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Doc nods, his features soft. “Good guy, I heard.”
I don’t even plan it. I just stand up and walk out of his office, right down the hall, jog down the stairs, and outside where I stand with my back against the wall and wonder what would stop the pain inside my chest, what sort of damage I could do outside that might ease the hurricane of pain inside.
Good guy…
He was. He was.
Breck was a good guy. Breck should be alive.
“Aw now, I thought I had lost you.” Sean’s right there, his hand on my back, tapping. I blink, turning to him.
“Sorry.” I look down at my feet. He must think I’m such a fucking loose cannon. Not much of an Operator if I can’t even—
“Want to come back up? Tell me what set you off?”
I swallow back the urge to snap at him—or turn around and run the other fucking way.
“I don’t,” I say stiffly.
“You don’t have to.”
“You said he’s a good guy. How’d you know that?” I look him in the face because I want to see his eyes.
“Read the obit,” he says.
“And the obit told you he was a good guy?”
I can see the hesitation on his face. “Just heard in certain circles. People talk, you know.”
“When an Operator dies. Yeah, they talk.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“People talk. Opinions, assholes…”
He chuckles. “Opinions are like assholes, and most of them stink. Come back upstairs with me, and tell me what the talk was about Breck’s death.”
I look him up and down. “How long were you a Ranger?”
“Thirteen years,” he says. He lifts his shirt up, revealing a long, jagged scar along his ribs.
“Blown up around the time that Baghdad fell. IED our bomb guy couldn’t get.”
I nod, forcing myself to look at the ruined skin. Because I know how much it sucks when someone looks away. If they can’t see it, how can you live with it?
I nod.
“It blows.” He chuckles. He heads inside, and I follow him up. Not because I have to, but because I know I need to try. For Gwen, and maybe me as well.
I feel like shit the whole walk up, and when I sit back on his couch, I feel that detached cold come over me.
I see him roll his chair over and feel him tap my forearm.
“Hey, guy. Look up here at me, will yeh?”
It takes some effort, but I do it.
“I’ve got white eyelashes. Blond, really. Since birth. Can you see them, or does it just look like I don’t have any?”
