She smiles back at me, her eyes dancing.
I want to keep that look on her face, the carefree, challenging look that I fell in love with. I want to emulate that weekend, where we talked for hours, sharing our thoughts and opinions on everything apart from ourselves.
“So, what have you been doing with yourself for the last eighteen months?”
Jodie’s face shuts down immediately, and she visibly seems to retreat. It’s the wrong thing to say, and I don’t know why.
“Not much,” she mumbles, turning to look out the rain-stained window.
She’s hiding something. I don’t know what, but I’m determined to find out.
“You been back to the Sea Hopper?”
She shakes her head. “Not since…” Her sentence trails off as she shakes her head, lost in her own thoughts.
I get the feeling that weekend is painful for her somehow, which gives me hope in a sick way. Maybe it means she does care, that it did mean as much to her as it did to me.
“I’ve been back loads.”
She looks around sharply, and a hint of jealousy flashes across her face before she turns back to the window.
I can’t hide my satisfaction. She doesn’t like the idea of me going out to bars. She probably thinks I’ve been picking up women, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I went back looking for you.”
Jodie’s gaze darts to mine, and there’s a glimmer of hope in them. That look is all I need to keep going, to give me hope that I might be able to break down the wall she’s constructed around herself to keep me out.
I sidle across the seat and hook my leg up so I’m facing her.
“I was deployed the day after we…” I was about to say hooked up, but that doesn’t do justice to what I felt that weekend, to the connection we had. “The day after that weekend.”
She looks up at me again, her hazel eyes round and wide.
“Thank you for your service. I’m not sure I ever said that to you before.”
I wave a hand dismissively. I don’t need her thanks. I should be the one thanking her.
“When I was over there, I knew it would be my last tour.”
I look down at my hands, trying to find the words to explain what I felt, the crushing buildup in my chest of twenty years of service, the emptiness with every mission—with every kill.
When I first joined, I had a conscience. I used to feel things deeply. I remember my first kill. It threw me for weeks. I couldn’t eat or sleep properly with the horror of what I’d done.
But by the last mission, I felt nothing, only a hollowness, an emptiness every time I pulled the trigger.
I was exactly what the Army needed me to be: a trained, heartless killer.
That’s when I knew it was time to get out.
But I can’t tell Jodie any of this. I can’t let her see that dark part of my heart. All I can show her is how she healed me without even knowing.
When I look up again, she’s watching me with compassion in her eyes as if she can see into my very soul.
“It got bad, this tour. I can’t tell you details, but something went wrong, and it was a bad retreat.”
I run a hand over my eyes. Our missions as a Special Forces team were dangerous, covert, ruthless.
I can’t tell her what happened, and I don’t want to anyway. Jodie doesn’t need to know the details of what we do to keep this country safe.