Outside the room, the station carries on with the ordinary sounds of people doing work. Beyond that, there’s a small mountain town that has no idea an old warmight be closing in.
I look at the woman Tyler loved, and I understand, with a grief that will never entirely leave me, exactly why.
I stroke my thumb over her cheek. “I care about you. More than I know what to do with.”
Then I kiss her again.
CHAPTER 30
ELENA
For the second night in a row, I lie awake long after the house has gone still around me.
The refrigerator hums, and the heater kicks on and off. The settling house creaks now and then.
There are too many small noises, and too much room for thoughts between them.
I stare at the ceiling and replay everything Calder said yesterday and in our earlier conversations. About the panic, and the way certain words or sounds could drag him somewhere else without warning. About the fear in his eyes when he admitted he didn’t know if he was too broken for anything real.
My chest aches again, just like it did yesterday. For him. For Tyler. For T.J. For myself, in a way I haven’t let myself feel in a long time.
Three years.
Three years of living around a hole no one had ever properly explained. Three years of folded flags and careful condolences and words likesacrificeandclassifiedandhero,while the truth was buried behind official silence.
Three years of building a life on top of grief that never made sense.
Tyler hadn’t died the way they told me, and Calder carries pieces of that night in his skin and bones. So do Buck and Weston. They’re all walking around with ghosts the Navy apparently found convenient to leave inside them.
And now the ghosts are hunting us down.
Tonight, anger burns hotter than fear. Anger at the military, at the lies, at the faceless officials who decided I didn’t deserve the whole truth about my own husband’s death. They could’ve at least given me a close version of the truth, scrubbed of names and locations.
Braided through it all, almost impossible to separate, is the memory of Calder looking at me like he was braced for rejection. As if he’d bared what he thought was the ugliest part of himself to me, just to get the inevitable over with.
As if he truly believed that was all I’d see.
I turn on my side and reach for my phone before I can talk myself out of it.
It’s late enough that I hesitate when my thumb is over his name, but I think about all the nights I’ve spent alone with my own thoughts, and all the nights he’s probably done the same, and I press call.
He answers on the second ring. “Elena? Everything all right?” His voice is thick and rough, but his tone is alert.
“I’m fine. Everything’s all right.” He lets out a breath. “Did I wake you?” I ask.
“No.” I know he’s lying to be kind.
“Can you come over?”
My question is met with a couple of seconds of silence. “Now?”
“Yes.” My fingers tighten on the phone. “If you want to.”
After another pause, he says, “I’m on my way.”
My heart is beating too fast when I set the phone down. It’s not fear and not exactly nerves. More like resolve or hope.
By the time his truck rolls into my driveway, I’m at the door in a sweater and leggings, my feet bare on the wood floor. I open the door before he can knock.
