma.
Dear Emma,
I don’t know why I keep writing. It might be the look on your face when you said goodbye. Or the betrayal I saw flash when you saw me in the BDUs and knew I was leaving you. But I like to think it’s because you’re not actually reading these. I can say anything, and I don’t have to worry about you opening them and seeing my darkest secrets.
Bonita, you are everything.
You’re the sun and the stars and the black hole that devours everything in its path. From the first kiss, or even before, I was yours. When you picked up your dress, revealing the flasks of liquor you brought to Remy’s wedding, I knew I wanted to kiss you, even though I knew absolutely nothing about you.
When you refused to shed a tear at your brother’s funeral, but offered your mother a shoulder to cry on, I knew that you were the strongest woman I’d ever meet, and I didn’t even know you.
When you danced with me under the stars and spoke up for a little girl who didn’t have anyone else, I knew I wanted to put my ring on your finger.
When I held you in my arms while you slept and you told me that you were falling in love with me, I loved you more.
I couldn’t tell you because I knew what would happen. I knew I’d lose you, and I wanted to save my heart that pain, for just a little while.
It was selfish. I know that.
You’re everything.
Dominic
I’ve barely sealed the envelope and put Emma’s name and address on it when the front door slams open and Casey Malone walks in. “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me, man. I’ve been looking all over for you and you’re here.”
“Yeah, dumbass. This is our room. Why would I go out in that storm?”
“Because you were supposed to be at muster with the rest of us an hour ago.” He points to the clock on the wall. “What? No time for the rest of us?”
“No,” I tell him honestly. “I was writing another letter for Emma.”
“Ah.” He throws himself down on his bed, crossing his legs and propping them against the wall. “The elusive Emma, who you never speak to on the phone, who never video calls you through Skype. Tell me, Dom, why are you so loyal to a woman who clearly doesn’t give a shit about you?”
I clench my fist so tight that my knuckles crack loudly.
“Don’t,” I warn him. “Don’t talk about her that way.”
“We’ve been here four months, Dom. Four months, and she hasn’t reached out to you once. We’ve got a satellite phone, Skype, email, a dozen ways she could have gotten in contact with you and she didn’t. It’s time to move on, brother.”
“You don’t know half of what happened, Casey.”
“Then enlighten me, because we’ve got nothing but time, and I’m not liking this girl for you at all. It’s clear to me that she doesn’t deserve you. You know all about what I did to fuck up my life, and yet you haven’t shared.”
It’s my fault. In the entire time we’ve been overseas, I haven’t told Casey a single thing about the woman I ruined. The one who holds every single key to my soul.
“Her brother died over here.” His feet hit the bed with an audible thunk, and I see the dust coming off his boots, floating through the air.
“What?” Disbelief laces his voice.
“You heard me, man. Her brother. He died serving in the Marine Corps. Danny Hayes, one of the men from Birch Harbor I served with when I wasn’t Reserve.”
First confusion, then shock and realization cross Casey’s face. He knows the Hayes family. He went to school with all of us in Birch Harbor. They moved sometime in high school, and Casey even married one of the girls from our class right out of high school. Although, that doesn’t really matter since he hasn’t been home in ten years.
“What the shit, Ortiz?” He sits up and leans forward, his face laced with confusion. “You didn’t tell me that shit. Linc’s brother? From home?” He scrubs a dirty hand over his face, leaving a streak of sweat mixed with dust across his skin. “Wait. Emma Hayes. Little Emma Hayes, with the blond hair and blue eyes that we all thought would marry that douche, Edward what’s-his-name?” He snaps his fingers together and closes his eyes while he tries to figure it out.
“Stryker,” I tell him, putting him out of his misery. “Yeah. Emma. That’s the woman I’ve been writing every day.” Eyeing the satellite phone, I choose not to tell him that I’ve also been trying to call her but haven’t worked up the courage to leave her a voicemail, so there is no way she’ll know that it is me calling and not some crazy telemarketer. “And she doesn’t have blue eyes. She’s got hazel eyes.”
“Holy shit, Dominic.” He stares at me until I think he’ll wear a hole in my forehead with the intensity in his eyes.
“Yeah. I know.” I sigh deeply. “But that’s not the worst of it.”
“How so?” He scratches his nose and then waits for me to pull my shit together and tell him. “I don’t know how it could get much worse, man. You’re telling me that you spent the last four months writing to a woman who already lost someone she cared about on a deployment.”
“Trust me. It gets worse.” I pull out the dog tag that I hadn’t gotten the chance to give her. The one I hadn’t been able to use to ask her to wait. To trust her with the only thing I had handy, since I couldn’t ask Mama for her ring on such short notice. “I didn’t tell her I was deploying.” His shocked gasp almost stops me short. “I had two weeks’ notice, or a little less since the CO recalled me early. But yeah. I didn’t tell her. She found out when I woke her up after packing.”
“Oh… you really screwed up. Like really, really screwed up.” Casey leans back, eyes wide. “I don’t even think I messed up that badly.”
“You left your wife alone for like ten years, Casey. You gave her a house and took off at eighteen years old. You don’t get to talk to me about screwing up.”
“Dominic.” Casey interlaces his fingers and shakes his head. “I don’t think you understand. Take a woman who lost her brother to this job and let her fall in love with you… and then hide the fact that you’re going to the same fuckin’ place that took her brother. And what? Just expect her to be okay with it and wait for you? You’ll go home and it’s gonna be all sunshine and rainbows?” When I don’t answer him, he lets out a deep breath. “Yeah, man, I messed up. But I never messed up quite that bad.”
“I told you that it was worse.” I offer a feeble explanation. “I didn’t want to lose her, and then I lost her anyway.”
Casey gets up. “Well, let’s go, man. We’re ready to go sit on target and get the hell out of this hellhole. When we get home, you can kiss her ass and buy her all the things and beg for another chance.”
If I thought for a second that she would forgive me if I did it, I would be the one to get down on a knee and beg for forgiveness. But Emma isn’t that type of woman. She wants the truth, not false platitudes or promises that can be easily broken. Especially since I was the one to break the trust and lie to her.
Even with less than two weeks having her in my life, I would do almost anything to get her back.
“Let’s go.” I get up and slide the rifle case out from under my bunk.
Four months of sitting around doing nothing, training for all the possibilities that might present themselves, and we finally have a chance to get home.
Even if I have to pick four months of sand out of my hair and skin, I’ll take it. Anything is better than not knowing how Emma is doing. How the academy is treating her.
Maybe, if I’m lucky, I may get home in time to watch her graduate.
When Casey opens the door, the wind and sandstorm have completely stopped. The bright desert sun beats down and it is hot enough that I almost wish the sand is back instead.
“Hey,” he says with a smile and a flourish. “Even the desert wants to get rid of us. It’s the first time in a week that we haven’t been pelted with the stuff.”
Except two hours later, I’m buried in sand under a canopy, with a rifle in my hand and a scope attached to my eye.
“What do you think you’re gonna do to win her over?” Casey mutters through the mic in my ear. “I need ideas if I’m gonna convince my wife to give me another chance.”
I snort. “I don’t think you should take advice from me. I keep screwing it up without even trying.”
“Trust me, man. If there was anyone else I trusted to ask about it. Or hell, anyone else here, I’d ask them too. But I gotta work with what I got. That’s you.”
“I don’t know. I figured I’d give her the chance to beat my ass and go from there. If I can get her talking, even screaming, it’ll be an improvement over the silent treatment.”
“What are you going to do about Linc?” Casey asks. “You could buy him his favorite bottle of booze.”
Linc, threatening to kill me for hurting his little sister, fills my mind, and I realize that it isn’t just one of the Hayes’ siblings that I’ll have to get forgiveness from. Out of the two of them, I can’t figure out which one I’m more afraid of.
I’ve seen Linc pull the trigger on an enemy combatant, but he’s not the scariest sibling.
The look on Emma’s face as she held on to Stryker’s head and knocked him out even with blood dripping from her hairline is branded into my brain forever.
Yep. Emma’s the one I’m scared of.
“I know what I’m gonna do,” I tell him after thinking about it for an hour.
I don’t get a chance to tell him, though, because something pops up on the edge of our firing distance. The target vehicle approaches with a trail of dust in its wake, marked by scouts, heading right toward one of the planned locations. Both Casey and I stop talking, ready to take action.
My finger on the trigger, the safety off and one in the chamber, I settle into the sand even further and adjust my position to make the most effective shot.
In my mind, a familiar mantra fills the silence.
Breathe.
In.
Out.
Pull the trigger.
As the shot rings out and our mission finally ends, all I can think about is Emma. In fact, if I’m honest with myself, it is her voice in my head, giving me the same instructions I heard her whisper to herself the day she outshot me on the range.
“Amazing.” Casey slaps me on the back as we make it back to base without incident. “How far was that shot? Fifteen hundred yards?”
Adrenaline courses through my veins, just like it does with every mission. “Two thousand,” I correct him.
He whistles. “Holy shit. I don’t even think my brother Cam could make that shot and he’s one of the best.”
Clearly not as good as me. But I don’t open my mouth.
Where there should be elation at completing the mission, all I feel is homesick.
It’s too bad I won’t be able to share with Emma that I made the shot. It doesn’t matter, though, because as far as I’m concerned, she can win every single time, as long as I get to be there by her side.
While I wait for my flight home, I write Emma one more letter.
Just in case.