I chuckle. “Maybe in a minute.”
“Tell me about that day,” she says.
I shake my head. “I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?” she whispers.
“Because it hurts to go back there,” I admit. I’d rather stay numb.
“They all died?” she asks softly.
I nod.
“How many were there?” She adjusts the blanket so that it touches more of me, and I feel her feet slide beneath my thigh. I smile. I like that. I like it way more than I should.
“There were ten of us,” I say.
“What were their names?”
My chest aches like a bitch now, and my throat hurts because I have a lump in it that I can’t swallow past. When I look over at her, her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. Fuck. I made her sad. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t burden you with this.”
“Burden me,” she says, laughing lightly. It’s a tinkling noise, pleasant like wind chimes on a windy day on my grandma’s porch. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.”
I think back. I can still see their faces. I can see what they looked like before and after the explosion. And that’s what haunts me. “There was Jimmy. He was nineteen and he liked to play poker. That boy beat me every time we played.”
She lays the side of her face on the back of the couch and snuggles into the cushions. She yawns. “Who else?” she asks.
“Ron and Bobby and David and John and Bubbah. They were all from Tennessee and they met in Basic.”
“Bubbah?” She snorts.
“He had flaming red hair and his real name was Seamus O’Malley.”
“Bubbah sounds so much better.” She grins, and my chest aches some more.
“Alex was a pain in the ass. He would steal my shower shoes and hide them. He didn’t want to wear them. He just didn’t want me to be able to wear them, either.” I miss his pranks. “Jeff was my brother from another mother. I knew him the longest.”
“Two more?” she asks, holding up two fingers.
I nod. “Rex and Rick. They were like twins. They went everywhere together.”
She nods, her cheek rubbing the couch, and I wish her head were on my chest so I could feel it. I want the feel of her breath on me. Fuck.
“Rick survived the blast with me,” I blurt out.
She picks her head up. “I thought you said everyone died.”
“He was burned, a lot like me, but he picked me up when he realized my leg had been blown off and he carried me over his shoulder.” My gut’s churning and I think I might have to stop to go and throw up. But then she scoots closer to me, and lays her head on my shoulder. She has to pull her feet from under my thigh when she scoots close, so I lift them into my lap, and then I cover her up with the afghan. She settles against me. I can feel her heart beating through the side of her breast, which is pressed against my arm.
“What happened?” she whispers.
My voice cracks, and I struggle to continue. “He got us to safety, but just as we cleared the crossing, he was hit by sniper fire. He fell, and I tried to pick him up and drag him with me, but the medics ran over, and pulled me away. He died, they told me later.” He saved me and then he f**king died. He could have left me lying there. But he didn’t.
I feel wetness on my cheeks and I f**king hate it. Faith doesn’t look up at me. She just lies there and I feel her tears against my shoulder. “Fuck, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” I say. I tip her face up to mine and she looks into my eyes.
“What makes you keep going?” she asks. Her mouth is so close to mine that I can smell the chips she was eating earlier. I lick my lips. I want to kiss her. But I can’t start anything. My days are numbered after all.
“I don’t know that I can keep going,” I admit. “Some days are really hard.”
“How long did it take to learn to use that leg?” she asks. Her hand touches my thigh, and I tighten the muscle.
“A long time.”
She wipes her face on my sleeve and heaves a sigh. I know she saw my wet cheeks, and I don’t care. I don’t know why I don’t. I should. Because men don’t cry, right?
“Men do cry,” she whispers.
Shit. Did I say that out loud?
“If you say so,” I toss out flippantly. I wipe my face.
“Do you ever wonder why you survived?” she asks.
“Only every f**king day,” I grunt. I wasn’t worthy. I wasn’t good enough. It should have been someone else. I didn’t have a mother or a wife or even a girlfriend at home. I was alone, except for them.
“Do you believe in faith?” she asks.
I look down at her. “You mean like in God?”
She shakes her head. “Faith in the knowledge that there’s something bigger than you.” She holds up a finger to stop me when I blow out a breath. I don’t believe in faith or God or predestination or any of that bullshit. Not anymore. “I don’t mean faith that there’s some entity that’s in charge of your life. I mean faith that you are intrinsically connected to other people. That you are never alone, even on your most lonely day.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Imagine it like invisible threads. They connect you to people. Just like you were connected to your parents, until you didn’t have them any more. Then, when you disconnected from them, you still connected with others, like the men on your team. Your threads don’t get broken when you lose someone. You’re connected to that person and the memory of that person forever. But your strings multiply. You add to them, and the new connections become a part of you.”