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I had fought her. Oh, how I had tried pushing her back. But she was persistent. There was this thing when it came to Amelia. She had a way of burrowing herself into your life and making it feel like she belonged there. It was like a takeover but in the most gentle way possible.
Fuck. I sounded like Xander.
I was far from a lover boy—the exact opposite. I had seen too much, and my heart was so scared that I didn’t even know if it still functioned correctly.
But walking with her like this in the park felt so…easy. It felt natural.
“Tell me something real about you,” she said as she bit into her doughnut with the biggest smile. The woman was so easy to please it was wild.
“What do you mean?”
“Something real,” she said, nearly choking on her bite as she tried to speak. “Sorry, but these are so good. Oh, it’s like heaven.”
She bit into it again, but this time moaning and enjoying the flavors that danced in her mouth. The sound alone brought flashbacks of last night. Her screams of pleasure were firmly engraved in my mind now. I got hard just thinking about it.
“Nate?”
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked for you to tell me something real about yourself.” She blinked. “Like something real and raw about you.”
Real and raw? That was a big ask for a man like me. I had many scars from my time in Syria and the accident. But many others were hidden. Wounds that had never quite healed. Wounds that she had a hand in creating—or at least I thought she did.
“I held my best friend's hand when we got blasted in Hama, Syria. And I watched the life fade from his eyes.” I hated reliving this memory. This happened six years ago on my first tour. Six years and the wounds still had not healed, much like the ones from the night of the accident. “His name was Andre. The guy always wound up in trouble one way or another. He loved the thrill of it—the danger that is. He said that he loved teetering on the edge of life and death. It’s one of the major reasons he signed up for the Marines in the first place.”
“He sounds fun.”
“He was. The guy always had a smile on his face. It was like nothing fazed him. He never let the job steal his light.”
I thought back to Andre and all the moments that we shared. He had been more than just my buddy in the service. He was my brother. We had built a bond and seen each other through much hardship. Being out there in the line of fire changed a man. It wore on your soul, but somehow Andre managed to keep me grounded. He managed to hold me down even when I felt like spiraling.
“It was meant to be just one of those routine trips by escorting civilians, but then we got hit by a suicide bomber. The shrapnel lodged itself in his heart.” My throat tightened just thinking about that day. “I had seen many people fall in the line of duty. I had seen many people lose limbs. But it never hit me quite as hard as it did that day. This wasn’t just some colleague ….this was my…my brother.”
I had never told anyone this story aside from Xander. It was a dark mark in my past that I wouldn’t say I like to revisit.
“He had knocked me to the ground to take the shot at the bomber, but it was too late. The bomb went off, and he put his body on top of mine when he heard the explosion.” My voice tightened at the end of my sentence. Reliving these memories was like picking at a scab and realizing the wound was still fresh underneath. “We were too far out from the base for them to get there on time, so I just sat beside him and held his hand while he took his last breath on this earth.”
I remembered it all so clearly in my mind. I watched the light drain from his eyes as his chest rose for the last time.
His last words to me were, ‘Stop existing and start living.’
He knew of the accident, and he knew of my strained relationship with my brother and father. But above all of that, he knew of Amelia. He knew what she represented to me or at least what she had previously meant to me.
He was the one person on this earth who knew me through and through. I hadn’t even told Xander about Amelia and our connection with the accident, and I don’t think I ever would. The wounds with Amelia were just far too deep.
A small hand fit into mine, bringing my stride to a grinding halt. I looked at Amelia, her delicate features and eyes almost liquefied with emotion.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Her voice was so soft it could have been a whisper. “And I’m sorry you’ve had to carry those scars for so long.”
I was taken aback by how sincere she sounded. Her tone had no forced empathy—just complete and utter sincerity.
She let out a short breath, her shoulders rising and falling quickly. “I didn’t watch her die, but I was involved in an accident with my mom, as you already know. She had been working the night shift then, and I had come down with something. We had been on our way to the hospital when she hydroplaned and lost control of the car.”
My heart stopped in my chest.
This was the one topic that I didn’t want to visit with her, but I didn’t stop her. She had allowed me to show my demons. Now she wanted to show me hers.
“I blamed myself.” A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “I always thought that maybe if I didn’t get sick, then maybe, just maybe, she would be alive.”
