My heart sank for him, of course it did, but he needed the truth. “She’s not enough, Charlie. Your mom is dead.”
Okay, I admit, it was the wrong thing to say. Had someone said that to me, I absolutely would have lashed out. I would have hated that person forever and always. I would have jumped at their throat and would have counted my actions as justified. So why did I say it to him? Why would I dare say something that I knew would so terribly hurt his feelings?
Maybe because my mom’s happiness was on the line and I was being the bigger person in all of this…
Or maybe it was because I was hurt that he was more upset that his mother’s memory was slowly drifting away than he was that our relationship, or whatever it was, had been sliced down at the root.
Maybe I expected more from him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” He didn’t say anything in response; just stared at me. “Charlie…” I took a step toward him, wanting to make it all better. What the hell was wrong with me?
“Just… no.” He put his hands up, stopping me in my tracks. He turned to leave, but then stopped, turning over his shoulder. “I’m leaving in the morning.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “I should be back in a week or so, as long as everything goes according to plan.”
He gave me a look. I don’t know exactly what he was saying in that look, but I knew deep down he didn’t hate me. There was still something there in his eyes that told me we weren’t through, no matter what was going on around us. That look gave me hope. It was really all I needed.
Or maybe I was completely off and it was the look of goodbye.
No, for some reason, I needed to believe in the first. I needed to know he was going to be there even if I said terrible hurtful things to him without thinking. And I needed him to know I was so terribly sorry for those words.
And so, I tried to ask him once more before he escaped out of the door.
“You’re sure this isn’t about us?” I begged for the answer I so wanted.
“Not everything is about us, Hannah.” And then he left through the still open door. No hug, no kiss, and no real goodbye.
“Well you know what, Charlie?” I said out loud as I felt my face redden and my eyes well with tears. “Not everything is about you.”
Chapter Three
Charlie
“Earth to Charlie. I need you with me on this one, Son.”
I shook from my thoughts, attempting to bring my head back to the task at hand. We were flying above a desert, searching for a team that we had lost communication with three days earlier.
It was a classic search and rescue. Right now we were searching, and we crossed our fingers that we’d soon be rescuing. I had done this same thing a handful of times.
But my father was right. My head wasn’t in the game. First off, I wasn’t entirely sure why he was there, and I couldn’t stop trying to pinpoint his motivation for trekking out here with us. I usually lead missions, especially ones as routine as this particular one. So why did he feel the need to tag along? Sure, I could come out and ask him, but that would force us to communicate, and well, that wasn’t something we were particularly good at. Trying to guess his intentions was just so much easier.
And secondly, and very possibly most importantly, Hannah consumed my every thought. Had I been a twelve-year-old boy, I would be doodling her name on top of my homework assignments. Of course I’d do this all very discreetly, so my friends wouldn’t make fun of me, but their teases wouldn’t stop me from doodling in the first place. I’d write it forward… and then backward… and then I’d laugh because her name is a palindrome, so it’s the same both forward and backward.
For the love of all that is holy, why was I thinking about palindromes? What the fuck is wrong with my head?
“Charlie. What’s going on with you?” He yelled over the sound of the speeding helicopter.
I looked up, and blinked my eyes a few times, hoping that it would wake me from this extended daydream. “I’m just exhausted, Sir. It’s been a long two weeks.”
“Okay.” He accepted outwardly, though I knew he didn’t truly accept it for one second.
The man was brilliant at reading people, and even more brilliant at reading me. I wasn’t going to be able to hide my feelings for very long.
“Why are you here?” After about an hour of deafening silence amidst the heightening hum of the helicopter, I gave in and finally asked, loud enough that the other two men in the rear of the chopper were able to hear me as well.
He laughed and looked back out the side, toward the endless desert. “I don’t love being stuck behind a desk all day, Charlie. That’s not why I got into this game.”
“Okay,” I nodded, trying desperately to hold in my anger, but knowing full well that I was not capable of doing so. “So this has nothing to do with you feeling as though you finally need to act like a father now that you’re getting remarried?”
He gave me a look I knew all too well, and I cowered just the way I always did, my whole life, knowing he wasn’t finished. “This is not the time for this conversation, Charlie.” And then he completely dismissed me as he called up to the pilot. “Hank, there’s a patch of trees up ahead to the right. Can you come in low above there?”
Hank gave the appropriate “yes, Sir,” and veered ahead and to the right. The thing is, it’s not like my father was a bad guy; he was actually quite a great man, but as far as the loving head of home figure goes… well, he was never really home to be that figure. My sister Mary, who is nine years my senior, took to raising me after my mother passed. My father went through a very common, understandable phase where looking at us was too close of a reminder of what he had lost. So he worked longer and harder, and quickly rose through the ranks to his current position of authority, all the while quickly falling through the ranks of my favor. It wasn’t until more recently that he tried to put on the ‘dad hat’ again. Hell, now that I’m thinking about it, it might not have been until he met Hannah’s mother.
Oh God, how did I not see any of this coming?
He had confirmed my suspicions by scolding me for being inappropriate when I called him out for his reasons for joining our mission on this go around. He was worried about me. He knew I didn’t take the news of his nuptials as well as one would have hoped, and he felt as though it was his fatherly duty to see to it that I was ‘okay’. But I’m twenty-seven years old. I don’t need my father to coddle me and promise that everything will be all right. I’m a man, and I’ll handle things the way men do.
If only I had a pint glass of beer to throw up against a wall. Then I’d feel much better about this whole situation.
“Sir, I see something. Should I go lower?” Hank called back as we reached the patch of trees.
“Go ahead, Hank.” My father confirmed.
So we dropped lower. And we all saw what Hank saw. And we all quickly realized that it wasn’t our team, and by no means were the friendly.
I heard the sound of machine guns just before I felt the jolt of our engine cease. After that, it all happened so quickly. I just barely had time to grab my father’s hand.
Chapter Four
Hannah
A week had gone by without any word from Charlie, but I wasn’t worried, as he had specifically said “a week or so”. There was really no reason to panic.
Of course, that’s a complete and utter lie. I was overly worried. I woke up each morning thinking about how he was doing out there, and went to bed each night with the same thoughts spinning through my mind.
I had completed the first week of parachute training, and had made my first solo jump yesterday. It was probably the most frightening thing I had ever done in my life. I absolutely did not want to do it ever again.
And that’s exactly why they made us pack up our parachutes and hop right back in the plane. They didn’t want to give us the weekend to decide we were never jumping again. Pretty smart: I guess the Army knows what they’re doing.
Luckily I had today off to recoup, as I’m pretty sure I gave myself a mild case of whiplash when I pulled the shoot on the last jump.
I was standing in my robe, brewing a pot of coffee when a frantic knock at the door caused me to jump.
Was it Charlie? Was he home? Had he come straight away to see me?
I sped through the kitchen, through the living room, and right up to the front door, swinging it open with a stupid smile on my face.
But this time, the frantic knocking wasn’t Charlie. It was my mom.
I sputtered. “Mom, what’s wrong? What happened?” She had obviously been crying. Her face was stained with day-old mascara.
“Their helicopter went down.” It was all she could get out before her sobs took over.
“Whose helicopter? What are you talking about?” I knew nothing about any helicopter, but with my intuition combined with my pessimism, I could only assume she was talking about Charlie.
Oh God, she was talking about Charlie.
“Max… and Charlie…” She tried to speak again.
“Wait… Max… I mean,” I corrected myself, “Sergeant Major Reynolds went with them?”
I hadn’t encountered the Major all week, but I assumed it was because I had been busy. I didn’t realize he went out on a mission. I didn’t even realize he partook in those shenanigans any more.
“He just…” Mom was still trying her hardest to have a conversation with me. “He thought it would be good for Charlie if they could talk… about the whole wedding thing, you know? It was supposed to be a simple mission. They should have been home by now.”
She collapsed into my arms and then onto the ground. I tried to help her down as much as I could, but I myself was stunned, immobile, and very, very angry.
My mother had already lost one husband to this institution. Had I known that Max was still stupid enough to get caught up in the literal groundwork, I would never have been so easy going about the new arrangement. No, she couldn’t go through this again. She deserved someone who didn’t go throwing himself in harm’s way. She deserved someone who came home at night, every night, and who didn’t make her sit up in bed worrying that he might never make it back alive.
But not only was I mad at him, I was mad at her. She knew going into the relationship that this could be a very real possibility. Why’d she let herself get sucked into this mess again? She brought this pain on herself. Maybe now she’d be smart enough to drop this whole engagement thing before it went any further.
Yes, I was angry with him, I was angry with her, I seemed to always be angry with Charlie lately, but I quickly realized I was mostly angry with myself.
Wasn’t I falling into the same trap as her? Wasn’t I going down the same path that would ultimately end in heartbreak? And the fucked up thing is that I didn’t even mean to… I just wanted one crazy night before going into two years of training.
But now somehow I ended up falling in love with my soon-to-be stepbrother.
And somehow, I’m sure enough about that love to say it out loud.
Oh dear God, I’m a mess.
Chapter Five
Charlie
“Sir! Sir! Are you okay?” I tore off my parachute and ran to my father’s side.
“Dear Lord, Charlie. Call me ‘Dad’.” He half-jokingly grumbled as he fooled with the strings on his chute. “With the helicopter blades almost cutting off our heads up there, you’d really think you’d be a little more sentimental in this moment.”
“Sorry, Sir… I mean, Dad.” Wow, it sounded strange to say out loud. I was just so used to calling him ‘Sir’ when we were working. I barely ever called him “Dad”.
I helped him to his feet, and quickly turned to seek out where the other three guys had landed, but before I could take a step in the opposite direction, he grabbed my shoulder. His eyes showed serious trepidation, and I was almost worried. His lips twisted and his forehead scrunched up. “Do you think I’ve been a horrible father?”
I huffed straight at him. “Are you serious?” Really? That’s what he thought to ask me in this exact moment? I gave him a taste of his own medicine. “We’re not having this conversation right now, Pops.” I turned back, searching the thin patch of trees ahead.
“Then when, Charlie? We almost just died.” He threw his arm to the air where our helicopter was flying only minutes earlier.
“No we didn’t.” I laughed. “You were just freaking out because you couldn’t get your seatbelt undone.” And then with a wink and a smile, I added, “old man.”
There was just something about that exchange… the way he looked at me, and I back to him… it was as if it was the very first time in my entire life that we had ever connected. I wasn’t sure that I was comfortable with it. But I also wasn’t sure that I wasn’t.
Luckily, since our communication had only gone down minutes earlier, when we were hit, and we had a back up team waiting in the wings just in case our mission went south, the second helicopter touched down only a few yards away within the hour. This was just an extra precaution we took in case the search and rescue team themselves need to be searched for and rescued. It honestly never happened- not once in the almost ten years I had been working with the Special Forces, and it often seemed like a waste of manpower, but in this case, we were all very happy we never vetoed the backup.
Strangely enough, we never did find out who had been shooting at us. That was mostly due to the fact that once we were grounded, we decided not to go searching for them. But equally as so, they must have moved on as soon as they saw we had been hit, for they did not come searching for us either.
We were there another four days, for the reason we had originally come, and we eventually did find our missing team. Well, unfortunately, we found what was left of them. Their mission had been mainly intelligence based, but soon after their arrival, the very group they had been tasked with keeping an eye on had ambushed them.
Of the twelve-man team, we happened upon seven of them, and as their Medical Sergeant had been one of the casualties, those seven were in pretty rough shape. We patched them up as best we could under the circumstances, as most of our supplies had gone down with our helicopter, and as soon as we determined all were in fair enough shape to make the journey, we headed home.
Chapter Six
Hannah
The next few days seemed to hang in a fog. I jumped out of a few more planes, pulled a few more parachute chords, landed on a few more targets, but I barely noticed any of it. I did everything I was supposed to do on and off the clock, but again, I barely noticed. Instead, I was dreadfully worried about the jerk who cared more that his dad was moving on after twenty years than he did that we were about to be related.
And I really hated him for that. And I also hated him because for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how it was possible that I tirelessly thought about him when he wasn’t around, and yet he was already “over us”. So why? Why did he always seem to be on my mind? I had a job to do, and I couldn’t do it if I was thinking about him nonstop. And I really couldn’t do it if I was worried that I had no idea if he was even alive.
But for the love of God, why couldn’t I make that very practical fact register in my head?
I pulled on a pair of jeans, threw my basics into the wash bin, and pushed through the doors of the locker room. I made a beeline for the front door, hoping not to be stopped by anyone wishing to make small talk. Since passing the qualification portion and heading into the real Special Forces training, the general mass of people in the program had begun to take me seriously. It also helped that two of the girls who seemed to have the biggest problem accepting me had already jumped ship.
It just goes to show that some people have to harp on others only to hide their own insecurities. When that is taken away, they have nothing left.
My straight shot out of the building was successful, and I cleared through the doorway into the thick heat of the early night. I looked up and out over the sea o
f cars, but before I eyed my parking spot, a tall figure suddenly standing in front of me changed my focus.
“Hannah…” He started, but I didn’t let him finish.
Had I been carrying anything, I would have dropped it to the ground in complete shock. But since I wasn’t, I just ran. I ran right into his open, too-massive, arms. I don’t know what came over me. I thought I was angry with him. I thought I understood better that this was not the way our story could unfold. We needed to keep our attraction for each other at bay.
But in that moment, I understood nothing but the real need to be held by him.
As soon as our bodies collided, he clutched me close to his chest and took off in the opposite direction. I didn’t really know what was happening, nor did I care. I wanted to be nowhere but where I currently was, and that information was good enough for me. He opened up the door to his truck and tossed me inside, never once taking his eyes off of mine. He buckled me in, kissed me quick on the cheek, slammed the door, and then took off around the truck to his side.
Embrace The Suck (A Stepbrother Special Forces Novel) Page 10