“Was it the right thing?” Jackson looked over at me with haunted eyes. “I had to make the call. He had enough air. We used our last patch kits to seal his suit. We hid him in a rock crevice and promised to come back. Then we hustled like our asses were burning back to our evac and told them to send a team. Was that the right thing? Leaving him? Because the battle armor team they sent didn’t find him. We didn’t see him again until a patrol sweep found his body left outside our base, draped in a Russian flag and with our equipment on top of it. They’d found him, killed him, and left his body under their flag as a message.”
I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth. “Shit.”
“Did I do the wrong thing?” he asked. “Did I make the wrong call, Bastian? You’re the one who stayed. You never left your wounded. You fuckingstayed, and I feel like a pile of shit for leaving a man to die like that.”
“Of course I stayed,” I said, squeezing his knee. “I was onEarth. I couldaffordto stay. A hail storm is terrible weather to endure, but I had a hard helmet and I knew I could get through it. There wasn’t a risk of a deadly sandstorm blowing in to scour my bones. I didn’t have to stare at oxygen levels, or worry that my team would stay, too, and we would all die together millions of miles from home. Jackson, it isdifferenton Mars, and you saved yourentire fireteamby making a difficult call.”
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing with the force of it.
I pressed on. “You were all hurt. All of you. Bleeding? Wondering if you had shrapnel or bullets still in you?”
“They pulled a flechette out of Dillon. Russians love modified flechette rounds. They tear through the soft spots in our environment suits. I caught two.” Even though a soldier’s environment suit more closely resembled protective body armor, it still had weaknesses. Suit punctures plague everyone’s nightmares up there.
Wrestling down the instinct to pull him close and assure myself he’d lived through the experience to my satisfaction, I kept still. “In your situation, I would have done the same thing. I might have left the wounded behind sooner, even, so I could get the rest of the wounded back faster. You carried him to as safe a place as you could manage while risking your own life to do it. You promised to get help. You saved yourself and your team in some of the worst environmental conditions soldiers have ever known. You are ahero.”
He stared back down at his hands. Wetness splashed on his thumb as a tear fell to dampen his skin. “Then why don’t I feel like anything but a coward?”
“Because carrying the weight of every decision you make is part of what a hero does.” Now was the time to put my arm around his shoulder and pull him into me. “The worst part of doing the right thing is that sometimes, it doesn’t feel like enough.”
Jackson turned his face into my chest and allowed the tears to flow. Holding him and stroking his hair was the right thing to do, but just as I’d said, it didn’t feel like enough.
17THE BULL BY THE VAN HORNS
“We leftyour keys on the floor last night,” Jackson called from the living room.
“What?” I said, turning off the vacuum so I could hear his actual words and notwrr lff er krr blah blah blahthrough the whine of the motor.
Jackson’s head poked into the office. “I said, we left your keys on the floor last night.”
“You sure the floor didn’t take my fly ride out for a spin instead?” Good enough. I yanked the cord out of the outlet so I could wheel it into our bedroom for a turn.
Jackson chuckled. “Your ride isn’t fly, so pretty sure. Also found the paperwork for my legal stuff. Where does it go?”
“Oh. In here. Filing cabinet.” I gestured at the old, battered metal box. Not much battering remained visible under the crust of restaurant magnets I’d collected. “Third drawer, I think, or second. There should be a section labeled ‘Personal Documents’.”
“Gotcha.” He ducked back out for the papers while I pushed the vacuum into the next room over.
The bedroom didn’t take too long, but I still expected to find Jackson scrubbing a sink or putting dishes away when I got out. He’d drawn kitchen duty that week. Nope. Dishwasher still full, sink still kind of gross. I headed for the office to see if he’d fallen into my filing cabinet like the worst magical wardrobe.
He had, in a way, though with fewer fauns and Turkish Delight. One of the drawers gaped open to show rows of green hanging files. Jackson himself sat on my office chair, folder in hand as he stared at the contents.
I have said it before, and I will say it again.Shit.
ThePersonal Documentssection encompasses a broad range of subjects in my slipshod filing system. My updated birth certificate and Social Security card, both sent after I legally changed my name. (My parents refused to hand over the originals.) All the documents pertaining to my enlistment and discharge. A collection of diplomas…
Jackson looked at me as I stepped into the room. He held up a paper with excessive scrollwork andBachelors of Science, Biochemistryin fancy writing. “Babe, why does this diploma say ‘Sebastian Hendrick Van Horn’?”
…some of which were gained before I legally changed my name.
I didn’t mind that he’d looked. The documents were right there. Diplomas aren’t top-secret paperwork or violations of my privacy, at least in my personal opinion. It’s just that I’d forgotten they were there, and forgotten what name they had on them, since I do my best not to think about that piece of my life.
Again, shit.
I gave him a twinkly set of jazz hands and said, “Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the final secret in theMarrying Sebastianlevel. You get theBastian Has a Crappy Memoryachievement.”
To this day, I wish I’d gotten a picture of the dubious look he shot me. “You forgot you had a degree in Biochemistry, or you forgot your own damn name?”
“I forgot I had those in there,” I admitted, and leaned my butt against the edge of my desk. “That’s me. You’ve figured that out. I’m Sebastian Van Horn, disgraced son of the Van Horn pharmaceutical dynasty.”