CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Reese
I was sitting on the kitchen floor. At least, that was where I thought I was. My vision was a little blurry. In the corner, was a stack of open bottles. I could see six of them, though I suspected I’d had a few earlier at the table and just not brought the bottles down to my safe spot by the fridge.
It was only when the knocking echoed through the house another time, louder, that I realized it wasn’t coming from in my head, but from outside. I blinked and moaned.
“What?”
It sounded like someone was trying to break the door down and for a moment I considered it might be just that. I was in the bunker on the edge of the godforsaken valley in Afghanistan and there was flack blasting everywhere.
Then my vision focused and I grunted. “Not…there. In the kitchen.”
I stood and hauled myself to my feet, swaying distractedly as I headed out into the hall. I looked through the window, wondering who could be knocking at my door at this time. I had no idea what the time was, as that went. I’d started drinking at four. The clock told me seven.
“Oh, my…” It had been ages since I was so messed up at seven. I felt the first blow of shame. I really didn’t want to start doing this again. I groaned as the knocking began.
“For the love of…”
Kelly. She was on the doorstep. Dressed in a warm powder-blue coat and jeans, she looked elegant and strangely self-contained. I looked into her eyes, or at least I tried to. My vision swam a little, and I had trouble telling my eyes where to look.
She looked up at me.
“Reese,” she said gently.
“Kelly,” I said. I felt shame crash over me like a wave. Of all the things to happen, the last thing I needed was for her to be here. How had she got here? Why was she here? “You coming to l…laugh at me?” I slurred.
She shook her head. Her eyes, when I focused on them, were solemn. She looked sad. “No, Reese,” she said gently. “I wanted to say sorry. I misjudged you.”
“Mis…no.” I shook my head. “No misjudging. I was an asshole. Now you know. An asshole…”
I was swaying and somehow my mind couldn’t follow my train of thought, if that made sense. I knew what I wanted to say but I couldn’t figure out how to make myself say it.
Kelly looked up at me. To my surprise, a soft smile touched her mouth. “Hell, Reese,” she said gently. “You’re a mess. Go sit down.”
I nodded. I went through to the sitting room and sat. She followed me in and locked the door. I heard the echo as the key found its mark. Then she was in the living room.
“Go…leave…alone,” I said ineffectively. I wished I could make myself talk properly. But my mouth just wasn’t made for it now. I shrugged. “Mess. A mess.”
“Yes, you’re a mess, Reese,” she said gently. “But it’s not your fault.”
“No…yes, it is,” I said with some pride. “No one makes me do anything. I’m Reese Bradford, and I’m as stubborn as six donkeys on a mission.”
I heard her laugh. It was a nice sound. She was smiling and her lips were very red in the muted light. I smiled back. My body was starting to feel the need for her, though I knew there was very little chance it’d work out.
“Reese,” she said gently. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
I frowned. “Wrong.”
“Yeah,” she said gently. “I was talking to Grandpa, and he said…” she paused.
“What?” I asked. My head was starting to hurt now and I felt the need to close my eyes. I did for a moment and when I opened them, she was looking at me. Her face was so gentle that it took my breath away. I frowned.
“Grandpa said that…when he served in Vietnam, some of the guys came back…not themselves,” she said carefully. “He said maybe you were ex-military too.”
“He said that?” I stared at her. “No way. How’d he guess?”
She smiled. “I told him you were as stubborn as six donkeys on a mission?” she offered.
I roared with laughter. “Oh, you did, did you?” I teased.
“Yeah.”
I sat still for a while, thinking about it. She knew, now. By some strange miracle she had guessed my small secret. So I might as well tell her the big one too. The one that I never told anyone about, not even myself if I could possibly avoid it.
“I was in the military. In Afghanistan,” I told her. “I was with the Fourth. We were…we were stationed at a base just near Dai Chopan. We were there when the base came under fire. I was the among the highest ranking officers at the base at the time—the rest of the guys were out on patrol.” I drew a breath. “It was my watch. And I didn’t give good orders. We should have headed out the back way. I chose to stay. My guys died.”
I could hear the way my voice was wobbling and there was nothing I could do about it. I had never told anyone this part of the story. If I wasn’t so stupidly drunk I might not be telling it anyway. But the fact was, she was here. I had been stupidly drunk with other people and it hadn’t come out.
She didn’t speak. She just sat looking at me with those big and gentle brown eyes. Then she said to me: “You know it’s not your fault.”
I shook my head. “The point is, it is my fault. Who else was at fault? I gave the orders that day.”
“Well, maybe if you’d given other orders they would have died anyway. It wasn’t your fault there were guys shooting at the base. It wasn’t your fault your guys were there that day. It wasn’t your fault that the troops were in Afghanistan or that they were fighting. So many other things made that happen. Not you.”
I sighed. “I know you’re right,” I breathed, my voice cracking with the strain of my emotions. “I just don’t believe that. I believe it’s my fault, somehow.”
She sighed. “Why do you want it to be your fault?”
“Because I could have changed it.”
“Really?” she asked. “I don’t think so.”
I felt angry at that. “Of course I could have!” I said crossly. “I could have…” I trailed off as I reached for something I “could have” done. As it happened, she was right. I couldn’t have done any better. What happened that day was unavoidable. I had done my best, and I knew I had. With the information available to me, I had made the best choice. I’ve always tried my best, and I had then too.
“Yeah,” she nodded slowly. “Quite.”
I was profoundly silent after that. Even in my current state of mind, which was completely incapable of standing upright, I could see what she said made sense. It felt as if a little light had come on in my head. A little light that shone in the dark, leading me out into the new day.
I didn’t want to say anything or break the moment. It felt so good. I just nodded.
Kelly smiled at me. She slid down off the chair so she was sitting with me on the floor. It felt so good, so right, to have her close. My lips found hers and we kissed, slow and lingering. I felt my body respond, though I knew I was too tired now to really be able to carry through on it. Just holding her was enough. Holding and being held and feeling that new closeness; a closeness that was beyond roles and strength, beyond anything.
It felt like love.
She snuggled close to me and I wrapped my arms around her. I felt good. We sat there and I felt my mind drift and knew I was about to fall asleep.
The next morning, when I woke, she was gone. I would have thought I dreamed it, except for the fact that everything had changed. The burden had slipped from me and I felt lighter and freer.
I did my best.
My head thumped and ached, my mouth was dry and my body was all bent from sleeping on the floor by the back door. But I knew that I had done my best. I could walk away now and into a brighter future, rich with possibility.
I stumbled through from the kitchen to the shower and undressed, plunging my head under the flow of hot water. It cleared my head and, after a few glasses of water to drink, I started to feel a bit less queasy. I shrugged on a bathrobe and headed through to the sitting room, and stared.
Kelly. She was curled up on the couch, the sunlight touching her red hair with slow fire. She was asleep, her eyes closed. She could have been eighteen years old, the lines smoothed from her face, all care and tension gone from her.
I went closer, not wanting to wake her. I knelt and looked at her beautiful, reposeful face. She stirred. Her eyes flicked open.
“Good morning,” I said.
She yawned and smiled. “Good morning.”
I kissed her cheek. “Breakfast?” I asked.
Her smile was as warm as the new day’s light. “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”
I went through to the kitchen and started to cook.