24 Days to Trial
Dylan and hisbest friends sighed collectively as they finally lay down to relax for the day. The three of them were stretched out on the lawn, reclined on their elbows, lower backs and shoulders screaming after the long hours spent bent over the porch putting on layer after layer of paint and sealant.
And that was in between completely redoing all the outdoor landscaping. They’d pulled up the shrubs surrounding the front porch and replaced them with flowering hydrangea bushes. They tilled the soil, added fertilizer, and tried their best to weed and line the flower beds in stone.
It had been a long day outside hunched over either the porch or dirt, and they were feeling every minute of it.
Kole groaned, stretching his neck from side to side and rolling his shoulders back. His dirty-blond hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. “I’m going to be feeling this for a whole week. Remind me why I spent my weekend off helping you with this stuff?”
Boone snorted. “Personally, I’m here for the free booze.” He lifted his bottle at Dylan in mock salute before tipping it back and draining it. “Another round, fellas?”
Dylan and Kole nodded their agreement and watched him in silence as he cut across the grass back toward the house. The three of them had been assigned to the same squad in the Army, and Dylan was grateful they’d both settled nearby in Virginia Beach, a large military community, after their tour was done. Kole and Boone came up most often to help with the renovations, but the other two from their team, Connor and Maverick, who were still active duty and stationed in Norfolk, occasionally made the short trip too.
“I worry about him, ya know?” Kole said softly, both of them wary of being overheard, even while Boone was out of sight.
“Me too. He hasn’t been the same since it happened.”
“It” was the attack in Afghanistan that had almost taken Dylan’s leg and had taken their friend Jace’s life.
“He still blames himself,” Kole said matter-of-factly. “Anytime I try to talk to him about it, he shuts down even more than usual. I can hear him screaming at night, too, when the nightmares start.” He took a long drink from his beer as silence fell between them.
Dylan rubbed the label on his beer bottle with his thumb, tracking the beads of condensation rolling slowly down the side. “He knows that none of us blame him for what happened. It could’ve happened to anyone, at any time. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it, no way he could have known.”
Kole nodded pensively. “I think he realizes that, to an extent. But it doesn’t make the survivor’s guilt any less consuming. We both feel it too.”
Dylan was silent. They did know how Boone felt. To have survived but lost a friend, knowing it so easily could have been him, and plagued with the thoughts of,Why him and not me?Did I deserve to live more than him? If he was a better man than I am, why did I survive?
Dylan wasn’t immune to his own nightmares. He woke up covered in sweat and shaking, sometimes having to rush to the bathroom to puke up whatever was in his stomach.
Boone’s figure reappeared from the house, three bottles juggled in his massive hands. The man was their squad’s gentle giant, and his size was intimidating to those who didn’t know him. He was tall, maxing out at six foot five, but he was thick too. Now that they’d been out of service for months and no longer needed to maintain appearances for regulations, his face was constantly covered in a scruffy beard, never fully grown out but not a close shave either, and his hair was shaggy, flowing over his ears and dipping to cover his eyes. His size and ruggedness scared most people off and gave the impression that he was a violent man, but truthfully, he was the gentlest of them all. He was quiet, preferring solitude to company, but unwaveringly loyal, and he cared deeply for the few he let close to him.
It was why he took the loss of Jace the hardest. They’d been on a two-week joint training exercise with the Afghan military, and it was their poor luck that a terrorist armed with improvised explosives on a rooftop nearby had a clear shot at them.
Jace had been closest to the blast, which had only a small radius, and was killed instantly. Dylan had also been close to the explosion, and he was struck with a single large piece of shrapnel. It hit close to his femoral artery, only missing by a centimeter. Maverick gave him rough sutures to hold him together, and they got him back to base, where he was flown immediately to Germany so a hospital could provide him better care.
Really, Dylan was alive because of the actions Mav took to give him field care.
The big guy finally reached them and passed out the beers, all of the caps already removed.
“Thanks, man.” Kole accepted the offered bottle and tipped the neck of it against Boone’s. He merely grunted in response and settled between them. They sat in silence once more, each staring out at the calm water of Oyster Creek and lost in their own thoughts.
Dylan looked across the creek to where Red’s house was on the opposite bank, smiling to himself at the idea of her moving so close to him without even knowing it.
Kole suddenly swung his head around to look at Dylan. “So ...” he began, drawing out the syllable in a way that made Dylan know to dread whatever he was about to say.
“No,” he said, trying to shut Kole down, but it only got the man more excited to push his buttons.Damn it.
“So,” Kole began again, not at all phased by Dylan’s glare. “Your girl, Kelsi. The one you would never shut up about when we were on tour. You said the other day she’s back in town, yeah? She single?”
Dylan closed his eyes and took a long swig from his beer, the chill of the fresh one hardly cutting through the heat of the day at all. He regretted ever bringing her up to these idiots. “She’s not my girl.”Yet.“But I think she’s single, yeah.”
“So, what are we going to do about it?”
Dylan scoffed and cracked one eye to glare at his friend. “Weare not going to do anything.”
Kole chuckled. “Nice to meet you, Denial, I’m Kole.”
Dylan didn’t hesitate, he grabbed the sweat-soaked towel next to him in the grass and hit Kole in the face with a loud, wet slap.
