Chapter One
I paced the kitchen floor, each step of my foot heavier than the last. He’d promised me there’d be no more deployments, that he was getting out of the army and we could focus on starting a family and building our life together, which had been in limbo for almost a decade—since that fateful day I laid eyes on him in the diner. I was an idiot to believe him.
He lied. Again. Just like the past four deployments that he volunteered for, he was leaving me behind. The first one I understood, as much as it was difficult to say goodbye. I watched him go with pride as he served his country. Then, he changed. The man I married changed into a stranger, wandering the halls of our home we worked so hard to build, his eyes glossed over, his fists clenched at his sides. I remembered the first time I realized something was slightly off and tried to help him. That was years ago, and things had just gotten worse.
I’d waited a year for Parker. To touch him. To kiss his lips, and I was just moments away from what I’d been dreaming about for months. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror one last time before heading to the gate.
My palms got sweaty and my mouth went dry. I could feel Parker even before I saw him. It was always that way between us. We were connected on a level that puzzled many people. That’s why it was so painful when he left. It was like a part of me was missing.
The door opened and soldiers poured out. People squealed and ran toward them, women and children swept up in a sea of emotions. I stood on my tiptoes to see better over the line of people in front of me. It was always difficult to tell them all apart, but Parker usually stood inches above everyone else. Today was no different.
Our eyes met as soon as he exited the door, and he smiled, the same smile I remembered from the diner, the one that made him look like a young boy. His face was clean-shaven, his hair in a fresh high and tight. Before I could blink, he was in front of me, the emotions of the year causing tears to stream down my face.
“Hey, baby. I missed you.” He held my face in his hands, his eyes lingering over my body, the heat swirling around us. When his lips touched mine, everything disappeared. It was just us, no one else. Gone were the noises of other families reuniting.
“I’ve been waiting a year to do that,” I whispered against his mouth.
“I’ve been waiting to do a lot more than that.” Parker’s eyes danced with excitement as his licked his lips. “Let’s get out of here. All I can think about is getting you out of that dress.” Hand in hand, we made our way out of the airport.
I was on cloud nine. Nothing could taint the way I felt. When we got home, we barely made it into the house before his hands were up my dress. Kneeling in front of me, he slowly lifted the skirt.
“Fuck, Rainey, you aren’t wearing any underwear.” He looked up at me, and I winked.
“Easy access. I didn’t want you to have to work for it today.”
Parker stood up and looked me straight in the eyes. Whenever he did this, it was so intense, because he’d had trouble making eye contact since I met him. The emotion that was inside of him, the struggles and pain, all stayed in his eyes.
“I’ll always work for you. I’ll always fight for you. Without you, there’s nothing worth fighting for.” There was a loud knock at the door, and Parker rolled on the ground, pulling me down with him. My entire body jerked, then slammed against the hardwood floor.
“Stay down!” he yelled, shielding my head with his body. I looked up at my husband; his eyes were dark and filled with such fear, hate, and rage that I gasped.
“Parker, baby.” I reached out and touched his cheek, just as another knock came at the door. “You’re home. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
After a few blinks, Parker stood up and stormed off, leaving me alone on the cool, bare floor. I stayed there for a minute, trying to gather my bearings. What just happened? Then reality hit me. My husband may have come back from the war, but parts of him had been left behind. Parts that I may never get back.
I knew the signs of PTSD. It was something I had become familiar with, especially after doing a rotation at the VA during my clinicals at nursing school. Parker didn’t want to hear it though. He knew he needed help, but refused. So instead, he signed up to deploy as often as he could. It was easier to be in the shit than at home.
I promised to stick by him through sickness and in health, but it got harder as each day trudged along and he chose death and destruction, his mind slowly becoming deeper and deeper entrenched in war. Sometimes I felt like he was choosing those things over me. Over a life that held so much happiness and promise. Kids. A home. Stability. How was that supposed to make anyone feel? Not loved or cared for. After eight years of marriage, I felt like a burden, and that maybe the man I loved was too far gone.
I heard his truck pull into the driveway, and sat at the kitchen table and waited. I couldn’t keep my feelings bottled up anymore. If there was any hope for our marriage, we needed to communicate. Something that had fallen by the wayside years before. We were more like friends passing in the breeze. He needed something, I got it, often before he even asked.
“Hey,” Parker mumbled as he threw his things on the counter and typed out a quick text. He’d been spending more time on his phone lately, wrapped up in something that I couldn’t figure out. He had received a promotion at work, so I assumed that the excessive phone use was because of his new position. All I knew was that it took him forever to text me back, yet his phone was always in his hand. Walking right past without so much as a kiss or a hug, he opened the fridge and pulled out a beer.
“We need to talk,” I said as convincingly as possible. My voice shook, because despite my confidence in certain aspects of my life, like my career as a nurse, I lacked it in almost every other area. I loved Parker, but upsetting him terrified me. He never hit me, but his anger only increased as each day passed. Maybe it was just his tolerance for me. I think that’s what scared me. That he tolerated me. That I was simply here because it was convenient. I didn’t want to know the truth behind how he really felt about me, so I buried it for many years.
I couldn’t take it anymore. Parts of me were dying slowly, disappearing before my eyes. I had tried to help Parker, but the cost was becoming increasingly higher as each day went on. I was losing myself.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rainey. I just got home, lay off, will you?” His phone dinged, and he smiled and shoved it back in his pocket. My heart twisted in my chest. I couldn’t remember the last time he smiled like that, at least not at me.
I cringed at his words and took a deep breath, digging around within my broken self for any resolve I had left. I couldn’t let this slide anymore. He needed to know.
“Sit, Parker. I’m not kidding.” I looked up at him, tears glistening in my eyes. He roughly pulled out the chair, the legs rubbing against the floor.
We stared at each other for what seemed like forever, our unspoken words saying more than anything I could ever voice. His look was pure disgust, dripping with disdain as my tears fell.
“I’m guessing you found out I’m leaving again. So, who told you this time?” Parker asked, taking a pull of his beer.
“Leslie next door. She asked me how I felt about you leaving next week for Afghanistan.” Tears streamed down my face, and I quickly wiped them away. “You can imagine my shock when she told me my husband was leaving for a year in just a few days, and I knew nothing about it.”
Parker hung his head and, for a second, looked like the man I married so many years ago. A man who cared about how I was doing and walked miles to bring me soup and flowers when I was sick with the flu in high school. I reached out and took his hand in mine to seek comfort, like I used to. As quickly as my old Parker was there, he was gone, the anger, the hatred taking him over. He jerked his hand away.
“I knew you’d be pissed I signed up. I didn’t want to hear it. The guilt.” He let out his breath and stood up, polished off his beer, and threw it in the recycling.
“The guilt?” I laughed between the tears. “The guilt of what? You obviously don’t care that you’re leaving me again. You don’t have to go! You keep signing up, and here I am left to live this life that is supposed to be ours.” I shook my head. “It isn’t ours. It’s a shit life where I pretend each day when you walk out that door that it doesn’t kill me that you need them more than you need me!” I was screaming, full-fledged shaking and crying, standing in front of the man that was once my everything. When did he become anything less? There was something about getting older that put things into perspective. Made you think about what it was that you wanted out of life. I guess it was that bigger picture that everyone talked about. I thought my bigger picture was crystal clear, but I had always been staring through chipped glass, and now it was shattering. I couldn’t see anything but a distorted image of myself.
“They understand.” Parker moved toward me, taking my face in his hands. Using his thumb, he wiped a tear from my cheek. “They get me. They know what it’s like,” he whispered.
There were times like this, when a simple touch brought me back to the way things were. How gentle he could be when there was nothing but love between us. Now there were wars and years spent apart. There was distance.
“I got you once. Remember?” I smiled at the memories of us finishing each other’s sentences and spending every second we could together. Now, we passed in own our home, like strangers. I breathed in deeply, taking in the scent of him. He always smelled the same, like Irish Spring. Since I met him, that’s all he’d ever used to shower. It was clean, fresh, and alive. A direct contrast to how I knew he felt. Sometimes, he’d give me snippets of what was going on in his head. That’s what kept me going, those moments of honesty and truth. Deep down, the Parker I married was in there, struggling to break free.
Parker stepped back, snatched his wallet and keys from the counter, and headed toward the door. He turned back and looked at me, clutching the doorknob in his hand. “That was then. This is now. I’m going to war again because that’s all I am now. A soldier.” The door slammed, shaking the pictures of us that lined the walls.
Falling to the ground, I cried. This wasn’t what my life was supposed to be. I’d had it all planned, and nowhere along the way did meeting Parker and falling madly in love at only seventeen fall into that plan. But life had a funny way of flipping the script, taking all your plans and throwing them out the window. I crashed and burned long ago. Parker and I both had. We were holding on to this marriage for what? I loved the old him, who left years ago. I’d thought maybe I could bring him back by loving him more, giving him more. I knew that was crazy thinking, yet I couldn’t walk away. I didn’t want to give up on him. He needed someone, and I was all he had.
The sad thing was, I’d always known I loved him more than he loved me, and that had been okay. But now, something in me wanted more. I wanted to be loved with such a passion that I couldn’t breathe. That when he looked at me, I couldn’t help but smile no matter how shitty my day was. When Parker looked at me now, all I saw was disdain, a man filled with regret. I couldn’t be his regret anymore. I deserved more, and that was absolutely terrifying.