"I feel like you should know what happened," Sawyer says. I can hear the strain in his voice that comes from fighting a dream battle.
"No," I reply. "It's fine."
"Katya, I have to. I don't want you hating me for the wrong reason. I don't want you thinking Mikael died in vain," he begins. "I made the decision to send them in. I was as certain as possible that there was no danger, but in the end, it's my responsibility as their commander. Petr went in first and tripped the first IED. As soon as he went down -"
"Stop!" I say more firmly. Captain Mathis is calming. This time, it's me who's starting to panic.
"- stranded in the middle of the street. We were taking heavy fire. Riley went to grab him and got shot. The other SEAL on our team pulled both to safety before he was gunned down, and that's when our scouts told us how bad it was."
"Sawyer." I pull my head back, eyes blurring with tears. "I can't hear this." I take his face with my hands. "Please." I place a hand over his mouth to try to keep him quiet.
He lifts his head away. "We had one way out," he continues. "One of us had to volunteer never to come home. Mikael-"
My chest seizes. I'm envisioning everything as he speaks, reliving the agony in the hospital when I was sitting two floors up from my dead brother and two doors down from a brother they didn't expect to pull through his surgeries. Reliving the horror of being nine again and trying to reach my mother as she screamed in the fire, only to be crushed by a steel beam.
I wanted to die the day they brought Mikael back. I wanted to die the day they said Petr wasn't going to make it. I wanted to die every time Petr wept with pain after a surgery or when he was trying to recover. I wanted so badly to trade places with him and spare him the pain.
I can't go back to those moments, to the pain. I barely survived it, and it's too much to experience again. My cheeks are wet with tears, my body shaking.
Sawyer is determined. The night terrors are slowly releasing him, and he wants me to relive the night I can't forget.
I can't do it again.
Trapped in his arms, I do the only thing I can really think of to get him to shut up. I take his face in my hands and kiss him lightly.
He stops talking. I'm not even sure he's breathing. He's gone rigid. Is he surprised or offended? Either way, I have his attention.