It's strange sitting across the table from Kelsey, watching her, knowing that I'll be going home with her tonight.

Somehow, I've got to survive sitting in class with the cadets, listening to them argue about leadership and women in combat and everything else they think they know about while trying not to think about her naked in my arms.

I do my best to pull my mind out of the gutter and back to the conversation. I'm letting Kelsey lead it today, mostly because all the blood in my body is still trying to make its way back to my brain.

Ryan isn't in class today. I'm not sure where he is but it doesn't bode well that he didn't drop either of us a note to let us know he was going to be absent. I know the ROTC commander is strict about that stuff. I'll get in touch with Professor Blake and the battalion commander after class if neither one of us hears from him before then.

"The reading this week is on tribes. The author isn't a soldier but he's spent significant time with soldiers. What do you think of his argument that we are lacking modern tribes?" Kelsey asks.

Veer raises his hand. "I'm not sure I agree with him. It seems awful simplistic to dismiss PTSD like he does."

"How do you mean?"

He flips open his notebook. "I think it's a compelling argument but it seems like it's romanticizing the past as some ideal where everyone felt like they were part of something. I'm pretty sure that past doesn't exist for everyone."

Jovi raises her hand. "I don't know. I think it's a really interesting argument. I can't imagine what he's describing. The idea of sleeping in austere conditions, getting shot at and bombed, and sleeping better than you do back home in the comfort of air conditioning and showers? I don't buy it."

"Why not?" I ask.

I love listening to Jovi work through her thoughts as she’s speaking them. She’s so fucking smart.

"Because I just…I can't imagine it. How? How on earth does that make any sense?"

Kelsey is flipping her pen cap on and off. I'm not sure she's even aware that she's doing it. "Well, if you think about it, our American standards of so-called wealth are very odd. At the most primitive level, we used to sleep and live and die in packs…tribes. It's only been since the industrial revolution that we began to segregate ourselves as part of moving up in the world. Maybe we need each other more than modern society is able to admit?"

Iosefe has said very little in the class so far but I've been watching him. Even though he looks like he's not paying attention, he's hearing every word.

Today he raises his hand. "I'm from American Samoa and when we moved here, the kids at school said we were poor because I lived in a house with my cousins and my aunt and uncle. We were crowded but we were happy. But my father always told me to push harder so I didn't have to live like we did growing up." He clears his throat. "He never asked me if I was happy."

Jovi looks like she's thinking hard about his statement. "Were you?"

"Yeah. It's family. It's big and it's messy and it's loud but there is no one who loves you like family. I never felt alone until I got here and had my own room."

Veer nods. "I agree. My grandparents are from India. Everything I grew up believing stems from the fundamental idea that we are all connected. The reading really speaks to the lack of connection in American life."

Kelsey swallows hard. "So what do you do about it? How can you apply this to your future as lieutenants?" She pauses and she's still avoiding looking at me. "How do you build your tribe?"

Veer looks at me. "Shouldn’t we be asking you that? You've actually done this, haven't you? As sergeants." I smile at the way he says the full word sergeant as opposed to abbreviating it to sarn't like anyone who has been in the Army for a minute does.

I take a deep breath. I figured we'd only get them to talk for so long before they put us on the spot. "There isn't a formula. You have to be genuine. You have to really care about your people. You can't expect them to assume risk without assuming the same yourself. You have to protect them, but that doesn't mean making life easy on them. You have to train them. And that's uncomfortable. But it's better to bleed in training than die in combat."

Kelsey tucks her pen into her fist. "I think the only thing I would add to that is to not trivialize things. Something that may be very basic to you may be a very big deal to someone else. Everyone has a different threshold. Protect your people but also hold them accountable. Don't let things slide. We have standards. You have to uphold them. That's part of your job."

She finally looks up at me. The bitterness in her eyes, the frustration, hits me in that moment. Everything we're talking about, both of us failed to do when we got home from Iraq.

The hypocrisy burns.

I knew the discussion was going to be rough after I read the chapters for class today. Reading about leadership and risk and bonding during war was far too real, far too potent a reminder of all the things I lost when I left the Army. All of it hit home, hard. Really hard.

It's never easy to look back and know you failed your soldiers. But I did. And I can't change it.

The guilt comes back every now and again. I think it's worse today because of…things. Things that involve Deacon and the memories of coming home to a home that wasn't.

"I'm not sure I can have this conversation right now," I tell him as he falls into step alongside me.

"Who said anything about talking?"

"So we're going to walk to The Pint in awkward silence?"

"Why not? We're both heading to the same place; we might as well, right?"

I glance over at him. His jaw is flexing so hard I feel bad for his teeth. "You still grind your teeth."

He relaxes his lips but it's not enough. The tight line of his neck doesn't relax. "Bad habit. They wanted to give me meds for it when I went for my last checkup at the dentist."

"You turned them down?"

"My inner hippie doesn't like taking medication unless I need to. Grinding my teeth doesn't seem like a big enough problem to suffer through pharmacy lines for. And my liver gets enough work every day."

I stuff my hands into my sweatshirt pockets and say nothing.

"I'm really glad that Iosefe brought up his background today," he says after we’ve walked a block without speaking. "I wish Ryan had been there to hear it."

"Yeah, I think Ryan could have really benefited from Iosefe's story." I make a noise. "It's funny how Ryan's got such strong opinions about what the military is like."

"He's watched Full Metal Jacket too many times." Deacon makes a noise that might be a laugh but I'm not sure.

"It's hard sometimes," I finally say.

"What is?"

"Looking back." I release a breath, clenching the back of my throat with a deep cleansing breath. “These readings about belonging were harder to read than I thought they would be."

"Why?"

"Because the author is right. Because I miss it. I miss the stupid pranks in the motor pool, I miss the three a.m. phone calls. I miss going to the field and listening to soldiers play stupid-ass ‘what if’ games. I miss all of it." I stop walking beneath a tunnel that's decorated with the emblems of clubs from around campus. There's no art for a veterans’ club. Because we don't have one. "Because what I did mattered. Because I had a fucking purpose. And then I went and fucked it all up because I couldn't sleep."

It's hard to meet his eyes. I'm trying so hard not to be a fucking coward these days. Trying to be the person I envision when I'm on the yoga mat.

Trying to pretend that everything I hope to be can ever outrun the person that I was.

"That is such a load of bullshit. Did you see the way those kids were looking at you when you were talking today?"

"They don't look at me the same way they look at you."

He shakes his head and steps into my space in the cool dark shadows beneath the bridge. "Yes, they do."

I back away, colliding with the chalk-covered stone behind me. I'm trapped. "There's nothing to tell."

"Why do you do that? Why do you downplay your own accomplishments?"

"I didn’t do anything special. I did my damn job, Deacon."

He moves into my space then. His hands are rough where they grip my shoulders. "You did more than that and you know it. The Army doesn't hand out Bronze Stars for Valor for showing up at head count at the chow hall." His mouth is there, just there, his body pressing against mine.

But this isn't sexual. This is more intense. Something more raw. Something primal.

"They just wanted to put a female face on the attack."

"Bullshit," he snaps. "Stop doing that. Stop acting like you didn't lead the defense after our perimeter was breached. Stop acting like you didn’t take over when the LT refused to get out from behind the tire he was hiding behind. Stop downplaying what you did."

I shove his hands away but he snaps them back into place.

I shove them off again and this time, he stops. "What do you want me to say? You want me to get up in class and beat my chest about what a badass I am? What kind of badass drinks herself to sleep every night if she can’t sleep? What kind of badass was so fucked up by everything that happened downrange that she took meds she shouldn't have and got herself thrown out of the Army? You want me to tell that story? Because that's not fucking heroic."

He's shaking his head slowly. "You don't see yourself the way I do."

"All you want to do is see me naked." My quip falls flat, like an egg cracking on the sidewalk.

He doesn't smile. "There's so much more to you than you give yourself credit for."

"I fell apart. For more than a year after you left, I fell down. And I couldn't get back up." The words break me, shattering like a lightning strike slashing down the middle of a tree, burning in my chest, squeezing my throat and blocking out the air I desperately need. “Heroes don’t fall apart.”

"But you got back up." He cups my face and I don’t push him away this time. A dark part of my heart needs his touch. Even if it’s only for a moment. I wish the heat from his palms, the abrasion from his fingertips, could warm the cold dead space inside me. "Why can't you see how that makes you strong?"

I cover his hands with mine. Then draw them slowly away from my face. "Because it doesn't. If I was strong, I never would have broken in the first place."

And then I'm gone.

Because that's what I do. I run. I always run.

I ran away from home. I ran away from the Army. Away from Deacon.

Away from the fragile peace I thought I'd found.

It was a futile hope. All of it.

I leave everything good behind because all I ever do is fuck things up.