I don’t know his name. No one ever knew who he was or where he came from. When I was in Iraq, he had walked up to the camp where my unit was stationed with a bomb strapped around his chest. I killed him with a single bullet from my sniper rifle before he could get too close.
Apparently, being dead isn’t enough to keep him away from me. His specter follows me everywhere.
Stark is still talking about Raine, calling her a saint for putting up with him. It doesn’t sound like he’s much of a boyfriend, which just comes with being wrapped up in organized crime. Our relationships, if we have any at all, are never good ones.
When he says something about Raine’s friends not liking him, I realize Lia doesn’t have any friends at all. In my desire to always keep her safe at my side, she’s sacrificed anything that ever might have looked like a normal life. At least Stark had attempted to try to be a boyfriend. I am probably better described as a keeper.
A fucked up keeper.
I tell Stark about how I plan my hits around Lia’s school schedule; he says I’m crazy.
“Yeah,” I say with a laugh. “I’ve got the diagnosis to prove it.”
He stares pointedly into my eyes.
“PTSD,” I tell him, not seeing any reason to lie about it. “I’m a certified nut.”
“From being in the Marines?”
“From being a POW, yeah.” I take a breath and hold it for a minute, trying to keep my mind from immediately going back to that hole in the sand where I spent a year and a half. Maybe it is an excuse for how I act with Lia, but there are things in my head I just can’t control. Considering the other characteristics Stark and I seem to share, I wonder how he justifies his actions, so I ask. “Why are you such a dick to your girl?”
“I just…have a nasty temper. I used to drink to make up for it.”
“Not anymore?”
“That’s the one thing she’d leave me for,” he admits. “If I drink, she’s gone.”
“And that’s enough to keep you off it?”
“Yeah,” Stark says. “Well, mostly. I’ve fucked up but just once.”
“She forgave you?”
“She did.”
I wonder how many times Lia has forgiven my misdeeds. There are the number of deaths she knows I’d had a hand in and countless others she knows nothing about. If she had any idea I was s
till working for Rinaldo, would she forgive me? No, probably not.
“I don’t think Lia would be so forgiving if she knew I was still in the business.”
“If she’s anything like Raine, she’d have your balls.”
I have to laugh because it does sound like Lia. Apparently, Stark and I have something else in common—the women who put up with us would probably be great friends. Of course, they might compare notes and decide to just get the fuck away from both of us.
The mounting similarities between my half-brother and me are interesting, especially since we hadn’t grown up anywhere near each other. There are a few times I’m tempted to tell him, but I don’t. There is no point. Instead, I watch him become agitated as he finds new energy to try to dig his way out of the hole he’s in. There’s no way—not with his leg stuck the way it is. I give a half-hearted effort myself, but I know it’s pointless.
“I want a fucking cigarette,” I say out loud.
I can’t hide my shock as he hands me one.
As the smoke fills my lungs, I think about how pissed off Lia would be if she caught me smoking. The irony that I worry about that instead of the fact that she’s never going to know why I never came home isn’t lost on me.
As Bastian and I continue to discuss how pissed off our women would be at us and the various ways we are likely to die, he says something that does catch my attention, a quote from his father figure, Landon.
“Victory is in your head first. If you decide that’s how it’s going to be, then that’s how it will be.”
Even as I spout off the possible outcomes—all bad—other thoughts creep into my head. I look at Bastian’s leg caught in the rocks and realize I could reach it with my foot easily enough. If I could kick the rock away, he just might be able to pull his leg out. It would hurt like a bitch, but if anyone could handle the pain, he could. If he were freed, he could free me. There’s no camera for anyone to see what happened to us.