I burned rubber on the way out of Casey’s complex. He wanted me gone? Fine. I was fucking gone. What the hell, anyway? Whatever. I was out of there.
I gripped the wheel tight. Driving after a nightmare/flashback. That was fun. A lot of fun. Yeah, this was a hundred percent what I needed to be doing tonight. Bright lights and dark shadows. Operating a vehicle.
Okay.
Maybe I needed to . . .
Not go home yet, but not be doing this.
I slowed down a bit and tried to think. Where to go? The liquor stores were all closed, but didn’t gas stations sell—
Wait, what?
I shook myself and gripped the wheel tighter. What the fuck was I thinking? I was not getting drunk. No. Not happening. Not tonight. Not any night. I hadn’t even craved it in so long that the casual thoughts of hunting down some booze were alien. And yet . . . not. There was comfort in a bottle, and—
No, Logan. Can’t go back down that road. Not again.
But I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
I forced myself not to, though. Instead of hunting down some late-night booze, I concentrated on driving until I reached Anchor Point’s famous pier. I parked, killed the engine, and stared out at the deep black void where the ocean would be when the sun came up.
And my mind went right back to liquor.
I closed my eyes and exhaled. The temptation to go find something alcoholic was almost unbearable. It was painful, the need to deep-throat a forty until nothing hurt anymore.
No.
Damn it, no.
I’d been dry for way too long—I hadn’t even wanted to drink—and I needed to stay that way.
Fuck you, Casey.
Instantly, I felt guilty. It wasn’t his fault. Except it was. And it wasn’t. And . . . I didn’t even need to drink because my thoughts were so jumbled and fucked up, I might as well have already been drunk.
Because I was flailing and alone and still shaky from that nightmare and . . . he had to kick me out now, didn’t he?
I rubbed my eyes. Okay, I’d put my foot in my mouth. But didn’t he understand? He thought he got it, but he didn’t. He didn’t even know the half of it. Yeah, washing out of BUD/S with a broken leg sucked, and I felt for him, but didn’t he understand all the hell he wasn’t going to experience now? Of course he didn’t. Nobody did if they hadn’t been there and seen it, heard it, felt it, smelled it, tasted it firsthand.
Didn’t he get that every time I woke up to him after one of those nightmares, I saw him in those war zones?
I closed my eyes and rubbed the back of my neck. When had I started sweating again? And why was I shaking?
Because I’d been there tonight. I’d been there, and instead of calming down and getting it out of my head so I could go back to sleep, I’d fought with Casey and wound up here.
I could do this. All I had to do was ride it out. It would suck, but I could do it.
It occurred to me then that I’d left one of my sketchbooks in the car. Hadn’t I? I reached behind the seat and felt around, and sure enough—there it was. The sun was still down, so my dome light would have to do. If the lines and shadows weren’t perfect . . . oh fucking well. And even if it wasn’t the right book . . . whatever. I needed my other sketchbook—the one I only brought out when my mind was really, really dark—but this was all I had right now.
And besides, there was an unfinished sketch in the black book. I hadn’t been able to open that book since I’d last worked in it. I’d seriously considered buying another one even though I hated starting a new sketchbook while the other still had blank pages. But opening that book meant seeing that drawing, and I—
Froze.
The pencil stopped.
In my mind’s eye, I could see the drawing I’d left unfinished in the black sketchbook. I could fucking feel it—everything that had torn through me while I’d frantically committed those lines to paper. Just thinking about the image almost sent me back to the nightmare that had woken me up tonight, and I forced myself to take long, deep breaths. Anything to stave off an actual flashback.
Hand shaking, I started drawing again. I had to get this out of my head, and I had to do it here, in the car and in this sketchbook, because Casey had thrown me out.
And didn’t he have every right?
Fuck. Yeah. He had.
Because hadn’t I been devastated when I’d realized I couldn’t reenlist? The Corps would’ve taken me, but I hadn’t been able to sign the paper. Not after everything I’d been through. Surrendering my ID card for the last time had nearly broken me. I wasn’t a Marine anymore. They say that once you’re a Marine, you’re always a Marine, but walking away a civilian, I hadn’t felt like a Marine. I’d felt like a failure. Someone who couldn’t crack it. Someone who didn’t deserve to be among the few and the proud.
It had been the best thing. Going back for another round in the Sandbox would have killed me. If a bullet or an IED hadn’t taken me out, I’d have finished myself off after I’d come back stateside. An honorable discharge after eight years was the best possible outcome at that point.
But it had still hurt. I’d been fucking proud to be a Marine. I’d loved working alongside my brothers and sisters out there. The fact that I couldn’t cope with burying another one of them or spend even one more night taking fire from faceless darkness didn’t change how hard it was to leave that world behind.
If anyone understood why Casey was hurting so bad after losing his shot at becoming a SEAL, it was me, and what had I done? Thrown it in his face. Tried to make him see the silver lining around that empty space where the gold trident should have been.
How could he throw me out tonight?
Because I deserved it.
My heart dropped into my queasy stomach. As much as I wanted to be angry and confused because that was easier than admitting I’d fucked up, the fact was that I’d, well, fucked up. The more the dream faded and my mind cleared—sort of—the harder it was to be mad at him. My anger started shifting toward myself as things started to make sense.
Whether I wanted to or not, I got why he was pissed. I’d woken him up in the middle of the night, punched him in the metaphorical dick, and had the brass balls to be surprised when he threw me out. Just because I’d been rattled hadn’t given me the right to throw his own pain in his face to make myself feel better. Again.
Drinking myself senseless was sounding better and better, if only to quell the guilt. It was the one thing that sounded good, but I reminded myself over and over it wouldn’t do anything except make the situation worse.
Except . . . could it get any worse? Yeah, I might add a hangover and some puking to the mix, but at the end of the day, Casey was done with me. I’d hurt him, he’d kicked me out, and that was it.
Aside from the part where we still had to work together.
And the part where I still wanted him.
Where I still loved him.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh fuck.
I did, didn’t I? I loved him. That was why it hurt so bad to think about him in a war zone. Why telling him he’d dodged a bullet hadn’t seemed like a slap in the face because in my mind, I’d heard what I was really saying:
The thought of you in the line of fire scares me so bad I can’t breathe.
If anything ever happens to you . . .
I just want you to be safe.
My eyes burned and I swiped at them. I needed to explain this to him. All of it.
How, though?
Sighing, I looked at the deserted pier stretched out in front of me. The sun was starting to light up the aging wood and the tree-covered hills in the rearview. As daylight melted away the dark of the night, my composure melted away too. I closed my stinging, tired eyes and rubbed my forehead as a few tears slid down my face. God, I’d been such an ass to Casey. But how was I supposed to undo it? How did I even start explaining it to him?
Talk to him. Tell him.
No. Don’t just tell him—show him.
Without a second thought, I tossed the sketchbook and pencil on the passenger seat, threw the car in reverse, and headed back to my apartment.
In my kitchen, I pulled the black sketchbook off the stack and flipped to the last drawing. Instantly, my stomach was sick. Well, sicker.
Would Casey understand if I showed this to him? I’d always been better at putting things on paper like this than I’d ever been at saying them out loud, and I was pretty sure anything I said would only make things worse.
I thumbed the corner of the drawing. Maybe this would make it worse too. Or maybe it would say what I couldn’t.
There was no telling if Casey would hear me out and understand what I was trying to say, but I had to try. I needed to make this right. I couldn’t do a damned thing about my past, and I couldn’t change what had happened to him during BUD/S, but maybe there was still a shot at fixing us. Except when had that ever been my forte?
I stared out at the ocean. This was the point where my relationships had all fallen apart in the past. When things had gone south and I’d managed to fubar any attempt at fixing them. Most of the time I’d been drunk. I was sober now, but even that didn’t seem to help because I still had no idea how to do this without somehow making it worse.
Maybe I needed a little advice.
So I speed-dialed my therapist’s voice mail.
“Hey, it’s Logan. If you’ve got space this morning, is there any chance you could get me in? Give me a call. Thanks.”
Then I hung up, and hoped like hell she’d call.