Chapter Twenty-one
Kael
Waking up to Karina in my ma’s living room was more jarring than I’d expected. I was confused as fuck as to where I was and what year it was. I hadn’t slept on that couch in years.
“Hi.” She smiled down at me, her hair falling over her shoulders.
“Hi,” I repeated, stretching my body as much as I could on the small couch. The smell was so familiar, but the circumstances were not.
Karina seemed well rested, a sense of ease over her that typically wasn’t there. As we left, my ma hugged me again and again, calling me my uncle’s name by accident. She had done that a few times on the phone, but I knew she was usually so exhausted from work that it made sense to mix our names up. That and our names were so similar. My sister had left for a study group earlier, but that was no surprise. Karina and my ma seemed to have a hard time saying goodbye to one another, which I both loved and hated. I knew I was only making things more complicated by intertwining our lives in every possible way.
“Were you nervous about me meeting your family?” she asked me as I pulled onto the highway.
I knew she would eventually ask her questions, but we had a long drive ahead, so part of me hoped her inquisition could wait until we were a little further into the day. My ma had been a mess when we’d left, but I’d promised her that I could come back more often. Karina made me promise her the same, pouting over not seeing my old bedroom, which I’d built out back. It was about the size of two sheds together and had everything I needed inside. When I was deep in deployment, I had daydreamed about running away and living there, in the back of my ma’s house forever.
“A bit, yeah.”
I didn’t look at her but I heard the subtle inhale she made at my honesty.
“Because of me? Or because you haven’t introduced anyone to them?” she asked. I knew she would assume it was because of something wrong with her, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“No.” I shook my head, putting my blinker on to change lanes even though the road was empty except us. “Because of me. I didn’t think I would ever bring my two lives together.”
“Two lives?”
“It feels that way. Not as sinister as its sounds, but it does feel like I have two versions of myself,” I admitted. “Or more.”
She was quiet for a few seconds. When I looked at her, she was staring out the window at the trees as we passed.
“And which version of you do I know?” she finally asked.
“The only one that matters.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
She was too clever to accept my bland response. “You know the me that no one else does, so it is a real answer. The man you know, flaws and all, is someone only you have met. Truly.”
Karina looked at me and curled her legs up on the seat, wrapping her forearm around her shins. Her eyes were soft and accepting, deciding to take my response at face value and let it go, for now. She was the one person I’d ever opened up to in this way, one of the only people I’d ever trusted in my life, and that meant a lot. I had fucked up when it came to her, and she had forgiven me, but who knew how long it would be until everything unraveled with her father. I was lying to her, even now, even as she trusted my words, and we drove in near silence with only the sound of her playlist in the car.
Memories flashed through my mind like an open camera roll. Her father the first time I met him, dirt and dust covering every part of his face, his gun against his chest. Her soft, welcoming eyes the first time I saw her at the massage studio. Him again, clean and shaven, threating Mendoza into silence, using his power in the most disgusting way. Her rambling to me on the living room floor as she painted her nails, laughing and unguarded. The silent shock in his eyes when I walked into his home for the first time with his daughter. Her voice when she comforted the darkest parts of me. Him showing up at her house and ruining everything. Him begging me to take his daughter away from here. The devastation in her eyes when she learned the truth. There I was, repeating history, and I couldn’t stop it. Technically, I could, but I wasn’t. I should have told her everything, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I loved her, but I hated him more.
The thought made my stomach turn, and I knew how fucked up it was. But I glanced at her again in the passenger seat and decided to keep the secret a little longer.
Fischer and Elodie were in the living room when we got back to Karina’s house. Elodie had just gotten off work and it was Karina’s turn to go in. I suspected their boss hated me at this point since both were missing so much work lately and by proxy I was to blame. While Karina showered, I put her laundry in the washer, folding the pile of towels that had been in the dryer. The dryer filter was covered in lint so I cleaned it off, wiped down her counters, and washed the dishes in the sink. When she emerged, her hair wet and in a braid that was falling apart, I was drying a bowl.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, lowering my hand with the bowl and towel.
“I know, but I did anyway.” I kissed her forehead and placed the bowl in the drying rack. I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her around gently to fix her braid.
“You’re spoiling me and I’m going to get too used to it,” she told me, her tone split, half joking, half worried.
It seemed a bit ominous, and paranoia crept in, as if her words were a reminder that I knew deep down that this was all temporary, a fragile hourglass, slowly dropping sand as the time passed.
“You should expect to be treated this way, Karina. Nothing less. Promise me?” I tied the band around the bottom of her hair and turned her around again.
Kissing her forehead, then the bridge of her nose, then her lips, I felt impossibly attached to her with every moment we spent together. But everything was going too well in my life, so I was expecting a tornado to come rip it apart. My fate wasn’t to be gifted a happy, comfortable life with Karina—to live in a beautiful home with our children running around. I knew better than that. My sins would catch up to me, and I was practically begging them to by complicating Karina’s life day by day and not just going away and leaving her to have a calm, honest life. She trusted me, and that fucking killed me.
There was a war waging inside of me. I wanted the best for her, I really fucking did, and I wished like hell that the best for her could be me at the end. But I wasn’t the best for anyone and I seemed to consistently leave a path of destruction in my wake.
“As long as you keep doing it, I’ll keep expecting it. Are you hungry? I can reheat some of the food your ma sent home with us before I leave?” she offered.
My ma had sent us off with two stacks of Tupperware full of dumplings, shrimp and grits, bread, steamed purple potatoes . . . I didn’t catch all of it. I think some ham or beef too. Food had always been one way for her to show her affection. Even on nights when she worked until dawn stocking shelves at the local grocery store, she would make sure there was always food in the house for me and Tay. I could imagine Karina as that type of mother. Always thinking ahead for her children and doing anything, literally anything, for them. She put me and everyone around her first; I couldn’t imagine how extreme her empathy would be for her children. How lucky they would be.
Instead of promising her anything that I wasn’t sure I could keep, I lifted her chin with my thumb and had her eyes touch mine. Her cheeks flushed pink, and I kissed her shiny lips, tasting the coconut-flavored lip balm she had been using lately.
“I’ll wait for you to get home and then we can eat together. I have a couple of errands to run and I need to put up some drywall, but if your brother helps me I’ll be done and here waiting when your shift is over.”
“I love the sound of that.” She grinned, lifting herself onto her toes to kiss me.
“Can you two get a fucking room?” Fischer groaned, striding into the kitchen.
“This is my house. So if you don’t like it, get out,” Karina said and kissed me again.
“Come onnnn . . .” he whined.
“You’ve been having a secret relationship with my married best friend, so I don’t want to hear a word from you.” She pointed her finger at him. She was teasing him, but she was right as hell.
He smiled, the length of it going nearly from ear to ear. “Touché, Kare. Touché.”
Fischer grabbed a glass and filled it with water from the sink before leaving us in the kitchen again.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I told her, hugging my arms around her body, inhaling her intoxicating scent.
“Me too,” she responded. “I love you, Kael.”
I didn’t deserve her love, but I needed it to survive for as long as I could take it.
“I love you, Karina.”
After she left I got into my truck and brought Elodie and Fischer with me to my duplex. I needed his help today or the drywall would never get finished by the end of the week. He insisted that Elodie come with us, as he didn’t want her to be at home alone, and neither did I—not until we knew what mental state Phillips was in. I got a text from Mendoza saying that Phillips was staying with someone from his old platoon, but he didn’t know who. That it had been so quiet and no one had heard from him except for hearsay was concerning. I’d been in my Karina bubble the last thirty-six hours. I debated calling him, but I knew Phillips saw me as his enemy now that I had so clearly chosen a side. Now that we were back near post, I hated the idea of not knowing his next move, or if he even had one. In hopes that the other night was a one-off, I put my phone on the counter and got my ass to work.
I was so lost in the manual labor of using my hands and mind to build something that I hadn’t realized that Fischer had stopped helping me. I no longer heard him talking to Elodie or any tools being used. I wiped the sweat off my face with the bottom of my debris-covered T-shirt and made my way through the mess to find him. Elodie was in the living room of my side of the duplex, sitting cross-legged on the couch watching a show on my barely used TV, but he wasn’t there with her. I passed her and listened closely, following the trail of his voice outside to my front yard. I stood in the doorway but didn’t open the door right away.
“I’ll send you the money as soon as I can. I’m working more this week,” Austin said into the phone.
I shifted my body sideways so he would be less likely to see me listening. This little fucker better not owe people money or be using again. I would kill him.
“Are you really going to come here?” he asked whoever was on the other line.
My blood began to boil, my suspicion growing high. Who the fuck was going to come here? With their father’s warnings to me and the situation with Phillips, the last thing any of us needed was someone coming to Fischer to get money he owed them.
“Okay. I’ll figure it out. Be safe, okay?” he told them and hung up the phone.
As soon as he stepped inside, I grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt and slammed him into the wall. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
His entire face went pale and his eyes widened; shock didn’t begin to describe the widening of his light eyes.
“What? How long were you standing there?” he asked, trying to push me back by his elbows.
I pushed forward, pinning him against the wall. “Long enough to know that I’ve worked my ass off to get you into the Army and you’re fucking up again.” I searched his face, waiting for an explanation. “You better not lie to me. I heard you. You owe someone money and they’re going to come after it. As if you don’t have enough people trying to come after you.”
I could barely contain my anger. I needed him to make it to and through basic, to make a living and have health care, to have stability for once in his life and stop letting his impulses control him. For himself and for Karina. It was the least I could do.
“Are you using again? Empty your pockets.” I let go of him with one arm, knowing one was enough to hold him still, and dug my free hand into his pockets, dumping them both onto the floor.
A debit card, a key chain, and his phone fell to the ground. Nothing more.
“What the fuck, man. Get off me!” he shouted, pushing at my unwavering grip on him. “I’m not on anything! I haven’t even had a damn drink! Let me go!”
Elodie came rushing to the door. “What’s happening?” she shrieked, yanking at my arms to let him go. I dropped my grip, stepped away from him, and her hands flew up in the air. “Why are you guys fighting? Tell me!” she demanded.
Our breath was wild, and my anger began to melt away as I saw how shaken up Elodie was. She had been through enough, and here I was sending her into a panic. Fuck.
“Nothing, just a misunderstanding and him jumping to thinking the worst of me. As usual,” Fischer said, his eyes filled with moisture. I could feel the hurt in them as he picked his stuff up from the floor and grabbed the front-door handle.
“I want to get out of here,” he told Elodie, not looking at me.
“Fischer, why don’t you—” I began. All he needed to do was tell me what the hell was going on with the phone call I’d just heard.
“Martin, why don’t you just fuck off with your holier-than-thou shtick. You kept feeding me bullshit, saying how great I was doing, how proud of me you were, how I would make a great soldier.”
His voice broke and he began to cry, trying his hardest to stop but failing.
“All that just to accuse me of being high in one flash of a second. Fuck you for making me believe you actually thought I had a chance,” he spat, flinging the door open.
Elodie looked confused and afraid but followed him out of the house, and they got into her car. I watched them drive away, hearing his words repeat themselves, echoing through my mind as I slammed the door and slid down the back of it.
About twenty minutes later, a knock at my door made me stand up. Assuming it was Fischer, I opened it, ready to apologize for being so quick to jump to the worst-case scenario when he had been doing so good lately, even passing a drug test two days ago. My worry for him and his future clouded my judgment, and I was about to begin my sincere apology when I realized it wasn’t Fischer at my door—it was Phillips.