Next to me Diana squeezes my hand in a gesture intended to tell me to hold onto hope and trust what she said a moment before. But as hard as I try I feel it slipping away every second he continues to not look my way, not take me aside and explain. It hurts, way more than I thought it would, and I can’t help but hate him a little, which only burns even more.
Gathering up my papers, I begin to walk back to my desk, having to pass him in the middle of the room in the process. My heart rate ticks up as my strides take me closer towards him. I look to the floor, and only glance up when I am sure he is not looking my way. But I am so wrong in my timing as his steal look locks with my own and I can feel every word he wants to say expressed in his eyes. The intensity makes me stumble as I begin to pass right in front of him, and then grab my papers close to my chest in an attempt not to drop them as I trip over my own feet and quickly start to fall to the floor.
My body feels his connection before my eyes can even notice he’s reached out to catch me. His strong arms wrap around me tightly right before he easily lifts me up in his embrace and my heart stops fucking beating feeling his strong broad chest against mine once again. My sharp intake of breath is all I hear as he helps me stand upright but keeps me in his arms, unable to let go, unwilling to let me move, in the middle of the room with everyone’s eyes on us.
“Are you OK?” His breath feathers across my lips as we stand so close together I can feel every inch of his hard body pressed up against mine. I can smell the mint on his breath, feel the pressure of his belt buckle tightly pressed against my lower stomach, and close my eyes trying to gather my thoughts quickly to respond.
“I, uh, yeah…” I whisper, as I shake my head side to side and reopen my eyes. I go to take a step back, but he tightens his grip making me defenseless to my inner conscious that is telling me the right thing to do, especially being in the middle of work, is to back away. Even if I don’t want to.
“Are you sure?” His eyes lock with mine and I read them perfectly. Sadness. Regret. Heartache. “Because I’m not…” He whispers, repeating the line he said to me the first time he stopped by my house. My mouth falls open as I remain frozen in his arms.
I’m not Ok either, I want to yell. I need you. Need this. Need us. But you don’t.
Any man who really wanted a woman wouldn’t let anything stand in his way, Rose. I hear the voice in my head begin. Don’t let him fool you. He doesn’t want you. You’re broken. Damaged. Ruined forever. He can see it and he doesn’t care enough about you to even try. You’re pathetic for even hoping he would.
I close my eyes as dread takes over. The voice is right! Any man who….
“Excuse me,” I hear Glen say, clearing his throat behind us. I open my eyes and look into Justin’s, but he doesn’t release me. Just stares back into my soul and studies me, examines me, makes me weak in the knees at the way he is more concerned with my wellbeing than what anyone in the office might think. “Justin?” Glen says again, making his grip on my waist loosen as I gently fall out of his embrace and feel cold from where his body was just so tightly pressed up against my own.
“Yeah,” Justin responds right as I go to leave, but his hand lightly grabs ahold of my wrist before his palm lowers and his fingers lace with my own.
“If we want to send the paper to press before the cut off I need to run a few things by you.”
My eyes are glued on the man at my side. The one that won’t let go of my hand and is stealing every last piece of my heart the longer he holds it. I see him nod in understanding before informing Glen he will be right with him. When he turns and looks at me, he smiles shyly, seeing the shocked look still on my face.
“You’re… not?” I stammer, as my eyes flutter closed and I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
He picks up my other hand in his and holds them both between us. “I’m better now,” he says quietly. “I just needed a little touch of Sunshine.” His gaze pops back up to my own and a mischievous smile spreads across his face. He gives me a wink before backing away and leaving me completely confused and utterly ruined from being able to think of anything else but him, us, whatever the hell that just was, for the rest of the whole damn day.
Chapter 12
Justin
The bar is dimly lit as I bring the freshly poured draft beer to my lips and take a long sip. The cold crisp liquid rolls down the back of my throat as a little more tension leaves my shoulders and I actually almost forget the way her body felt in my arms earlier this afternoon. The feeling lasts all of two seconds before I’m haunted once again with everything I have been trying to ignore for the past three damn weeks.
Looking up at the ballgame on the screen across the bar from me, I try once again harder than before to forget, force away the regret, as I focus my attention on the players. Anything to take my mind off of a woman that I don’t deserve and yet can’t fucking seem to find a way to live without no matter how damn hard I try.
The guy to the right of me asks what the score is as he glances up at the screen. I shrug, because hell, I couldn’t give two shits what the score is when I can’t seem to find a way to escape her. Looking back down, I wipe my fingers across some of the condensation running off the glass and sigh heavily. I’ll never win, I was doomed since the fucking beginning. It’s just fucking better this way.
“You know, it helps to know the score if you keep your damn attention on the screen for longer than two whole seconds.”
A smile spreads across my face as I lift my head and release the glass in front of me. Turning, I see a man I last said goodbye to in uniform a couple years ago in Iraq, before he swore the Navy off all together and returned home to his wife, his newly adopted daughter, and a life I will forever be envious of.
“Troy fucking Young,” I grin as I stand and yank him in for a brotherly hug. “How the hell are you doing, man?” He pats my back hard and steps back. “Shit it’s good to see you!”
“You too, Brother. Hell, I thought I’d never see the day your ass was state side. The life overseas finally get too much for you? Don’t tell me you walked away by your own free will? Justin Gatz is no fucking quitter, and he sure as shit would never quit the life of a seal!”
He takes the chair to my left and orders a beer. With a smile, because shit it is good to be with my brother in arms again, I pick up my beer and take a sip while we wait for the bartender to pour his. I see him check his phone and send a text right as his beer is delivered. I glance at the screen and my heart hurts a little realizing he is living the life I wish I could. Texting his wife he is safe and sound after arriving for a visit with an old friend that is far too long overdue.
He takes a sip of beer and sets his phone down on the counter. The screen flashes with an incoming text, a sweet exchange between him and Jolene I can’t help but read when I glance at it, although try to avoid as I look back up at him and see the smug bastard smiling like I only wish I fucking could.
“I got to admit I was surprised to get your call the other day, J.” He says, as his fingers dash across the screen and he texts his wife back. Putting his phone back in his pocket once he shoots off his last text, he finally looks up at me over the rim of his beer stein. “I told Jo, you? State side? Now that is a sight I had to fucking see!” He teases, before he takes a large gulp of the dark amber drink and lets out a deep breath. “I had to see it, because then I’d know if I was right!”
My brow furrows as I try and mask just exactly what he is getting at. The truth only Troy fucking knows when I told him every damn last thing about my past one night when we were left for dead and swore we’d never see another damn sunrise. The reasons why I enlisted. The reasons why I would never come home. Ever! My nerves get the better of me as I turn back to my beer, pick it up, down the contents of the glass quickly and motion for the bartender to bring me another.
“You alright, J?” I hear Troy ask at my side.
“Yeah,” I shrug, as I take the new glass eagerly and raise it to my
lips.
“Bullshit!” Troy shouts, making me stop the second the glass makes contact with my mouth before I slowly lower it back down to the countertop.
I see his eyes dart to my trembling hand. The one still clutching the glass in front of me like a fucking lifeline the more my past tears me apart, permanently scars me from any fucking future, and makes me know only one damn thing that is more real than anything else.
That I deserved to fucking die. To take their place. Because it was my fault. It will always be my fault. And there is nothing anyone can say, or do, that will ever change that.
“Who is she?” Troy asks right before I see him raise his glass to his lips and he takes another drink.
“Who?” I deflect, trying to throw him off the scent and trying to change the damn subject. When he called two days ago and said he’d be coming through town and wanted to crash at my place for a few days, I didn’t think it was to give me the third degree. I honestly thought it was a friendly gesture for two guys who used to fight side by side one too many times.
“The one that has you questioning for the first time since Charlette if you really could come back to fucking life.”
My teeth grind against each other in hatred. Not for him, and not for either women he’s speaking of, but for myself. For every damn thing I have been through and the way I would go back and change it, all of it, if I was only given one more fighting chance.
“I heard it in your voice when you called J, so don’t think it was the fucking mask you’re trying to hide behind that gave it away.” I turn to look at him and can’t help the way I glare at one of my best friends for everything his words are dragging up. “You know what it sounded like?” He says, leaning in and making everything else in the bar fade while I wait for him to tell me. “Happiness.”
I blink twice and try and ignore the only one thought that comes to mind. That maybe I can be happy. Maybe it would be OK to let myself feel alive again. Maybe, with her, it could be different.
“I don’t deserve to be happy,” I say, as I pick up the glass in front of me and attempt to ignore every damn thing I am feeling.
“Bullshit!” Troy shouts again. I flinch and shoot him a death glare. “Hell, if I’d have known we were starting this night off with two tickets to your own personal bullshit show, I would’ve suggested we take shots.” He waves the bartender over and I roll my eyes. “Two shots of Jameson,” he insists, as he takes his wallet out and pulls out a card. He hands it to the man behind the counter and tells him to keep the tab open.
When both shots are poured, I grab mine and raise it towards him. Hell if I was planning on getting wasted tonight, but after the way these last few weeks have gone and what happened in the office earlier today that I still can’t seem to escape, I figure fuck it. After all, it is Friday night and the man standing before me once made me promise if I ever got back to the states we’d have a damn good time reminiscing and drinking away all the times we thought we’d never make it home alive.
“To?” I ask, as I clink my glass against Troy’s.
“Trust!” He says, with an all-knowing glare as he raises his shot glass and shoots back the alcohol.
I scowl at him in spite, before smiling knowing he means well and shooting back my own. He motions for the bartender to pour us another round and quickly hands me my glass once the man finishes pouring.
“To?” He asks, taunting me in a friendly way.
“Sacrifice!” I shoot back the liquid and watch as he pauses before slowly doing the same.
“You’ve already sacrificed enough, J.” I hear him say as he sets the shot glass back down on the bar top. “You deserve a fucking resurrection brother. An awakening. And something tells me, you’re on the damn verge of that breakthrough, no matter how hard you try and fight it.”
An eerie feeling slithers down my spine as I motion for the bartender to pour another round before somehow persuading him to just leave the damn bottle. As he does, the only word that sticks to my mind as I lift the fifth of Jameson and pour us both a shot is salvation. A word that used to have such a different meaning to me. She could be my salvation, I find myself suddenly thinking. A thought that grows a little more on me as the shots continue to be poured and the heaviness of my past lifts a little.
6 years ago
The room grows cold as I stare at the ground in our tiny kitchen and wonder just how in the fuck we got here. How this is actually fucking happening? And what the hell did we ever do to deserve this?
It’s all my fault. It fucking is. And I know it! A truth that is harder to face than the way my daughter’s 17-inch white coffin looked as it was lowered into the soil earlier this afternoon. Her final damn resting place when she was only two fucking months old.
The house is still as I lean forward and worry my hands in front of me. I hear the muffled sound of voices on the front steps to our tiny house. Hear my wife’s voice mixed with a strangled sob that escapes her lips and swallows my heart whole with it knowing I am to blame for why she won’t be tucking our daughter in tonight. I am responsible for the empty crib across the hall from our room that now holds nothing but nightmares of the one morning last week that we went in to wake her up. A morning after a night we actually slept through, when we’ve never slept through a night since she was born, only to be met with horror when we found her not breathing.
The way my lifeless daughter looked still haunts me in my dreams and will every damn time I close my eyes until the day I die.
A fate I fucking deserve. To take her damn place. To suffer, horribly, for not saving her when she was too fucking young to ever be able to even save herself.
Her pale face and blue lips were nothing compared to the way her listless body felt in my arms when I picked her up and screamed for Charlette. But even then, nothing ever could have prepared me for the look in my wife’s eyes. The panic. The hysteria. The madness that ensued the moment we realized she wasn’t with us any longer.
Our Emma Grace. My fucking little princess. Taken in the middle of the night by the fucking ugly possible reality they try to warn all new parent’s about. The unexplained death that can claim your child’s life even when you do every fucking thing in your power to always protect them. SIDS.
I promised Charlette I’d always put Emma to sleep on her back. But I sat with her that night and rocked her for hours before she fell asleep. She was so fussy. So out of sorts. The only way I could get her comfortable was when she was laying on her tummy against my chest and her breathing would finally settle. Her heartbeat was slow and steady against my own and I felt like I was doing the right thing, as her father, by giving her the comfort she needed to finally settle down.
Comfort? I hauntedly laugh as I push back in my chair and drag my hands down my face, feeling the beard that’s been growing every day since she left us. Comfort. Something I don’t deserve to feel again, ever, not so long as my child is in the ground and I am still here, walking the damn earth, forced to go on as if nothing fucking happened.
I laid her down on her back, didn’t I? My head wants to tell me I did but my heart feels like it knows better. It knows the truth. I did this. I am to blame.
The screen door creaks as it opens and I hear my wife’s footsteps coming down the hallway. I tell myself to look up when she enters the room but I can’t bring myself to meet her stare as I pull our wedding ring from my hand and play with it between my fingers. My heart feels like it is being pressed, squeezed, crushed by the finality of everything that has happened as my throat closes up and tears sting the backs of my eyes.
She stops in front of me for a second. Her low sigh of disproval hangs around us now that we are alone. The shadows have grown darker and I can’t remember the last time I ate as I slowly raise my head and take in the platters, trays, assortments of food and desserts that are supposed to console someone when they walk through a day like we just have. But their presence only adds to the grief. The reality that the last fucking thing I want or need righ
t now is food when all I could ever fucking ask for, ever pray for, is to hold my beautiful Emma Grace in my arms again and never ever let anything happen to her.
My wife moves to the cabinet across the room and grabs a bottle of wine. She doesn’t attempt to be graceful and plucks the loosely-corked, half-drank container, open with her teeth and proceeds to drink straight from the bottle. I steal a glance at her while she drinks heavily and worry, just like I have since the morning it happened, that we will never be the same. She’ll never be the same. And it will always be my damn fault.
When she stops drinking she kicks off her heels and leans against the kitchen counter. The bottle hangs loosely at her side as a whimper escapes her lips. A few moments pass before a guttural cry rings from her lungs, she sucks in a deep breath and brings the bottle to her lips once again.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper between us, but that only causes her to slam the bottle down on the counter next to her and take a few hate-filled steps towards me.
“Sorry, Justin? You’re fucking sorry? My little girl is gone! Gone! She’s never coming back, and you’re fucking sorry!”
I take the jab. I take the hate. I deserve so much more and I know it. I’ll let her use me as her punching bag if it means we get through this. If it means I don’t lose her too. Because I can’t lose them both. I can’t lose my whole fucking world, my life, my entire damn reason for even breathing.
“Charlette,” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“No!” She shouts, coming toward me quickly and making me finally look up to meet her stare. Her eyes are like ice. Desolate. Destroyed. Ravaged of any fucking spark there ever could have been between us, or ever will be again. “You did this!” She shouts. “You did this Justin! You were the one who put her to bed! You were responsible for her! For this!”
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