“Then why are ya so mad?” I wondered.
He blinked before sighing, his shoulders slumping. “Because I’m just…mad. Like I said, none of us should have been there inthe first place. None of us should have had to deal with a fight no one but those at the top wanted. You can say you all knew what you were in for, but does that really matter? It’s not like you had a choice; you were in, and once you were in, you were stuck. Otherwise, what were you going to do? Say no? We don’t get to say no, not without having the rest of our lives destroyed. They take young men, break them down, and build them back up, for what? To be soldiers, to take orders and fight and kill and even die, for what? For a future we’re promised and then when they deliver the smallest scrap of that promise, we’re supposed to act like we’re grateful, like we didn’t give so much of ourselves, potentially trading away the chance at life, and we?—”
Walker stopped, and I realized the cup in his hand had crumpled in his grip as he stared into the distance, no longer enraptured by the sight of the mountains. In fact, I didn’t think he could even see them through his anger. I didn’t know if I should reach out and touch him, try to bring him back to reality, or leave him to his anger.
Except…except I knew that kind of anger didn’t help anyone, least of all him. I didn’t know what had happened to him since I’d last seen him, but it was obviously something he had been carrying around for a long time. I was no different, except where there might have been anger and rage, there was only a hollow feeling, the absence of the people who meant more to me than I would ever have the words to explain. Here was someone who had also experienced loss, one that I didn’t know and might not understand, but I knew what it meant to lose something so vital to who you were that you become someone you never dreamed you could be.
“Hey,” I whispered, reaching out and touching his back carefully. He flinched, and I quickly added. “Sorry.”
“No,” he said, his shoulders releasing their tension, and he sighed, looking at his mangled coffee cup. “I’m the one thatshould be sorry. You’re not the one who deserves my anger. You’re not the reason I’m so pissed off. I’m sorry, Ser…Cade. I guess maybe I belong here, even if I don’t actually believe that for a minute.”
“I guess a lot has happened for both of us,” I said softly, reaching out to touch him again now that I realized I wasn’t going to risk losing another limb.
He huffed, letting out a laugh that, while not the happiest sound on the planet, didn’t sound completely bitter. “I think that’s an understatement.”
“Yeah, well, I was never good at sayin’ things the right way,” I chuckled, rubbing his back and feeling him loosening up a little. It was funny because I remembered how wary he was of people touching him back in the day. I could never figure out if it was because he simply hated being touched or if he was confused by it, at least with our team anyway. It had taken him longer than anyone else to get used to having someone touch him, which struck me as funny. This was the man whose job was to put his hands on us to deal with our injuries, which he did expertly and without hesitation, but if one of us tried to give him a hug or even draped an arm over his shoulder, he acted as if you were asking him to promise you his first-born child.
“You’ve never had a problem saying what you needed to say,” Walker said with a roll of his eyes. “I never quite figured out who told you that you can’t fucking talk, but every one of them deserves a swift kick in whatever sensitive place they have.”
I snorted. “I guess that’s inclusive.”
“That’s me, a regular progressive guy,” he said and then made a face about something only he was aware of. “Ugh.”
“C’mon,” I said, taking a cue from him and sliding my arm across his back to grasp his shoulder and give it a little shake. “You’re only on, like, what, day four here? There’s no need to getall upset; that’s what the gym is for, and I guess the group or private therapy sessions.”
“You guess,” he said dryly, not quite leaning into my touch but not pulling away or tensing either.
“And I guess you’ve gotten better about people touching you,” I noted with a raise of my brow, hoping that changing the subject might help him a little.
He blinked, looked back at my arm, and rolled his eyes. “You know why I was always weird about you guys touching me, right?”
“Mmm, no,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Kinda figured it was ’cause you didn’t like bein’ touched and had to get used to it with us, or that ya didn’t have it happen much and it was just…I dunno, an adjustment?”
Walker stared at me before letting out a laugh that sounded a lot more enthusiastic than before. “God, I just…really?”
“Now, see? I went and said somethin’ wrong, so that meant I was right a second ago,” I told him with a snort.
“No, I bet this has nothing to do with your belief that you’re an idiot who doesn’t know how to talk and more to do with the fact that you’ve never…had to worry about certain things.”
“I’m, uh…not sure what you’re talkin’ about.”
“I’m sure,” he said, pulling away from my arm and dumping his coffee cup into a trash can. “You remember what I told you guys that one time, right? We’d been working together for about a year. We were having a few drinks because we had a few days free for once. You guys were so hell-bent on getting me drunk that night, and since we had time ahead of us, I thought, why not?”
I thought about it for a minute, letting my mind drift back, careful to skip the part where everything had gone to hell. A year in would have been… “Oh…right. When ya told us you’re gay?”
“Yes,” he said, clearly amused, but I couldn’t see what was so funny.
Okay, I remembered. We’d taken one of the larger tents at the base for ourselves that night, and although alcohol wasn’t in high supply, though definitely high demand, we had got our hands on a few bottles that would rot your insides and leave you regretting your life the next day. We had definitely been trying to get Walker to dive as deep as we could into one of those bottles, and it had taken a team effort to get him to take more than a few drinks. There had been some side bets between Bassey and Morrow, one arguing that it was because Walker was just a goody two shoes, the other arguing it was because Walker just didn’t want to risk being drunk if something happened.
Morrow had been the winner because once we got a few drinks into Walker to loosen him up, he had become a regular boozer. Even I’d been surprised at the way he had put the drinks away, drunk and yet completely in control right until the last couple of hours. It had been right before that point of no return where he’d confessed, both drunkenly confident and quietly nervous that he was, in fact, gay. The looks from the team after that quiet confession had said everything, mostly because everyone was trying not to laugh their asses off, but we all knew it was a big deal and we shouldn’t laugh at the poor guy for what we had pretty much already figured.
“Ya were so confused when we just shrugged and told ya we already knew. I can’t remember who it was that said they’d seen ya sneak off a few times with someone on base at the last place we were at,” I said with a chuckle.
Walker rolled his eyes. “Clark. The man could keep a secret like he could keep his silence. He was the first one to laugh at me because he’d seen me sneaking off and knew I thought I had been so careful when I was apparently not that subtle.”
“I mean, I figured just ’cause you never talked about bein’ with anyone,” I said with a shrug. “Not like I expected ya to start talkin’ like Bassey did, or pine after the girl left behind like Kines, but ya never mentioned anyone. I figured that if ya weren’t going to share, it was ’cause you felt ya had a reason not to. The only thing I figured would make ya not feel like sharing was that ya liked guys. Bassey wanted to bring it up to ya a couple of times, but I told ’em it wasn’t none of our business unless ya wanted to tell us.”
“And again, you try to make yourself out to be this big idiot, and yet you figured it out just fine on your own,” Walker said with a shake of his head.
