When a man walks into the destroyed remnants of a yoga studio with a chainsaw, most women do not think oh, my hero. No, most sane women would think this is usually how horror movies start.

But when that man is the man you just spent the last three hours with down in a dark basement, there are definitely dark and dirty thoughts happening.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been so happy to see a chainsaw in my life.”

He holds it up and offers a tired grin. “Give me some sugar.”

I hold up one hand. “Okay wait, now you’re doing Evil Dead lines?”

He shrugs. “I had a really boring tour in Iraq. Punctuated by a lot of not boredom but you…well, you get the idea.”

He sets the chainsaw down and pulls a pair of work gloves out of his back pocket. “So where do we start?”

“Wait. Where did you get a chainsaw from?”

He tugs one glove on. “Bruce’s shop is only a few blocks from here.”

“And he has chainsaws in there?”

Caleb narrows his eyes at me as he pulls the other glove. “Do you know what a Maker Space is?”

“Not really.”

“It’s a fancy name for a crazy ass craft workshop. Power tools, 3D printers. Tech and electronics. Basically everything you could ever need for any type of project. Bruce has opened a couple of them. Home Depot has them. Encouraging people to get back into working with their hands. Craftsmanship. Tinkering. That sort of stuff.”

I tip my chin, studying the man who looks so different from just a little while ago. “Who knew?”

He looks so rough and tired and yet he’s still standing here, offering help that I didn’t know how to ask for and have even less practice in accepting. I look at the wreckage of my shop. My studio. My entire life.

“Are you okay?”

I haven’t felt this lost in so long. The feeling is still familiar, though. As though it never really went away after my deployment. “I don’t know.”

He takes a single step closer. I can feel the warmth from his body. Part of me wants to lean into him. To ask him to help me. To take this burden and carry it for me.

Because I am so tired all of a sudden.

“I don’t know,” I whisper again.

His hands are strong on my shoulders. I’m trying so hard not to fall apart right now. I have insurance. I can recover from this.

But right now, in this moment, I can find no sense of movement. No path through the debris.

No way out of the darkness.

I’m trapped. Just like I was back in Syria. Only there’s no screaming. No crying.

Just emptiness. And sadness that echoes off the buildings like ambulance sirens.

I don’t know how to ask for help. I don’t know how to say the words. I want to. I know I need to. That I don’t have to do this alone.

But the words are lodged in my throat.

His hands slip away when I don’t move. I want to ask him to stay.

But I can’t.

I close my eyes. Breathing.

Letting the cold, damp air from the hole in the glass flow into my lungs. “Kali.”

“Who’s Kali?”

I turn, having forgotten, however briefly, that I am not alone. “She is the destroyer. The protector. The giver of liberation.”

“She sounds amazingly complicated.” Caleb frowns, bending down to pick up a small white statue half-buried in the dirt from a plant that’s having a really bad day. “Who is this?”

“Ganesh—he’s the remover of obstacles.” I take the statue from his hand, wiping the white elephant-headed figure clean and placing him on the counter. “The remover of obstacles.” I smile then, the knot in my chest easing up as though I’m waking up from a deep sadness. “From death comes rebirth…”

My voice trails off as I survey the destruction. And I am suddenly seeing it not as destruction but as…freedom.

He lifts both eyebrows. “So the goddess of destruction is responsible for this? I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

I lift one shoulder. “I didn’t say that. I said I struggle with it.” I bite my lips, looking at the chaos around me. But I am no longer filled with loss and fear and sadness.

This path laid before me is daunting. Terrifying. And just because I’m starting to find meaning in this disaster doesn’t mean…it doesn’t mean the path will be easy.

“I guess…now is when I start salvaging what can be salvaged.” I glance at the small white statue, who’s fallen from the small shrine where I’d placed him the first day I opened my studio. “And see where the universe leads me.”

“That’s an awful lot of faith.” He sounds skeptical. I don’t really blame him.

“It’s a coping mechanism,” I say, more lightly than I feel. “It’s that or I’m going to start drinking and I’m thinking that major construction projects don’t go well with alcohol.”

He glances down at the chainsaw at his feet. “That they don’t.”

---

Chainsaws are therapeutic.

Honestly. It’s just usually better to run them when you’re not on an overtired high, when your wrists aren’t throbbing from new tattoos.

But.

It’s calming to cut through the tree branches. I watch Nalini drag them out of her shop even as I try to keep my hands from shaking from too little sleep and too much vibration.

The tree that’s smashed through the roof and torn through half the building and its front window is a monster. Big enough to create a hell of a lot of damage and big enough that cutting it with a chainsaw is back-breakingly painful. Nalini’s already filled two contractor bags with broken glass, cut-up tree limbs, and other debris.

But she looks as if she’s taking everything in stride, to be honest. It’s a little unnerving how calm she is now, after seeing her face when we emerged from the basement.

I don’t know how she managed to switch gears so quickly. One minute, her breathing was fast and she looked like she was about to shatter like the glass in the center of her shop. The next…she was fine.

Okay, maybe not fine, but…a hell of a lot better than she had been.

I kill the chainsaw after the last chunk of the tree branch splits apart. She’s made a neat stack of logs on the pavement outside.

She’s not even sweating. What the shit is this? I’m ready to cry from my back hurting so bad from bending and sawing and she’s just happily stacking wood.

“Maybe I need to get more into this yoga thing. You are peppy as hell for someone who’s had their entire shop destroyed.”

She drops another log onto the stack. “I love the smell of fresh cut wood.”

I must be losing my mind. Or maybe I just need sleep. Probably both. “It sounds like there’s a story there.”

“I spent a summer in central Maine with one of my uncles. We had to split wood and toss it into the woodshed. It took a week, and I’d honestly forgotten about it until you started cutting.”

I know she doesn’t mean the words the way they come out but they slice at a memory, buried beneath tattoo ink. Resurrecting the time I cut at my own flesh and now sought to hide the evidence of that time beneath tattooed thorns and roses. At a time when I didn’t know what to do with the pain eating away at my soul. A time before I found solace in a bottle and started killing myself slowly rather than attempting it all at once.

“Glad to bring about happy memories.” I can feel my mood shifting and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

She shoots me a look but says nothing and I am a fucking asshole.

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full.”

I look up at a voice attached to a big man with a big smile, stepping into the studio through the broken window.

Nalini smiles warmly. “I should have known you’d show up, Sam.” She’s not even done speaking when he grabs her and pulls her into a massive embrace.

She clearly knows him. I try not to feel jealous of the ease in how he moves, his confidence. He looks as if he’s never met a challenge he didn’t like. “Sam, this is Caleb. Sam and I were classmates. He’s one of like six I actually still talk to.”

I want to ask why she’s so disconnected from other West Pointers but I don’t. The time for intimate questions seems long past.

I suddenly miss the storm.

I reach out and take Sam’s extended hand, determined to be civilized. “We’ve met.”

She looks between us, waiting for one of us to clarify the situation, so I add, “Sam was the assistant operations officer in my battalion when I was a pain-in-the-ass lieutenant.”

Sam grins and I’m mildly surprised he doesn’t look like he remembers what a dick I was when we ran into each other at The Pint a few months back. “Still surfing unicorn porn?”

I was wrong. He does remember. And Jesus my face feels like it just turned fifty shades of red. “Yeah, about that…”

He shakes his head and slaps me on the shoulder. “I’ve heard you’re working with Bruce now?”

I breathe out sharply. “Yeah. He took pity on me, and decided to put my rusty engineering skills to use.”

Sam makes a noise. “That’s good. Bruce…I’ve known Bruce a long time. I’m glad to see he’s making use of your…unique talents.”

I make a noise. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.” His wide smile is a flash of white against his deep mahogany skin. His grin reminds me of the Rock’s million-dollar smile and holy fuck I need to get some sleep. “So when were you going to call me?” he asks Nalini. “You know Sleet works at USAA, right?”

She sighs. It sounds familiar, like she’s had this argument with him before. “I was working up to it.”

I wonder what it feels like to have the kinds of friends you have patterns of conversations with, rather than stupid arguments about how much furniture you damaged during the previous drinking binge.

I pick up the chainsaw and step out of the studio. Nalini and Sam are discussing something about a warehouse and insurance claims, things I know somewhere between jack and shit about.

I’ll take the chainsaw back to Bruce’s shop. Tonight. This afternoon. Hell, whenever I wake up.

My apartment doesn’t feel nearly as far away as it did in the middle of the downpour and holy hell I’m tired.

I slip out into the street, heading for home. It’s better this way. That at least now, I can hold on to a memory of her without knowing that I’ve screwed everything up.

My tattoos are aching. My wrists feel wet and I really hope it’s sweat and not blood. I hope I haven’t done any permanent damage.

I glance back at the light pouring out of the yoga studio onto the sidewalk beneath the dark gray sky.

And for once, I know where I am going.

Away.

Before I can do any real damage.