Throughout the time of making dinner with Caleb for all of them, Evie had been welcomed into a house that was clean, comfortable, open, and quiet. The only real sound was the sound of company. Perhaps, she had thought to herself, that the only reason she had wanted to go back home earlier was because that was what she had beenusedto for all those years.
But it wasn’t what she hadwanted.
After the kids were put to bed, Caleb and Evie went to sleep in separate rooms out of respect for his kids, but he didn’t go to sleep with a clear mind.
The next morning, before the kids woke up, he took her hand and led her outside to the front pasture. The fields were small patches of white snow and dark earth from the wakening of dawn, and the trees had lost their brilliant sparkles, but the tall grasses swayed in their blondtones. The snow had melted enough for them to sprout and grow. And the horses nickered at each other while they grazed. She knew it was something serious.
He stood on the hill with her and wrapped his arms around her. Their embrace was tight and full of intent, and she grazed her loving hands along his side to his back. Caleb’s face snuggled down into her hair.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I gotta tell you what you’ve been waiting for for over a year, and I’m worried you’re going to leave me after this.”
“I won’t,” she urged. “I can’t. I’m in love with you. People don’t leave people they love.”
Evie’s eyes soared into his, her beautiful dark jewels glittering as the pinks of the sky washed her cheeks. It was easy to see that Caleb was hurting. She held his cheek. He had shaved that morning.
“What is it? I’m here. Lay it all on me, please.”
He began lowly, “I’ve not had a good past. And because I don’t talk about it, it makes people angry at me.”
She listened, bracing for something devastating. She ignored the nipping cold of the early hour.
“I’m in the Navy, as you know.”
Here it is. Be patient. Be calm.“I do, but I never knew what you did.”
“I’m an SWCC. Please don’t ask what that means. It’s too much to explain right now.”
She let him gather his breath. Her eyes never left him even though he was now looking down. Their arms hung down between them and they held their hands with each other.
He hesitated and breathed rapidly. He almost gripped her hands too tight. He began, “I’ve seen things I can’t forget, but I want to. It doesn’t matter what I do. It’s been hard. Everyone always sees me, and they think I just shoot guns because of the marksmen awards I’ve gotten, or that I kill people. But they don’t know what kind of rescue and humanitarian things I’ve done, too.”
Evie felt her blood go cold. Yet it wasn’t for the reason one would believe. She already knew it was a hard thing to talk about, but herblood went cold because she couldn’t imagine holding something that fucking heavy. With a tilt of her head, the center of her brows rose upwards in compassion, listening deeper. She had no clue what an SWCC was, but apparently, they did both risky things and also helped people.
He was getting uneasy, and she rubbed the top of his hands with her thumbs.
He shook his head. “All I want to say is that when the War on Terror started, things went from bad to worse. There was an accident with a friend of mine, and that’s really all I wanna say.” Caleb clenched his jaw and licked his lips. The memory was ripping his heart out, and he felt the tragedy was all his fault. But he would never disclose that to her.
Evie saw his shoulders rise and tense. She yearned to touch him and soothe his nerves, but she refrained, knowing it wasn’t the best thing to do at the moment. She started to lose feeling in her fingers from how hard he held her hands. She didn’t care.
Once more, he aggressively licked his lips and forced a smile. “Please don’t ask me any further details. It is what it is.”
“I won’t,” she cooed affectionately.
And Evelyn Morgan grew up in that moment. Two years ago, that response wouldn’t’ve satisfied her. Now, it did. Because he was there with her, trying to open up.
She grew up. And she felt she grew upwithhim.
The winds came gliding across their faces. He managed to conjure the strength to continue, “When I came back, people in town thought everything was a joke. They made horrible jokes about how proud they were that I served but then others hated me for it, and all sorts of fucked up shit.”
His lips trembled. “Ashley was seeing shit on the news, believing one way while I was living it and believing another. It started to be too much to take, so I stopped associating with people in town so much. Every time I tried to stick up for myself, they only would say stupid shit like, ‘Oh come on, it ain’t that bad.’ I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Now that I’m gone, I don’t associate hardly at all. People took me as wigging out and having psychotic breakdowns every time I got angry. If I had a fight with Ashley, my PTSD was to blame for it. It didn’t matterif it was because she did something to upset me, no. It was always because I was acting out and needed therapy.
“I ended up getting on medications that didn’t help. The VA here is a fucking joke, as everyone knows. But I had an incident with Ashley’s dad where I ended up fighting him and breaking his arm, and that was blamed on my unstable mental state, and I almost lost my kids.”
Evie was about ready to completely, utterly, totally, and viscerally cry. No. She swallowed and stood strong for him. She fought back those tears with a strong heart. His tears that began to pool in his eyes were damaging to her heart to see. She wanted to kiss them away, erase his pain, and hold him close.
“There’s more to that story, but I’ll save that for a rainy day.”
