I’m surprised by how much I enjoy this—this quiet feeling of being skin to skin, the silence of our bodies touching, nothing more.

There’s something about the silence between us. Something stretching and grasping, trying to form a sense of permanence in the impermanence of the morning.

“Tell me about why you hate West Point,” he whispers.

It’s surreal, lying in my bed, wrapped in blankets, cocooned within the warmth of his body. His question catches me off guard. “You really suck at pillow talk.” But I slip my thigh between his, moving closer to take the sting out of my words. “What do you want to know?”

“You have this deep desire to bring yoga to people who need it. To soldiers. And yet, the very people who could help you—your Old Grad network—you seem to want to avoid. Why?”

He slides my hair off my neck and nuzzles me. It’s a soft gesture. Loving. His need to touch is something I’m coming to expect from him. Something I could easily learn to crave.

I never thought I’d crave touch again, that I would trust enough to let someone else’s hands roam over my body, my scars.

I’m surprised at how hard it is to whisper my next words. How my throat instantly constricts at even thinking about the ways West Point changed me. “West Point was the most difficult experience of my life. I was in company B1.”

There are four regiments at West Point. Each regiment has nine companies. Each company is known by its regiment and letter. And each company has a different culture, a different legacy. Some companies have graduated more general officers. Others have had more of the goats—the person with the lowest GPA in the class.

Bravo company, First regiment had its own unique culture.

I close my eyes and inhale hard, deliberately constricting the back of my throat in ujjayi breathing. Calming myself as the story starts to rise up from the dark place where we put memories that we try to pretend didn’t happen.

“Boys First was the motto.” Another deep breath. “Well, they don’t tell you that the girls who are assigned there sometimes are worse than the guys to other women.”

But he presses against me. “When I was a freshman, the firsties bragged that B1 was the last company to graduate a female when they first brought women to West Point.”

I twist my fingers into his, needing the support for my admission. “And I embraced that. I fucking loved it.”

It’s hard to say those words. To know that I embraced the toxic shit that said other women didn’t belong at West Point. To know that I actively supported the culture in our company that led to the highest rate of attrition of females during my junior year.

That I thought I was one of the good ones. One of the ones who deserved to be there. Who could out-guy the guys.

No shifting blame. No blinders. No matter where this goes, I’ll own it.

And I’ll be grateful for moments like this. Moments that are open and raw and pure human connection. No matter how bad it might hurt in the future.

“What happened?”

I’m afraid to resurrect those memories. “There was one upperclassman. He was some big shot athlete or something. He was supposed to be the great hope that helped us finally beat Navy.”

His arms tighten around me. It’s almost as if he knows where this story ends.

“I was a yearling. My plebe told me he pinned her in a corner. That he demanded she recite some knowledge. When she failed, he punished her by making her low-crawl up and down the halls near the trunk rooms until her hands and knees bled.”

“Jesus…”

“She told me what he did. How he stood over her. How he implied that he could do anything he wanted and she couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t believe her at first.” Another deep breath. “He laughed about it openly. About how he put that uppity little bitch in her place and I agreed with him. She should know the knowledge book. She shouldn’t argue with him. She’s a plebe and plebes are always trying to get out of shit. I heard him laughing with the company commander and the first sergeant.” I breathe out deeply. “I watched my plebe start to fade pretty hard. I have no idea what made me believe her but I knew something was wrong.” My breath is shaky now. “I turned him in. I went with her to report him for hazing. And the entire corps of cadets turned on both of us because he was thrown out of the academy.

“I was moved to a new company but it was still pretty terrible. Sam was one of the only people willing to still talk to me. I refused to go to behavioral health. So he gave me an order to show up at yoga the next morning.” Another deep breath; my eyes are burning.

“Wait. Sam does yoga?”

I choke out a laugh at his attempt to make me smile. “Yeah. He does. I found my tribe. I made it through West Point because of the brothers and sisters I made in the yoga club. I became obsessed. Focused. It helped me. I know it doesn’t help everyone. I know it’s not a miracle cure that will magically solve all trauma and terrible things. But it helped me. It brought me back to who I was when I’d almost lost it.”

He moves closer, if that’s possible. Wraps me tighter in his arms. Pressing his chest against me, his thighs to mine. I’m completely surrounded. Cherished and held.

“I had no idea.”

“It’s not easy owning up to being an asshole,” I whisper. “I thought I was doing what West Point wanted me to do. I thought I was being loyal to my company. I almost failed my plebe because I wasn’t looking. Because I didn’t want to believe one of my peers could threaten and harass someone else when they were good to me.”

My heart doesn’t hurt like it used to. I’m able to get the words out without feeling like I’m suffocating. It’s amazing how things that control our lives for so long manage to look so different when you can change how you look at them. “I blamed West Point for a long time. But in the end, it’s my responsibility for how I acted.”

“There are good people there,” Caleb says softly. “But a small percentage can do a lot of damage in the name of duty, honor, country.”

He says nothing for a long moment. “That explains why you were kind to me when I got in trouble.”

“Yeah. My firstie year, they made me a regimental sergeant major. Try leading when everyone hates you. It’s not that easy.” I feel her breathing, slow and steady. “I made it through. But I’m not ready to go back. Because I’m afraid that the person I was when I was in B1 wasn’t an anomaly, but was a part of who I really am. And I’m ashamed of her.”

---

It’s hard to put into words how it feels when your oxygen is cut off, when your skin prickles with nerves and anxiety and anger.

Hatred for the person you were.

For the person you’re trying so hard not to be anymore.

“That’s not who you are anymore,” I whisper.

“I know that. Rationally, I know that. But fear is a powerful thing.”

She’s an addiction. My drug. A human connection that I never knew I needed. But to know that she was part of that culture…

I don’t have the words I need.

I slip out of her arms. Away from her warmth.

The cold is an instant slap against my skin.

I pull on my pants. Needing to get away. To hide.

To remove myself from her.

She sits up behind me. Her arms wrap around my waist, her thighs slip over mine. Holding me. Flowers and vines and lotuses snake down the sides of her body, intertwined in the scars covering her thighs.

She’s a goddess. A goddess of rebirth and strength.

She’s everything I’m not.

And I will never be.

“Where are you going, Caleb?” Her words vibrate into my back, her breath warm against my skin. “You don’t get to do that,” she whispers.

I turn my face, looking out into the storm as lightning flashes outside. “Don’t get to do what?”

“Leave just because something hurts.”

I laugh bitterly. But I don’t stand up. I don’t step out of her embrace. “You have no idea what’s going on inside me right now.”

Her palms fold over my heart and it’s so easy to cover hers with mine. “People don’t just start drinking as kids because they’re healthy, well-adjusted people.”

I want to pull my hands away, to break the contact. To staunch the wounds inside me.

The broken pieces of me aren’t an excuse for what happened to me.

I close my eyes. Her voice mixes in my head with another one, until I can’t tell where her voice ends and my memories begin.

I pull my hands away.

Turn away from the salvation I don’t deserve. I look at her room. At the yoga mat in the corner, the tiny altar draped in prayer beads. At the pictures of her family on the walls.

A sanctuary. But the walls and the paint and the floors are only a building.

She’s the soul of this space. The heart of it.

I can feel the burning of the tattoos against my wrists. Against my back.

“My father sent me to military school after my mom died.” I stare at a painting on her wall, of a dark blue teapot with steam coming from the spout. I can see the lines knitting the canvas together. The way the colors saturate the fibers. “It was worse than B1.” The shame crawls over my skin, hot and cutting, like steel through flesh. “I was thirteen. I’d lost everyone and everything that mattered.”

I can feel the heat of her breath against my neck, an echo of the pain piercing my body.

I shudder. “West Point was a sanctuary for me. It was a place where I could finally feel like a man.” I bow my head. Shame is cold and violent inside me. “I finally felt like I belonged. I got off on punishing those we deemed unworthy. I enjoyed it because for once, I had power.”

She is silent, her breathing mixing with mine. It would be better if she left. If I tell the darkness, it can still judge me. It can still torment my sleep.

The nightmares are my penance.

“Nothing that happened to me is an excuse.” My hands are fists by my sides. “I laughed when one of the guys told me how he’d made some of the female plebes cry. I was a willing participant because it hid the shame of what happened to me. I never spoke up. I never defended any of our plebes.”

My throat is tight. My sins are real. Not pretend. Not wiped away.

“I’ve been a raging fucking asshole for years because I chose to ignore what happened to me before I got to West Point. The same culture you rejected, I enjoyed.” My eyes burn and my chest feels like it’s being ripped apart by the violence inside me. “Because it meant I could pretend what happened to me never happened.”

Her arms tighten around my ribs. Her palms are hot against my heart, like she’s holding it together, keeping it from breaking out of my chest.

And I stay. Because I don’t know where I’m going.

And for once, I have somewhere I want to stay.