Prologue
PROLOGUE
Fort Hood
2007
“I put your checkbook in the front pocket of your ruck sack. Did you find the sleep medication? You’ll need to sleep on the plane so that you’re rested when you land. And I put your calling card—”
Captain Trent Davila looked up from where he sat on the edge of their bathtub. He held a tiny folded flag in his hands. For a moment, he’d been somewhere else. Sulfur scorched the inside of his nose. The thunder of the fifty cal reverberated off his breastbone.
“What’s that?” she asked softly, watching him from the bathroom door.
He held out his palm so she could see the little flag. “Good luck charm. I can’t deploy without it.”
A thousand questions flickered over her face as her gaze fell onto that tiny flag. She bit her lip and turned away, but not before he saw the naked fear looking back at him.
He moved, stepping in front of his wife and capturing her face in his palms. Her skin was smooth and soft and achingly familiar, and a deep part of his soul missed her already.
But that part of his soul wasn’t in control right now. The moment she touched him, his soul recoiled, refusing to let him take even the simplest pleasure in her touch.
He’d cheated death and he knew, knew he didn’t deserve to be there with his wife when so many of his men had died.
That’s why he had to leave. Again. It didn’t matter to where. It didn’t matter if it was the war in Iraq or a transition team somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. He needed to get away. To get back into the fight.
And pray that his wife would understand why he had to go.
“Laura.” He whispered her name, capturing her attention.
She tried to look away, to pretend that today was just another day. But Trent knew her too well. He saw the doubt and the fear that she tried to hide. Her eyes, though, her eyes always gave her away. He stroked an errant strand of copper hair away from her forehead, meeting her golden eyes, unable to speak any words of comfort. He knew they’d just be more empty lies.
She offered a watery smile. “I’m terrified of losing you again,” she whispered.
“I’ve deployed since I got hurt. This time is no different.”
“You didn’t get hurt.” She refused to meet his gaze. “You died. Your heart actually stopped beating. And this time is worse. This is the Surge.” Her voice broke. “I can’t lose you again,” she whispered. Her voice cracked as the tears tumbled down her cheeks.
He hated to see her cry. Worse, he knew he could prevent those tears.
He pulled her close and simply held her, wishing he could feel as alive with his wife and family as he did when he was at war. Maybe someday, when the war was over, he could figure out what had broken inside him and how to fix it.
He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks as the kids shrieked in Ethan’s bedroom. The sound sent a spike of anxiety through Trent’s heart, but he smiled, hoping to cheer her up. “Sounds like someone just lost a Lego.”
“Daddy!”
“He’s probably going to beg you for a hamster again,” she said. Laura swiped at her eyes, blinking rapidly. “Can’t let them see me like this.”
He slid from her embrace, regret sealing the walls that four deployments had erected around his heart. Trent tried not to notice how intently Laura watched him, her gaze sweeping over the scars on his body as he finished getting dressed. His dog tags banged against his ribs as he dragged his t-shirt over his head and pulled on the rest of his uniform and then his boots.
“Well, you could get one,” Trent said, needing the distraction of simple conversation.
“Or,” Laura said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “you could promise him one when you get home. It’ll give him something to look forward to.”
Trent frowned at the odd note in Laura’s voice and focused on tying his boots and tucking the laces beneath the cuff of his pants. “He won’t even notice I’m gone. They’re both too little.”
Trent straightened as Laura approached, placing her palm over the scar on his heart. It burned where she touched him. It took everything he had not to flinch away from the gentleness in that touch. “Keep telling yourself that,” she said with a soft kiss. “They miss you when you’re gone. We all do.”
He sighed quietly and glanced at her, resting his hands gently on her hips. “Laura, you know I have to go.”
He couldn’t explain it. Didn’t have the words to explain the emptiness inside him that consumed every waking moment when he wasn’t over there. And worse, he didn’t ever want her to see the emptiness he tried so hard to hide from her.
She believed he’d come home. As long as she continued to believe that, his world would continue to exist.
She brushed her thumb over his bottom lip. She blinked rapidly and the sight of her tears almost penetrated the cold empty space where his heart had been. “I just wish it got a little easier waiting for you, that’s all.” Her fingers wrapped around his dog tags, her thumb sliding along the chain. “But we’ll be here when you get back. We always are.”
He ran his fingers lightly over her face. The lie he’d told his wife so often sat like a concrete wall between them. She didn’t know that he’d volunteered for this deployment, for so many others, and he had no way of killing the lie without killing their marriage. “Don’t go getting a deployment boyfriend while I’m gone.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Laura wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling his neck. They stood for a long moment before Laura eased away.
Trent swallowed and let her go. Again.
* * *
Five hours later, Trent kissed his wife good-bye for the fourth time in six years. His four- year-old son and two-year-old daughter were getting antsy, climbing up and down the bleachers non-stop. As he walked away from the gym where he and the rest of his unit had checked in for the deployment, he glanced up at her in the stands. She was steady. Stoic. Trying valiantly not to join the ranks of the wives and children who were crying as their soldiers left them, assault packs and weapons in hand. God but he wished he didn’t have to go. That he was man enough to stay home and fix whatever was broken inside him. Wished that he were man enough to need her more than the heady, uncertain terror of war.
“You ready, sir?”
Trent glanced over at First Sarn’t Roy Story, a man who’d taught Trent the right way to kick in doors and the difference between knowing when to wipe a nose or whip an ass. The war was lined into Story’s leathery face. Fifteen years as an infantryman that had started in Mogadishu and continued with the long slog through Iraq.
“Are we ever really ready for this?” Trent asked, taking one more long look at his wife and kids. And then he turned away, needing to harden his heart for the battles to come.
Outside, Trent climbed aboard the bus that would take them to the airfield. Spouses filed out from the gym along the sidewalk. In the seat behind him, Sergeant Vic Carponti was harassing one of Trent’s platoon sergeants, Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison. He almost smiled. With those two around, things would never be dull.
He scanned the crowd, searching for his wife amongst the blurry faces of other people’s spouses lining the sidewalk. There. She held her vigil in front of a light pole, a tiny hand in each of hers. Beside her, Ethan stood bravely, tears streaming down his face. He held a tiny salute, his mouth pressed into a flat line as he tried to be a tough little man. Emma waved brightly at the bus, still too little to fully understand that Daddy was leaving for longer than a trip to the grocery store.
He looked away but it was far, far too late. When he closed his eyes, the image of his small family was seared onto his retinas as the bus pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the airfield.
“Never gets any easier, does it?” Story asked quietly, sucking on the end of an unlit cigar while he fiddled with a light on his helmet. There was little love left between Story and his wife. Story deployed to avoid his wife.
But Trent deployed to avoid his life. Because life back in the rear was too complicated, too loud, too chaotic. War was simpler.
The scar on his chest ached and he rubbed it, wishing he could forget the way his family looked as the bus pulled away.
He closed his eyes, trying to put them out of his mind. He didn’t want to remember his wife with her cheeks streaked with tears or the raw grief in her eyes. He wanted to remember her face as she slept curled into his side. Or laughing with their kids. He needed to carry those memories into war with him. Because that was all that would steel him against the long hours and bone-crushing fatigue to come.
He had soldiers to command. His family would be there when he came home.
He hoped.
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