Page 15 of We Thought We Knew It All
I headed straight for the day care. Declan would be there and Liam would be too since pre-school was in the morning. They’d gotten me through a lot over the last year when it seemed like the only thing that healed my broken heart was hugging my boys.
My phone buzzed when I pulled in to the parking lot.
Jamie:Cal, I need to see you.
I closed my eyes, leaning my head back.Don’t do it,I told myself. Jamie was leaving and I couldn’t let him take my heart with him. Not again. My boys needed the pieces that were left.
Callie:No. I’m sorry, Jamie, but I have to do what’s best for me and my boys. I don’t think that is being around you. Good luck with everything. You deserve to be happy.
I put my phone in my purse and went inside.
7
Jamie
I didn’t know what I was doing there anymore. My platoon needed me. A cramp twisted my hand, reminding me that I couldn’t go back.
I was rootless.
My phone was clutched in my good hand, Callie’s text still lighting up the screen.
I thought I’d gotten over her years ago, and now, after seeing her for one day, I was back at the beginning. I was the fifteen-year-old boy who felt guilty for wanting his best friend’s sister; the sixteen-year-old who loved nothing more than fighting with her; the seventeen-year-old who thought he had no chance; the eighteen-year-old who finally got her to love him back and then left her.
I was all of them and none of them. Those boys were fond memories, but I didn’t always feel like they were a part of me anymore. I’d changed - and it wasn’t just growing up.
I glanced down at the hands that used to fit so perfectly around a gun—as if they’d been made for it. It felt natural. I’d been good - the best weapons expert and marksman in my company. Enemies were just targets. We were at war and I was a Ranger.Ranger’s lead the way.Damn right we did.
Going into the army, I’d wanted to prove my dad wrong. Despite everything between us, I’d wanted him to be proud of me. Just once. The irony was that my missions were ones that even as a senator he couldn’t know about. He’d never heard how good I was; the kind of soldier his disappointment of a son had grown into.
Maybe just making it into the Army Rangers was enough to make him see.
I doubted it.
And now he was gone. I was here in this God forsaken town.
Without him here it shouldn’t have been so bad, but it was hard to see where I fit when the very people I was there to see didn’t want me around.
I snapped myself out of it quickly, refusing to go down that road again. I’d grown up with no self-respect. The army changed that. You could take a soldier out of the army but you couldn’t take the army out of a soldier.
I squared my shoulders and raised my chin, looking into the mirror. I pulled back on the fingers of my bad hand, stretching my wrist and gritting my teeth against the pain. None of them could know.
I slid a belt through the loops on my jeans, buckled it, and pulled on a pair of shoes.
A few minutes later, I pulled up outside my brother’s office and it was like stepping into the past. I could still see my father sitting behind his tall desk, a scowl firmly in place.
I didn’t bother stopping at the receptionist’s desk. She called after me, but I knew my way, guessing correctly that Jay had taken the large office I knew so well.
He was sitting at his desk, hunched over with his head in his hands. His dark hair was wild from his fingers that ran through it constantly.
At the wake the day before, he’d kept everything together so well, but I should have expected this. He’d been close with our father. It was one of the many issues between us. My fellow soldiers had been more brothers to me than the man in front of me, yet I felt this connection to him, anyway.
I rapped my knuckles softly against the door. He looked up with red-rimmed eyes that didn’t register my presence at first. Then he jerked back as if waking suddenly and straightened his ruffled clothes.
“Yes?” he snapped.
“Hey brother.” I gave him a tentative smile.
“Jamie.” He nodded.
