My close friends and family. Viper, Char, and Harley.
Switching thought patterns, my heart began to bleed for the man who’d put it all on the line for me without so much as a moment’s hesitation. And now, his life had been turned over to the asshole who had left a permanent imprint on my psyche.
His torment would be far greater than my own, death being the outcome. I couldn’t live with myself if he died. A certain amount of guilt would ride my shoulders for eternity, regardless of whether I had any say in his sacrificial offering.
I don’t know how long I lay on the shower floor mulling over everything. The water began to go cold, so I rose like a zombie and dried off, checking the phone again and finding nothing.
Wrapping myself in a hotel robe, I walked out to the bed and crawled on top, still grasping Viper’s cell. I stared at it, willing it to ring, my nauseated stomach overturning continuously.
What if he never came home? The moments we’d shared but a flicker in time. Just as I began to dream that maybe I’d found what I’d been looking for all along, it had been snatched away like a terrible tease.
God, I needed him to be all right. He’d been through too much already to have it end this way. His handsome face held firm in my mind’s eye as I eventually drifted off.
Chapter Fifteen
Harley
Would I ever see her again? I tried to push images of her distraught face away as footsteps raced up to me from behind. Turning marginally, my hopes of it being the cavalry disappeared when the two men who’d been aiming their weapons at us only a few seconds earlier narrowed the gap. One had his weapon trained on me and the other covered the retreating hallway, walking backward. If I’d been on top of my game I could have taken out the ring-leader before his minions showed up, but I’d been too busy grieving the loss of Mac.
Straightening up, I barely had time to refocus when a blow to the back of the head dropped me to the dusty floor. I never felt the impact because darkness seized me first.
***
Rousing groggily, awareness seeped in. My body curled awkwardly as if I were inside something. A crate?
Squinting my eyes open, I fought against the surrounding darkness. My head felt like it could explode at any second as agony ripped through my skull. Had I hit my head? A rumble from underneath brought me to life a little quicker. I attempted to sit up, but a metal barrel to my forehead pushed me back down.
“Don’t move!” a male voice yelled. My mind had a hard time playing catch up, but instantaneously a barrage of scenes and images flooded my brain, causing me to inhale sharply. Lightheadedness had me loll my head to the side of whatever caged me in. Random events played out in fast motion in no particular order.
Sitting in a classroom with what appeared to be middle-schoolers, passing notes to a boy I recognized as my friend. Danny Burgess. We’d become friends at the beginning of that year and stuck together until high school when he moved away. His red hair and crooked front tooth somehow worked in the overall scheme of his freckled face.
War torn buildings, bombed and crumbling, the smell of gunfire singeing my already sensitive nostrils. Reno, Viper, and my team on alert as we entered a small Afghan village, vacant and beyond repair, searching for survivors on a peace-keeping mission. A young voice, sniveling and pathetic clung to the air as we stepped over the threshold of the remains of a simple slum. Roof blown off and walls crumbling, the meek cry for help took us by surprise. I glanced at Viper and Reno, and they waved their guns to the sound of the child. Rubble and remnants of cheap furniture littered what once would have been a living area. I scanned the space, waiting for another sound.
Sobs mixed with desperation came at me again, and this time, I pinpointed my target. An overturned table in the corner of the room shielded the frightened victim of war. Dragging the wooden structure away, my eyes focused on a small form, huddled and shaking against the wall. I couldn’t make out the gender from all the dirt covering the youngster. At a guess I’d say boy, perhaps five or six years old. Abandoned and left to die. My steely heart wasn’t immune to the ravages and tragedies of war, especially when children were involved. They didn’t ask to be born. They didn’t ask to have such adversity thrust upon them. And this youngster who’d be mentally scarred forever, with no shoes and matted dirty hair, scared beyond belief, made me take pause. Sorrow filled me. The child should be attending school, laughing with friends, instead of cowering in the remnants of his bombed house, alone and worrying we’d come to finish him off. His small head turned, his eyes round with dread. I held up my hand and dropped my weapon, crouching to put myself on a more even keel.
Flattening himself further against the wall in the hopes it would swallow him up, guilt and disgust riddled me. Both converged together in a powerful slap to my ego. In a moment of clarity, I became ashamed of the human race. We were doing this to ourselves because of greed, race, religion, and money. How had everything become so screwed up?
Another flash. Jumbled images twisted and turned. Faces and places. My mother and father. My dad before he died. His funeral. My childhood dog, Zep, short for Zeppelin, grinning as we ran through the park on a Sunday morning just around the corner from home. Smells bombarded me. A summer shower of rain settling into a garden filled with roses caught me as we tore past Mrs. Shepherd’s dated Victorian. Mom’s blueberry pancakes seeping into the yard through the open window as I kicked off my sneakers near the porch. Her perfume grabbing me and holding as I charged at her for a hug, with Zep riding my tails.
With the mental movie came an overwhelming influx of emotions. An onslaught almost too much to contend with. I retched weakly, my stomach deciding it couldn’t handle the excess acid formed by the return of my memory in one fell swoop.
A few loud pops outside failed to drag me out of my speeding movie, which entrenched me within its confines. My overloaded senses were dragged from past to present and back again, never lingering long.
The fire in my skull raged, pain shooting from the top of my scalp to the top of my spine. Something told me my sudden memory recall had been brought about by blunt force trauma.
The contents of my stomach rose, and as I heaved again, I brought everything up in the small space I occupied. More vertigo seized me, taking me once again into the nothing.
***
This time when I came to, my body wasn’t folded in on itself. My legs and arms rested comfortably on a soft surface.
Voices cut into the quiet.
“He’s coming around.”
“He took quite a blow to the head. You think he’ll be okay?”
“I hope so. I’m just happy he’s alive. You saved him.”
“Told you I would.”
Whispered words followed by, “Thank you.”
I know that voice. Her voice. Please don’t be a dream! Am I dead this time? Don’t tease me. Make it real. Make her real.
Opening my eyes, her puffy, bruised face came into view, bringing a snarl from my throat at the recollection of what had gone down. I moved to sit up, but fell back down as dizziness slapped me, hard. More fragments of my subconscious filtered through, and then like a roaring train with no brakes, I hurtled into my own head with its infinite flashes. Bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle thrown in a pile for me to sort out. A soft hand came to my arm in comfort but I shucked it away, overcome by my brain’s overload. A collection of events from birth to present vying for space, some horrific, some amazing. With each unlocked piece of my past came the emotions that sat with the occasion. Fear. Love. Wonder. Hatred. Self-loathing. Worry. Joy. All of it together but unsorted, filling the void at an alarming rate.
“Fuck!” I roared, gripping my scalp. I just wanted it to stop. Make it stop!
“Harley?” her soft voice rose in concern, but I couldn’t shake my waking nightmare. I couldn’t quite grasp onto the comfort it always brought me. I floundered, drowning.
I’d killed people. Seen things. Horrific things. Bodies mutilated. Heads blown off. F
riends dead in my arms. Reno…God. Reno! Guilt pulled me under.
A shadow loomed. The enemy. I lashed out, flailing my fists, not concerned about the wounded cry or the semi-focused image of my beautiful nurse. I howled in pain. Not physical, but mental. Scars cut so deep, stitched back together haphazardly.
“Dec, man! Stop! You hurt Mac. Calm down!” Large hands pushed my shoulders down into the mattress.
I shook my head, my body already trembling. Tears fell down my face as I squeezed my eyes tightly, attempting to purge the horror of who I was and what I’d done. What I’d seen.
“Dec. You’re safe. It’s okay. Open your eyes.” Viper. My wingman. My battle buddy. The only one who knew the torment, beneath. He’d lived it too. Right by my side.
“Shhh. Come on, dude. Don’t do this. Come back.” His dusty voice begged with a level of authority that made me blink several times and focus. It took a moment as I swiped at the tears.
My vision showed not a warzone but a room. I saw the concern in his green eyes as I let him settle me. “You okay? Shit.” Letting me go, he backed off, allowing my sight to move across the room. My eyes pinned Mac, standing on the other side of my bed, holding her arm. Fuck! Had I done that? I didn’t mean to. I’d never hurt her intentionally. And yet, she stood frightened, half the woman she had been when I’d first met her. God, her marred face. The wounds raw and blatant. I did that. I caused all of it. A beautiful, tragic mess. Not directly, but indirectly, and that had proved just as bad. I’d never get over hurting her and she’d never begin to understand why. No one could possibly understand my grief. Her fear made me feel pathetic and weak. She may not admit it but right now, but she was scared of me. And so she should be. I wasn’t who she’d created. Harley. The guy deserving of such a woman. The guy I’d wanted to be for her. The guy I could no longer be.
The strong, independent woman who had promised to stick by me until my memories returned now cowered like a mouse. Afraid. Of. Me.
Her wide eyes held mine with pity and fright. She made no move to come closer. The room began to swallow me up with her reaction. I fought to remain focused on her as my brain caught and held more memories. Memories of the person I’d always been but had lost. And the person I had become under Mac’s care dangled in limbo, neither here nor there. I didn’t know what to do with him. He was me, yet he wasn’t. He was what she wanted and needed. Dec would hurt her. The damaged soldier. I couldn’t wake up each day seeing the same hesitation in her eyes. Wondering if each day would bring another meltdown.
I knew what I needed to do. To save her I needed to hurt her. She had no business being caught up in my mess. I would fail her. Not physically, but emotionally. Now that I knew everything, my nightmare had only just begun. I needed help. I had to let her go and fix myself.
Saving her life had been just the beginning. Now I needed to save her soul.
Masking my emotions, I gripped the sheet and ground out, “Leave. Now. I don’t need you here.”
Nothing could be further from the truth, but if she stayed, she’d witness someone I didn’t want her to see. The real me. A soldier with a fucked up brain caused by war.
Her blue eyes appeared horrified at my command. She looked at Viper for support but he remained silent, eyes slightly squinting as if he were trying to read my change of heart.
“I mean it. You need to leave.” My voice held the authority I now remembered as being a commanding officer’s.
I needed to punch something. To release the valve that had my head constricted so tightly. I could barely breathe without screaming.
Her weak voice asked, “Where will I go?”
Drinking in more of the bedroom I lay in, I realized it belonged to the hotel we had rented. She couldn’t very well go home because we weren’t in Ann Arbor.
“Just go out in the living area,” I barked.
Viper moved to go too, but I lurched forward, gripping his wrist as he pulled away. “You. Stay.”
I didn’t wait to see Mac disappear. I felt detached. Wrong. My vision blurred. A flash of the small boy huddling in the Afghani town plagued me along with one of our crew being shot through the head in an attack from militant rebels. Any peaceful memories of family and friends took a backseat. Violence and carnage shot to the fore. Bloodshed. Death.
“Make it stop!” Squeezing my eyes tightly, I pounded on my temple with my fist, needing something to numb me.
“Dec. What’s happening?”
“Brain overload. All the images from our tours. I can’t shake them. All of them.” I could only hear Viper’s voice come closer with my eyes closed.
“I’m calling 000.”
I didn’t damn well care. I just needed a clear head.
I vaguely heard him make the call.
“They’re on their way.”
Nodding and dragging in deep breaths, I attempted to fight the deluge. “Mac. Make sure she’s okay.”
He perched on the edge of the bed as I opened my eyes. “What was that about before? She’s gone through hell and you virtually yelled at her to get the fuck out.” He spoke genuinely. I knew he liked Mac. He could tell she made me happy. Normally. When I knew nothing about my past. When I wasn’t Declan Harding.
Hissing out a breath between my teeth, I propped myself up on the pillow, not knowing how to explain, but figuring if anyone would understand, it would be Viper. Staring at him, trying to remain present, feeling the sheets underneath me and letting the smells of the room keep me grounded, I hoped I could help him see.
“Harley’s the guy she met. He’s the one she knows. In light of what I know now and what I’ve been through, I don’t know if I can be him anymore. My head is a mess. I feel like I’m going crazy. I want to physically tear someone apart from the infinite rage coursing through me. Jesus, Viper. How did you do it? Get through it all, I mean.”
He’d been there with me. Seen the same things. Probably had the same shit going over and over in his head. And yet, he seemed so put together. Thinking back through the muck sinking my mind, I searched for memories of my friend having a meltdown at any stage but he answered the question for me.
“It wasn’t easy. Cost me my girl. The one I had asked to marry me.”
Gripping the blanket covering me and squeezing it as more images tried to steal me back, I jiggled my legs and slowed my breathing.
Ahh, yeah. The house he’d brought as a family home. The memory peeked through. Cindy.
“She left because of your drinking and anger.”
Folding his arms across his chest, clearly uncomfortable, he grunted. “I had it all. Career. Home. Woman I loved. Then it all went to hell after the second tour. I totally lost my shit.”
He had. I’d nearly lost him as a friend because of it. He’d derailed, drowning himself in bottles of Jack Daniels. The only thing that had pulled him back from the edge had been medication and counseling.
“The thing with you is, you’ve got everything flooding your brain all at once. I had the shit happen over time. You’re trying to process it all now. It sucks for you. You need something to help with that. I’m telling you, the meds they put me on are what helped me get up each morning.”
Feeling another wave of daytime drama appearing in my mind, I hung my head, attempting to push it back. There were no triggers. It just happened rapidly. Randomly.
A knock sounded on the door before it opened and two medics appeared, Mac in the background looking flustered and stressed. My heart called out to her but I didn’t need to be dealing with more emotional stuff right now. I couldn’t think past my own anxiety. She’d understand. I didn’t want to lose her, but the vermin in my psyche twisted and twirled like sharp claws. The suddenly new version of myself felt detached from her as if Harley had all been a dream.
Chapter Sixteen
Mac
Harley had woken from his head trauma with his full memory. How did I react to that? He wasn’t the make-believe Harley any more. Harley had been nothing more than a prete
nd version of Declan. A temporary persona. Watching him process his memories, mainly bad, had cut me to the bone. I wanted to help but clearly he didn’t need it. He chose the friend who’d seen him through thick and thin. And why should it be any other way? I’d only known him for such a short time. He didn’t owe me a thing. And I shouldn’t hope for anything more.
Already in too deep, if he asked me to walk away and never see him again, it would gut me. Just going into another room and leaving him vulnerable had been hard enough. Or had his order a double meaning? Perhaps he had meant for me to leave and never come back. His voice had sounded so final. I’d been there for him right up until a few moments ago and the idea of not being wanted anymore had my stress level at an unhealthy high. Harley had the ability to break me.
Maybe he needed time to pull himself together. To let his past settle into some sort of order. He must be going through hell, and it was selfish of me to be considering my own feelings.
I’d seen PTSD patients at the hospital. They carried a heavy burden. Sometimes too much to handle. We always referred them to a clinical psychologist. Fingers crossed Harley would be given the same option. Harley. It now sounded foreign. Harley had never existed. He’d always been Declan. A person I’d never known. A life I’d never been a part of. Suddenly I felt like an outsider. Is that how he saw me now?
I’d let the paramedics in and they loaded him onto the gurney, injecting a liquid into his arm that seemed to sedate him somewhat. His eyes glassed over and his lids struggled to remain open. His bleary eyes found mine as they wheeled him past.
He mumbled something but I only caught, “Mac.”
I wanted to go with him. One of the medics stopped when he saw me.
“Are you okay, Ma’am? Do you need medical treatment also?”
Viper hadn’t taken me to the hospital in light of him needing to rescue Harley. I’d almost forgotten about my face. They must wonder what I’d been involved in.
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