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.
Chapter One
Fort Irwin, California 2008 One year later…
Trent walked out of the ops tent, needing a few minutes to himself. They’d just sent word that the wife of a kid in one of the companies was in the hospital. She was going into labor while her husband was enjoying the fun and sun of the National Training Center.
At least the kid wasn’t deployed. He’d be able to get home quickly. Sure, not as quickly as if he was back at Fort Hood, but still. It beat the hell out of trying to get home from Iraq.
The notification was something simple, and yet it had struck Trent that yet another soldier was going to miss the birth of his child because of the Army.
He knew exactly how that felt and right then, a thousand bitter memories rose up, reminding him of everything he’d willingly squandered. The resurrected hurt was so raw, the regret so powerful, he nearly choked on it.
He should be used to the hurt by now, but lately it seemed to be getting worse. It overwhelmed the dead space inside him, forcing him to feel things he didn’t want—and wasn’t ready to feel.
He didn’t know how to feel them, how to deal with them. So for the moment, he sat outside the ops tent and let the raging emotions storm inside him. Until he could get them under control. Until he could function again.
It had been happening more and more this year. The things he’d stuffed away had started having a nasty habit of reappearing when he least expected them.
He was starting to get comfortable with the crazy, but at least now he was starting to recognize the warning signs. Which was why he was sitting outside the ops tent.
“So your BFF Marshall is looking for you.” Story walked out of the ops tent, a smirk on his face that only meant bad things for Trent. It was so strange calling him “master sergeant” instead of “first sergeant” but Story wasn’t a first sergeant anymore. Just like Trent was no longer a commander.
Trent sat on the hood of a Humvee, smoking a cigar and contemplating his sixth cup of coffee since he’d come on shift twelve hours ago. He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose then glanced over as Story hopped up next to him.
Since they’d both been fired more than a year ago, they’d been hanging out on the staff together, responsible for nothing but PowerPoint slides. Funny how getting fired meant giving up the hard jobs in the Army. You still got to stay in the Army, but you just weren’t trusted with taking care of soldiers anymore. It was a punishment, being put in the easy jobs. Trent would have given anything to get his old job as a company commander back, but that wasn’t going to happen so he and Story and Iaconelli kept each other sane and avoided the new commander. Captain James T. Marshall the Third drove everyone fucking crazy.
“Should I be worried?” Trent asked dryly, adjusting his glasses again. He’d long ago given up getting upset when Marshall attempted to piss in his corn flakes. Marshall had been tapped to take over Trent’s company when he’d gotten himself fired and Marshall took great pleasure in reminding everyone that he was fixing all the things that Trent had screwed up. It grated on Trent’s last nerve every time the words, “Well, sir, I’m still fixing the mess I was left when I took over” came out of Marshall’s mouth at staff meetings, but what could Trent say? He had gotten fired. It didn’t matter why. He supposed part of his penance for being a shitty commander was having to listen to Marshall without knocking his teeth out. He’d leave that for Story and a few of the captains, like Ben Teague, who were leading the insurgency on the staff. Trent had other things on his mind.
Like his wife. His two kids. The house that was no longer his.
He cleared his throat and tried to listen to Story.
“I don’t know,” Story said. “Marshall wasn’t screaming so I think maybe you should be okay?”
Sergeant First Class Reza Iaconelli, one of Trent’s former platoon sergeants, stepped out of the ops tent. “No, you should definitely hide,” he said, interrupting the conversation. “He’s bitching about having to transport you back to the rear early and he’s pretty cranky.”
Iaconelli was a big man: broad shoulders and built like an ox. He was steadfast and solid downrange but when they got home? Yeah, that’s when things went to shit for Iaconelli. He’d never met a bottle of alcohol that he didn’t like. He was lucky he still had a career but the sergeant major liked him. Trent respected his ability in combat enough to overlook any personal failings. Trent was the last one to judge someone’s personal failings.
He reined his thoughts back to the present and the feeling that flittered in the dead space around his heart. “I’m getting sent back?”
Iaconelli shrugged. “Maybe they’re finally going to court-martial your sorry ass,” he said
lightly.
Trent flipped him off. “That would be nice, actually. If they’d at least get the damn thing
over with. If I never see Lieutenant Jason Randall ever again, it will be too soon.
“He is a special little fuckstick, that is for certain,” Iaconelli said, staring at the end of his cigar for a moment.
Iaconelli may or may not have threatened to kill LT Randall downrange. Twice. But all of Randall’s interpersonal hostility had been a sideshow, a distraction to keep Trent or anyone else from figuring out that he had been selling sensitive items and funneling the money to bribe the Iraqis to stop blowing their boys up. Randall had finally gotten caught and now was determined to take down Trent and anyone else he could with him. Iaconelli chopped the tip off his cigar and sucked on the end while he tried to light it.
“Too bad I won’t be around for his court-martial,” Story said.
“Did you get reassigned?” Iaconelli asked Story.
“Yeah. I’m deploying again in about two weeks. As soon as we get back from here,” he said.
“Your wife isn’t going to be happy,” Trent said quietly.
“Actually, she’s going to be thrilled. It’ll give her a chance to find her some twenty-year- old boy toy to keep her busy while I’m gone.” Story spat into the dust.
“So you’re still married because…?” Iaconelli sucked on the end of his cigar.
“Because it’s too fucking expensive to get divorced,” Story said. “I’ll take care of it after this next deployment. I’ll save up some money first, though.”
“Sure you will,” Trent said. “You’ve been saying that since ’04.”
It was Story’s turn to flip Trent off. “At least I’m willing to accept my marriage is over.”
Trent rubbed his heart, knowing his first sergeant hadn’t meant to score such a direct hit. At least, not with malice. “Yeah well, my divorce is complicated.”
“These things always are.” Iaconelli leaned against the truck. “Which is why I’ve never gotten married.”
Trent snorted and was going to make a crack but Marshall took that opportunity to step into the darkness outside the ops tent. “Davila, you’re going back to Fort Hood.”
Trent glanced at his watch. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”
“And you’re going to be on a plane in three hours. Pack your shit.” Marshall turned to stalk off, mumbling about pain in the ass captains and not having enough time for this shit.
Iaconelli blew a smoke ring into the darkness. “God but he is such a charmer.”
Trent sat there long after Story and Iaconelli went back into the ops tent.
He wanted to go home. But now that it was happening, fear slithered down his spine.
It had started slow. One day, he’d wake up, dreaming about Laura. Other times, he’d be in the mess tent and he’d think he heard her laugh. He’d hear a kid giggling on the TV and he’d look up, expecting to see Ethan or Emma.
Always, though, he was alone. He’d wanted it that way for so long. He’d wanted quiet when they’d been running around his feet, shrieking and bickering like kids did. He’d craved silence at the end of the day when someone would get out of bed for a glass of water.
He’d certainly gotten the silence and the solitude.
And the oppressive emptiness of it all ate away at him. He’d thrown himself into work here in the California desert. He’d pulled eighteen hour days gladly. The longer he spent away from the war, the less he felt its siren call, luring him back. And somehow, work wasn’t enough anymore. Nothing he did pushed away the aching need to get to the one place he simply didn’t belong: home.
He was back in the States but he couldn’t go home. Not with an investigation hanging over his head and the potential for a very long jail sentence standing in front of him. And the worst part about the entire court-martial was that his brigade commander was changing command soon. If Colonel Richter left before the case was resolved, Trent would be at the mercy of the new commander—a new man with no loyalty to the soldiers he’d put in leadership positions.
It was not a comfortable place to be. The power plays between the senior officers never ended well for junior officers, and Trent? Trent was caught right now. He had to trust that Colonel Richter would take care of this before he left.
But a year after Trent had been sent home, Trent was running low on trust and patience.
Patience had never been his strong suit. Every other time he’d been home, he’d been prepping to go back to war. This time, the year had stretched in front of him like an unending slog.
It was the longest time he’d spent in the States since he’d gotten shot. It had taken him almost that long to realize just how badly he’d fucked up everything in his life that was supposed to be important.
His marriage. His kids. His family.
If there was a grade lower than an F at being a husband or a dad, he’d earned it. He’d come home from Iraq nearly a year ago—pending a court-martial and a divorce. And since then, nothing had happened. The case had been stuck in investigation mode forever. And the divorce? He just wasn’t able to sign the papers. His life had been frozen in carbonite on all counts.
The investigation had moved slower than molasses in winter. And he was glad.
Because standing out here in the California desert, he’d come to a conclusion. He wanted his family back. He wanted his wife back. When she’d slapped him with divorce papers last year, he’d refused to sign them, hoping that the investigation would go away and that he could fix things with her. But that hope had proved futile. The distance between them was too much. The warmth he remembered was gone, but still, he’d been unable to let her go. He couldn’t. Sure, they spoke on the phone or when he saw her at the office, but they were a few stolen minutes here, a quick chat about the kids. There was nothing there to give him hope that he could fix things with her.
He’d volunteered to train soldiers anywhere he could so that he didn’t have to face the cold emptiness of the reality that he was no longer welcome in his own home. And if he volunteered, someone else wouldn’t have to.
Now? Now he sat in the middle of the California desert and thought about the new dad who wouldn’t be there for the birth of his child. He looked down at his wedding ring and thought of all the time he’d willingly given up.
He was a goddamned fool. He wanted her back. Damn it, he wanted his life back. The life with this woman who had once smiled and laughed with him and wrapped herself around him while she slept. Who was as beautiful changing Emma’s diaper as she was dressed up in an evening gown for the Cav ball. This woman who used to ask about his day when he called home at two in the morning, even after she’d been up half the night with one of the kids.
He sobered, his hands trembling at the thought of his children and the tiny family that had grown while he’d been away. The tiny family that overwhelmed him and terrified him and dropped him to his knees with a need so strong, it crushed his lungs until he could not breathe.
He didn’t know how to feel good, but he knew he’d never figure it out without them.
He had no clue where to start. He had no idea how to be a father to his kids. Or a husband
to a wife who could barely look at him.
Trent hopped off the top of the truck. He had a phone call to make.
Because it looked like he was getting exactly what he wanted.
And it was time to figure out how to be the man his family needed him to be.
***
Fort Hood
“Son of a bi-iscuit!”
“Bad Mommy!”
Laura Davila wrapped her scraped and bleeding knuckles in a paper towel and prayed to the patron saint of Army wives for patience. Her six-year-old dishwasher was currently spread in carefully laid out pieces across the kitchen floor and counters. And now the cavernous white interior was splattered with her blood. Awesome.
Her son Ethan looked up at her with disapproval in his dark brown eyes, and Laura flinched. “Sorry, honey. Mommy just hurt herself.”
“You said a bad word.” This from her daughter, Emma. “Agent Chaos said you’re not allowed to say those words.”
Laura glared at the fat brown hamster that was clutched in her daughter’s hands. Agent Chaos looked up at her with disapproving beady brown eyes. Sitting there, silently judging her.
She had joked with Trent that he should buy the kids a hamster when he returned from his latest deployment. By the time he came back, things between them had already crumbled but he still remembered the damn hamster. He’d bought not one, but two of the stinking, smelly creatures. The hamster cuteness factor did not override the pain in the ass factor of having to clean their cages every other day to keep the smell from overpowering the entire house.
Maybe if Trent had been around more over the last year, she wouldn’t have minded them so much. But instead of sitting at Fort Hood and working in an office like any other officer who was under investigation, he’d volunteered for several rotations at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin. He’d spent more time there than at Fort Hood over the last year. He might as well have just moved there.
She took a deep breath and pressed on her throbbing knuckles, focusing on the pain so that she wouldn’t feel the tension that squeezed her heart every time she thought about her husband. She regretted sending him the divorce papers. She could admit that now, but she’d done the only thing she could at the time.
She could still remember that stupid flare of hope when he’d stood in her office that day. Hope that maybe, finally, he had come home to her.
But he hadn’t.
And as time had ticked by and he’d refused to sign the papers and let her go, she’d moved beyond regret. Now, she wanted to move on with her life. Maybe someday she’d be able to think of Trent without the hurt and frustration that kept reminding her of everything she’d lost.
“You have to pay us each a quarter,” Ethan said, stroking the fat orange hamster in his hands. Laura was seriously thinking about buying a cat—that would solve the hamster problem quickly enough. But it would be just one more thing to clean up after.
And she wasn’t really up for the trauma of finding a dead hamster under the bed.
She could only imagine the therapy bills.
She pursed her lips and counted to ten…thousand. “Okay, guys, why don’t you go play in the garage or something? Mommy has too many parts in here, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Or move anything. But she didn’t say that out loud, because that would only encourage them to run off with some vital component that it would take her three days to identify and two more days to find online and order. A new dishwasher was not in the budget at the moment. Besides, she wanted to see if she could actually fix the thing herself.
She shooed the kids and their accompanying hamsters out of the kitchen and made her way through the master bedroom to the cache of Band-Aids she hid in her bathroom. The kids were all too eager to use every bandage in the house if she let them, which always meant that she couldn’t find a Band-Aid when she really needed one. She’d resorted to hiding them like they were some kind of precious commodity. In her house, they were.
Laura pulled down the shoebox that held the first aid kit. She held her breath as she cleaned the cuts on her knuckles with iodine, then wrapped gauze halfway down her fingers, covering the empty space where her wedding and engagement ring had once been.
She paused, staring at her ring finger. Blood pooled on the pale band of skin there, as if her finger refused to forget the rings that had been there since forever.
Her finger might not forget the rings but that didn’t mean it was a marriage worth waiting for. No amount of waiting or wishful thinking was going to change that. Trent had seen to that. And broken her heart all over again.
She knew in her heart that they were finished. He had lied to her so many times about his deployments. That alone had destroyed her trust in him. And then there was the rest of it…
She was ready for the pain to stop. Ready for her heart to stop waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting, so desperately, for her heart to stop beating for a man who was never coming home.
A spike of melancholy pressed on her lungs. Damn it, what was wrong with her today? She was past mourning the death of her marriage. At least, she kept telling herself that. So when was it going to stop hurting?
She briefly considered a shot of vodka to numb the pain, but that wasn’t really a good idea since she was alone with the kids. She barely ever had a drink these days. She sighed and glanced wistfully at the discreet box on the top shelf in the bathroom closet. Droughts were not limited to alcohol.
She had gotten used to it, this new normal. While the kids were vibrant chaos, full of life and joy, the married part of her life was… well, it simply was. There was nothing there anymore. No joy. No hatred. Just silence and cold detachment overlying a dull aching sadness.
She simply wanted it to be over. And damn Trent to hell for dragging it out when he wasn’t even willing to fight for them. And the silence between them? Between her and the man she’d thought she’d love for the rest of her life?
She sat on the edge of their bed, one finger rubbing absently over the bruised knuckles and her empty ring finger. She could hear the kids shrieking in the garage. One of the hamsters had gotten away. She smiled. She really didn’t mind them, not when the kids loved the judgmental little beasts so much. It was a gesture of kindness from a man who couldn’t be a father. She knew that.
It didn’t make it hurt any less. She’d married him knowing what she was getting into, thinking her love for him was strong enough to withstand whatever the Army could throw at them. Knowing that the Army was a demanding job, that he’d be gone a lot. But that first deployment had done something to him, something deeper than just the visible scars on his body.
Once, she never would have thought the silence would grow too loud or that his empty side of the bed would become too heavy to bear. Once, she would have waited forever for him to come home to her.
But forever was a long time.
And her faith in their love had died long ago on some distant battlefield.
CONTINUE READING
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