My heart ached. I wanted to hear his story so badly, but seeing him this way just made me want to wrap him in my arms and rock him back and forth like a child. I needed to comfort him, I didn’t care about anything else but making sure he was okay, and right now, he was definitely not looking like he was okay.
I crawled across the bed. He held up his hands to stop me, but I pushed them out of the way and climbed onto his lap, straddling his legs and placing my hands on his chest. We’d been in this position before, at the hotel on the way to Dallas. I could feel his body instantly relax as I settled myself there, supporting him, but not crowding him to the point where he would lose it again. He was lost in his story, his eyes wandering but his hands tracing gentle patterns as they relaxed onto my thigh.
“We were heading to the airport,” he whispered.
My gut sank. I knew where this was going. They were headed home. They were about to get out of this war zone and go back to their families.
“The road should have been swept already. Leo will tell you it was his fault, but it wasn’t, it was the fault of the team ahead of us who we trusted and who had failed to do a thorough job.”
A chill was settling over my body, but I didn’t let it get to me, I didn’t move to pull the blanket up around me. I just focused on him.
“It was an IED. Front tire missed it, back right though was a perfect hit. It threw us through the air. We rolled a few times before we landed on our fucking roof.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Leo and I were the closest to the front and on the opposite side. The guys closest died instantly.”
His hands moved up the side of my hips and tickled my waist, but his eyes were still trained over my shoulder as if as he was explaining it, he was watching it happen on a television or a movie screen.
“I didn’t realize at the time, but I’d broken a rib, and it had punctured my lung,” he explained, huffing out a laugh like it was amusing for him to be so seriously injured and have no idea. “I was fighting for breath, and there were things getting in the way. Things pressing down on me and I just wanted to fight them off, so I shoved at whatever it was to try and find that fresh air, as well as the car filling with smoke, and Leo trying to tell me that our people were on their way.”
There it was, the teen girl who crashed and the smell of the smoke were like a slap in the face. That’s why he’d frozen up and hadn’t been able to move.
“I had a concussion as well,” he continued, swallowing tightly. “That’s why I didn’t realize at the time that what I was fighting off, were actually arms and legs of my teammates who were hanging there limp.”
For a second I wondered if my heart would be able to contain the pressure it was under right then, full of so much pain, beating so damn hard. Tears dripped down my cheeks, and I swiped at them with the back of my hand, drawing Eagle’s attention back to my face.
“Don’t cry,” he said, taking my face in his hands and using his thumbs to wipe under my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, sniffling softly. Everything was starting to make sense now. The reason he was drawn back there when he felt like he was too crowded, the memories of his friends’ bodies pushing down on him.
He shook his head. “You don’t have to be. Every single one of us went out there knowing there was a chance we might not make it back. We know it’s not going to be pretty, and a fair percentage of men and women who served at the same time as I did, returned home with PTSD.” He lay his head back against the headboard and sighed. “It impacts people in different ways, for some it’s worse than others. Some days I feel normal. Other days I struggle to drag my ass out of bed. Episodes like this, they drain the energy from me, leave me exhausted.”
I licked my dry lips, tasting the salt of my tears which had escaped and dried there. “I’m not going to pretend I know anything about PTSD, so please don’t take offense, but will it ever go away?”
“No offense taken. But it’s hard, you know?” he said quietly. “To have people constantly asking you like… hey, are you feeling better? How are things going? Oh… it’ll take time, but you’ll get there.” He squeezed his hands into fists, and my instant reaction was to cover them with my own hands, to try and soothe the frustration I knew he must be feeling.
It couldn’t be easy to have people constantly telling you that it’ll be okay, or downplaying what you are feeling.
“It’s like people have no fucking idea,” he snapped, his eyes meeting mine, filled with pain and anger. “They have no idea that this is probably as good as it’s going to fucking get. Yeah okay, it’s better than it was, but there’s always gonna be triggers, there’s always gonna be memories in the back of my head.”
His body was shaking, I wanted to comfort him, not to tell him that it will be okay or that he will get through it, but to show him that it was fine to feel how he was feeling.
“I told you before, I don’t want to fix you. But if there’s something I can do to make the dark times brighter, then you just have to say.”
One of his hands reached out and his fingers tangled in my hair. He pulled me forward, and I braced my hands on his chest as I leaned in, following his lead. “Trust me when I say, you already do,” he murmured before his lips crashed into mine, sending sparks flying, lighting up the dim room with the electricity between our bodies.
The kiss was slow, passionate and intense.
It wasn’t like before.
I was getting in deep, probably too deep.
But when Eagle touched me, I just couldn’t find the strength to care.