Page 37 of Coming In Hot
If he would just stay still and stop trying to get out of bed before he's ready, I'm sure the stitches would hold.
“What are you doing here?” Arlo asks, his voice edged with concern, like he's about to scold me.
“Working. What do you think I'm doing?”
“Pharo, you're part-time. You've been here for almost two weeks. Your rotation is over. Why haven’t you gone home?”
“Because the team…” I start, but he doesn’t let me finish.
“The team will still be here when you come back,” Arlo cuts in. “Look,” he sighs, sounding exhausted, “this job isn’t going anywhere. It'll be here for the next guy, and the guy after that. I know I've bugged you for a long time about coming on full-time. But not because being here is more important thannotbeing here. It's because you're lost. I can see it. Anyone can see it. You don’t know where you belong in this world, and I thought, being here with the team, having a purpose, might ground you. But when I look at you now, I see that I was wrong.”
“You’re not wrong,” I say quietly. “It does ground me. I need to work. I need…”
“What you need is to go home,” Arlo interrupts, his voice softer now, like he’s pleading with me. “You have a mother, friends, and a life waiting for you. This job—it’ll put you in a grave faster than you can blink, and it won’t remember your name when you’re gone. We’re not here to serve our country or do anything noble. We’re here to earn a paycheck. That’s it. Each one of us has a different dream for that money, a different purpose, but in the end, we all have the same goal. What’s yours, Pharo? What dream are you chasing?”
He sits up and reaches for the glass of water on his nightstand, and I rush to lean across him and hand it to him before he can strain himself. “You're right. I do have a dream, and it's not flying helicopters and chasing down bad guys.”
“Then what the fuck are you still doing here?” he laughs.
“I don’t know,” I mutter, pinching my nose and rubbing at the tension in my brow. “Chasing ghosts.”
He leans back against the pillow, his face serious. “Go home, Pharo. Visit your mother. Go out with your friends and have a beer. Get laid. Don’t just dream about your future, make it a reality.”
I glance down at my hands. Besides my mother, I don't have a whole lot anchoring me to any particular place—Cairo, Black Mountain, Iraq. They’re all just places I’ve lived. What would it feel like to have a reason to come home? To have someone waiting for me? Someone who made me promise to come back in one piece?
My promise to Jax echoes in my mind.
Is he waiting for me?
The idea strikes me with a strange warmth, something that spreads from the pit of my stomach to the rest of me. A heat I can’t ignore. The same heat that threatened to burn me the night I left his kitchen, after licking the sauce from his lip. I had fully expected him to punch me in the face. But he didn’t. He just stood there, stunned. Would he let me do it again?
I shake the thought away, trying to focus on Arlo’s, but I can’t.
Maybe Arlo’s right. Maybe it’s time to stop chasing ghosts. Maybe it's time to face the one that’s been haunting me for far too long.
“Pharo,” Arlo repeats, raising his voice, a little sharper this time. “Are you listening?”
“I heard you, Arlo.” I try to keep the frustration out of my voice, but I can feel the edge creeping in. I can’t focus on anything he’s saying right now, not with everything swirling in my head.
Arlo doesn't let up. “You're not hearing me. You're still stuck in this world of yours, like it's the only thing keeping you grounded. But it's not. You’re not gonna find what you're searching for out there, man. Trust me.”
I clench my jaw, trying to push the images of Jax from my mind—his face, that damn promise I made to him, the way he looked at me in that kitchen. Every part of me wants to shove it all down, to keep moving forward without thinking about what’s really pulling at me. But it’s hard to ignore the truth that’s starting to sink in, harder to pretend that I don’t feel the pull of something more.
Arlo watches me carefully, and I know he can see through the facade. “If you don’t go now, you might never get another chance,” he says softly.
He’s right, and I know it. But what the hell am I supposed to do about it?
“Well?” Arlo presses, his voice expectant, watching me with that knowing look. “What are you gonna do?”
I exhale slowly, rubbing my hand over my face, trying to clear the fog that’s clouding my brain.
“It would seem I owe an old friend dinner.”
Arlo’s lips curl into a small, knowing smile. “Took you long enough,” he mutters, his tone softer now, but still filled with that gentle reprimand I’ve always known from him. “Don’t screw this up, Pharo.”
* * *
I sleep for a solid day straight, and when I finally wake, I feel like I'm stepping out of a dream. My body feels heavy, but the exhaustion is fading, and the haze in my mind starts to clear. I shower off the travel dust and the stress of the last few weeks, letting the hot water wash the tension from my shoulders.
