“You wouldn’t understand.”
She snorted then. “Oh come on. You think just because I didn’t go through exactly what you did that I can’t understand? That I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone I care about? That I don’t have guilt, or regrets, or understand emotional trauma? Do you really think that?”
“Jess, I…”
But she kept going. “I lost my father. He was the one man I counted on for everything. He was the rudder of our family and suddenly he was gone and no one knew how to function without him. The last thing I wanted was to make things worse, add grief to a bad situation, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to make things better behind the scenes. But I needed love, too, you know? By the time I graduated, I had such a low sense of self-worth that I was ripe for the picking for someone like Mike Greer.”
She took a breath, met his black gaze in the semidarkness, and pressed on. “I wish I’d been better at dealing with my feelings. I wish I’d had better self-esteem. I wish I’d realized that I was capable of more. You want regrets? I’ve got them by the bucket load. Mike took more from me than any man ever should. You think this scar on my belly is bad? It’s nothing compared to the scar in here”—she pressed her hand to her chest—“and the guilt I carry around every damn day.”
“Jess,” he said again, softer this time. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“None of us does,” she replied, her throat raw. “You just do it.”
Quiet descended over the room until Jess heard Rick sigh deeply. “His name was Kyle.”
He’d started, and now she had to tread carefully to make sure he kept going. “Kyle?” she urged.
He nodded. “He was a good kid. A good soldier and a good friend. A brother.”
Rick stopped for a minute, but Jess simply waited for him to continue.
“We became buddies. He was young and fresh-faced, from a farm in Kansas and had a wicked sense of humor. Nothing seemed to get him down, you know? And that was saying something considering where we were. And sing; man, could that kid sing. Just when you thought you couldn’t stand another minute, he’d break out into some stupid song. Usually Weird Al, so we’d get laughing. And in the absence of that, he’d make up his own words.”
“He sounds great,” she murmured, wondering if he realized how his voice had warmed talking about his friend.
“We were nearly done with our tour when someone found out he had a partner at home.”
By the way Rick said partner, Jess immediately got what he was saying. “Kyle was gay.”
“Yeah.”
The warmth was gone from his voice now, replaced by a hard edge. “I didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t like he was running around the camp hitting on us, you know? He was like a little brother. The guy was in a relationship. But there were a few in our unit who didn’t feel the same way.”
“There was trouble?”
“He got the shit beat out of him.”
The room fell utterly silent.
Finally Rick spoke again. “The next day, we were out on a patrol when we were ambushed. Kyle should never even have been along, but he was so determined they wouldn’t get the best of him, you know? He refused to say a word about who attacked him, covered up his injuries. He just took it on the chin and kept going. But it slowed him down and he got hit. I was running out to get him when an RPG hit the vehicle he’d been using for cover.”
Jess couldn’t imagine the horror of such a thing, or what it must be like to be in that kind of extreme situation. “What happened to him?” she asked gently.
“He died,” Rick answered, his voice flat, devoid of any emotion. Jess now understood that the detached tone meant he was protecting himself from feeling too much. “When I woke up I was in a hospital, full of holes, and minus one hand just above the wrist.”
So he’d seen his friend die, and then he’d been wounded himself so that he was powerless. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, putting her hand on his knee and squeezing reassuringly. “But it wasn’t your fault. You know that. You were trying to save him.”
Rick’s haunted eyes searched hers. “But I didn’t. I should have reported what I knew to our CO. I should have tried to protect him. He never should have been with us that day, only I kept my mouth shut.”
And she could tell that no amount
of talking or urging on her part was going to change his mind. He blamed himself, and that was that.
“Whatever happened to the guys who assaulted him?” she asked gently.
Rick’s face twisted with distaste. “Nothing, as far as I know. I never went back. And I never said anything, either. I thought it was better to let it go and not kick the hornet’s nest, you know? Stuff like that has serious ramifications. And since Kyle hadn’t meant for people to find out, I told myself that he wouldn’t want his name dragged through an investigation. Nothing would bring him back…”
Jess cuddled closer, leaned her head on his shoulder. “It makes sense,” she answered.