But one of us, Private Nathaniel Jansson, paid the ultimate price.
War doesn’t care how old you are, how brave you are. War doesn’t care how hard you work or how much you love your country. War doesn’t care that you’ve got a woman back home waiting for you or that you’re months away from becoming a father for the first time.
It could have been any of us, but today it was Jansson.
While he was young and green, he was going to be one of the best. I knew it. I saw it in him. He may have been new but he had a fire in his eyes and a dedication like none I’ve ever seen before, and now he’s leaving behind a child that will only ever hear how brave and heroic their father was through secondhand stories.
My ears are still ringing and there’s no time to sit around and process what just happened. We hadn’t been back from our mission to the Syrian border but half a day when we found our base under siege. The flash of lights that preceded the deafening explosions and the sounds of men crying out in the dark will haunt my nightmares the rest of my life, but the strangest thing happened.
In the midst of all the chaos, when I wasn’t focused on sheer fucking survival, I found myself thinking about her.
Maritza.
Coming this close to death does something to a man, it forces him to reevaluate his priorities and the things in life that he truly wants, forces him to question if the kind of life he’s living has any sort of meaning at all or if he’s just drifting through life like a fool believing his own lies—that he’s happy alone, that he’s never going to want anyone else for longer than a drunken night in a hotel room.
But I’m done lying to myself.
I want meaning.
I want her.
I want to get to know her, really know her. And I want to make her smile. I want to feel her strawberry lips on mine and brush her hair from her face. I want to do dorky touristy things together, things I’d never be caught dead doing with anyone else. I want to show her more constellations. I want to take her to another Panoramic Sunrise concert because god damn it, she deserves a do-over.
I want her to wait for me, to push my limits and do annoyingly sweet things and tell me she misses me.
And I don’t want her sleeping with anyone else.
Shoving what’s left of my things into an Army-issued duffel bag, I find a crumpled scrap of paper—an old report of some kind, the edges burnt, and I grab a pen from my desk drawer. Scribbling a note, I fold the paper into fourths and tuck it in my pocket.
First chance I get, I’ll send it.
“Corp, we gotta go.”
I glance up to find Lt. Peters in my doorway, looking white as a ghost. The familiar, sickening sound of bombers breaking the sound barrier rumbles above us, vibrating through every breath, every thought.
I’m not a religious man much to my mother’s dismay, but I find a handful of seconds to make a promise to God. Let me make it home alive, and I promise I’ll tell her how I feel. I’ll be the man she deserves, the man I’m supposed to be. I’ll change. For good.
And I’ll tell her everything.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maritza
Melrose cups her dog’s wrinkly face in her hands and rubs her nose against his. “You seem down lately.”
“Me? Or the dog?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes before pulling her dog into her arms. “You. Murphy’s always happy. He’s living the good life.”
“I’m not … not happy,” I say, reaching for my bottled water on the coffee table. I unscrew the cap and lift it to my mouth before adding, “I guess I’ve just been thinking about Isaiah lately.”
“Still?” Melrose sits up straight in our leather arm chair. “You haven’t seen him in, what … several months? And you knew him all of a week?”
“I know, I know.” I take a swig. “And it was nine days. I know, okay? Don’t think I don’t have this conversation with myself on a regular basis. I just guess I’m trying to make sense of how two people could hit it off so well and how we were writing these cute little letters back and forth and then he just … stopped.”
“You need a new hobby or something that doesn’t involve obsessing over pointless stupid shit like Corporal Douche Bag.”
“It’s not like I’ve been moping around the last few months. I’ve been living my life, doing the exact same things I’d be doing had I never met him,” I say. And it’s true. I catch movies. I grab drinks with friends. I lunch with my favorite people. I read books and visit family. By no means am I sitting around waiting for the mailman or some serendipitous knock at my door. But it doesn’t make this whole thing bother me any less. “I just want to know that he’s okay, Mel. At this point, it doesn’t matter why he stopped writing. I just want to know if he’s safe. That’s the only thing I care about.”