Unraveled

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Gray

THE DRIVE BACK FROM SAM'S condo was a blur. I could have hit five cars and four pedestrians and I wouldn't have realized it. I was just that numb. A few careless words had laid waste to my life. For a moment there, I'd had everything. A gorgeous girl who was loyal and loved me and was willing to see through my decision to stay in the Marines. She was experienced and knew what deployment felt like. She was self-sufficient and had her own hobbies and plans. She wasn't reliant on me to make her entire life, even though I was beginning to realize that I wanted her to be my sole focus. But because I had a moment of insanity, I'd ruined it. Give her time, I thought. I just needed to give her a few hours to cry it out. Then we’d talk and I’d make her see that I was over that moment of indecision.

I pulled in blindly to the driveway and into the car pads. The rain was making it hard to see. I switched on the wipers but the wet spots remained and I realized it wasn't rain but that I was crying. I swiped the back of my hands against my cheeks and they came away wet. The driver's door opened and I looked to see Noah and Bo looking down at me with concern.

"I fucked up, boys," I choked out. Bo nodded gravely and offered me a hand. I took it and he pulled me out. The two led me out to the far end of the pool. The place was quiet, an unusual state for the house. I dropped into a lounge chair and folded over, knees on my elbows, head in my hands. Finn liked to ask people what superpower they'd ask for. Right now, I needed to be Superman and turn back time so that I could stop myself from making the biggest mistake of my life. Bo and Noah didn't say anything. Just sat there in silent contemplation.

"Want to talk about it?" Bo asked.

I shook my head. "No. I just need to wait her out."

No judgment or sage words of wisdom came forth from either of them. An hour had passed when Tucker Anderson came charging into the backyard. I heard the squeal of tires and then the slam of a car door, but I paid no attention to it. I was mesmerized by the pool and by trying to count the number of blue tiles in the mosaic trim. It was hard because the blue tiles started morphing into white tiles and then into Sam's face. I had to close my eyes when that happened and start over.

My attention diverted, I didn't see Tucker barrel down the side of the pool and dive right at me. He knocked me right on my ass, my head thudding against the lawn. My sole thought in that moment was that it was a good thing I was sitting on grass because my head would have cracked like a spoiled melon if we'd been on the concrete pool deck. Dimly I heard shouts but Tucker had the right of it. I needed an ass kicking and as her brother-in-law, he probably should deliver the punishment. As I took one blow after another, I wondered if this penance was good enough to win her back. Hit me all you want, Tucker, I deserve it.

Perhaps it was my lack of response, but his blows died out after the first flurry. Tucker was fit, but he wasn't a Marine, and it was easy enough to dislodge him. I swiped at my mouth and looked at the blood left on my hand. No kissing then, not with a split lip, but then I thought of Sam and her bruised heart and wished that Tucker could hit me again and again and again. But Bo and Noah were holding him back. I leaned back on my arms and shook my head. "Let him go. I deserve it."

Adam, the only other roommate present, looked disgusted and walked off. Maybe I could set up a punching booth instead of a kissing one and all these Woodlands guys and their pals could take a swing at me to make themselves feel better.

Bo and Noah let go, and Tucker shrugged off their hands.

"Why don't you give us a minute?" I asked my friends.

"We let you have those blows, man," Noah bit off, "because Gray seemed to think you had the right. But you don't get any more freebies. Got me?" Noah loomed over Tucker, a big black blot in front of the sun. Tucker gave a short nod but I could see his eyes burning with more retribution.

"Let it go, Noah. I can take care of myself."

Noah turned on me. "You haven't shown any signs of that so we'll just be at the other end. You want to right your wrong then get your head out of your ass." Then his voice softened. "I know what it's like to make bad decision after bad decision but the right girl will forgive you."

I hoped he was right. Bo and Noah took their own sweet time getting to the other end of the pool. In the meantime, I stood up, using the chair to steady me and offered one of the recently vacated seats to Tucker. He refused.

"I'd offer you a beer, but I'm not allowed to drink," I joked weakly.

"You take orders from Noah Jackson?" Tucker sneered.

I just shook my head. "You aren't riling me up with that so just sit down and let's get it out."

"I knew the minute I saw you that you were no good," Tucker spat.

I didn't care what Tucker thought of me, although maybe I should. He was her brother-in-law after all. "How is she?" That was the only important question in my mind. Tucker looked like he wanted to haul off and hit me. He actually raised his fist, but I grabbed it before it could make contact. "Noah was right. I let you have those. I deserved them but no more." I squeezed his fist until he grimaced. I could take him, and he needed to know it so that his first response to everything I said that he didn't like—which was probably every other word out of my mouth—wasn't to try to beat me up. At some point, I'd get tired of him trying and have to teach him a lesson. Then Sam would be mad at me. Again or more. Whatever. I was going to do everything I could to make sure my actions never angered her again.

Tucker's arm relaxed, and I let him go.

"She's got a bruised face and a broken heart. How do you think she is?"

A bruised face? “What the hell?” I stood up.

For a moment, Tucker looked confused and then his face hardened again. “She texted me before I went into work, but I ignored it. I knew she wanted that goddamn piece of felt down, and I knew exactly why. Because she was pushing Will out so you’d feel comfortable.”

My heart sinking and my fury rising, I listened to Tucker fill in details I knew nothing about. I should’ve broken down that goddamned door.

“About lunchtime, I felt shitty because I’ve ignored a lot of requests from Sam to go to lunch with our family or do stuff because I don’t want her to be over Will. I called and called but she didn’t answer. I went over and pounded on her door and she didn’t get up, so I use the key that was Will’s—”

“You used her fucking dead husband’s key to get into her house?” That was some sick shit, and I wanted to punch him hard for that. He looked slightly chagrined but not enough.

“Yeah, I used the goddamned key, and it’s a good thing I did because she’s got a shiner on her face the size of some man’s fist.”

I didn’t let Tucker finish. I ran toward the house. Inside Ethan was laughing it up with a couple of the girls. I jerked him out of the chair and slammed my fist into his jaw. Ignoring the screams from the girls and the “what the hells” from the guys, I dragged him outside onto the lawn and pushed him down on the ground. “You like to hit girls, you bottom-sucking boot?” His flesh gave way under my fists but it wasn’t satisfying. Hands pulled me back and I heard gasps behind me but my attention was focused on Drake. Struggling against the arms that held me, I shouted at him. “You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.”

He wiped a hand across his mouth, displeased I guess because I made him bleed. “Shit, you are such a pussy, Gray. Left your balls on her counter, did ya? All this crying last night about how you were so worried about her cheating on you. Do you want to know what we did while you were passed out in your drool here?”

He laughed maniacally and I charged him, breaking away from the human bonds of my friends. He tried to fight back but he was slow and uncoordinated. Not even one of his fists came near my face. I had him on his back, repeatedly hitting him until I was dragged away. He lay still, knocked unconscious, but my blood lust hadn’t abated. I spat on him and then turned away, looking for Tucker. He stood off to the side with a disgusted look on his face and his arms folded. "She need anything?"

"For you to leave her alone." He turned and walked toward the front of the house. I followed him. I wanted that key back. It should be mine, and I was going to give everything I had to convince Sam that I belonged in her life. I’d quit the Corps, move here, live in her little condo, and service her on my knees every day if that was what it took.

"Other than that because that isn't going to happen." I had ten—no nine—days left before I had to go back to San Diego and every minute of them was going to be spent convincing her that she should give me another chance.

"She doesn't want to see you ever again. She never wants to hear from you. She's going to wipe you out of her memory."

The verbal blows landed harder than the physical ones but like a stupid man, I stood back up and asked for more. "Did you talk to her about what happened?"

He snorted. “Only that she was done with military guys forever.” He threw something up in the air—her key—the shiny metallic glinting in the sun. I wanted to grab it from him. I clenched my teeth together to prevent the yowl of pain that was rising up inside me. I hated to hear that I hurt her so. Tucker went on digging the knife even deeper, twisting it so every part of my heart felt like it was being scored by a dull knife. "I only remember seeing her that bad once before, and that was after my brother died. She was like a ghost for months. Didn't eat. Couldn't sleep. We had to force her to take sleeping pills and slip protein gunk in shakes so that she wouldn't die from just not caring for herself. We almost lost her after he died, and when she started coming around a few months ago, started smiling again and interacting with her family again, I thought it—” He broke off but I knew what he was thinking.

"You thought it was time for her to start loving again."

He fisted his hand but at my challenging look he placed it carefully on his thigh and nodded grimly. I would’ve loved to repay him with a fight right now. I was brimming with unspent rage. He turned his back on me and walked to his truck. Whatever he'd come to say was done. "But you aren't going to see her anymore. They’re going to England tonight for ten days to see her dad. In fact, she's being driven to the airport right now. And Bitsy's confiscated her phone. They don’t want her in contact with you." He said the word “you” like I was a terrorist.

Ten days. My heart sunk and the terror I was feeling must have shown on my face because Tucker laughed, a mean and ugly chuckle that had nothing to do with mirth and everything to do with his celebration of my pain. "Yup. You aren't going to be able to contact her for a good ten days, and by that time, it'll be over for you. You aren't Will. She'll be over you by the time the plane lands in London."

With the knockout blow delivered, Tucker turned and jogged to his truck. The implication was clear. He'd be here when she got back, and I wouldn't. But I wasn't leaving anything to chance. I sprinted to Bo's car and jumped in. Bo stood in front of the car, allowing Tucker to leave first.

"Goddammit, get out of my way," I screamed at Bo. He wrenched open the driver's door and shook his head. "Move over, I'm not letting you drive in that condition."

I didn't care who was driving as long as we got to Sam's condo in the next five minutes. It took twenty, and I cursed Bo the entire way. His patience was at an end because he bit out, "If you open your mouth one more time, I'm turning the car around and driving us both into the nearest lake." I shut up promptly after that.

At the condo complex, I jimmied the outdoor lock, not wasting time getting someone to buzz me in. Bo was following hot on my heels. I ran up the three flights of stairs and down to Sam's condo. "Sam, let me in." I pounded on the door. I hit it repeatedly, yelling her name. I kept pounding even after my hand started bleeding so I switched to my other hand. Finally a door opened but it wasn't Sam's door. It was her neighbor's door. I leaned against the metal door, and waited to for the words I didn't want to hear. "She's not here, asshole. She left about fifteen minutes ago with her family and a big suitcase."

I swallowed back the bile at those words, but I wasn't ready to give up yet.

"Back to the Woodlands. To her house."

We raced back to the Woodlands. I wisely kept my mouth shut and so did Bo. I cradled my bloody right hand in my lap, trying not to get blood all over the interior of Bo's sports car. We drove up to Sam's house but it was empty. The lights were off and the house looked still. I still got out and looked in every window and door I could, pounding on the door with my left hand and yelling for Sam. But she was gone. They'd taken her away from me. I sunk down on her back porch. I hadn't even had the opportunity to make it right, and by the time she’d be back, I'd have to be back at Pendleton.

"I'll stay here, then,” I decided.

Bo knocked me on the back of the head. "So you'll be dishonorably discharged or thrown in the brig? That's going to win her back?" He hit me again. "Use your fucking head."

"All my ideas are shit." Bo opened his mouth and I threatened him, "Don't fucking say I told you so or it'll be on right now."

He closed his mouth then and then said, "I'm only standing down because I think the squirrel over there is stronger than you at the moment."

"I don't know how Sam got up and lived again after losing her husband because right now the pain is fucking unbearable,” I choked out.

Bo drew me against his side, a hand on the top of my head and I allowed myself to lean into him, like we were out in the desert and too tired to stand up after a thirty-mile hike through the hills of Afghanistan. "You gotta go home, get your head together, and plan an assault. There is no citadel, human or natural, that can withstand a siege from a Marine."

"I hope you're right."

They took me to the airport the next day. Silence was our fourth companion, so heavy and weighty it could have been another passenger.

When we arrived at the gate, Noah and Bo both got out of Noah’s truck. Bo had felt so sorry for me, he gave me shotgun even though I hadn’t called it.

“You look like hell,” Noah commented.

“Thanks, man.” I shouldered my seabag and rucksack. “It was real fun.”

Any moment the police would come and boot them out of the drop off lane but neither of them seemed to care. Noah grabbed me and pulled me in for a long hug. "You know we love you, man."

I nodded, the emotions of the last few days riding so close to the surface that I couldn't speak. He shoved me away then and grabbed me around my neck so I'd look straight at him. "You love her enough, you never stop fighting for her. Never stop showing her how much she matters. You give it your all, and even if she doesn't accept it, you lived up to your own standards and you can walk away with no regrets. But I'm telling you, Gray, that if you love her, she's going love you back. I know it."

I think it was the most words I’d ever heard Noah string together.

"Do you now?" I snorted.

"I do." He let go and said, "Semper Fi, Marine."

Always faithful.

Noah was right in one sense. I wondered a lot after Carrie had cheated on me if I'd given it my all. Maybe I hadn't. Probably I hadn't. I loved having sex with her, but I loved playtime with my boys just as much. And that had sat uncomfortably on my shoulders. Deployment had been a relief from the constant emotional upheaval.

In the airport, people shied away from me, the bruises on my face making me look like a dangerous man. The airline ticket agent didn’t give me the upgrade that servicemen and women usually received and I was stuck in the back by the bathrooms in a tiny seat with no space. The woman beside me shrank to her side as if I was a monster. I was a monster, though. Only a monster would’ve done what I’d done to Sam.

When I arrived home, I threw away my enlistment papers and drove out to see my parents.

"I'm not reenlisting," I told my dad. His mouth quirked to the side in what looked like disappointment, but he didn’t ask about my bruised face.

"What will you do?"

I wasn't going to say that I planned to return to the city to try to win over a girl, so I just mumbled, "Don't know."

"That doesn't sound like much of a plan." My dad had been a drill instructor when he retired, and you didn't get to that position without perfecting a stern look of reproof and disappointment. He laid a good one on me, but I was too numb to care.

I threw up my hands. "What do you want out of me? You said there were better things for me than just the Marines. You and Pops got in a fight about it at Christmas, and made Mom cry, so now I’m telling you I’m getting out. I’m going to get a degree, maybe go into law.” Maybe I’d be the lawyer Sam didn’t want to be. At this point I had no other plan but to win her back.

"I told you that because you were looking like you were at a crossroads. I wanted to make sure you thought long and hard about whatever decision you made."

I gaped at him. "I thought you wanted me to get out."

"Hell, no." He stood up and began to pace, his hands folded behind his back like he was barking orders to an unseasoned recruit, which is what I was acting like. "I wanted you to know that the Marines weren't your only option. That because we have a little more money now and I have a certain position, that you've got other choices. The Marines were good enough for your grandpa and me but we didn't have much. I know that there was a lot of pressure on you to enter the Corps because your older brothers decided against it. I wanted you to have an out."

I sank back in my chair. "I don't know what to say."

"Think about your service again," Dad recommended. "I don't want you making a hasty decision because you thought that’s what I wanted, but you'll have to do it on your own time and you’d better hurry before the boat fills up."

Boat space—or space in the Corps—was limited, particularly with the troop drawdown and the government tightening its belt on the defense budget. Ponder too long about your future options, and they’d be decided for you.

At my sigh, Dad came over and squeezed my shoulder. "But no matter when you make your decision, there will always be room for a good Marine like you. I'm proud of you, son."

Oh man, if you only knew. I swallowed and stood up, saluting my dad. He knocked my arm down, and drew me in for a hug. "Looks like all that thinking took a lot out of you. Let your mom coddle you for a bit. It'll make her feel good."

I spent the day with my parents and then drove over to my brothers' garage and they took me in without question. Unlike my dad, my brothers knew immediately what was wrong with me and it wasn't that I'd been wrestling with a decision about my future. "Girl troubles, huh?" said Luke, my oldest brother, but that was it. I tooled around in the garage doing odd jobs, running errands and learning a bit about custom painting, silently stoking my pain into hardened determination. Then it was back to Camp Pendleton.

My bruises were mostly healed by the time I got back to base but my CO still called me in. “Am I gonna hear about some Marine breaking shit in bars and generally making the Corps look bad?”

“No, sir.”

“I’d better not,” he harrumphed. “Where’s your reenlistment papers then?”

“I’m not reenlisting, sir.”

CO Dailey looked alarmed and then narrowed his eyes at me. “You better tell me what happened out there.”

“Nothing important, sir.”

“If it ain’t important, then why the hell aren’t you reenlisting? If it’s a tiny bar fight, then we give you an Article 15 and call it a day. With your record, that ain’t gonna hamper you.”

“No need for a non-judicial punishment, sir. Nothing will reflect poorly on the Corps, sir.”

The CO stared at me for a long time hoping I’d cough up some details but I stood rigidly at attention, giving him nothing but the stony face I’d learned in boot camp.

“Go on then, get out of here.”