44 Chapters About 4 Men - BB Easton Page 0,79

cut him off, gently complaining about having to get up early or giving some other thinly veiled excuse to end the discomfort, he would always close with his patented ex-stalker good-bye, saying I was still his girl, that he’d always love me, and if I ever needed anything, he’d be there.

I know, Knight. You poor deranged, psychotic motherfucker, I know.

I’d roll my eyes and sigh into the phone, its battery searing hot against my cheek by the time I finally hung up, and just be happy that Knight was still alive and no longer driving by my parents’ house nightly or screaming at me in public.

Knight had joined the Marines the instant he graduated from high school. It didn’t change him much. He was already scary, muscle-bound, and militant, so being a Marine just…fit.

But after doing a tour of duty in Fallujah, the nature of Knight’s phone calls changed. They became friendly, vulnerable even. He asked for advice about women, finances. He talked about problems he was having with his friends and employers. He called during daylight hours, sober hours. The deeper I got into my psychology coursework, the more clear it became that Knight was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and he needed help.

I asked him about it once, and he said, “Yeah. That’s what the doc told me. Gave me some pills, but they don’t fucking work. Last night, I tried to kill a guy downtown. He started some shit with me at The Point and before I knew what was happening, my buddies were holding me back and I had a fucking broken beer bottle in my hand. They said I’d smashed the neck off on the edge of the bar and lunged at the guy. I don’t even remember doing it. So…I think it’s getting worse?”

Jesus. Ya think?

Knight later told me that one of the first things he’d seen when he touched down in Fallujah was a woman’s hand on the side of the road. Just lying there, like some dubious Welcome to Iraq sign. In Hawaii, pretty girls drape leis strung with fresh plumeria blossoms around your neck and kiss your cheek. In Fallujah, a bloody, sun-scorched, severed hand waves hello to you from the side of an IED-infested desert road.

I don’t know the half of what he saw, heard, or did while he was over there, but Knight was an emotional paradox when he returned. He’d be pensive and candid and introspective during our irregular phone calls, yet after a beer or ten, he was even more violent, brash, and reckless than ever.

Within months of his return, Knight had wrecked his motorcycle twice, the second time resulting in road rash so bad on his back that he looked like one of Hannibal Lecter’s victims. His entire back piece, the McKnight coat of arms, was just…gone.

It’s these changes in his demeanor, the increased rage and recklessness, that make it so hard for me to believe the circumstances surrounding Knight’s death.

As the story goes, Knight was trying to break up a fight between his buddy and some asshole when he was stabbed in the back by the girlfriend of said asshole. The media painted him as the heroic veteran, a valiant US Marine just stepping in to defuse a violent situation in a local bar.

Right.

I don’t care what anybody says. The Knight I knew had either started that fight or jumped in to finish it. The Knight I knew had probably gone into a blind rage and wouldn’t have stopped pummeling the nameless, faceless stranger in his grasp until he went limp. The Knight I knew was the scariest motherfucker on earth, and if he ever got my boyfriend on the ground while he was in full-on Skeletor mode, I would have felt the need to stab him until he stopped, too.

Or maybe that’s just the story I want to believe. Maybe I want the world to be a just place where people who serve our country overseas don’t come home just to be slaughtered at the hands of one of our own citizens while trying to break up a fight.

It was bittersweet, knowing that as I was burying my first great love, another great love was growing inside me. I worried the edges of the sonogram photo in my pocket as I gazed into the casket at Knight’s face. He looked so different from the fuzzy-headed, freckle-faced boy who had once picked dandelions for me and drawn me stick-figure pornos at school. He looked old.