Olivia
“Hey, can I borrow your truck?” I ask August. I’d been tossing it over in my head for an hour so it may have seemed a little bit blunt just blurting it out like that, but the worst he can do is say no. We can’t work on the shelter today because we’ve found a live wire and all the electric needs to be grounded and rewired thanks to Old Man Tinker’s efforts to do it himself.
August leans up against the kitchen counter, but only briefly glances at me before he continues rifling through the giant bag of potato chips in his hand.
“I mean, please?”
He crunches a chip loudly. “Where are you taking it to?”
“Um . . . Jackson?” I ask, because it really is a question. Unfortunately for me, it’s a question that now has his undivided attention.
“As in, two hours away from here, Jackson?”
“Yup, that’s the one.” I smile brightly, feeling as if I’m losing him, but I’m desperate to hang on. He doesn’t smile back. “You know what, it’s okay. I can just—”
“I’ll have to call Miss Sue and ask her to keep Bettina an hour longer, just in case you’re not back,” he says, shoving a handful of potato chips in his mouth.
I move forward and take the packet from him. “You should eat something substantial.”
He screws his nose up, glances longingly at the packet I stow in the cupboard, and wipes his hands on his jeans. “What are you doing there?”
“My friend owns a shelter. She called about a dog that she can’t place. She’s a little aggressive, so I thought I’d try as a last-ditch effort. They’re a no-kill shelter too, but this dog is . . . well, she’s special.” I open the refrigerator and bend to peruse the shelves. Finding what I need to make him a turkey sandwich, I straighten and turn to face him.
August’s gaze darts away from my body with a slight flush of what looks to be embarrassment as he glances down at the floor. “Special, huh?”
I place my ingredients on the counter beside him and take the plates from the cabinet above our heads, then I set about fixing us both lunch. “You know, you could come with me? If you wanted?”
The brilliance of my plan unravels thread by thread inside my mind, and I find myself tensing every muscle in my body as I wait for his response. When Sallyann called about Zora, I thought maybe if I could weed out her behavioral problems I could train her up for Dalton because we still haven’t found the perfect candidate for his emotional support dog. After talking with Sallyann, whose no-kill policy is as stalwart as mine, I knew she wasn’t the dog for Dalton, and we’d need some kind of miracle to turn that dog around.
Zora is a Military Working Dog, and by all rights, she should have gone back to the Marines. However, the family of the fallen Marine had agreed to take her because he loved that dog, he gave his life for hers, and they knew what the Marines would do if they sent her back. If a MWD can no longer work, they're fostered out. When they can’t be adopted because of their behavioral problems, they’re put down. From the sounds of things, Zora needs time, anxiety meds, and a whole lot of love. She’s lost her handler. In her mind, there is no fate worse than that. August lost his comrade along with his leg. It doesn’t take a genius to put the two together.
Sallyann is at the end of a very fine tether, but I have a MWD handler at my disposal. It’s as if fate has dropped this opportunity in my lap and I can see how perfect this match would be. August doesn’t want a dog, he doesn’t want any part of my program, but sometimes we don’t choose life—it chooses us. Though it is probably for the best that I don’t mention any of this to him.
August wets his lips. “Sure, why not?”
“Really?” I say too quickly, because it couldn’t be that easy, could it? He raises a brow, and I promptly shut up, handing him the sandwich as a peace offering. He takes it, but not without studying me closely first. It’s evident he knows that I’m up to something, but he doesn’t say anything to the contrary, and as I sit at the small kitchen table across from him, neither do I.
He’s never discussed his IED detection dog with me, but MWDs aren’t ever just dogs in the military, at least not to their handlers. They’re soldiers, they’re Marines, and they save countless lives. I’m hoping Zora has it in her to save just one more, because this dog needs August as much as August needs her.
August takes his eyes from the white line to glare at me. “What?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head and smile at him. We’ve been on the road for an hour now, and I’ve spent the better part of it gawking at him across the cab of his truck.
“You starin’ holes in the side of my face, ain’t nothin’. Out with it, Liv,” he says, and I squeeze my thighs together because I like his new nickname for me a little too much.
“It’s just . . .” I sigh, knowing the next words out of my mouth could either end with him shutting me down or with me actually learning something I can use in regards to August's recovery. “You never talk about your dog.”
He clenches his jaw tightly closed, until that little muscle in his cheek pops. “No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he glares at the road ahead of us, his hands gripping the wheel so tightly the knuckles blanch bone white.
“August,” I say, resting my hand on his forearm. His muscles bunch beneath my fingers, and he follows the line of my hand up my wrist, my arm, my clavicle, and finally, his gaze meets mine. I find it hard to breathe when he looks at me like this, with his eyes afire and his full, beautiful lips curved up in the corners as if they were making promises his body was yet to make good on. Just when I feel my own lips part, and a hot and heady breath rushes out of me, he glances back to the road, flips the visor above his head, and pulls a picture from the elastic strap. The photo is crumpled and worn around the edges. It shows August in full uniform, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make my skin hot and prickly all over, with his broad shoulders and massive frame, and the half smile on his face as he stands proudly holding his rifle. He’s breathtaking. Beside him is a robust Belgian Malinois sitting proudly at his owner's feet, his long tongue lolling out to the side and his eyes squinting against the sunlight. It takes me a beat before I realize August’s gaze is no longer on the road; it’s on me. I wet my lips and glance at him. “He’s beautiful.”
He smiles like even he’s not sure if I’m talking about him or his dog, and then the light leaves his face, and he studies the road again. I turn the picture over and read the inscription. Lance Corporal August Cotton and Havoc.
“Havoc, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “That dog saved my life more times than I could count.”
“He’s magnificent.”
“He was. You know other Marines don’t really get what we do—they give us hell about handling puppies like it’s all fun and games, but I never would have made it out of that desert if it weren’t for that dog. He saved me on nights so brutal and lonely that I thought I could just walk out into the desert and be done with it. I didn’t care if I got captured. I didn’t care if I got shot. I just wanted out of there. Havoc kept me alive, and I woulda taken all the ribbing those boys could dish out willingly if it meant I didn’t have to go through that alone.”
“You don’t have to be alone anymore, August. We could put you in the program and get you paired up with a dog, today. You already have experience with handling—”
“No.” His voice bellows through the truck, and I flinch. August holds his breath and then exhales loudly. “I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Why you always gotta push my buttons?” he bites out. “You push, and you keep pushing until I’m ready to snap.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you ready to snap?”
“I’m this fucking close.” He pinches his thumb and forefinger together.
“Good,” I shout. “Maybe I’ve finally gotten you to feel something after all of this time.”
“Don’t talk to me about feelings. You don’t know shit. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t—”
“When I was seventeen, my mother’s dealer raped me,” I say, and I hurry through the words because I’m afraid my mouth will close up like a clam if I don’t. “I wound up pregnant.”
“Shit.” August drifts into oncoming traffic, but he jerks the wheel hard until we swerve back into our lane, and veer off the road. We come to a bumpy stop on the shoulder.
“I couldn’t tell my mother. I was terrified she’d accuse me of doing it deliberately, of seducing him. I didn’t have the money for an abortion, and I . . .” I swallow back tears. “We were living in a trailer at the time, but before that, we’d had a house, with a big back yard and a tub so huge you could get lost in the damn thing. Before my daddy was killed in combat. We lost everything when he died; I even lost my mamma. She went from a strong military wife to a woman addicted to pain pills. When she could no longer afford those, she turned to crack. She met a guy in the trailer park we’d moved into, and he became my mother’s dealer, my rapist, and the father of my unborn child.”
“Liv,” August whispers. I know his eyes are trained on me, I can feel them, though I can’t look at his face. I know it wasn’t my fault, but if I glance up at August and there’s even the barest hint of pity or blame, I won’t be able to unsee that, and I don’t want either from him. “I’m sorry.”
I nod and glance out the window at the blacktop baking in the heat. “It was the only place I remembered being happy. That house. I had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to, and I felt like within its walls, I’d be closer to my daddy. But someone else lived there now, a family, who were whole. Not like us.
“I waited until they left, the kids at school, probably, and the father at work. He wore suits. I remember thinking it was so different, you know? When my daddy left for work, it was in full uniform, and there were a lot of tears, always.” I smile at August, but inside I feel hollowed out. I’ve never told anyone, not even my best friend, Ellie. I shouldn’t be burdening him with this, but I was tired of keeping the worst parts of me hidden. I wanted him to know that I understood pain. I knew how it felt to harbor a broken spirit because I’d done it since I was sixteen years old. “I wandered through their house, and every trace of us had been removed; my daddy wasn’t there. He was long gone.
“I knew that. I’d known it a long time, but I still kept searching. I waited for him. I thought somehow, he would cross the veil that separated our worlds and he’d stop me, so I lay there on a stranger’s bed staring up at the ceiling, knowing I didn’t have time to waste, and waiting anyway. I was waiting on a miracle. It never came. I dried my eyes, and I ran a bath so hot I was afraid my skin would peel. I screamed as I stepped into it. It’s funny how your body fights for self-preservation, even when there’s nothing worth saving.”
I glance down at the scars on my wrists. I taste the bitterness of sorrow on my tongue, feel the tightening in my throat, and the sharp prick of tears sting my eyes. I know how this story ends, and still I want the chance to re-write it.
“I cut myself. Stuck that blade in my skin and I watched as the blood poured out of my body. I didn’t know what came next, and I didn’t much care what happened to me in the afterlife. All I cared about was not feeling this pain anymore. My daddy would have been so ashamed of me, but I couldn’t take care of a monster’s baby. I couldn’t even take care of myself.
“It hurt like hell. They don’t show you that on TV and in the movies, it’s always just a little nick and the character quietly slips away, as easy as falling asleep, but it isn’t real. Somewhere in amongst all the pain and blood, I woke up. I fought and changed my mind. I crawled out of that tub, but I didn’t make it two steps before I fell and hit my head.”
I can’t look at him. Instead, the words pour out of me as I stare through blurry eyes at the long, empty road before us. “I saw my daddy, August. I saw his stricken face, and I wanted to stay with him, but the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital bed. I’d lost the baby. That was a given, I guess, and I was doped up on despair and morphine. I tried to pull my drip out because I was terrified I’d become like her, like my mamma.
Salt water spills over my cheeks. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I don’t know what it’s like to fight in a war zone, to see the things you’ve seen and to have to be okay with what you’ve done, what you’ve lived through, but I do know something about feeling unworthy. I do know what it’s like to wake in a hospital bed and find you’re all alone, and to know that you’ve made decisions you’re not sure you can live with. And I know what it’s like to forgive yourself, and discover that there is a reason you’re still here. I don’t know if it’s divine intervention or just a series of events that led me to your door, but I do know I was born to do this, and you weren’t born to be alone.”
I wipe my tears away and search my purse for a Kleenex. I come up empty, but August leans over and opens the glove box, pulling out a travel packet of tissues and handing one to me. “Thank you.”
He unfastens my belt, and the next thing I know, I’m being drawn up against his warm body with his big arm wrapped around my waist. I hold my breath, afraid if I let it in, if I give in, I’ll break down completely, but he squeezes me tightly, and then I fall apart. I sob like I never have, not even when I slipped into that bath, or lay dying on a stranger’s tiled bathroom floor—not even when the doctors told me that I was going to be okay and I didn’t see how I could be. I didn’t see how I deserved to be after what I’d done.
He squeezes me so tight I fear I may crack a rib, but right now it’s the only thing holding me together, so I don’t move away. I just lean into him, and I take his strength.
When my mind is quiet, and my tears have all but dried, he presses a kiss to my hair and says, “You done good, princess. You did real good.” His voice quavers, and he tilts my head up to his, pressing a chaste kiss on my lips. I kiss him back, but there’s no heat to it, just a kind of acceptance that I didn’t think I’d ever feel from this stubborn, short-tempered Marine. And it’s as sweet a taste in my mouth as it is bitter, because I just poured my heart out to this man, and I know he’ll never let himself open up to me.