“No, let’s wait to tell them. Leo will be pissed if they get involved.” Dom again.
“Leo will be pissed when he figures out we are all here anyway.” Alex is right, I will be pissed. Wait. Why are they all talking about me?
“Did he really say he was going to kill himself, Gia?” Was that Hannah? Why the hell is she here?
“Not in those words, but yes. I knew. I felt it and called him. He said it was too hard. I begged him to come home.” Dammit, Gianna.
“That’s why he suddenly showed up here again? Fuck.” Dom’s voice is full of pain.
“I’m pretty sure he’s awake and listening to all of this.” That sounds like Stone.
“Leo? Are you there?” Gianna asks softly.
I open my eyes, finding I’m now on my couch. “Who moved me here?”
“So you remember being on the floor?” Arianna asks, her voice choppy. I open my eyes to find her worried gaze as she chews on a fingernail.
“Vaguely. I guess you all have questions,” I comment as I sit up. I hate this. I despise feeling inferior and dependent on my family. I can’t stand when my emotions get the best of me.
Gianna sits beside me, taking my hands tightly in hers. “I want to go over some details first, so we know what possibly set off your panic attack. Okay?”
I nod, suddenly so overcome with exhaustion, both physically and emotionally.
“Alright. Arianna asked to meet you here, and wanted to tell you she overheard a conversation between Ella and her friend Whitley about a doctor’s appointment, and whether or not a dad would be in attendance. Ella replied that the dad didn’t know. Is that correct?”
I nod numbly. Hearing it again is pouring salt into the wound.
“Then you started to mumble things,” Arianna says quietly. “I don’t think you knew you were speaking out loud. You said you’d always wanted a family with Ella, but that you weren’t lovable. Then you said you should have killed yourself like you’d wanted to, but that Gia talked you out of it. Is that true?”
“For the most part, yeah,” I murmur. I hear my front door open and close, then see Sebastian and Josh walk in.
“You had pills?” Alex asks, and I nod. “What kind?”
“I’d saved up a bunch of oxycodone pills from multiple surgeries.”
“Multiple?”
Fuck. Sighing, I close my eyes. “My left leg, and my knee, are really fucked up. Shrapnel wounds, skin grafts. Debridement. Surgeons tried to revise a scar, but it made it worse. I had five or six surgeries at Walter Reed within a year, and it seemed like everytime, my leg got worse. The surgeons in Germany weren’t the best with things, as they were just trying to keep me alive.”
“You almost died?” Isabella asks quietly.
I nod. “I was in a medically induced coma for a few weeks. I don’t remember being flown out of Afghanistan at all, and I barely remember the first month or two in Germany.”
“How much time went by before you actually notified us that you were injured?” Dom asks.
“I begged my superiors not to tell you. I knew the fact that half the squad died would make headlines, but didn’t think they’d give specifics about which battalion we were from. I figured it was better you thought I was on a mission than at death’s door.”
“Typical fucking Leo,” Alex says angrily. “Assuming no one else can handle things. And then once you were back stateside? How many surgeries did you have where we were clueless?”
“Gianna knew about most of them,” I admit, watching her mouth drop open in shock. “When it was supposed to be a simple procedure, I didn’t tell anyone. Why stress everyone out when all I was having was an outpatient procedure to remove another piece of shrapnel?”
“Stressing everyone out is what family is for, Leo,” Luca spits out. “You’re not supposed to handle all of this shit by yourself. You’d be furious if we did this to you.”
“So when did you start feeling like you wanted to kill yourself?” Arianna asks.
I look down at my hands, still held tightly in Gianna’s. She squeezes them reassuringly. “I’d been back in the States less than a year. The Army discharged me. I didn’t know who I was without the Army, and without Ella. I’d figured she’d probably moved on, but I didn’t have the balls to ask any of you about her. I didn’t have the balls to admit how much I was struggling, how much guilt I had over losing all of my guys. Figured it was better if I just disappeared.”
“Did you think we wouldn’t support you if you admitted all ofthat?” Dom asks, and I nod. “I hate that you felt that way, Leo. I can’t even imagine how you must have struggled for so long to get to that point. But I want you to hear every word that I say right now: I, for one, will never think less of you for admitting you’re struggling or in pain. I’m always here for you. I know you would have dropped everything to help me had I needed it, so you need to know I’d do the same for you. I love you, man.”
