Page 76 of Hard to Lose

They’re gone. Just like a piece of me will always be gone with them.

Just like the hole left in the lives of their families that day.

So good? Never. But that’s not something I’ll ever say out loud, because who am I to not be good when I’m the one still alive?

“Yep. Just . . . just figuring shit out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Gunner

Six Years Ago

“I’m serious, Ryan. There were calls. Emails. I saw them on his computer when he accidentally stayed logged into his account. They want you.” My mom’s voice, her incomprehensible pleading for me to believe her across the scratchy connection, almost feels surreal. Almost sounds like the words are a dream.

But they’re not.

They can’t be.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” I finally say.

“They emailed Sal, sweetie. Agents. Four of them. They were interested in representing you. In getting you signed into the major leagues.”

The hope in her voice is like a dagger to my heart.

“And you’re just finding this out now?” I look at the sparse walls of my barracks and hear the night patrol watchman’s radio faintly in the distance.

“Yes. I had to help him with something on his phone and saw them,” she explains. No one is allowed to go near Sal’s computer when he’s logged in. No one. So the fact that she saw the emails, that he left them sitting open on the computer screen so she could read them, tells me it was all part of his plan to manipulate her. To show her who is in control. “It was an accident. This all was a misunderstanding.” But the catch in her voice confirms she knows she’s lying. “He thought they were calling for Marcus. He gave them Marcus’s information by accident, and it was all just a silly mix-up that I’m sure we can get straightened out.”

My snort of derision is loud.

“Are you listening to yourself, Mom? Are you really hearing yourself make excuses for him? You’ve somehow been able to watch him lay into your son time after time for years. You justify why he hits you. That’s on you. But now you’re justifying why he fucking screwed me over, and you bet your ass I’m going to call you out on it.”

“He promises it was an accident.”

“Yeah. A perfectly calculated accident to get me out of your lives while pushing his own son’s success.”

“He can undo what he did. I promise. All he has to do is call them and explain it. Explain the confusion that he had two sons—”

“Do not ever call me his son again,” I grit out through clenched teeth.

“All he has to do is explain that he thought they were calling for Marcus,” she repeats, never missing a beat. “That he—”

“I’m not sure what I’m finding harder to comprehend. The fact that you’re buying this BS or the notion that you think this can be undone.”

“It can. I know it can.”

“Mom? Are you listening to yourself? I’m in fucking Afghanistan. Do you think the US Army will let me out because some agent showed interest in me before I signed my life away—before your husband threatened me and made me sign my next four years away? They don’t fucking care.”

“But they want you.” Her voice sounds less certain now. “They know how good you are.”

“Wanted, Mom. Past tense.”

“We don’t know that.”

I’ve never hated her more than right now. A wishy-washy woman who is defending her asshole husband. Sure, life has dealt her a shit hand, but that doesn’t mean she has to be weak. That doesn’t mean she has to kowtow to a man. She’s worth more than that, but I’m so sick and fucking tired of being the only one fighting for her to see it.

The anger that courses through my veins is like a drug. I don’t know how to dampen it, and at the same time don’t think I want to. I need to feel it. Need to own it. Need to hold on to it, because it’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane at the moment.