“I was thinking I understand why Monday is your favorite day of the week. After all that drama, you probably need boring routine.”
Abrupt laughter burst out of him, the force of it flying toward the ceiling. “I never said Monday is my favorite.”
Propping myself up on his chest, I met his eyes. “You hear that?”
His body stiffened and concentration filled his face. After a moment, he glanced at me. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. It’s the sound of younotdisagreeing.”
He groaned.
“Kieran?”
“Hmm?”
“What happened that day?”
His chest rose and fell, and he pushed some hair out of my eyes. “It was a bloodbath. Bullets flying, grenades going off. People screaming.” He went silent for a moment and brushed at my hair again. “They were killing their own people too.”
I stroked the side of his face, and to my surprise, he leaned into the touch.
“I got shot three times,” he murmured, reaching between us to rub at the shoulder covered with his tattoo. Following his touch, I saw the scar hidden beneath the ink. “My shoulder, my side, and my leg.”
Immediately, I tugged the blanket down, looking at the large tattoo on his thigh, finding a scar similar to the one on his shoulder there too.
“I went down hard with the third and felt like an epic failure, like the trust the command put in me was wasted. All the years I’d spent thinking good always won laughed in my face as I lay there bleeding out in the dirt, listening to men scream. Some hostiles moved into the area to clear it and make sure we were all dead before setting the place on fire. Woodly, one of the men I trained with—a damn good man—was beside me, his throat slit. I dragged his body over mine and pretended to be dead.”
Tears stung the backs of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I refused to cry because I had no right. The amount of anger and despair I felt just hearing this was nothing compared to what Kieran had lived.
“I’d almost given up. The pain, blood loss, and being outnumbered were odds I didn’t expect to overcome. Besides, why bother trying to survive? For what? To go home alone, to bear the weight of everyone’s eyes asking what happened and why I let my brothers die?”
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered.
“I must have really looked dead because they started talking,” Kieran rasped. “Make sure they’re all dead or we won’t get paid. Stupid Americans think they’re better, but here they are, killing their own just like the rest of us.”
I cuddled into his chest again, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how.
“My first reaction was denial, but it was hard to deny something when I was lying in the middle of a massacre, riddled with guilt for letting down the people who’d apparently sent us there to die. I got angry. So fucking angry that I didn’t even feel the pain anymore.
And then from across the dirt, someone else yelled, “There’s only four. One’s MIA! The one who isn’t American!They laughed. The one closest to me said,Imagine dying for a country that isn’t even yours.”
“Ghost,” I whispered, picturing his Asian features in my head.
“Yeah,” Kieran replied. “The spark of hope I felt knowing he might be alive coupled with the rage burning through my veins gave me the will to live. To fight. To make them pay.”
I felt it in the air. The energy he must have embodied that day as he rose from betrayal and blood-stained earth, leaving behind the hopeful boy he’d been to become a stoic man who walked among death.
“I grabbed the grenade attached to the belt of my fallen brother and launched it. The second it went off, I leaped up and started shooting, channeling the rage I felt into every bullet. I took down all the hostiles nearby and ducked into a building for shelter. I was out of ammo, and a group of men was heading my way. I searched the place, looking for something—anything—and found Ghost in a closet, bleeding from a stomach wound. He handed me his last two grenades and told me to leave him. Itold him to fuck off and threw him over my shoulder. The front door burst in, and I headed out the back while Ghost tossed both grenades into the house. The force of the blast knocked us on our asses, but somehow we made it out. The fire and confusion were perfect cover to haul ass out of there. I’d barely made it a mile from that hellhole, when I collapsed. I woke up a couple hours later in a tiny house with dirt floors. A couple had found us, and instead of turning us in, they gave us first aid and hid us overnight. That night, they drove into the next town, and we hopped a train.”
“And then what?” I asked, completely amazed.
“We went off grid, knowing eventually they’d figure out that two of us got out. Neither of us trusted anyone anymore, so going to the government for help was out. About two months later, we learned they were looking for us, so we separated. For a couple years, I moved from country to country, barely sleeping, always looking over my shoulder. I took shitty jobs for cash and lived for the sole purpose of getting revenge. And then I got caught. I thought for sure they’d assassinate me right there on the spot. Instead, they offered me a job.”
“A job!” I exclaimed. “You have to be freaking kidding me!”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” he mused.
“I hate to break it to you, but on a scale of one to ten, your sense of humor is a negative five.”
