My brother Grayson has been trying to get my dad to expand the farm for a while now. There’s so much land that isn’t worked and isn’t really being used for what it’s worth because there aren’t enough bodies to work it. My pops is getting old, as is my dad. Theo helps out when he isn’t at the fire station, but basically, it’s Grayson trying to hold it together. He could use someone like Brutus. A man who doesn’t care if he’s sick, exhausted. Won’t quit because of the weather. Won’t quit when his family abandons him. So faithful it could be a flaw. That’s the type of guy I’d want on my side.
He reaches a hand out between us, and I offer him mine, shaking once. “Just might take you up on that someday.”
He turns to leave, and I move back toward the rock to grab the phone when he calls out to me, “Hey, Hart.”
“Yeah?”
He stares at me, and I can see his throat work in a slow swallow before he speaks. “You're trapping yourself.”
I twist my brows together, not sure what he's getting at.
“Up here.” He raises a hand, his pointer finger tapping at his temple. “You're trapping yourself up here. I saw it when we first met, and it's been worse since we lost the guys.”
My eyes sting, tears begging to fall, but I inhale sharply through my nose, reeling them back in like I always do, and he sees it.
“You gotta find a way out of there.” He taps his head again. “You let yourself get lost up there, spend your free days wading through the dark shit, and that'll kill you.” He waves his hand around, gesturing to the dust and desert that surrounds us.“Trap yourself up there and it'll kill you quicker than anything we'll ever fight out here.”
CHAPTER 31
Lukas
My feet drag across the concrete, steps a drunken zigzag pattern as I try to walk the white line. I inhale a heavy drag from my cigarette and tilt my head up, blowing the gray smoke out into the starry night sky. It’s crystal clear tonight, so clear I can see every star, and even though I’m piss drunk, I can still find a few of the constellations they taught us in elementary school.
A car passes me along the highway, horn beeping, and I stumble closer to the ditch.
“Don’t get run over by a reindeer,” I slur to myself. I toss my cigarette into the gravel, stepping on it once before continuing on my way. Reaching for my phone, I squint at the time. The booze poisoning my blood right now won’t let my brain do the math to figure out what time it is for Magnolia, but I shrug, swiping for her name and calling anyway.
I bring the phone to my ear, the ringing going on and on, and just when I’m deciding whether to hang up or leave a voicemail, she answers.
“Lukas?” Her voice is rushed, worried, and even though I don’t feel much these days, hearing her voice still has me a little choked up.
“Lukas?” she calls out. “Are you there? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I cringe at the sound of my own voice; the words slurred as my tongue tangles over itself. “What’s up?”
She doesn’t answer right away, and I know she’s already mad at me.
This has been our routine since I came back to the States.
There have been a lot of missed calls. Tense text messages. I call her when I’m walking home from the bar in the evening. We argue, I think. But most mornings when I wake up after the fact, I can’t remember what we even talked about.
“Mags?”
“I’m here,” she says. “Where are you right now?”
Pulling my gaze from my feet, I look up and realize I’m nearly to base. “Just about to check into base.”
“You’re not driving, right?”
“Never.” For one, drinking and getting behind the wheel of a vehicle is stupid enough. For two, getting drunk and trying to drive your car back to base is basically asking for it. The guards at the entrance aren’t idiots, they’d sniff us out a mile away. “Just needed a little walk.”
That part isn’t a lie. I left my buddies back at the bar in town. What started as a night to unwind and try to relax, turned into them looking for a woman to occupy their time. As soon as a group surrounded our table, and a blonde looked at me like she wanted to eat me, I knew it was time to call it a night.
The walk back to base is usually the better part of the night. It sobers me up enough that I only feel half terrible when I wake in the morning.
“I’m almost home,” I tell her. Home. When did the base become home? “What are you doing?”
“I’m standing in the hall.”
