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It was said more like a statement than a question, but I had a feeling it was definitely a question. “Yeah,” I breathed. “He was a medic in the army. Died in Afghanistan.”
I wanted to say a lot more. I wanted to tell him about the 1:00 a.m. death notification and the days that followed. For the first time ever, I wanted to tell someone about me and ten-year-old Parker graveside. How I’d lost my mind. How my heart had hardened beyond repair that day.
But I didn’t. I swallowed those words down and asked instead, “How’d you know?”
“Mmm,” he hummed before placing a kiss to the side of my head like he knew I needed it. “People don’t usually keep pictures of them and their ex-husband all over the house, babe.”
I nodded slowly. Yeah, I guess most divorced couples probably didn’t keep pictures of each other in their homes anymore. I guess the pictures I had up of Andy and me and Parker all over the place were a dead giveaway.
“How long?” he questioned quietly.
“Five years,” I whispered back. Feeling like it was yesterday that I said goodbye to him for the last time while at the same time it felt like forever ago. A whole other lifetime really.
On the day of his last deployment, I’d hugged him bye like I always did. He’d been gone more than he’d been home. It had been the norm for us. I’d taken him for granted.
I wished I had said more to him. Hugged him harder. Told him I loved him just one more time.
“I wish I’d had a warning. I wish I had known,” I said out loud without thinking.
Weston wrapped both his arms around me as tight as he could and pulled me to him in the biggest bear hug I’d ever had in my life. “Take it from a guy who knows better than anyone. There’s never enough time. There’s never enough I love yous. There’s never a long enough warning. It doesn’t matter how long you know, it’s still god-fucking-awful losing the person you love.”
My heart ached at his words. I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe that if I’d known, I would have been better prepared. That it wouldn’t have hurt as bad. But the heaviness in his words told me differently.
And I could tell he knew. He wasn’t just waxing poetic about death to ease my pain. No, he had his own. He knew. He, too, had lost someone. Who? I didn’t know. I remembered that night at the bar. How his hollow eyes had called to mine. Our grief had brought us together. It was sad, really, our story.
I cuddled back into him and laid my head against his arms.
We lay like that for God knew how long until he kissed my cheek and moved off me. We didn’t have sex anymore that night. The weight of our conversation was too heavy. We got dressed and climbed back on his bike and he took me home in the middle of the night.
I curled around him, my front to his back, and wrapped my arms tight around his chest, wanting to hold him to me, to comfort this sweet, grumpy man.
I placed my chin on his shoulder and watched the world rush past us in a blur of colors and the whiz of streetlights, thankful for the roar of an open throttle slicing through the silence of the night and our pain.
It was my monthly therapy group. It wasn’t official or anything, but each month a bunch of us veterans met at a local restaurant, talked, vented, ate good food, usually wings and beer, and shot the shit.
To the regular person, it might not have seemed like it would have been therapeutic at all, but for us, to be around our people and talk about our experiences with life after being in the military, it was the best kind of therapy.
I usually looked forward to it every month and while I still did, I found myself checking my phone for the time, anxious for 10:00 p.m. to roll around when I would leave to head home to my bed and my slugger’s warmth.
She was coming over tonight and I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything but that. We’d settled into a smooth and somehow seamless rhythm, she and I. She came over long after Parker went to bed. We used each other up until each had their fill and then she’d head home, sometimes on the back of my bike, sometimes in her old truck.
I’d hoped to work her out of my body, but it seemed the more time I spent inside of her, the more I wanted to be there. Until I found myself asking stupid questions and delving too deep into her life for this to actually be what it was supposed to be. Just fun. Still, I couldn’t help myself.
That should have been a clue that I was already in too deep, but like all things that I didn’t like to think about, I pushed it out of my head.
I checked my phone one more time. It was nine thirty and some of the guys were starting to head home to their families and for once I wouldn’t be going home to an empty house of my own. I wouldn’t be alone with my thoughts. I’d have a warm body there waiting on me.
I started to say my goodbyes and stood up from the table along with a few others when I heard a familiar voice say, “Hey, Reeves. Can you hang back for a minute?”
I looked to the very end of the other side of the table. I’d been avoiding that end all night. I’d known what was coming and I’d almost gotten out of it, but when my eyes met Holden’s across the table, I knew I was fucked.
His voice may have been as light as a feather when he’d calmly asked me to hang back, but his heavy eyes said it all.
“Sure thing,” I answered, shooting off a text to Emily that I’d be late, pissed off I’d have to wait to see her. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been expecting this. But I sure as hell didn’t have to like it.
I’d known Holden for years. He’d been head of this group since it started. When I’d seen him at the club that night, I could immediately tell he was trying to keep me away from Emily. And I wanted her enough that I didn’t give a shit.
I sat back and said my goodbyes to everyone until all that was left was Holden and me.
