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“They’re more than that,” said Luca. “But, yes.”
“Sorry.”
He squinted curiously. “Why are you sorry?”
“I mean, I don’t want to pry. I don’t want you to go down any roads you don’t want to—”
Very abruptly he leaned in and kissed me. It was a sweet kiss. A gentle kiss. When he pulled back again, he was holding my hand in his.
“Jenna, I’d go downanyroad with you,” Luca said softly. “This one included. In fact, you’ve sort of helped me with my nightmares. Since you came into my life, I’ve been having them a lot less.”
I squeezed his hand in support. Bringing it to my lips, I kissed it gently.
“Tell me about them.”
He swallowed once, pursing his lips as he searched for words. I realized he wasn’t thinking about whether or not to tell me. He was only working out the best way to do it.
“Iwasa communication’s officer,” Luca began. “That part’s true. But then I took a marksman’s test, and blew it away. Highest score they’d ever seen. Funny part was, I hadn’t touched a gun until I’d enlisted. They called me a natural. It made them all the more impressed, I think.”
The room was growing dark now without the fire, and a bit colder too. Luca noticed my shoulders begin to hunch. He pulled me even closer, and reached up to drape the blanket over me.
“I got shipped off to Fort Benning for two months of sniper school,” he went on. “Turned out I was some sort of prodigy. I was hitting targets I could barely see, at ranges I shouldn’t have been able to reach.” He gave off a small shrug. “For me it all seemed too easy. I couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t do it. It wasn’t until later on that I realized that I was part of a very small, very elite group.”
Luca’s eyes unfocused, and for a moment he was very far away. When he spoke again his voice was sadder and more emotionally invested.
“Michael Serrano… well, he was a lot like me.”
I wanted to tell him I got it, but I couldn’t. Such a statement would’ve been ridiculously disingenuous. And so I sat there, listening, holding his hand. Waiting for him to go on.
“We did Black Ops,” Luca murmured into the midnight silence. “Some pretty dark shit that skirted the line at times. But we followed orders. We obeyed. They put me in places that I shouldn’t have come back from. But I was sneakier than most. And I quickly learned how to extract myself after the shit hit the fan.”
His eyes made their way back to me. When they did, they were filled with sorrow.
“Mike was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet,” said Luca. “Red hair. Freckles. Goofy fucking smile…” He shook his head slowly. “You’d never guess he could take a man’s head apart at fifteen hundred meters. But he could, and he did. And for some reason his smile never let up. His goofiness, his innocence… it always stayed intact, because to Mike it was always just a job. Never more. He never carried it with him.”
“I’m sorry,” I finally breathed. “I—I didn’t mean to make you talk about this.”
“No, talking about it is probably a good thing. At least with someone like you.”
My nose twitched. “Why me?”
“Because you don’t glorify what I did,” Luca answered. “You wouldn’t believe how many guys hear I was a sniper and immediately think it’s the greatest thing in the world. They want to know where I was, who I did. They ask questions like ‘how many people have you killed?’”
How many peoplehaveyou killed?my mind asked fearfully.
“Anyway, Mike and I kept each other alive. We went through some serious shit, and somehow we came out the other side.” He swallowed dryly. “Almost, anyway.”
We were both looking at the dogtags now. Staring in the shadows.
“What happened?”
“I got transferred out,” said Luca. “And Mike bought it on the very next mission. A turned informant gave up some bad intel and he crawled into an ambush. Never had a chance.”
I hugged him now, leaning in so that his face was right alongside mine. My eyes were already wet with tears when my lips brushed his ear.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say. “I really am.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
