“Lucy, I am sending an ambulance out to you.”
“No. No hospitals. I’m bruised, not broken,” I whimpered, a pathetic attempt to laugh through the shaky breaths.
“I will send someone to pick you up then, and they can decide if you need the hospital. That’s final.”
There would be no winning this battle. The finality in his tone said everything. I wasn’t speaking to Marco, my brother. I was speaking to Officer Coleman.
“Fine,” I repeated before hanging up on him.
My energy was waning, and I just wanted today to be over.
It’s cold, though, so if whoever it was could hurry, that would be great.
Chapter 3
SAM
The steaming hot water felt amazing against my aching muscles. I pushed myself a little too hard while at the gym today. My body screamed at me each time I rolled my shoulders, but I loved it that way. The pain made me feel alive. It was a reminder that I was here, maybe not completely present, but indeed alive.
I’ve had one hell of a time adjusting to simply being home, and sometimes it felt like I wasn’t cut out for civilian life. I wanted to go back, to continue to serve because it was all I'd known.
When I stepped off the bus, my mother embraced me, but it didn’t feel the same anymore. She was hugging Sam, but who was that? Who was I without the uniform? Once the realization really hit me, I wrapped my arms around her, arms locked into a tight squeeze, and I never wanted to let go.
My heart remained empty, though. As I looked at my friends and family, it felt like someone was missing. A face that got me through the hardest days. A woman whose picture I clutched onto for dear life when the Humvee flipped, and my life flashed before my eyes. Lucy Coleman was the real reason my feet would never touch war-torn ground again.
She was the younger sister of my best friend, Marco, and that made her off-limits from day one. Sometimes, however, I wondered what would have happened if I’d followed my heart instead of running away.
I’d grown up with the Colemans. Our mothers were best friends. I guess they went to high school together or something. Around my thirteenth birthday, my mother got sick, and my father had all his attention on helping her, which left me to fend for myself most of the time.
It was hard for me to cope with my mother’s sickness, and I started getting into trouble. I never spoke openly about my pain until the day I saw Lu on the swings in the backyard of her parents’ house.
I’d joined her, and she gave me silence…the safety I’d needed. This continued over the course of a few days until, finally, I opened up. After that, we were practically inseparable. If it wasn’t for Lucy, I probably wouldn’t have learned to cook a real meal or feel anything other than exhausted.
Back then, I was afraid of losing a lifelong friendship if our relationship didn’t work out. So, like the dumb fuck I was, I sabotaged it and left without a word to anyone. If I had stayed, she’d be mine by now, and that was a fact.
The time wasn’t right then, but it was now. The only difference was that I had been fighting an entirely different battle then. In trying to heal, I lost myself. I had joined the Marines because I wanted her to be proud of the man she loved, but all I became was a shell of myself.
I looked at my best friend, grabbed him in a half-handshake, half-hug, and asked him for a place to crash. He’d accepted.
At some point, he’d said I could stay there indefinitely because it would be easier to split the bills, which he had a point. The house was paid off, and aside from necessities, I had no problem splitting everything down the middle.
It’d been around a year since I’d been home, and I’d managed to avoid her for now. I was trying my best to remainunder the radar while I went to therapy, adapted, and found a job.
Clearing my throat, I grabbed the towel from the rack as memories of Lu flashed through my mind, including the night I broke her heart.
When I lied to her.
When I made her feel like she meant nothing to me.
I’m so sorry.
Now that I was home, I’d spend the rest of my life groveling if I had to. I’d do anything to be the reason she had that soft glimmer in her eyes. Whether she ended up with me wouldn’t matter, and if she didn’t choose me, I would understand. I would happily live with my mistakes to watch her achieve every goal she'd set for herself. I’d heard about the person she settled with from Marco, and was surprised she chose such a flaky, good-for-nothing like him.
Steam followed me in a trail as I walked down the hall toward my room, stopping abruptly when my phone rang out from downstairs. I immediately went to investigate, wondering who would be calling me at eight at night.
Marco’s name flashed across the screen, and I sat down, rolling my eyes as the towel rode up my legs before I answered. The hello barely left my mouth before his rushed sentences hit my ears.
“Are you naked, right now?” he asked nonchalantly.
