Page 133 of Severed Heart

Dropping my gaze to my worn boots, I will the eighteen-year-old inside me who can’t forget that morning to recognize themanthat now hosts him. Willing him to identify how far we’ve come and how many steps we’ve takenwithouther.

Just a little further, I tell him and get no response.

I swallow and swallow again as I peer through the window at her, tracing her profile as carefully as I can in the dim light.

I’ve marched endless miles, crawled, crept, ran, carried others on my back in the worst imaginable conditions, but I can’t seem to fucking manage fifty steps, give or take, to cross the fucking street?

Freedom explodes across the night sky as if mocking me, while my father’s stifling words choose this moment to haunt me.

“I still can’t find the fucking door.”

His tearful confession batters me as the burning in my chest amplifies with that truth. A shriek pierces the midnight-cloaked sky before the deafening boom follows, and another so loud it reaches my bones, rattling them with memory, willing the images to flood me.

Any relief I could have felt at laying eyes on her is trampled and stripped completely as my pulse spikes with memory-induced adrenaline—my body’s way of reminding me of just how many steps I’ve taken since her. Of the battles fought and the blood spilled to get back to this cement. It’s then a notion strikes me that if I would’ve come to her before I left for the GRS, I could have crossed this fucking street. Maybe not with ease, but I could have done it—would have done it. A large part of me, before I joined, was still the boy who ran from her that morning and is taking shelter beneath the rubble of the aftermath now, unwilling to budge.

Every pop and screech at my back confirms I’ve practically erased that starry-eyed kid’s idea of what being a soldier is versus the reality.

Have I erased her now, too?

The escalating pain at the sight before me tells me that’s not the case and that she’s not the cause. It’s me. My decision to continue to march—to take on another mission—that initiated the change. The realization sets in that I understand my father’s blind decision now, in that he probably has no idea which battle it was in which he lost himself, just that he did.

“Go to her, you fucking bastard,” I grit out breaths coming hard. “She deserves a thank you,” I gasp out as I will my feet forward. Even as I scream at my psyche, I can’t and don’t manage a single step.

The need to protect her outweighs any selfish other because if I do manage to cross the street, I’ll bring it all with me—the visions, the adrenaline, the anger, the night sweats, the blood on my hands, as well as my current body count.

“They’ll break you down only to build you up, making you believe you’re a god. They’ll make you feel invincible, but you won’t be. No man is. At the end of it, if you make it out alive, you’ll come home with scars you can’t hide, physical or otherwise, and the fact you can’t hide them will eat you fucking alive.”

Except it wasn’t the Marines who made me believe I was different—I did that all on my own, thinking myself some exception. I trusted it was the truth, up until this very moment as the door disappears from my vision, and I become blinded by my father’s view—no door. There’s no door.

“No,” I rebuke as my chest cracks wide. “Not you,” I condemn both boy and man. “You’re different,” I grunt as failure thrums through me. “You made yourself a different fucking soldier ... God dammit!”

Cupping my jaw, I run my palm down my face as defeat lodges in my throat, the ache now screaming in my skin, embedded deep in my bones. The longing for the home I swore I saw in her eyes, the shelter I made inside her heart. And now, no matter how hard I try to visualize it, there’s no longer a door. I erased it. She erased it.

Blinking rapidly to clear my eyes, without a single weapon, the hardest battle I’ve ever fought plays out on the cement beneath my feet.

“Please, Tyler, please cross the fucking street, look into her eyes, and t-thank her.”

Just as the words leave my lips—as if she can hear my struggle—she turns in her chair as if searching for my shadow. A second later, I know she sees me when she stands so abruptly that she stumbles back a step.

My starving eyes desperately search her, an unbearable ache detonating when I’m only able to clearly make out her silhouette, nothing more. But I feel it, the connection in the way she’s standing stock still and staring back, as the whisper of home I thought I had in her begins to beckon me. A relieved breath leaves my lips as she begins to walk toward the storm door, just as I finally take a step toward her. In the next instant, our connection is lost as Dom interrupts our connection, stalking into the kitchen and turning on the light. My view of her now blocked altogether, this time by the barrier of a promise—a promise I can’t keep if I take another step toward her.

Searing, white-hot pain shoots through me as I realize I might not ever be able to walk back into that house again. To look into her eyes without any of the affection I felt and still feel.

I still love her and am in love with her, and my thundering heart is telling me now that I always will. But my soldier’s heart is weary, and it needs its sanctuary. It needs her. I need my front fucking door.

“I will never love you.”

I never believed that—never believed her—but maybe I should. Even with evidence of her surprise through that window, it’s her silence in my absence that prevents me from believing anything else.

Swiping my face free of the debris of any foolish delusions of a homecoming, I turn and stalk away from that cement, from the deceiving view, and retreat toward refuge from the unforgiving sky. Once inside the cab of my truck, I slam my fist into my wheel as the guttural pain I’ve been curbing for six years crashes through me like a tidal wave.

You’re her soldier. She made you! She saved you! Turn around and thank her!

Chest heaving, the battle allows no escape as color explodes across my windshield, the smoke slowly tracing its path just after, as if savoring the victory. Shackled to her promise not to ever darken her door with a hint of what I feel for her, I allow myself to hate her for it in that moment—for forcing me to utter those words. With that promise, she took away any chance I had of a homecoming. Putting my truck in gear, I press the gas and don’t let up on it until I’m well past the county line. Speeding toward my reality—now convinced of what was solidified the day I left Triple Falls—that I am now and forever a homeless soldier.

Chapter Thirty-Five

TYLER