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That second blast had not only ruptured both of my eardrums, but it had caused such severe damage to my inner ears and auditory nerve that the Army doctors diagnosed me with a severe hearing impairment.

Deaf .

I was fucking deaf .

They called it sensorineural hearing loss. They said it was permanent, but they also said that it was fine, it was common, and that I could still lead a great, full, and wonderful life with the help of hearing aids or cochlear implants.

They called me a hero.

They said that what I had done to save my men was commendable, and they awarded me with the Medal of Honor and Purple Heart for what had happened on that dusty road in Afghanistan.

But I was no goddamn hero.

I was a failure .

I had gotten Lizzie killed by going against my gut. I had disobeyed my supervising officer and left the truck when he’d given me strict orders not to. I had escaped the blast with nothing but my eardrums blown out while Sid had lost his fucking leg .

And what was worse was that I had been let go from my fucking job.

The only thing I was ever good at besides memorizing the pages of textbooks.

But even the most bionic hearing aids weren’t good enough for a sniper, and being declared deaf was a good enough reason to get me kicked out of the military on medical discharge.

And just like that, I didn’t know who I was, what to do, or where to go.

The Army, of course, took care of me. They covered the cost of my hearing aids, and I qualified for disability benefits as well as a retirement pension. It was something, and I knew I should’ve been grateful, but one question kept me awake at night: What the fuck do I do now?

I didn’t want to live with my sisters. Lucy was happily shacked up with Ricky—against our father’s wishes, I should add, which had made me smile a bit when they told me. And Grace had only recently gotten her own studio apartment right outside of Boston, near the law firm she was interning for.

In short, I didn’t want to burden either of them with their deaf older brother’s bullshit. And my parents hadn’t laid eyes on me since well before I’d been injured.

Sid had offered me a space at his uncle’s house. “Until we can find a place of our own,” he’d said, talking about living together like we’d be two bachelors, living it up with our disabilities and PTSD .

But it was easy to turn him down because we weren’t two bachelors, were we?

There was me, and then there was Sid, who’d only just begun to nurture a brand-new relationship with my little sister.

I didn’t want to get in his way, and even less, I didn’t want to unintentionally listen to the intimate details of his relationship with Grace.

So, I got myself an apartment not far from where I’d grown up.

And it was small, and the lighting was terrible, and the ceiling was water damaged.

But it was a place for me to sleep, where I wouldn’t get in the way of my sisters’ happy lives or darken my father’s doorstep.

A place so quiet and secluded from everyone that the thoughts that kept me awake at night were given the freedom and space to scream their ridicules and assessments of the failure I’d become.

A place so dark that all I could see was Lizzie’s crumpled body and Sid’s crushed, pinned leg and every single light I had helped put out through the crosshairs of my rifle.

There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to drown all of that out.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked one night as she lowered her wineglass slowly to the small table in their kitchen.

Ricky sat beside her. There were only enough chairs to seat four, so they’d had to drag the ottoman from the living room for me to sit on.

I thought they would’ve been better off just having a double date.

My two sisters with my two best friends.

Which one of them had thought I could fit in somewhere?

Why did they think I was worth making room for at this table ?

I crossed my arms and shook my head, overselling myself already with a grin. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You’re just quiet,” she replied, eyeing me with skepticism.

“I’m just thinking,” I reasoned, still shaking my head. “But I’m fine. I’m good. I’m … yeah, I’m fine.”

“You said that twice.”

I turned to find Sid glaring at me through questioning, narrowed eyes.

The rest of their interrogation didn’t bother me as much as Sid’s. Maybe it was because Sid knew shit they didn’t. He had seen the same shit I had. And therefore, I felt he possessed the ability to see through my lies.

No, I knew he did.

“Because I’m twice as fine,” I said, widening my forced grin, like I was making a stupid joke.

I grabbed my glass and held it up to raise a toast to just how fine I was, then drank. I hated wine, but it was all Lucy kept in the apartment. Better than nothing, I guessed.

The noise that rumbled from Sid’s chest sounded almost like a growl as he glared at me, and after taking a hearty gulp of some shitty red my sister had poured out of a box, I glared right back.

Daring him to accuse me of whatever the hell he had going on in his head, whatever made-up shit he thought about me.

It had been six months since we’d both been discharged.

Who the fuck was he to look down on me now …

and for what ? Because I hadn’t bounced back into life as easily as he had?

Because I wasn’t as fine as him? Well, fuck that.

Fuck him . He’d lost a leg, and I would never discredit him for the shit he’d been through, but I had lost one of my fucking senses.

I couldn’t say one was worse than the other, and I wouldn’t , but not everyone coped as well as others.

Sid, as it turned out, was a pro at coping.

I, however, couldn’t cope at all.

“So, um …”

Ricky cleared his throat, and I knew some kind of announcement was coming. Something else I couldn’t cope with. I shifted my glare and aimed it at him.

“Lucy and I have some news.”

My heart sped up its pace as I swallowed around a panic I couldn’t quite explain or even justify at this point.

“News?” Grace asked, taken aback, almost seeming hurt that she didn’t already know. “What news?”

Lucy was beaming despite her older brother’s trepidation and her twin’s wounded feelings.

“I didn’t want to say anything until we were all together,” she began hesitantly, turning to smile at Ricky.

What, is she pregnant? I thought, swallowing hard. Fuck, if she’s pregnant, I might puke.

I downed the rest of my glass to hopefully steady my nerves.

“We’re getting married,” she announced as I was mid-swallow.

I coughed on the gulp of wine and choked out, “ Married ?”

I sounded horrified while Grace squealed with glee from beside me, my hearing aids buzzing with interference from the high-pitched sound.

“Oh my God!” She clapped with delight, jumped from the table, and wrapped her arms around both Ricky’s and Lucy’s shoulders, squeezing them in tight to form a Grace sandwich. “Finally! Ahh! I’m so excited!”

I turned to Sid, who was no longer glaring at me suspiciously, but his eyes met mine as he gave a shrug, as if to say, Could be worse, right?

And I guessed he was right. Someone could’ve been sick, someone could’ve been dying …

but married ? Why did I feel like it was so sudden when it wasn’t?

They’d been together for years , and they’d been living together for nearly one of them.

They were happy together, so didn’t marriage make sense? Wasn’t that what people did?

So, why the hell did it settle in my gut like a hot ball of lead? Why the hell did I feel as though they should’ve prepared me?

I looked back at Lucy, who met my eye, and she smiled.

“Ricky’s gonna be, like, your brother.”

I forced a chuckle as I glanced at him. “Yeah. Brother.”

He tipped his mouth in an awkward grin. “I wanted to tell you, man, but … with everything …”

Everything . He meant the war. He meant the accident, my ears, my constant struggle with the battle in my head …

He hadn’t thought I could handle this on top of everything else, and he was right.

I forced another strangled chuckle. “It’s all good.”

Hope lit within his eyes. “Yeah? You sure?”

There was nothing else I could do but nod profusely. “Of course it is. Come on.” I huffed like it was all ridiculous, like they didn’t have a single reason on the planet to believe I was going to go back home and drown this despair with the bottle of Jack I had waiting for me.

“I was, uh … kinda hoping you’d be my best man. If you want to be. I mean, you don’t have to feel pressured or anything, but—"

“No, no,” I cut him off, shaking my head. “I would, um … yeah, I would love to. Thanks … for, um … thinking of me.”

How uncomfortable. How absolutely fucking awkward.

This was the guy who had given me a reprieve from my hellish upbringing.

This was the guy who’d starred in every decent memory I had from high school.

I still considered him a friend—a good one even—but this whole sleeping with my sister thing had dug in too deep, and the unease it had brought was so damn hard to shake.

And maybe I was an asshole for that—I didn’t know—but it wasn’t that easy to get around, even after all these years.

And why ? I could talk to Ricky, we hung out occasionally—our friendship had mended that much, and it was good—but when it came to matters with Lucy, I just couldn’t handle it.