“No! Congrats. Little mini-Jagger, huh?” My mind flashed to a son, to strapping tiny skates on a toddler, handing him a stick for the first time while Ember lectured me on safety from the box.
“God help us.” He laughed, but it faded quickly. “Look. I love you like a brother. I just…I just need to know a few things.”
My stomach twisted. “Yeah.”
“Did you know it was me? Was that all in my head?”
“Yes, I knew. We were on our local area orientation flight for Carter, and we heard you go down. I recognized your voice on the radio.”
Our eyes locked for a second, and his slid shut. “You saved me.”
“It was never a question, Jag. You are my brother. What do you remember?”
He looked off into the distance. “We lost our tail rotor —RPG—and then everything started to spin. It was like being on that teacup ride at Disney, except you figured it was going to kill you. I knew it. All I could think as the side of the valley came closer was that I’d never kiss Paisley again. I’d never see our son. Then the first impact came.” His eyes narrowed. “The sound was…”
“Yeah.” I understood, because it was a sound like no other, crumpled metal and death.
“We hit a few times along the valley wall, end over end, I think…and I swore I heard you call my name. That’s when I figured I was dead, except you’re no angel.” He gave me a wry smile.
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Did you know the site wasn’t secure?”
I swallowed. “Yes. Your wingman was still taking fire.”
“And you came anyway?”
“It was you. I mean, I’d like to say that I would have done the same for any downed pilot, and I think I would have, but when push came to shove, it was you, Jagger. I wasn’t going to let my best friend die at the bottom of a valley in Afghanistan, not if there was the slightest chance you’d lived through the impact.”
He nodded. “Did…did Will know?”
Anguish ripped through me, freezing my lungs, my heartbeat, the very blood in my veins. His face flashed through my mind, seeing him above me right before the shots rang out, his relieved smile that we’d made it.
Except we didn’t.
“Yeah,” my voice croaked. “Yeah, he knew.”
His head hit the back of the couch, a ragged sigh forcing its way through him. “Of course he did.”
“He agreed. We all agreed to go in. Carter…he was the one to pull me out, and he was the first to get to you, to tell me that you were alive.”
Jagger’s eyes were trained somewhere on the ceiling. “Thorne?” His copilot.
“He was gone by the time we got to your crash site.”
He nodded. “And then the firefight?”
“That’s when we lost Carter.”
“Fuck. I didn’t wake up, not completely. I thought I heard your voice, but I wasn’t strong enough to open my eyes. Where…” He swallowed, and I fought back the misery clawing its way up my throat, the tears I wouldn’t let near my eyes. “Where did he die?”
“Right next to you,” I answered. “He…” My head dropped into my hands as my heartbeat escalated, and I rubbed at my temples, like it would keep the images at bay so I could just tell Jagger what he needed to know. “Rizzo couldn’t get the bleeding stopped. Carter had been hit in an artery and his stomach, just beneath his Kevlar. You guys were less than two feet apart, and he…”
It was too much. My throat closed, nausea rolled through me, and my brain felt like it might explode if I didn’t keep pressing inward with my hands.
“It’s okay. I got it.” Jagger squeezed my shoulder.
I took deep breaths, picturing Ember’s face, her laugh, until the tightness in my chest faded and everything else became manageable.
“Thank you. I’ll never be able to say it enough, Josh. Thank you.” He squeezed my shoulder harder, and I leaned over, pulling my best friend to me in the hug I’d been terrified I’d never have again.
“Never say it again. You would have done the same. I’m just glad you’re alive.”
“Yeah, I would have come for your dumb, foolish, courageous ass.”
“I know.” We did the awkward back-pat thing, and I relaxed against the couch.
“So, I’m not really feeling Call of Duty,” he said, picking up his controller.
I pointed to my shoulder with my controller. “I think the Kinect golf game is out.”
He shrugged. “Lego Jurassic Park?”
Just like college, except we weren’t nursing morning-after hockey game bruises or chasing no-name girls out the door. We weren’t healed, weren’t close to any standard of what normal might look like from now on for either of us, but we’d both made it out alive. That was more than we could say for our friends.
“Legos.”
Chapter Twenty
EMBER
Tomorrow it would be two weeks. I closed the calendar app on my iPhone, which reminded me that we were due at the Cadet Chapel in half an hour. One last pin and my hair was secured, my French twist reminding me so much of Mom that I did a double take.
I patted concealer over the dark circles under my eyes and the small bruise that Josh had sucked into my collarbone last night. I knew what he was doing every time he reached for me, using sex to escape, to hide from the nightmares that still woke him nightly, but I let him.