“Maybe you didn’t get high around them, but surely the influx of new men hanging around their mother wasn’t something they were blind to.”
“I’m allowed to date, to have boyfriends—”
“What would have happened if one of those men set their sights on either Layla or Oliver?” Her mouth flaps, but nothing comes out. I know she hasn’t considered that possibility.” Do you think in your drug-addled haze, you could have protected them?”
“I never—”
“I don’t know what happened to make you go down this path. Frankly, I don’t care enough about you to want to know. What I care about are the children clearly affected by their mother’s behavior and protecting them from anymore backlash. I’m not going to lie to them anymore about who or what their mother is, because she clearly doesn’t know what she wants.” I hold out my hand to her, suddenly remembering why she’s really here. She looks hungrily at the kit in my hand. If she was itching for a fix before, the looks on her face tells me she’s even more desperate for it now.
But I also see the hesitation in her eyes. She’s heard me, and the words I’ve spoken about her children are affecting her the way I had hoped. She needs to wake up if she hopes to restore any kind of relationship with her children. That is if Kingston allows one to take place.
She takes a hesitant step forward, reaching for the kit.
“I will never be their mother. Only you can do that. So, right now, you have a choice to make. Your kids. Or your fix. You can’t have both, Tatum.”
She stops, her eyes flicking between me and the kit, the words penetrating pieces of her that she’s buried under her addiction. She teeters, and I watch as her eyes fill with tears, threatening to spill over at any moment.
“Do you want the kit? Take it. Guilt free. Because I will take care of your children. I will show them what it means to be loved so hard and so much, they will never doubt it. But remember as you walk out that door with your needles, as loved as they will be, they will always live with a hole in their life because their mother chose to get high instead of being there for them and loving them.”
Tatum looks down as the first tear falls, and she takes a step back, dropping her hand completely.
“Get some help. You can’t do this on your own. That doesn’t make you weak or insignificant. It makes you human.” I lower the kit, but my eyes never leave her. I watch her shoulders slump further with defeat, and a shudder runs through her body. She turns away and walks out the door, leaving behind the kit. Choosing her children.
I take a deep breath and turn back to the counter, finally noticing the crowd of people watching what took place moments ago. Their eyes on me feel stifling, and I need to get away. Tossing the kit to Claudia, I walk down the hall and out into the stairwell, needing a moment to collect myself after the emotional confrontation I went through with a woman who has always hated me.
All I can do is hope she gets the help she needs. Not just for her kids but for herself as well.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Growing Tired
Anonymous
Soon.
She will be mine.
Soon.
She doesn’t know it yet.
But she will.
Soon.
Soon.
The angel will be mine.
Then we will play.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nightmares and Guilt
Kingston
“Alright, no more fucking around, let’s get this shit done,” I say into the walkie-talkie, ending yet another one of Dizzy’s much too long and totally not funny stories about growing up with four sisters. Mostly, I feel sorry for the dumb son of a bitch, not that I’ll ever tell him. How the man survived half the shit he did growing up is beyond me.
“Yes, your majesty,” Dizzy clips back over the line. I can hear the smirk in his voice. Plans to make that fucker clean out the shithole if he doesn’t fall in line begin to fill my head. I don’t care if my nickname is King. This is official SEAL business, not play time at fucking preschool.
“Tango, we’re going to stop in four clicks and let the other vehicles catch up to us,” I tell him, and he looks over at me with a smile. “Keep your eyes on the road, hotrod.”
He turns back to the road and frowns. I turn my head to see what has his attention. A large piece of the road is missing ahead of us; it’s scorched black. Smoke rises like a black plume into the blue, cloudless sky.
“What the fuck?” The words are a whisper, but my stomach sinks. I look back at Tango; only now he sits lifeless in the chair next to me. His face is covered in blood and his glassy eyes stare openly at me. I jerk back in my seat. Seeing the dead man beside me makes my heart pound like a jackhammer in my chest. I gasp trying to regain my composure, and I reach out for him. Tango suddenly lifts his head and his glassy eyes turn black as night.
“You killed me, Kingston.” His voice is deep and gravelly. He tilts his head to the left and falls into a coughing fit. I watch the blood run thickly from his mouth, dribbling down his chin with a loud splat. “It’s your fault.”
*****
I knife out of bed, my body and mind coming alive as they prepare to defend themselves from impending danger. I quickly look around the room; the familiarity of it stands out, but I don’t recognize anything right away. A mounting panic sets into my body, and I inhale a deep breath, pulling the oxygen into my frozen lungs.
Everything around me slowly comes into focus, the bed, the dresser, the nightstand sitting to my right, and the bedroom door to my left. Home. I’m home, in my bedroom. Dragging in another breath into my lungs, I sit down on the edge of the bed behind me. My fingers tangle in my hair as Irun my hand through the thick locks and down my face.
Fuck, I swear to myself. It was a dream, but it felt too real. Like always.
I chant the truth in my head, trying to calm my pounding heart, but the feelings are difficult to shake. My mind races as images of Tango’s lifeless body flood my mind. Visions of his cold, dead eyes resting on me like a silent plea for help nearly choke me. A clammy sheen of sweat covers my skin from head to toe, and my body shudders with unspent emotion and guilt.
He’s dead. Tango’s dead, and whether or not his death is my fault is irrelevant. Nothing I do or say will bring him back. I’ve learned to live with my guilt and regret, but tonight’s a rare occurrence meant as a reminder to what happened. I may have learned to live with what happened, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it. I’ll always carry it with me.
“Kingston?” Missy’s soft voice interrupts my thoughts, and I feel a dip in the bed behind me as her arms wrap around me. She rests her chin on my shoulder, tightening her grasp on me as she feels the tension resonating through me. She quietly caresses my chest, letting the warmth of her body fill me with calmness, but it also sets fire to my bare skin. Her touch relaxes me, knowing she is near slows my heart, and the darkness clouding my mind fades away. I cover her hand with mine, lacing our fingers, resting the connection across my heart.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” I’m careful to mask my raging emotions when I speak to her. Even with the effects of the dream lingering, having her here, wrapped around me, helps a little.
“I know.” Her voice is a breathy whisper in my ear. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I reach up and squeeze her hand.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I’m fine,” I cut quickly, shutting down the need to talk about it with her. There’s no sense denying what is going on with me, but moments like these, dreams of that day, are not things I’m ready to share with her. She doesn’t need to hear about the horrors in my head, though I suspect she has an idea of what they are. I can’t give her my darkness yet.
Usually, the dreams come around the anniversary of that day. I’ve learned to control my reaction to them with time and therapy, but tonight, I wasn’t prepared for them in the least bit.
Missy has been around me long
enough to understand the things I struggle with, but she never says anything about it. She’s never pushed me to talk about any of it. It’s like she knows these things will always be with me in some way and there is no one in the world who can take them away. She’s always let it be. This is the first time she’s been here while it happened, and I have to admit, I like having her arms tight around me, quietly telling me I’m not alone.
“Okay.” She lifts her head and softly kisses my shoulder. “Come back to bed.”
“In a bit. I want to check on the kids first,” I say, but I know she doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe the words either, but she doesn’t say anything. She accepts that I need a little time to myself to get my head sorted the right way. “Go back to sleep, Queenie.”
“I love you, Kingston,” she whispers, softly kissing my neck. My breath catches in my chest, hearing the words pass from her lips for the first time. I want to turn, take her in my arms and say the words back, but it takes everything in me to tap down on the panic I felt rising inside me.
I’m not sure how she translates my silence, but after a few moments, she realizes I haven’t said anything and I’m not going to. She loosens her hold on me and pulls back, letting go. I know it’s wrong of me to ignore her, but I can’t give her what she needs right now. I stand, moving quickly out of the room when her voice stops me at the door.
“I’m not going to push you, Kingston. I can’t make the shit you’re carrying better. I’m not going to pretend I can, either.” The honesty in her words breaks my heart, because I know my lack of reaction has hurt her. “You don’t want to tell me what’s going on in your head, that’s fine, but I’m part of your life now, a permanent part of it. I’m not going anywhere. I will never push you to give me the darkness that creeps on you every so often, but you don’t have to run from me. My arms are yours for comfort on nights like these. No judgments. No questions. They will always be waiting to wrap themselves around you and chase the ghosts away. I love you, Kingston, with all my heart, and I choose to tell you now, in this moment, when you might doubt the good man you are because the darkness threatens to hurt him. I love you now, just as I always have.”
I close my eyes, breathing in deeply, trying to focus my thoughts on the moment. My heart pounds away in my chest but for a different reason. Her words have torn me in half.
“Go, find your peace, but I will be here waiting for you to return.” I nearly choke as her words hit me, grateful to be released from this moment with her, because I don’t feel strong enough to handle her kindness, her understanding, her love.
I’m too fucked up to give her anything more than silence right now.
So, I walk out of the room.
*****
Bile surges up my throat. It burns and threatens to expunge itself from my system as the cool night air hits my lungs. I swallow hard, pushing it back down, ignoring the sting it leaves behind. Nothing about this night is right and not just because of the darkness throbbing through my body.
I walk out to the dew-covered grass and collapse onto it, face first. My thoughts forget the gorgeous woman waiting for me back in my bed, instead filling with the memories I’m trying desperately to repress. I growl, fighting the strong pull of it, failing, as it sucks me into the vortex of that day.
It’s hot. Fucking scorching. The desert sun bears down on us with so much force I can feel the heat of it through my gear and clothing. Sweat drips down the middle of my back, pooling at the waistband of my pants. I look up at the cloudless sky, squinting even behind my sunglasses from the brightness of the sun. What I wouldn’t give for just five minutes of a light drizzle in this blast furnace called civilization.
I fucking hate the desert. How people survive in this giant sandbox is something I don’t get. Why someone would choose to live their life here is just as puzzling.
I take measure of the sun’s position in the sky, calculating how many hours are left until the sweet relief of the cool night air.
Fuck, I hate being hot.
“Lieutenant,” a feminine voice speaks behind me, pulling my thoughts away from the weather to more important issues. I turn to greet her, and she hands me a sealed envelope. For a moment, my heart beats hard and my eyes hungrily scan the envelope for her familiar handwriting, but it’s not there. The envelope is blank. It’s not from her. The soldier in front of me salutes me respectfully. “Your orders, sir. Roll out o-six hundred.”
I nod, lifting my hand to salute her. “Thank you, Vaughn. We’ll be ready.”
She turns and walks toward the makeshift command room. The sight of the plywood building reminds me how temporary this mission was supposed to be, but here we are, almost three months later, no end in sight.
We’ve transformed into a certified babysitting operation. The local insurgents have been a bitch to control, and the small village we patrol has lost more innocents than any of us are comfortable with. The elders are ready to pull out of the peaceful treaty we’ve made with them that allow us to patrol on their land.
I know what the contents contained in the envelope are. Orders to patrol an area we’ve been over and over again. Nothing new. And like the nothing new mission, we’d come back with nothing new to report. Why we’ve received the same fucking orders every few days is not something I’m privy to. It’s obviously above my rank to understand the why, not that they don’t keep me from worrying something bad is brewing on the horizon. Everything has become routine for us, and if I’ve learned anything in my line of work, routine is dangerous.
Like a good soldier, I take my sealed orders and head toward the gathered team, who are more like brothers to me than anything. They gather in around me, waiting for me to give them our orders.
“All hail the king,” Frankie bellows, and each man curtsies me.
“Knock that shit off,” I bark, but my growl is met with laughter. I hate the nickname graciously bestowed on me the moment my boots hit the ground in boot camp. It wasn’t the first time anyone called me king, but it was just as irritating. Growing up, my friends shortened my name, teasing me incessantly with it. It wasn’t until high school, when I was long bombing the ball down the field as starting quarterback of our state champion football team, did it give me higher status. I was crowned “King of the Field” after we won the championship title my freshman year. Apparently, I became king both on and off the field; the girls lined up for a shot at me. Unheard of? I know. Now, the name was back to its original purpose, tormenting the hell out of me.
“Those our orders?” I look up from the envelope I’d been avidly staring at to face my second-in-command and longtime brother of war, Preacher. I hand the envelope over to him. He notices I haven’t opened it and eyes it wearily. “What’d we want to bet shit hasn’t changed. Same run. Same route. Same deal.”
He opens the envelope and curses loudly.
Yep, same shit, different day.
“Something isn’t right, man,” he drawls slowly. His eyes scan the document searching for something, anything, different in our orders. “This shit isn’t sitting right anymore, King.”
“I know,” I agree, lowering my voice. “Meet me in my bunk in five to go over the route.”
“The same route we been driving for two months?”
“That what it says?”
“You know it is.”
“Then that’s the route we’re going to take.” I lower my eyes to the ground and shake my head. Preacher and I have been calling the shots since assigned to this team. Each man was handpicked by the two of us. All except Hudson, who has been assigned to our team a year and a half ago when Angel decided to go AWOL.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” he sighs and scratches his face, still concentrating on the document in his hand like it’s going to magically change if he wills it hard enough. I look up at him and not the worry laced in the lines of his face. We may be soldiers trained to take our orders and see them through, without questioning our superiors, but that doesn’t mean we ha
ve moments when our minds do fight against our training. We are human after all, and right now, every fiber of my being is screaming at me to question it all.
“Tell the team to get some rest and to be ready to load up by o-six hundred. Going to be another long fucking day,” is what I say instead of expressing my own concerns about the mission.
I let go, trusting in my training, and walk away. Tomorrow, I’ll give the order to be extra vigilant during our observations and trust that my men will get us through it.
My heart pounds hard in my chest as the memory fades away. I drag in breath after breath, focusing on something, anything, in front of me. I settle on a tree off in the distance. This is a technique I learned after speaking with a few doctors about my condition. PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is real, and I’m proof of it.
Soon after our deployment ended, I spiraled out of control. That day, and many of the following days, what happened used to haunt me around every corner. Three years ago, I was a slave to my guilt, my fear, and the memories themselves.
Today, I’m coping but living a normal life. Sure, I have my moments and I struggle to hide them from those around me. Except for tonight, I’ve done a good job of it.
I’ve learned my triggers and know how to avoid them. Sometimes, especially in my line of work, that’s impossible to do. So, on my bad days, I try to surround myself with people who calm the raging guilt flowing through me.
Missy has always been on that short list. It doesn’t matter what kind of day or what triggers I face, whenever she is near, the darkness brightens and I don’t feel so lost in the world. She centers me. She grounds me. She calms me. She was put here on this earth for me, and I’m more sure of this now than I was ten minutes ago, when she gave me truth and her confessions of love. As much as I hate to admit it, she sees me in the middle of the swirling darkness and loves me unconditionally. She knows who I am despite my past mistakes. She always has.
Lost Without You (The Lost Series Book 2) Page 16