There, I tipped the balance in his favor. That’s all I can think to do right now.
Chapter 11
Flint
Jasper has arranged for some brothers from our LA chapter to keep an eye on Jules’ former landlord and make sure those assholes don’t circle back.
I’ve just filled her in on what’s happening when she leans over the table and lowers her voice. “Flint, can I ask you something?”
“Always. I know you’re trying to be polite, but you don’t have to keep asking first.” I try to keep from sounding frustrated because she doesn’t deserve my ire when she’s always nice as fuckin’ pie.
“I’m just curious why you’re so obsessed with safety. I know it’s important, but you make it seem like everything is an emergency. Every situation is either zero or a hundred. There’s never anything in between. You never used to be like that…”
I close my eyes for a second. After the day I’ve had, this is the last fuckin’ thing in the world I want to talk about. “Look, can we not do this today?”
“You told me last night I could ask you anything I wanted.”
Sighing, I respond, “Yeah, I remember saying that. I just didn’t think you’d take me up on it quite so fast.”
When she laughs, the sound is easy on my ears. I fuckin’ love the sound of her voice and the way she laughs. It lightens my mood.
I begin telling my story, one she might end up hating me for. “Tommy and I were in the same unit but had different MOSs. I was responsible for repairing firearms. Tommy got stuck moving JP-8 fuel, which is highly combustible. I was rushing through a job on a fifty-caliber machine gun, making headspace and timing adjustments with steel tools. He came off shift reeking of fuel.”
“What happened?”
“Tommy walked into the munitions bay looking for me. He wanted to grab lunch. He leaned over my shoulder to see what I was working on, just as I scraped a metal tool to dislodge a bolt. All it took was one spark to ignite his shirt.”
I stop telling the most painful story of my life to take another long drink of beer.
“The fuel on the fabric caught fire. Tommy got his shirt off in a matter of seconds, which saved his fuckin’ life. He ended up with pretty severe burns on his right side and spent six weeks in a burn unit.”
Jules just stares at me with a confused look on her face before blurting out, “Is that where all that scarring along his rib cage came from? He told me it was an accident.”
“Yeah, and I totally feel like shit about what happened to him. Burns are nasty business.”
“But was just an accident, nobody’s fault,” she tells me.
“You’re wrong about that, Jules. I didn’t use the proper headspace and timing gauge. I was sure I could make it work with a screwdriver, and that’s what caused the spark.”
“You’re being pretty hard on yourself. It sounds like an accident.”
“Yeah, that’s what the investigation revealed. They said I was working under pressure without the availability of proper tools, so I was forced to improvise.” Rubbing my fist against my chest, I tell her, “It doesn’t matter what anyone says. I feel like it was my fault.”
She reaches out and places her hand over mine. “You need to forgive yourself, Flint. Looks like you’re the only person who thinks you were responsible.”
“I’m not there yet, not even close. And you’re not the first person to tell me that.”
“Who was the first person?”
“Tommy.”
“Of course it was. My brother’s a smart man. He’s not going to hold a grudge against his best friend over something he didn’t mean to do.”
I look down at my hands, wishing that had never happened. “You want to know something that I’ve never told anyone?”
“What’s that?”
“It would have been easier if the investigation had determined that I was at fault because I would have received a punishment. If Tommy had blamed me, I could have made somekind of restitution. But as it stands, everyone just wiped the slate clean, and now I have to live with the endless fuckin’ guilt.”
