Elias
The radio never screamed, it crackled.
Static.
"Reed! Reed! We've got a man down!"
The voice wasn't coming through the headset anymore it was inside my skull the valley disappeared, the pines disappeared.
I was back in Afghanistan in the heat and sand.
The air tasted like metal and diesel. Gunfire tore through the narrow village street in sharp, violent bursts, ricocheting off broken concrete walls.
Move.
Fucking Move Reed.
Move.
My boots slammed against the packed dirt as I sprinted between collapsed buildings, rifle tight against my shoulder. King was somewhere to my left.
Dawson...
Dawson was behind me. He was supposed to be behind me. Another explosion ripped through the alley and the ground jumped, dust swallowed everything. I hit the dirt hard enough to crack my chin against the stock of my rifle.
For three long seconds… there was nothing. Only ringing.
Then the screaming started.
Not civilians, soldiers. One voice was raw and desperate.
"Elias!"
I knew that voice.
"Dawson!"
I shoved myself up, stumbling through smoke thick enough to choke on the world that had turned grey concrete dust ash blood every breath burned.
"Dawson!"
Another cry answered me.
"I'm here!"
I found him beneath a collapsed section of wall half his body was buried beneath shattered cinder blocks his left leg... fuck. There wasn't enough left to call it a leg, dark blood soaked through the sand, running between broken bricks in thick black streams.
"Elias..."
His hands were shaking not from fear but from blood loss. I dropped beside him, throwing chunks of concrete aside until my gloves slipped on blood.
"Hang on."
"I can't feel..."
"Don't."
"I can't-"
"Don't you finish that sentence."
His breathing came in ragged gasps.
"You promised..."
His eyes found mine.
"...you promised we'd both go home."
My throat closed.
"I know."
"You promised."
"I know."
Gunfire erupted somewhere beyond the smoke, closer.
Too fucking close.
King appeared through the haze. His face was covered in dirt and someone else's blood.
"Elias!"
He already knew. One look. One glance. He knew Dawson wasn't making it.
"We've gotta move!"
"I'm not leaving him!"
"Elias!"
"I'm not leaving him!"
King grabbed my vest.
"Elias!"
I shoved him away.
"No!"
Dawson actually laughed but it was weak and broken.
"You always were..."
Blood spilled over his lips.
"...too damn stubborn."
"No."
I kept pulling at the concrete.
"No."
No.
No.
No.
His fingers found my sleeve and his grip had already weakened.
"Go home..."
"No."
"...for me."
"No!"
"Elias."
"No!"
His hand slipped.
His eyes...
Slowly closed and never opened again.
The village became silent not because the fighting had ended but because something inside me had.
I woke up sitting bolt upright, air tore into my lungs. My heart hammered so violently against my ribs I honestly thought it might break through them.
02:03.
The red numbers glowed beside the bed like fresh wounds. The bedroom was dark, quiet.
No explosions. No smoke. No Dawson. Only the sound of my own breathing. I scrubbed both hands over my face. Still shaking.
"Fuck..."
The sheets were soaked so was my T-shirt another night, another ghost, another promise I couldn't keep. Sleep wasn't coming back. It never did after dreams like this.
I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, the wooden floor cold beneath my bare feet. My lungs still hadn't settled, every breath scraping against the inside of my ribs like broken glass.
I stood there for a second.
Just breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
It didn't fucking help.
The silence inside the cabin always felt loud after the nightmares. Too loud. Every creak of the old timber sounded like boots crossing gravel. Every gust of wind through the pines became rotor blades overhead. My brain knew where I was.
My body didn't. I shoved both hands through my hair and walked into the living room without bothering to switch on a light. Darkness suited me. Always had. I dropped onto the old rug.
Push-ups.
One. Two. Three…Twenty…Thirty…Forty.
I kept going until sweat ran off my nose and soaked into the faded fibers beneath my palms.
Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five.
My shoulders burned. Good. Pain meant I was here, pain meant Afghanistan was over.
Sixty…Seventy…Eighty.
My arms started shaking. I welcomed it. Collapsing was easier than remembering when my chest finally hit the floor, I rolled onto my back, staring up at the cracked ceiling.
Still awake. Still thinking. Still feeling hearing his voice.
"Dammit."
I sat up again. Sit-ups this time. My elbows touched my knees.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The muscles across my stomach screamed where the old bullet scar pulled tight beneath my skin.
Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.
I stopped counting after that. The numbers stopped mattering, nothing drowned out the memories, not sweat, not pain, not exhaustion. I leaned forward, forearms resting on my knees, breathing hard into the darkness.
Her face appeared anyway.
Seraphina.
Not kissing me, not asking for a hug. No. The first thing my mind dragged back was much worse.
"So..."
Her voice had been so small.
"This is what a hug feels like."
Jesus Christ.
I scrubbed both hands down my face. I'd interviewed children who'd survived house fires. Pulled addicts out of ditches. Knocked on doors no husband or wife should ever have to answer. None of it had hollowed me out quite like those seven words.
This is what a hug feels like.
How the hell does someone reach adulthood without ever knowing that? How many people had walked past her? How many had looked at that smile, those jokes, those ridiculous ceramic gnomes and never noticed the little girl underneath all of it was still waiting for somebody to hold her?
My jaw clenched.
I stood before I could think about it any longer. The shower. Cold water usually shuts my head up.
Usually.
I walked into the bathroom, stripped off the sweat-soaked shirt and let it fall beside the laundry basket. The mirror caught me for half a second. Scar across the shoulder. Knife wound beneath the ribs. Burn marks. Shrapnel. The bullet scar low on my stomach.
A road map of every mistake I'd survived.
I turned away before the memories could start reading themselves and strided into the shower.
With my face tilted back, I turn the handle and the cold spray pours over me, shocking me back into the present. My muscles start to unclench as the water slowly warms. I need to focus on what’s important and that’s the same thing it’s always been. Surviving.
Heavy with memories, my head tips forward.
Steaming water cascades through my hair, the sudden warmth after the cold shock making me appreciate it even more.
It’s easy to get used to the quiet, static baseline of this mountain valley.
Easier yet to forget the edge. As if to remind myself that I’m human, my hand reaches down to trace the old gunshot scar on my stomach.
It’s the closest I’ve ever come. Even with the deployments, the frozen nights, the starved days in the field, that little piece of jagged metal was the closest I ever came to death.
There’ve been times I wish it would’ve taken me.
Done me in. But I still have moments I’m glad I’m alive.
Like last night.
My eyes slowly open, locking on a small, smooth bottle resting on the corner shelf of my shower. I bought it thinking about her. I shouldn’t have but fuck me that never stopped me before. Bending my broad shoulders, I scoop up the plastic container, pop the lid open, and inhale.
Vanilla and with a hint of roses.
It’s sweet, but it’s not light or fragile or carefree. It’s... dark. Heavy. I breathe it in again, and my mind is instantly filled with her.
Seraphina.
Her pale skin. Her dark, unblinking eyes.
My breathing picks up, the air thick with steam and her scent.
The sudden, intense memory of her excitement shouldn't hit me this hard.
I want to protect her. I want to walk away so she doesn't get pulled into the blackness that follows me everywhere, but her eyes... those goddamn eyes.
The deep, bottomless depth in those dark orbs. When she stood on my porch in that clinging white linen dress, she stared up at me like I might save her. Like I was something other than the bogeyman lurking in the shadows of this valley. Like maybe I could be more.
And the moment her small fingers curled around my forearm, pulling me down to her mouth...
I groan, a low, guttural vibration in my chest, and my body reacts the same way it did on the porch, hardening to its full length beneath the spray.
"Fuck," I bite out the word, the sound bouncing sharp off the tiles.
I tip the bottle over, filling my palm with her liquid soap, the pale amber cream glistening under the dim light. Setting the container down, I brace my free hand flat against the cold marble wall, leaning my weight into it as I lower the other.
You’re a sick fuck, Reed.
But even the internal warning can’t stop the baseline from fracturing now. My palm connects with my cock, and I let the vanilla-scented lather engulf my senses completely.
"Fuck," I hiss through my teeth, my grip tightening as the soap removes every bit of friction, making the skin dangerously slippery.
Squeezing my eyes shut under the running water, I begin to stroke, the motion fast and rhythmic. Only instead of my hand, my mind completely overrides the room. I imagine it’s Seraphina’s sweet, hot body pinning me, her slickness, her desperate need for me taking over the layout.
Pumping my hips, I fuck my fist and pretend she is with me in the shower.
Pretend it’s her dark eyes blinking up at me in the shadows, a mix of absolute hero-worship looking back at me, tightening my balls until they ache.
I think about the way her perfect breasts would bounce as I slammed into her, our hips connecting with a heavy, wet jolt that would shake her entire frame.