Page 9 of Angels & Whiskey

Three years later …

Present day

We continued to fire.I didn’t know how many enemy troops there were. I couldn’t see with all the sand in the air, but we kept firing until the wind wasn’t blowing and we saw all of the enemies down.

“Everyone good?” I asked. I turned around to see one of my medics down. I couldn’t tell who, but my heart stopped.

“Jackson!” I hollered as I ran to the down medic.

When I reached her, I fell to my knees, flipping her over—Cochran.

“No!”

I woke up screaming, clenching the sweat covered sheets, panting and trying to catch my breath. It was always the same. If I didn’t consume enough whiskey to make me not dream, I dreamt of the day Alyssa died. It was like a movie on repeat. It played over and over and over and always ended the same.

Glancing at my alarm clock, I figured I’d gotten enough sleep with the six hours I’d received and got out of bed. With my current job, I usually stayed out late, going to lavish parties, going on dates, whatever they wanted as long as I played my role.

After my final tour with the army, it took six months to take the required post-deployment health assessments and post-deployment resilient training exams. Somehow I’d passed even though I had nightmares nightly about Cochran. I thought about moving back to my hometown of Chicago, but a part of me knew that I’d miss the sand. Plus my best friend, Paul Jackson, moved back to Malibu at the same time and promised he could get me a job.

Sure as shit he was able to get me one all right.

When he first told me what he was going to be doing, I laughed. I laughed for hours. When I stopped laughing, I would laugh some more. I laughed so hard I cried.

“I wouldn’t be laughing, Captain. You have no idea how much money you can make.”

“You don’t need to call me captain anymore. That’s behind us.”

“Habit.” He shrugged. “Look, haven’t you heard the expression ‘don’t knock it till you try it’?”

I laughed harder, tears starting to prick my eyes. “Oh, I bet you’ll be knocking something.”

“Hey, man, it’s a beautiful woman on my arm. What more can I ask for?”

“What if they’re ugly?”

He shrugged again. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I’ll fake it. Plus, Bobby said we’re escorts, not gigolos.”

“What’s the difference?” I chuckled.

“We don’t have to sleep with the ladies unless we want to. We’re not paid for sex. We’re paid to be a companion for a few hours. Saddles & Racks is a legitimate company.”

I laughed again, tears rolling down my cheek. “Saddles & Racks?”

“Come on …”

“I don’t know—”

“Just think about it, Cap. It might be good for you to—”

I stopped laughing. “To what? To move on from Cochran?” The silence that filled the air could be cut with a knife as I waited for him to speak.

“No … For you to be happy again,” he pleaded.

“You think fucking a lot of women is going to make me forget her?”

“God no.” He paused, thinking of what to say next as I felt my blood boiling. He didn’t know what it was like to lose the love of his life. “Look. We’re young. You’re what? Thirty like me? We have a long life ahead of us and you can’t use your hand forever.”

“Thirty-one.”