Alive Day: Homefront, Book 2 Page 2

  “I wanted you to stop chucking glass bottles at the shed so I could go to sleep,” she informed him sharply.

  The barest suggestion of a flush rose in his cheeks, but his tone remained completely void of any hint of compunction.

  “Echo Company saw more daily combat during those nine months in Kunar Province than any single infantry deployment in the entire Afghan conflict. As far as I’m concerned, these men have earned the right to deal with their experiences however they want, not be thrust into some exploitative psychology experiment.”

  “Every participant is a volunteer,” she reminded him. “No one’s being forced into anything.”

  He arched a brow. “You have a lot to learn about the military definition of ‘voluntary’. Most of these guys probably signed up because they thought they’d be reprimanded if they didn’t.”

  “Maybe they just want some help.”

  “And maybe they don’t realize that blathering on about what they’ve been through isn’t going to do them a bit of good.”

  “With respect, Captain,” she replied quietly, “that’s not your call.”

  He glared at her for a long moment, his eyes icy and hard and disagreeing, but not arguing either.

  Warmth stirred in Mia’s stomach at the discovery of this chink in Ethan’s otherwise ironclad armor. He clearly projected authority, but she suspected he handed out a lot of autonomy down the chain of command as well. His troops’ well-being was paramount, and she was suddenly confident that if she could prove to him that exposure therapy worked for his men, he wouldn’t interfere in her work. He would let his soldiers make their own decisions.

  Finally he turned an abrupt about-face and stalked to the back of her small office.

  “You wasted no time settling in,” he murmured resignedly, his hands clasped behind his back as he studied the framed degrees she’d hung on the wall. “Three days ago this room was a dumping ground for old computer parts.”

  “Most of my work is onsite so I’m used to moving.” She watched him carefully, unnerved by his sudden change in demeanor and incredulous that she could’ve defused his hostility with that one comment.

  “And you’re based where? DC?”

  “Maryland. At the NIMH.”

  He nodded, perusing the framed certificates. She knew what he’d find there—her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Penn, her professional practice license, even her undergraduate—

  “Holy shit,” he exclaimed, his palms slapping against his sides as he dropped his hands. When he turned to face her his expression was an oddly endearing mix of sheepish apology and disbelieving astonishment.

  “Beg pardon, I didn’t—”

  She waved a dismissive hand before he could finish. “I’ve spent so much time on military posts I’m completely immune to profanity.”

  “And I was raised by a Southern woman who’d tan my hide if she heard me swear in front of a lady. I’m sorry.”

  The softening edges of his tone, the unlikely revelation of his manners-led upbringing and the charmingly old-fashioned idiom had Mia biting her lower lip to stop the affectionate smile that wanted so badly to drag up the corners of her mouth.

  Three minutes ago he was slamming around her office and criticizing the project, she reminded herself sternly. What was it soldiers said to remind each other to be watchful? Stay frosty.

  “Really, it’s fine,” she replied evenly. “Did something catch your attention?”

  “We went to college together.”

  She swallowed an expletive of her own. “Are you serious?”

  He aimed a thumb at the degree on the wall. “Same class at Princeton.”

  “What was your major?”

  “History. I suppose yours was psychology?”

  Mia nodded dumbly, not quite believing in this coincidence but equally unable to convince herself Ethan was lying. It was too easily verifiable a fact, plus what was there to gain from it?

  “Which college were you in?” he asked, referring to the university’s distinct housing system.

  “Rockefeller.”

  “I lived in Butler.” He smiled. “I dated a girl in Rockefeller. Did you know Jill Robson?”

  Her shoulders stiffened and her lungs tightened. She pictured Jill’s face as clearly as if she’d seen it yesterday instead of a decade ago, hovering over her, her forehead creased in concern, judgment forming behind her pretty green eyes. Mia had waved her away, blinking hard to keep Jill in focus and slurring that she was absolutely fine.

  She kept her expression neutral as she peered at Ethan across the desk, a terrifying possibility rumbling to life in her mind. Had he been there that night? Had he passed her slumped form in that long-ago, beige-walled corridor? Had he seen Jake lead her into the bedroom as she stumbled and giggled, obvious to any observer that she was way beyond the capacity to consent? Had he laughed at the sight, or smirked, or simply turned away in disgust, deciding any girl who got that drunk was asking for it?

  “Jill was a friend of a friend,” she managed tightly.

  “We were getting pretty serious by the end of sophomore year, but in the fall I left to study abroad and we called it quits. Well, I called it quits,” he clarified, seemingly oblivious to the tension pulling every one of Mia’s nerves as taut as a bowstring.

  “Did you go for a semester? Or the whole year?” She clutched the edge of her desk, her ability to survive the next ten weeks of his presence without constantly wondering if he’d been there that night hanging on his answer.

  “I spent the fall semester in Jordan and the spring in Egypt,” he replied, and her whole body sagged with relief. He couldn’t have been there, he had been abroad—there was no way he could know what had happened.

  “I wish I’d studied abroad,” she muttered sincerely, shuffling papers on her desk to hide the anxious trembling in her hands in what she hoped was a conversation-ending signal. She couldn’t wait to get Ethan out of her office and bring this unpleasant trip down memory lane to a screeching halt.

  “Anyway—” she fixed him with a bright, forced smile, “—I appreciate your coming to me and sharing your concerns. Hopefully our housing situation will mean that we have a wide-open line of communication as the project gets underway, and I’m confident that by the end of the ten weeks you’ll see that it’s been a productive, helpful exercise for your troops.”

  Her attempt to remind him that she had a bird’s-eye view of his after-hours behavior was either too subtle for him to pick up, or he simply didn’t care. Either way, the stern, determined expression that hardened his features promised they were still on opposite sides, and that this battle was far from over.

  “I understand the first group session is tomorrow afternoon.”

  She nodded.

  “Then I’ll see you there.”

  It was more of an open threat than a courteous farewell, but Mia stood up and extended her hand, never letting her smile falter.

  “I’ll look forward to it. Thanks for stopping by, Captain Fletcher.”

  He took her hand and met her eyes. His fingers were big and rough, dry and warm, powerful and decisive. His hold was firm but restrained, and despite everything—his drunken prowl around the backyard, their professional opposition, the unwelcome reminder of the night that changed her forever—it reassured her. And intrigued her.

  And if she was brutally honest, it excited her.

  He dropped her grip as swiftly as he’d caught it, turned and was gone. The door bounced on its hinges from the force of his departure and Mia stood frozen in place, her hand still extended as she gazed at the spot where he’d just stood. She swallowed hard and took several deep, slow breaths, attempting to quell the frantic, erratic and traitorously exhilarated pounding of her heart.

  She was no stranger to silly, romantic, out-of-her-league crushes, and every day her job involved emotionally wounded men who used caring women as healing springboards back to normal life. At first glance Ethan was a walking manifestation of all her
ugliest sexual missteps—disproportionately attractive, concealing raw wounds with arrogance, displaced and searching for the road back to his old self.

  She’d seen it hundreds of times, and she was as sure of her diagnosis as she was that in six months he’d be charming and confident and unrecognizable as the man bleeding in his backyard on the Fourth of July.

  But as much as she knew this vulnerable, struggling version of Ethan wasn’t the real deal, she liked him. And for some ridiculous, unprofessional, inexcusable reason, she wanted him to like her too.

  Ethan paused outside the door, listening to the muffled rumble of men’s voices inside. They sounded jovial and upbeat, and as a single laugh rang out clearly through the wall, he smiled. There hadn’t been a lot of happiness in those first few weeks back from Afghanistan, but as time wore on, the chatter in the canteen focused less on that ill-fated deployment and more on the run-of-the-mill triumphs and hassles of life in the military. He’d grown extremely close with his soldiers in Kunar Province—too close for a commanding officer, according to some of his peers—and now his office door seemed to be perpetually swinging open to admit a soldier eager to show him a photo of his newborn baby, announce that he’d proposed to his girlfriend, or sigh with relief as he shared the news that his dyslexic kid was finally getting the support she needed at Fort Preston Elementary.

  No matter how busy he was, Ethan always took the time to give each man his full attention for as long as they needed, and he treated even the most trivial bits of personal news with sincerity and respect. It didn’t matter that he often had to stay late or bring work home—these men put their lives on the line at his command, and he owed it to them to take as much interest in their survival as in their willing self-sacrifice.

  And he owed it to the men who hadn’t come home to invest in those who had.

  The noise on the other side of the door died down and gave way to the scrape of chair legs on linoleum. He paused, his hand hovering over the doorknob. They sounded so calm and at ease, maybe they didn’t need him after all. Maybe he was being overprotective.

  Then Mia’s voice cut through the quiet, as clear and pretty as a noontime church bell, and he pushed into the room.

  Eleven sets of eyes swiveled toward him as he stepped inside. Ten men from Echo’s Second Platoon sat in folding chairs arranged in a circle. Their posture stiffened as they registered his presence, blatantly unsure how to read or respond to their company commander’s appearance. Mia sat at the far end, leveling him with a watchful gaze.

  He forced a grin. “Oh, good, I finally found the knitting circle. I hope y’all can help me, I’ve been working on this scarf for weeks and it’s coming out all crooked.”

  A few men shifted in their seats, regaining some of their earlier ease, and a handful of chuckles that were louder than his joke warranted let him know the guys appreciated his casual demeanor.

  “Seriously, gents, I’m just here as an observer. I want to see how this process works, and whether there’s anything I can do to make it even more useful for you guys.”

  Mia’s expression remained unchanged, her dark eyes keen and cautious, but the almost imperceptible arch of her brow broadcast her skepticism as loudly as if she’d screamed at him.

  He dragged a chair into an open space and dropped into it, then held up his palms. “As you were.”

  Mia’s answering smile was tight, which unfortunately did nothing to diminish its beauty. He wrenched his gaze away from her and fixed it on the toes of his boots, his face heating as he recalled the night before, when despite the quiet of the duplex the mere thought of her moving around on the other side of the wall—bathing, dressing, combing that thick, dark hair—hardened him so forcefully it took every ounce of will not to press his ear to the shared plaster, take himself in his hand and give over to his vivid fantasies.

  Instead he’d called upon the white-hot fury that had flooded his veins the instant one of his fellow officers identified his new neighbor as the DoD shrink. Anger was his most readily available, easily navigable emotion these days, so he summoned it without hesitation and held on tight, letting it obliterate everything—Mia’s refusal to judge him that night in his backyard, her annoyingly rational appeal to let his soldiers make their own decisions, and the first hopeful flare of attraction he’d felt since deploying almost a year ago—like the eclipsing moon obscuring the sun and casting everything into darkness.

  “Now that we’ve finished our introductions,” Mia began, evidently picking up a thread of conversation that preceded his arrival, “let’s have this first session be an open forum. I’ll guide our future discussions, but today I’d like to hear from you guys. What’s on your mind?”

  “With regard to the deployment or in general?” asked one of the platoon’s team leaders.

  “Whichever. This process is all about getting you settled back in, so it’s always good to know what that home front looks like.”

  The room fell silent save for the rustling of ACUs and the creak of folding chairs as the soldiers shifted in their seats. Ethan wondered if he should start, to show his men it was okay—but what would he say?

  Well, I’ve got this nosy neighbor, she’s always interrupting me when I’m trying to check my glass-bottle traps for insurgents, and she’s barging into my workplace too, but the thing is she’s also totally hot, so I’m not sure what to do. Oh, and did I mention that I haven’t slept a full night in months because I have horrific nightmares? So anyway…

  “I drove down to my sister’s house in St. Louis for the Fourth.” Sergeant Carl Watkins, one of his best team leaders, spoke in a quiet voice. “She’s a high-school teacher in a pretty rough area, and we ran into her principal at the end of the parade. He asked if I’d come back in the fall and speak to the senior class about life in the military—you know, one of those trade-gangs-for-glory, serve-your-country speeches. I said I’d do it, but I wish I hadn’t. What am I going to tell these kids? That they’ll end up shooting way more people than they would in a gang, except it’s okay because they’re not American, so they don’t count?”

  “Of course they don’t count,” the youngest PFC, Dustin Jessop, insisted. “They’re terrorists intent on destroying our way of life. They’re a threat to freedom and democracy everywhere.”

  “I shot a little boy right through the chest. He wasn’t a terrorist.” Corporal Gabe Hernandez leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, seeming to stare right through the soldier seated across from him.

  “Terrorist in training,” the PFC retorted, and then Ethan heard his own voice before he realized he was speaking.

  “That was my fault, Gabe. I told you to engage the huts without waiting for intel on civilian numbers. That’s on me.”

  Hernandez turned to him with a frown. “You told us to take out possible observers for mortar teams—men with binoculars and phones. You didn’t tell us to shoot kids with itchy trigger fingers.”

  “I should’ve held us back until we had a clear target. We were looking for one man in a hundred-person village.”

  “And we got him. You got him. Textbook three-round burst and the mortar fire ceased. I’m the one who—”

  “No,” Ethan interrupted his subordinate, shaking his head. “They were my orders. You just did your job.”

  Another awkward hush descended over the group. Ethan set his back teeth and stared at the floor, struggling to regulate his short, panting breaths. The village loomed in his mind’s eye as clearly as if he’d driven past it that morning, huts seeming to defy physics with the angles at which they clung to the side of the mountain, chickens squawking and scattering as the first round cracked through the air, goats nearly choking themselves on their rough-hewn tethers as they tried to run away from the gunfire.

  His chest felt hot and tight. His right hand began to tremble in his lap. He clamped it on the edge of the chair, hoping no one had noticed.

  “I’m not just saying this because he’s here—in fact, we hardly ever have
anything nice to say to each other’s faces.” Watkins shot him a conspiratorial smile, referring to the vulgar banter they regularly exchanged, then turned to address Mia. “But we were damn lucky to have Captain Fletcher at the helm. There was a lot of shit rolling downhill out there, and he did his best to intercept it. His leadership is the only thing I still have absolute faith in.”

  Heads bobbed to accompany grunts of agreement as guilt seared through Ethan’s stomach so painfully he nearly recoiled. He felt Mia’s gaze land heavily on his face and ducked his head to avoid meeting her eyes.

  But so many of us died, he wanted to insist, clenching his fists against the impulse to grab each man by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. I couldn’t keep them safe and I couldn’t bring them home. How can you have faith in someone who’s such a catastrophic failure?

  The scene from his nightmares flickered to life behind his eyes, that afternoon in the forest almost a year ago, daylight slanting weakly through the trees. Slamming down the radio headset in frustration, Corporal Wright dropping into a crouch on his left, the murmur, the shout—

  Jessop’s head snapped up eagerly. “Like this one time, Captain Fletcher called in an artillery strike on a building we’d confirmed as a huge weapons cache for the Taliban. It was in the middle of a village, so he asked for one or two rounds to calibrate the coordinates—you know, to make sure the aim was accurate. Then his commander gets on the net and is all, ‘we need a decisive hit, the buildings surrounding that one may house sympathizers’ blah blah, and the next thing you know the whole place is up in smoke. The artillery totally flattened this village. The sky was still glowing when the sun went down.”

  “Innocent civilians, vaporized like that.” Hernandez snapped his fingers. “All for a couple of medals and some high-ranking officer’s promotion.”

  “The incompetence in the upper echelons of this division is breathtaking,” Watkins added.

  Ethan kept his gaze on the digital camouflage pattern of his trousers, counting sections of the multi-colored squares in an effort to anchor himself in the present and push away the memories that circled his mind like vultures.