Page 25 of Wild Child
“Always.”
The cagey feeling I’d been battling since I returned home welled back up. It grew every day, more and more suffocating. More and more diabolical. Darker. Heavier. Filled with flashes of fire and light and explosions all around me.
This last deployment hadn’t been my first, but it had been my longest. A damn year in Afghanistan, cut off from the world. My parents emailed, sent packages, but it had been the emptiest, most terrifying year of my life.
Without Ellie, everything felt empty.
But that deployment had been hell unleashed, which only made it all feel worse. Disaster riddled it like holes in an old boat. The attacks didn’t stop. The sense of impending doom never left. The hits from the border never stopped smacking us on the back of the head, no matter how much aerial support we fed over there to prevent them from killing us first. On our “mission of peace.”
There was no peace.
Even on American soil, peace had eluded me. Sometimes I woke up at night in a cold sweat. Minutes would pass before reality became clear, but sleep never returned. The lack of deep rest made me feel like a zombie, and I stumbled through the day with thoughts of Ellie and naps that only made it worse.
And I didn’t know how to tell anyone.
Didn’t know how to form the words that would sound something likeI’m back and I’m struggling and everything feels too close. Like it’s pressing on me. Text messages come too fast. The radio is too loud. People talk too much to strangers they don’t know. I don’t know what to say when people ask how I’m doing. My parents’ house feels too different to be mine. I don’t belong here anymore.
I don’t know how to be back.
“I need to beat the shit out of something,” I said in a croak.
Mark studied me with a shrewd gaze. Eternities seemed to pass before he nodded without a hint of question, pity, or compassion.
“You know I have it,” he said. “If there’s anything we specialize in around here, it’s destruction.”
With a jerk of his head, he motioned to the back door and stood. Relief filled me. He didn’t ask. Wouldn’t question. There were no answers I had to avoid, make up, or lie about. As I’d hoped, Mark got it.
And now I could vent the rage over my relentless deployment and all the lives lost somewhere safe. Maybe, justmaybe,I’d get a full night’s sleep tonight.
“Come on.” Mark grabbed my shoulders and shoved me down a back hallway ahead of him. “I have a woodpile and an ax with your name on it. Don’t come back until the whole thing is split and ready to keep my wife warm through the winter.”
7
Ellie
Apile of skewed undershirts commanded my attention two days later.
The smell of coffee followed me while I walked around Pineville Outfitters setting things straight. I attempted to contact our sister company in Jackson City to coordinate canoe rentals, and haphazardly managed inventory. Thanks to the Frolicking Moose, I smelled like espresso all day. An eight-hour shift at the shop had preceded my six-hour shift at the Outfitters. Tonight, I’d drop into bed exhausted.
But not because of work.
Devin haunted my thoughts since our quiet canoe ride. The truths he’d unveiled had slowly unwound in my head. I reviewed the last three years—particularly time with his parents, Millie and Mac—with a new understanding. As if I had to relive my life now that I could see it through a new lens.
Through thetruth.
And what he said made sense. Mac’s pride. Millie’s natural piousness and humility meant she rarely spoke about money, not even the seemingly sudden success of her company. In some ways, it seemed to come from nowehere. She’d never explained where the funds to expand came from, and I hadn’t asked.
In other words, history reallydidstack up.
No texts had come through from Devin, and I didn’t have his number. The distance was a relief. I needed space away from . . . him. I’d just wrapped my mind around the idea that we could be friends again. Maybe acquaintances was a better word. What was the difference? In my world, not much, and that didn’t seem right either.
Devin would go back to his life in a few weeks, and I’d continue on mine. It had taken two days to wrap my head around the idea that I could spend time with him without regretting it later. Without yearning to feel his touch. Without falling even more in love with him. That was the old Ellie.
We had neverbeenlovers, no matter how badly I had once wished it.
Now I could really set the past behind me and move forward without Devin. At some point, I’d be able to settle into that idea. Once I could comprehend that Devin was living in his own world as my friend, not occupying my world as . . . everything. Friendship with Devin had, at times, felt more like soulship.
Could it be different now?
