And I am over the edge of control. If this is going to end, it might as well go down in a blaze of painful honesty.
“Why can’t the fact that I had some bad shit downrange be enough?”
“Because you tell me that you’re broken and the one time I screw up a little bit, you lash out at me? That’s okay with you?” she says quietly. It’s like she physically deflates.
It hurts. Like I’m cutting out a piece of my heart with a dull blade. “I was a goddamned fool for thinking that I could do this with you. That you wouldn’t push me for more. That you could just take me for who I am."
"That's not fair." Her words are laced with hurt.
"Life's not fucking fair. It's not fucking fair that your goddamned father died. It's not fair that I made it home but my fucking dick might as well be a paperweight. Life isn’t fucking fair."
She flinches but doesn't back away. I'll give her that.
And I'm going to destroy her. Because that's what I do. It's all I know. "I'm not a mind reader."
"Because I don't want to talk about it! I want to forget it. All of it. I want to come home and be fucking normal. But that'll never fucking happen." I'm gone. I can't stop. It's like the last two years have finally broken free and are tearing out of me. "You want to know why?" I back her up until she is pinned against the wall. "I was on a patrol. We got stopped. Do you know how bad burning tires smell? You can taste the burning rubber in your mouth. It penetrates your fucking skin." My fists are bunched by her head, and it is taking everything I have to not slam them into the bricks.
"You know why I have such a fucking hard time in class? Because fucking violence isn't theoretical to me. It's bleeding, pulsing, hot and raw. And here’s a little something no one tells you. It feels fucking good. Really fucking good."
The memories crash over me like a wave of violent crimson blood and gore. I can hear the screams again. The cries.
The helplessness. Blood dripping between my clenched fingers as I tried to stop the bleeding. “It feels fucking good to take the enemy out. To know that your buddies are coming home and fuck those guys for bringing the fight in the first place. But we can’t talk about that.”
I see Abby's eyes. Wide. Filled with disgust and revulsion.
“I’m supposed to hate what I did. I’m supposed to say I only did what I did to survive. I’m supposed to hate war.” I slap my palm into the brick next to her head. “Then why the fuck do I miss it? Why the fuck would I give anything to be back in the mud and the dirt and the shit?”
I see it then. The fear on her face. And I don’t fucking care. I can’t.
And then I feel it.
A terrifying sensation burns over my skin. It's so familiar, so long forgotten.
My cock stiffens.
A tightening, an ache. The latent edge of arousal. My dick swelling, like it's coming alive after a long winter.
From the fear I see looking back at me from a woman I’d dared to let myself love.
I yank away, a wave of nausea slamming into me.
I need to get away. I need to forget. To stop my sin even if I can't erase it.
I can never erase it. It has tainted me, corrupted the one thing that I wanted more than anything else in the world.
I will never, ever be able to forget the horrifying sensation of arousal and violence, twisting together in dark, erotic heat.
Abby
I am eleven years old again.
A grown man is screaming in my face. The demons of war etched in his skin, ripping him apart.
But eleven-year-old me did not love the man in my past.
And love is a powerful, stupid thing.
It takes every ounce of courage I have not to reach for him. To place my hand on the scarred and broken man in front of me and tell him it’s not his fault.
I'm not eleven years old anymore. And I have a choice to make.
And I will not beg. I will not cry for this man.
My cheeks are wet in the shadows.
My heart broken into a thousand pieces in my chest.
No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much it rips my soul out and grinds it into the damp pavement.
I let him go.
Chapter 22
Josh
I should have gone home. But if I’ve utterly and completely destroyed everything good in my life tonight, I might as well keep drinking. And there's nowhere better to be right now than crawling into the bottom of a bottle, numbing the pain if not ending it. I have no idea where I'd even start on that one.
I knock back another shot. I've lost track but I'm pretty sure Eli is counting.
When I showed up at his apartment, he didn't judge. Didn't cuss me out for trying to take his door off the hinges at three in the morning.
He took one look at me and let me in, then poured the Jack and Coke silently.
Waiting.
He knew I'd start to spill at some point. He's creepy psychic that way sometimes. Right now, he's just drinking quietly, letting me marinate in my own misery.
I want to ask why he wasn’t at The Pint tonight but I don’t.
Eli says nothing. It's part of why I like the guy. The first time I met him, I pegged him for having some heavy fucking rocks in his ruck from the war. Who doesn't, though?
I sit there silently with him, filled with hate and anger and rage. Hate at the stupidity of the fucking war. Rage at the emptiness it's left me with.
And anger.
The fear that I will always be fucking damaged. That this is my new normal.
And maybe, it isn’t worth it.
If I close my eyes, I see nothing but the brightly bleak desert. The piercing sunlight glinting off pools of fresh blood.
"You have any morals, Eli?" I ask finally. My words are heavy and thick and run together.
"Don't we all?"
I squint at him. He's a little blurry right now. He might have two heads. "You're the officer. Aren't you supposed to be a leader of character or some shit?"
He shakes his head slowly, sipping his Jack. "Was an officer. I'm not anymore."
"I notice you didn't answer the question. About morals?" I suddenly very much need to know the answer to my question. Even if I won't remember it in the morning.
"Sure. I've got morals."
"Where did you put them?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
I point my glass at him. I'm pretty sure some Jack sloshes over the rim of the glass. "When you went to war. Where did you leave them for safekeeping?"
"You don't check your morals at the door when you sign up, brother."
Another shot slides down my throat. It's smooth now. Smooth and steadying. "Yeah, well some of us had to." I raise my glass in his direction. "Remember when you told me I should be grateful I came home?" I shake my head. "I'm not."
"You're drunk." A quiet menace in his words that I am too far gone to heed.
"Why should I be? I can't fuck without threatening to beat the shit out of someone. All I'm good for is fighting. I should enlist again. Go back to war."
I reach for the bottle. He slaps his hand over the rim of my glass. "Say that again," he says.
"I should go back to war. Let them finish what they started."
He shakes his head. "Not that part. The ‘beat the shit out of someone’ part."
I swallow. It fucking sucks hearing my shame put into words. "You got it pretty much covered."
"What do you mean, you can't fuck? Without violence?”
I adjust my pants. "It's…complicated."
"Try me." He slides the bottle from my hand and pours me another glass.
Shame burns my skin. My head drops back to the chair behind me.
"I thought you were seeing that girl from the Baywater," he says after a while.
I want to ask how he knows about Abby. I remember she came to the bar one night.
Shame crawls up my spine, a cold and prickling feeling. "I screwed that up tonight."
"
Is that why you're here?"
"You could sound a little pissed at me or something, you know? This whole saintly, calm older brother thing isn't what I need at the moment."
He releases a quiet sigh. "I am not your company commander and I am not your father. Your daddy trauma isn't my problem."
"Fuck you." But there is no threat in my words.
"At least I can."
I flip him the middle finger. "That hurts, man."
I say nothing. His words cut small chunks out of my remaining pride and toss them into a frying pan. I can hear them cooking, leaving me alone and ashamed.
All I can see is Abby's face. Her golden eyes wide. Her dark skin washed out with fear.
"I got hard tonight." The shame almost chokes me.
Eli says nothing and I am eternally grateful for his silence. Because the words are coming, whether I want them to or not.
"Abby. I was arguing with Abby. I pinned her against the wall…"
"Jesus Christ, tell me you didn't…"
"No! Jesus no. I'd never…I left." I lean forward, emptying the rest of the bottle into my glass and knocking it back. Needing the burn. Needing the pain to block out everything else. "I could have hurt her tonight," I finally whisper. "And I got a fucking hard-on." The words rip from my throat, tearing their way into the world.
I lower my head onto my arms. The sob breaks free, a ragged, wicked sound.
Chapter 23
Josh
Have you heard from Caleb?
I'm not awake yet. I blink and squint again, making sure I'm actually seeing what my brain thinks is a text from Eli.
Not since last night.
Eli doesn't usually text me before noon. I sit on the edge of the bed, cradling my head in my hands. Oh god, it's going to be a bad day. My head is pounding as if my brain is trying to beat its way out of my skull with an ice pick. I'm reasonably certain a cat has pissed in my mouth.
I don't have a cat.
I need water, but my stomach is in knots, so I just sit there. Hoping my head doesn't explode. And try to remember what happened last night.
I frown, trying to remember something important from last night. It's like trying to capture a wisp of air. Thoughts slip through my mental fingers.
I wonder if I can make it to the bathroom, and please dear lord, I hope I have some eight-hundred-milligram Motrin. Civilians always laugh when I pop one of those horse pills but damn, whatever works, right? At that moment, I'd probably cut off my little toe if it would make the pain in my head stop.
My vision is blurry as I stumble to the bathroom, and holy hell, past me is a fucking saint. A bright white pill and a glass of water are waiting for me on the counter near the bathroom sink. My stomach isn't happy with the pill, but I couldn't really give a shit at the moment. I need to get my ass to campus.
I sit up and rub my hand over my face, then read the text again.
The phone rings. "What's wrong?"
Eli isn't known for irrational panic, so the fact that he's on the other end of the phone actually does trigger worry in the hung over pit of my gut.
"Have you seen Caleb since last night?"
I frown at my phone. “I just sent you a text. No, I haven’t." I think.
"Go check on him."
Eli doesn't ask much of me. Hell, I think the only thing he ever usually asks of me is that I don't break any furniture when I get into fights.
He's never asked why I fight so much and for that, I love the man.
Shame crawls over my skin as I mentally divert my brain away from that painful subject and hop in the shower. Ten minutes later, and I'm on the road to Caleb’s place.
The first thing that hits me is the smell. I fucking hate the smell of piss. My stomach is already twisted from being hung over and the wall of piss smell crashes over me the second I step through the front door.
I gag then push through it. I've been in worse, much worse, and this is Caleb. And this is my penance for being a prick.
I find him on the floor of his bathroom. His pants are around his ankles, like he fell off the toilet. His entire body is spasming, shivering violently.
I rock his shoulder, trying to jolt him awake. His skin is blazing hot and dry.
"Caleb. Come on, man."
It isn't the first time. It probably won't be the last.
Because I recognize all too well how bad those nights can get when you try to handle them on your own.
Unless I start feeling more normal around civilians, I’m going to stick with people who speak my language. And the way things are going, that isn't going to happen any time soon.
"Ah hell, man, come on, get up." I try to lift his shoulders. He's shivering violently.
I might be combat lifesaver-qualified but my skills don't include alcohol poisoning.
I have no idea what to do other than keep him from choking on his own vomit.
It's an ugly thing to see your friend staring into the abyss and knowing there isn't shit-all you can do for him except sit with him.
And hope that this too shall pass.
He blinks but he's not seeing me. I have no idea where he is but he's not with me.
I call 911. They're pretty quick in getting the details.
I get his pants pulled up and cover him with a blanket. I have no idea if he's going into shock or what.
But I sit with him.
And start talking, hoping that maybe some part of his brain can hear me.
"So hey, this is pretty shitty, you know that, right?" I've got him leaning against me. He's shivering and mumbling incoherently. "I mean, if you were trying to make me feel bad for being a dick, you could have just told me."
He makes a noise. Like he’s actually heard me.
"I hope you feel bad. I'm missing class for this."
He shudders violently. I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to say right now. I mean, please don't die? What if it has the opposite effect of don’t jinx me? I don't want to put him on a fucking speed pass to heaven. Or hell. Hell might be where we're all headed.
We don't have a lot of stories about where soldiers of bullshit wars go when they die.
We know where the heroes go. But we're not heroes.
"Where do you suppose we go when we die?" I ask him. "I mean, we're not exactly modern-day heroes. We didn't fight the good fight. We weren't fighting the Nazis or liberating France." He's shivering again. Fuck. "I mean, the guys in the Greatest Generation get a speed pass straight to Saint Peter, right? But what about us? I mean, we don't have a noble cause." I grip him tighter. Clearly I'm making both of us feel a hell of a lot worse.
Counselor material, I am not. Where's Eli when I need him?
He makes another noise and this sounds vaguely like an attempt at speech.
I hug him tighter as a violent convulsion steals his ability to function. "Ah fuck, man. Stay with me."
Sirens and flashing lights announce the arrival of the paramedics.
I tell them what I know. Show them the bottles of alcohol he consumed.
I stand on his front step and watch them drive away.
Another payment to the butcher's bill.
Chapter 24
Josh
They won't let either of us back because we're not family. And no amount of lying will convince the nurse to tell us how he's doing. Eli has called in a favor with a friend who knows a guy on the hospital board.
And so now, we wait.
The waiting room at the university hospital is a depressing place. There's a young mom trying to get her toddler to stop screaming. His back is arched and his face is bunched up, his little lungs pushing all of his rage and fury out into the world.
"I know how he feels."
I glance over at Eli's quiet remark. "Caleb had two empty fifths at his apartment."
"I know. I was trying to convince him to go to a group session at the hospital."
I'm used to feeling this useless.
Eli is not.
The big man
is hunched over, his shoulders bent, his fists knotted together and pressed to his mouth.
"If you knew he had a problem, why did you serve him?"
"Because at least if he’s drinking at my bar, I can keep an eye on him," he says. "What a fucking disaster."
I lean back in my chair.
And we wait.
The hours tick by.
"Does he have any family?" Eli asks after a while.
"Not that I have contact info for."
The war at home isn't fought only by soldiers. Guess this is part of it. The process of coming home.
"I thought we were supposed to win if we made it home." The words hurt. They don't even try to conceal the pain, the lies we were told. All the pictures of the happy couples, all the smiles, all the support, the troops signs and posters and military discounts.
They're a lie. A fucking lie. All of it.
"We did win."
His response is not what I'm expecting.
I can't help thinking of my limp dick, the useless fucking skin between my legs. And how fucked up that the only way it appears to want to work is if I jerk off to a war film.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
"How do you figure?"
He hesitates a long moment. "We're alive. We came home. And I fucking promise you that every Gold Star family would give anything to have their loved one back."
I sniff, trying to swallow the bitterness that threatens to choke me. "So why doesn't it feel like a victory?"
He grips my shoulder. "Because we're sitting in an emergency room, hoping one of our buddies doesn’t die from alcohol poisoning. There's no commander to hand this off to, no work to try and forget about it at." He pauses, his eyes dark, his mouth pressed into a hard flat line beneath the scruff on his jaw. "But I wouldn't trade it, any of it, even if it meant I wasn't sitting here right now."
"You have no regrets? Nothing you'd change?" My shame, the dark and twisted helplessness, is back.
Eli is as calm and steady as he's always been since I've known him. "There are different choices I wish I'd made but I can't change them."
Break My Fall (Falling #2) Page 15