“For what it’s worth, I looooove the name. A heavy emphasis on the love, in case you missed it.” It was at that moment my stomach decided to make itself known, the angry rumble resembling the battle cry of Chewbacca, the beloved Wookie from the Star Wars movies.
Hopefully no one noticed. I cringed. The last time I’d eaten was hours ago.
Cooper zeroed in on the sound. “Maybe we should call it a night. I need to get you home.”
“No, I’m okay,” I answered reassuringly. My hunger had a mind of its own, however, answering with another gurgle that put the first one to shame. “Just ignore it.”
“Not going to happen,” he countered protectively, not giving me any other choice as he tugged me out of the chair. “Guys, I need to get Caylee home. Are we good for tonight?” He glanced around and noticed we weren’t all there. “Where’d Marty go?”
Troy peered up from his guitar. “He got a phone call, so he went outside to answer it. And . . . here he is.” Sure enough, Marty walked back through the door with barely restrained excitement.
Holding his phone in the air, there was a strong possibility he could explode from whatever news he had. “You’re NEVER going to guess who just called me.” Before anyone could chime in with suggestions, he rambled on. “Nick fucking Charleston.”
The name didn’t ring a bell, but it did to the others. “And?” Aidan asked, gesturing for Marty to quit dragging it out and just tell us.
“Guess who just booked a slot in the upcoming rock festival in Sedona?”
“Shit, you better not be bullshitting us, Marty, because I will beat you to within an inch of your life if this is one of your stupid pranks,” Aidan threatened. I’d been around Marty enough to know that was a pretty decent chance.
“I’m wounded that you would even doubt me.” His mock hurt was hilarious to witness and totally unbelievable.
Cooper folded his arms across his chest. “I agree with Aidan. We’ve been burned too many times by your lame attempts to blow smoke up our asses.”
I looked over at Troy, waiting for him to throw his two cents in with the others. “For real?”
“For fucking real. How much do you all love me right now?” He was answered with high fives and chest bumps.
Boys.
While Cooper wasn’t as exuberant in celebrating as Aidan, Marty, and Troy were, the new gig brought a huge smile to his face. “Damn, that’s pretty impressive, bro. So many bands catch their big break at Rock-A-Palooza.”
“And we’re going to play there. Damaged Souls is about to go viral, baby!” Marty crowed, looking like he’d just solved world hunger or something. “What can I say? It helps to schmooze sometimes.”
This was it—the chance they’d been waiting for.
“Watch out world, huh?” I elbowed Cooper affectionately in the side. “Ready for the big time?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Chapter Fifteen
Cooper
The sharp sting of antiseptic permeated everything. Opening my eyes, I blinked away the sudden brightness, flinching as I waited for my vision to adjust. Sterile white walls surrounded me.
Where the hell was I?
Slowly, the familiarity of the place crept back. I was in Landstuhl, Germany; at the hospital I was transported to where they’d ensured I was stable enough to ship home to the States for further surgery and physical therapy. I’d desperately tried not to dwell on my time there, the three weeks of hell where the doctors and nurses fought equally as hard to save my spirit as they did my body.
Day after day, I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, wishing the Devil would come and claim me. I didn’t want to be saved—didn’t deserve it. The more my medical team pushed for me to follow orders, the harder I wished for death. Just being here, in what was obviously a dream, brought back a rush of that darkness—it’s cold tendrils grazing across my nerves.
It felt like such a long time ago, yet in the same breath, like it was just yesterday.
Maybe if I was dreaming, Ramsey would appear, her thick, brown hair pulled back into a tight bun, the comforting rustle from her combat fatigues as she walked. I owed my life to the dedicated nurse who’d been assigned my case. It didn’t matter how many times I cussed at her, yelling for her to simply let me die, she’d valiantly fought for me. Patiently, she would tend to my dressings, administer medicine, and stubbornly refuse to accept my excuses for not eating. To me, she was a walking contradiction—all the strictness and regimented display of the military paired with the compassionate heart of a healer. She was hard, yet equally soft. She didn’t take crap from anyone, but she held the composure of an angel.
Most of all, she was there in the emptiest of hours, when the world grew quiet and my guilt came crashing around me from the shadows. Susan held my hand, listened to my screams as I woke from endless nightmares, not once looking on me with pity as tears constantly spilled from my eyes.
I was a mess—a broken shell of a man.
And she refused to let me give up.
Sgt. Susan Ramsey was my own personal savior, a saint, and one day, I was going to personally thank her for being the only person able to reach through my self-loathing. It was because of her that I survived.
But this wasn’t real. I was dreaming, and from the way my heart was hammering hard within my chest, at any second, this could go from harmless and sedated to the excruciating terror of a nightmare and flashback.
Now, those, I was intimately accustomed to.
Wake up, I demanded, inwardly trying to jolt my consciousness. Wake up!
Nothing. I would need to ride this one out.
Letting out a loud breath, I scooted off the bed, placing my bare feet on the cool linoleum. So far, it was a pretty uneventful dream; the only troubling aspect was that I was wearing a hospital robe, my ass exposed in the back.
“Let’s see what happens,” I muttered, my hand tightly gripping the material so I could have some semblance of modesty.
I padded cautiously across the room, fiddling with my wristband that didn’t disclose the reason I was here. It had been a long time since I’d thought about Germany—the memories swept beneath the proverbial carpet along with everything else.
“Hello?” There was a slight tremor to my voice, betraying the growing fear stirring in my gut. Something wasn’t right—it was way too quiet. In real life, the hospital was nonstop action with wounded soldiers coming and going, medics rushing about as they raced against the clock to save their patients.
It had been that way when I was medevaced in—my body suffering from shock and blood loss. My own screams of agony had filled these corridors, my own desperate pleadings to just let me die like I deserved.
The heartbreaking thing I realized, now that there was enough distance between me and then, was my voice wasn’t the only one echoing off the walls. In fact, it was often drowned out by someone louder.
“Anyone here?” I asked again, this time with more confidence.
No one replied. I was alone.
Except . . . there. That was something, a faint scratching sound, like an animal trying to burrow out in an attempt to hide or escape. The word to describe it danced just out of reach.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
Pause.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
And there . . . even fainter . . . the sound of someone sniffing back . . . tears?
I stepped one foot out of my room, blinked, and suddenly, everything changed. The faded material of the hospital gown disappearing, replaced by my own set of battle fatigues. A gun appeared in my hand, the assault rifle locked and loaded, ready to fire at will.
“Fuck,” I uttered, my stomach dipping with a sense of dread as I struggled to drop my weapon to no avail. My skin prickled, the hairs on my arm raised, and I knew what that meant with an absolute certainty.
Danger.
Even though I couldn’t see the threat, my body register
ed it.
That gut instinct had served me well during each tour, and it was like I’d never left—that I hadn’t spent the last few years at home, slowly dealing with the aftermath.
Gone was Cooper—the bitter asshole who was fucking his life away because he was too afraid to face his demons.
I was Sgt. Hensley, U.S. Marine, and it was my responsibility to not only locate the source of noise, but to also neutralize it. If that meant using deadly force, it wouldn’t be the first time. I was no stranger to combat or firing my weapon.
“Whoever you are, I suggest you cease whatever you’re doing and come out into the hallway with your hands up, nice and slowly. No sudden movements.” Creeping toward the room at the end where the only other light was on, my finger rested lightly over the trigger—poised.
My heart raced, but I was a professional. After a few deep, calming breathes, my nerves had returned to steel, my focus crystal clear.
Flashes of a different battle, one with ricocheting bullets and ambushing insurgents crashed through my mind, disturbing the tight hold I had on the situation. Gunfire smoke and clouds of dust stung my eyes, making them instantly tear up. Nothing was there, but that didn’t matter.
It was real in that moment, and I almost choked on the crippling pain that surfaced.
Blood—that all too familiar coppery scent—slammed into me.
I could live for a million years and never forget it.
“It’s just a dream,” I muttered, over and over, not once stopping as I approached the distant room. “Keep breathing. Ignore it. It’s just a dream.”
A scream bubbled itself up my throat, jeopardizing my best efforts to shake away the illusion.
It was all a hallucination, the result of a tired and stressed brain. At least, that was the explanation the therapist gave when I’d barged into his office demanding something to help flip the switch off. Falling asleep had never been a problem—it was what happened once I did.
It left me feeling like I was losing my fucking mind—one bloodied, gruesome image at a time.
“Answer me!” I roared, the last of my patience snapping. Dream or not, I was the one in control, dammit.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
The sniffle—feminine.
Recognizing it was a female crying helped stifle my anxiety. Racing toward the sound, I came to a screeching halt the moment I broke into the room.
Blink.
And then the world exploded.
Blood. Red, thick, pools of the liquid covered every surface like someone had busted open a fire hydrant and drenched the space with it.
I choked back the bile that surged upward. It took every ounce of willpower not to bend over and violently heave as the overwhelming scent of death robbed my breath. It was everywhere, painting the walls like a macabre mural.
That was bad enough, but it was the source of the scratching that finally swept my feet out from under me, my gun tumbling from my hands and skittering across the ground. Before I could even move to retrieve it, the weapon faded away, gone.
A woman sat in the center of the furniture free room. The starkness of the former white decor would’ve driven anyone over the brink of sanity, but with each blink of my eyes, it would’ve been a welcome relief to the maddening red.
I didn’t need to see her face—her blonde hair concealing her features—to know who it was.
Her whimper was one straight out of my nightmares.
Caylee. And in her hands, a gore-covered scrubbing brush.
“It won’t come out,” she whispered. She cast me a quick glance, using the back of her hand to push back an errant strand of hair. It didn’t help, instead leaving a bright red streak of blood across her cheek. It felt blasphemous to see her perfect skin defiled with it.
“Caylee?” I murmured softly, not wanting to startle her. While she’d looked my way, there’d been no recognition to who I was. Just the constant back and forth of her arms, her fingers caked with carnage. “Sweetheart?”
Nothing.
“Why won’t the blood go away?” she wailed, tears streaking down her face. “So much blood.”
After a few tentative steps closer, I dropped to my knees beside her. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Just let me take you away from here.”
That seemed to break through whatever thrall held her. “I can’t. I need to clean this up.”
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
I did the only thing I could think of—I took the brush from her and tossed it out into the corridor. “Trust me. You don’t belong here.” It was only me who did.
“I don’t?” The smallness in her voice broke my heart.
“No, Caylee. I promise. Let me get you somewhere safe.”
Confusion warred in her eyes, the light that I’d spent so much energy denying I’d noticed, sadly absent. “Thanks, but I need to stay here.” And with a resigned sigh, she began cleaning again, her arms making the movement while her hands remained empty. There was no convincing her.
Standing again, I didn’t bother arguing, determined to carry her if need be. It wasn’t until I bent to scoop her up that I noticed where some of the blood was coming from.
The gaping wound in the center of her chest.
“Cooper?” she murmured.
“Yes?” I stammered, unable to drag my gaze away from the hole. Something had been ripped out . . . something . . .
Caylee cradled her still beating heart in both hands. “Why do you hate me?” Before I could ask her why she thought that, she continued on with a haunting cadence that would forever pierce my soul. “You killed my true love.”
I couldn’t have answered if I tried, my mouth immediately dry as the Arizonan desert from my childhood. Fuck. I’d done this to her.
There was no anger in her words, only sorrow. As if in slow motion, Caylee tilted her hands outward, her dying heart rolling across her palms before dropping to the floor with a deafening thud. With a ragged sob, she tipped her head back and screamed, every ounce of her grief and agony resonating in the banshee-like cry.
The sound shredded the flesh from my bones like confetti, penetrating my soul and shattering it.
You killed my true love, echoed in my mind.
“Caylee.” Somehow, I managed to say her name. Over and over again, I repeated it until her wailing ebbed and the room returned to silence.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
The scrubbing brush was back in her hands, another blank expression on her face.
“This isn’t all your blood, is it?” I didn’t know why I asked.
The question surprised her. Dried flecks of gore fluttered from her cheek to the floor. “You don’t know whose blood is on your hands?” Her reaction suggested she thought it was absurd I didn’t know.
“My hands?” I asked, unsure by her meaning. In the room that closely resembled a slaughterhouse on crack, I was the cleanest thing in it. “There’s nothing on my . . .” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Ichor coated my skin, dripping between my fingers where it then pooled at my feet. I was drenched in it. “What the fuck?” Stumbling back, I banged into something hard and immovable.
“You were my friend.”
Cold dread skated up my spine as I broke out into a sweat. I didn’t turn around to face the one who’d leveled the malice-laced accusation. I couldn’t if I tried, my feet rooted to the spot.
“You’re not real.”
“Is that what you tell yourself, fucker? Is that how you sleep at night?” Owen’s ghostly presence growled, spittle flying from his lips. “I trusted you. My wife trusted you.”
I needed to wake the hell up—now.
As much as it terrified me to see my best friend, to remember every little nuance that made Owen who he was, there was one simple truth that trumped it all—I missed him, and like every other occasion that he starred in my dreams, I needed to convince him how truly sorry I was.
Twirling around, I came face-to-face with a loaded gun barrel shoved in my face. Th
e one holding it looked like my best friend and fellow Marine, but his features were twisted and snarled from hostility. An all too familiar blaze of hatred shone from his dead eyes.
What I wouldn’t have given to remove it, to return him to the way I desperately wanted to see him now.
The way he looked before that life-changing patrol.
“Owen,” I choked out, my voice once again failing me.
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up!” he snarled as Caylee came to stand behind him. I was a fool to believe with the wildest of hope that she would ever forgive me for killing her husband. However you chose to view that day, my inability to save and protect him had caused his death. I deserved this. I deserved his wrath and vengeance.
Closing my eyes, I gave in to the inevitable. “Pull the trigger, Owen.”
There was a momentary click—the weapon’s hammer cocking back in readiness to fire.
BOOM!
The acrid scent of gunpowder, followed by the fiery intensity of my flesh burning, were the last things I sensed before dropping to the ground.
Owen and Caylee’s expressions of pure hatred and gloating satisfaction were the last things I saw before death ushered me away.
“Son of a bitch!” I gasped, waking up in the safety of my room with a concerned Lola nudging my arm with her wet nose. She’d sensed the nightmare and, like countless nights before, was ready to help me get rid of those gut-wrenching emotions and distance myself from the dream. Crawling up beside me, the warmth and weight of her body began grounding me—my heartbeat struggling to slow down and match hers.
Nothing else mattered but the feel of her soft fur beneath my touch. Tactile. That’s the word my therapist had used when we’d discussed dealing with flashbacks and panic attacks. Sometimes it helped by giving me a focal point to concentrate on.
Thankfully, it was working. If I couldn’t shake this overwhelming need to scream, I would wake Bryce, and that just added to the embarrassment. No one liked looking weak in front of their big brother—justified or not.
Tears fell without me brushing them away. There was no need to hide them or excuse them. If anything, it helped purge the crushing feeling of drowning.
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