I close my eyes, and her beautiful face comes to focus in my mind, amused when I find my dick hardening. I make no effort to reach for it. Instead, I sink deeper into the couch and allow the images of her to float through my mind.
Slowly, I drift as I imagine myself confessing my feelings for her and spending all my evenings cuddled on the couch and fighting over the remote, arguing over whether to watch her favorite show or my sports. I’ve never seen myself as a family man, but she makes me think of starting a family with her. I can see it vividly—Ashley and some dark-haired kids running around in the backyard, giggling as they feed the squirrels that love to invade that space.
“Matt, come play with us!”
“I will, after I finish this beer,” I call out.
Her lips move to a pout, making me roll my eyes, but as I start to get up, something yanks me back to my seat. I look down to find myself bound with a seatbelt before the scenery changes from my backyard to the inside of a Humvee.
“When I go back home, I’m proposing to my girl,” Johnny says with a wistful grin on his face. “What about you, Galloway?”
No, this can’t be happening.
I try to pull myself back to Ashley and our imaginary kids, but I’m forced back to that night.
“Galloway will be the first to actually do something with his leave,” Miller says from the back. “Bet he goes home and finally fixes up that house his folks left him. Maybe find himself a woman willing to marry him.”
“Or sleeps for a week straight,” someone adds. “Whichever comes first.”
“You’re one to talk, Johnny. Aren’t you going through a divorce with wife number two?”
“That’s why I’m proposing again,” Johnny shoots back. “Third time’s the charm.”
Now there is laughter and more teasing from the men in the Humvee before Miller breaks it. “How are you bunch thinking of going home when we still have six months left on our tour?”
“Got my eye on a piece of land back in Arizona,” Carter says. “Been saving for it. Going to open a little shop—work with my hands, finally.”
“I want the whole picture,” William adds. “Wife. Kids. House with a porch. The whole nine yards.”
My eyes scan the road ahead through the dust kicked up by the lead vehicle in front of us, half my mind on the route and half on wondering if maybe I, too, should be thinking about starting a life outside of this one. I’ve been a soldier for nearly twenty years, and in a couple more, I’ll be turning forty. I haveenough money saved to live anywhere I wish in the world. I could…
“Galloway, what’s that—”
I surface from the dream? Nightmare? Vision or memory? I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it robs me of my breath. I gasp for air, my heart pounding in my chest at the terror of it all. I sit up, my breath coming in ragged gasps as the image of the nightmare dances at the corner of my mind.
There was no explosion. No screams or sobbing, yet this nightmare was worse. So much worse.
Christ.
I grab my beer and chug it, pressing the cool can against my pounding head, but it does little to help with the headache. My left side hurts with phantom pain, and my chest is tight with more than just panic and fear. The guilt is a deep ache inside of me.
Eight men were in the Humvee, and only three made it out. Men who had plans of going back to their families, starting their own, and living life outside of the tragedy of combat. Good men who spent their lives doing what they believed was best for their country and…they’re gone.
And it’s all my fault. No matter how much everyone says it’s not. I was the LPO on that convoy. I ran point. Bear and I walked that route at pre-dawn and marked it safe. The call was mine. The timing was mine. For twenty years, I've trained and known what to look for, and I knew how to protect my brothers—and I failed them.
I don’t deserve to be happy. I don’t fucking deserve to dream of a happy life with a wife and kids.
I don’t deserve Ashley or the ease and joy she brings into my life.
She deserves better.
She deserves a man who gets to come home to her without a dozen ghosts in tow. A man who can take her dancing without flinching at the music. A man who could meet her grandparents and hold a conversation through a Sunday dinner without his hands shaking under the table.
Not me. Not what’s left of me.
Chapter Seven
Ashley
