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28 Nathan

Life is fragile. A man knows this from the time he’s just a boy, but for me, it didn’t really sink in until I watched men die around me.

Before I went to Afghanistan, I was young. There was a freedom I always felt, like life was limitless and so was time. I didn’t really think about how we could be here one moment and gone the next.

And then I went to war.

I watched men—good men—die. I watched the fear in their eyes as hostile people shot and attacked us. I heard the yelling, the screaming. Desperation and gunfire laced the air and sounds of the explosion still haunted my every waking hour.

When I returned home, I wasn’t the young man who left. I felt old. I felt hardened, and I glanced at men who I used to be like and felt angry they could be so innocent. I wanted to rage at them; I wanted to tell them they had no idea the time they wasted.

I wanted to tell them that everyone has an expiration date and they needed to start living like it.

But I didn’t.

I couldn’t give out advice I wasn’t living. Lead by example. It was something I tried to lay as the foundation of my career in the Marine Corps. To me, that meant being a Marine, a man that my peers could look up to. It meant showing others how to live with actions.

But my actions went against everything I learned in Afghanistan.

Instead of living life to the fullest and making the most of every minute, I sort of withdrew. I shied away from things I really enjoyed, from the people I really loved, because living life to the fullest felt too hard.

Living life to the fullest was dangerous.

It was easier to avoid commitment, avoid attachments, and be solitary because part of me thought it would hurt less. Some of those men were like brothers to me. Their lives ended in the blink of an eye.

I went and stood at their funerals and watched their loved ones cry. I watched Prior’s wife cry over his gravesite while she cradled the baby daughter he never got to meet.

How was that fair?

How was it fair that he died and I got to live?

What made my life more valuable than his?

And so I retreated. I spent my days working out and filling my time.

I didn’t want to live that way anymore.

Honor was the light that flooded my darkness. She was the glasses to my partially blind eyes. Her kisses were like balm to my wounded soul. Her determination to survive even when odds were against her was my wakeup call.

I told her I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle her. I didn’t mean sexually. I had that shit handled. That woman turned to putty in my hands. I meant emotionally. Honor was the kind of woman that would make me fall. It would be hard and fast, and once I was in love with her, I knew I would love her forever.

What if she died too?

What if I gave her everything I had and then she was taken from me?

I wouldn’t survive it.

But I didn’t want to live without her either.

I steered the Jeep in between two white lines and shifted it into park. I glanced out the windshield and did a double take. I hadn’t planned on coming here. I left her standing at the front door, wearing those tight jeans and furry boots, and I went on autopilot.

I glanced at the sign in the window of the shop and laughed.

It was the kind of laugh that expelled some of my worry and replaced it with a lighter feeling—a feeling of rightness.

It was time I made more out of my life. I would forever mourn the men that died, but I couldn’t act like I died too. I didn’t. I was still here. I still had the opportunity to be one lucky bastard. Yeah, the thought of losing Honor scared the shit out of me.

But she was young. She was healthy. We weren’t in a war zone. The odds were in our favor.

Except, of course, for one thing.

Lex.

He was a threat to me. To Honor.

I was trained to eliminate threats. Eliminating him would be a freaking pleasure.

I yanked the keys out of the engine and stepped out onto the pavement. I felt better now that I had some sort of plan.

But first, there was something I had to do.