our phones back. She picked up. She showed up.
Second time was during my first tour. She told me not to contact her again, that she wasn't mine and didn't want to be.
Goes without saying that I ignored that, because hearing her voice was like balm to my blistering soul. For all her resistance, she picked up ninety percent of the time, and we would talk…and talk. That percentage eventually drop to fifty.
Once, she picked up and told me she was seeing someone and couldn’t talk to me anymore. The rage and fury that vibrated through me when she told me that could’ve rocked the earth. A week later, Onyx confirmed it was a lie.
When I confronted her, she broke down and admitted she’d started to worry and pray for me like an army girlfriend and she didn’t want to be. That she needed me to die and never come back and getting closer to me through our phone talks was confusing her.
About a year and a half before the copter went down, she changed her number on me. When I asked Onyx to get her new number, she refused to give it to him.
During my surgeries in Germany and my rehabilitation in Seattle, all I wanted was to get better faster so I could see her. Grunt and Kendra flew back and forth on the reg to see me, but for whatever reason, it wasn't enough. I needed her. During one of Kendra’s visits, she told me she’d been renting from Leyana, and I managed to trick her into giving me her number. “For emergency reasons.”
I called her. She picked up, heard my voice, and immediately hung up.
She acknowledged none of my texts.
I stopped contacting her.
There was nothing I could do while half-functional and 13,000 miles away, so I channeled all my focus and energy into healing, becoming whole again. Because healed, functional, and whole was the only way I’d be able to get to her.
I don't know what she means to me. I don't know why she matters. All I know is that she makes me want to live.
I spend the next two hours downing beers, refusing pussy, and half-engaged in pointless, perverse conversations. My body’s here but the rest of me is elsewhere.
Onyx finds me in the same place he left me an hour ago when he went off with some chick. The satisfied grin he's sporting means the lay was good.
"You okay, man? You haven't moved an inch all night." He pops open a fresh beer. “Cookie told me you turned away the girls she brought for you?"
Before I can respond, a slew of explosions rings out. Quicker than I'm trained to be, I’m off the picnic bench with my Glock out and aimed, crouching. "Get down! Get down!"
Mitchell is sprawled in the dirt next to me, blood gushing from the bullet wound in his neck.
"Michaelson, help me," he gasps out, fear in his eyes. "I don’t…want...to die."
A bullet whizzes past my ear, grazing it, and I can feel the intensifying burn with each second. With laser focus, I aim and fire. Man down.
I aim and fire. Man down.
"Michaelson..."
I duck and flatten to the ground next to Mitchell when a fusillade of bullets sprays in my direction. With a sickening thud, another troop member falls. Head shot. Dead before he even hit the ground.
"Micha—"
When I look to my left, Mitchell is gone. Eyes wide and frozen with terror. I couldn't save him.
"Retreat!"
A commander’s order should never be disobeyed. But I’m ready to die. It’s not fair that two good men are shot down and I’m still alive. I reach over and run my palm down Mitchell’s face to close his sightless eyes. Then, I reach up to my neck and clasp the protection chain rested above my dog tags. Lifting the pendants to my lips, I press a kiss to them and whisper goodbye to her.
Ready to meet death, I climb to my knees again, aim, and fire.
"Scratch!" Onyx’s voice wrenches me to the present. "Jesus...”
I blink.
I'm surrounded by brothers, all staring down at me with concern. Crouched to the ground, drenched in cold sweat, my gun aimed at Onyx.
"What?" I ask dumbly, disoriented.
Judge suddenly pushes through the crowd. "All's good, Scratch," he tells me. "It was just air shots, for fun. Like we used to do, remember?"
I lower my firearm. "Right."
Of course. Firing off a few rounds in the air is the norm at Den of Heathens’ shindigs. I should’ve expected it. But I hadn’t. Because