What He Explores (What He Wants, Book Twenty-One) (20 page)

“Leave me alone,” Zack said.

I turned my head, watching both men uncertainly.

“Dude, we need to talk,” the blond man told him. “It’s time.”

“I got nothing to say and you should know that by now,” Zack told him.

The man shook his head and then looked at me. “Are you his girlfriend?” he asked. His blue eyes were piercing.

I gave a half-shrug. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Lance Barrett,” he said, outstretching his hand to shake mine. I grasped his hand and he firmly shook mine, still looking at me.

“And how do you know Zack?”

“We served together,” he said.

I nodded as if this made sense, and it did—a little. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t really know what’s going on.”

“Don’t talk to him, Caeli,” Zack said, not moving from where he stood.

Lance turned and pointed back towards the restrooms. There was a small group of men, all of them sporting short hair and similarly fit builds.

“Friends are here to see you, Zack,” Lance said. “It’s time to face up to it.”

Zack swore under his breath. Then he looked up. “Come on, Caeli. Let’s go.” He reached for me and I crossed to where he stood, felt his hand on my arm, pulling me closer as if to protect me.

“Dude, you can’t keep running from this,” Lance called out. “You need us and we need you.”

“Fuck off,” Zack replied, and then turned, pulling me with him as we went out to Yawkey Way.

“What’s going on?” I said, as he started up with a brisk pace. “Zack, I can’t keep up with you when you walk this fast.”

“Then run,” he said, his voice suddenly aggressive.

I felt tears sting my eyes and I stopped short.

Zack stopped too, looked down at his feet. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he said softly as people streamed around us.

“Who are those guys? What do they want?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said.

“Zack, that guy said his name was Lance and that he served with you in the military.”

He shrugged. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Well maybe you need to.”

He looked up at me, green eyes flashing with anger now. “What the hell would you know about it?”

I stepped back, and felt my cheeks flame. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“I just need to clear my head.”

“You need to stay and deal with this.” I looked over and saw Lance and the other four men standing not far away, watching us.

Zack glanced at them and shook his head. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“Then go on and leave,” I said, folding my arms.

“And you’re going to stay?” he said, smirking with disbelief.

“I’m not running anywhere.”

His eyes grew harder and colder still. “Fine,” he said, sneering a little. “You have no idea…no idea…” he seemed unable to even complete his thought, and then finally he just turned and moved off, away from me without looking back.

Soon, he’d disappeared into the crowd.

I felt myself choking back tears, staring at the crowd of people, waiting for Zack to reappear. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“You okay, ma’am?”

I turned and saw not just Lance, but also his four buddies all surrounding me. I licked my lips and tried to smile. “I’m Caeli,” I said. “And you all must be friends of Zack’s?”

“That we are, ma’am,” a shorter guy with a dark beard said.

They introduced themselves to me, then. There was the tall blond Nordic fellow, Lance, and then the bearded fellow, Brant. The others were Steve, Caden, and Darrell.

“I’m afraid I don’t really know Zack all that well,” I admitted to them. “I didn’t even know he’d served in the military to be honest.”

None of them registered any surprise.

Lance spoke up again. “We know that Zack didn’t probably talk to you about his service, ma’am. After he got out of Afghanistan and came home, he up and left everyone and everything he knew back in Ohio and moved around. Nobody could locate him—not his family, not his friends, not the people he served with.”

I felt fear and anxiety lance my belly, piercing me deeply. This was it.

I knew he’d been running from something. Something terrible.

“Did he do something wrong?” I said.

They all exchanged glances.

“Are they going to arrest him or something?” I asked, my hands fluttering as the thought bubbled to my lips, unbidden.

Lance was the first to smile ruefully. “Quite the opposite, actually. Zack isn’t some deserter. He’s not getting court-martialed for breaking the law.”

“No?”

“He’s a war hero, ma’am.”

Brant spoke next. “He saved our lives over in Afghanistan. We got ambushed in Kabul by a large group of Taliban fighters,” he said.

“We lost three of our brothers during the skirmish,” Lance said, “and five others sustained major injuries. It was a bloodbath.”

Despite the crowds surging around us and past us as we stood in the middle of busy Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park, I felt like the six of us were totally alone.

Everything else seemed to drop away as the enormity of what they were telling me took hold.

I recalled Zack’s tattoo of the tombstone with the word Kabul etched into it—that tattoo which I knew meant something. But I’d had no clue just what it meant.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling completely at a loss to absorb their pain and suffering. I could see it still in their expressions, in their eyes, which looked much too old for the eyes of people just a little older than me.

“Zack took on the enemy singlehandedly,” Lance told me. “He drew them away from our position, allowing us to escape with our wounded. But as a result, he ended up being out in the wilderness by himself, fighting and avoiding the Taliban for four days.”

“He was alone for four days?” I said, my skin chilling.

“Yes ma’am,” Caden replied seriously.

“We were finally able to locate him on that fourth day,” Lance said. “He was severely dehydrated, he’d sustained a bullet graze along his calf muscle that had become infected and septic. He was in bad shape, so they shipped him back to the states to be treated and then he was released from further duty overseas and honorably discharged.”

“How long ago did this happen?” I said, still reeling from everything these men were telling me.

“Approximately two years ago, ma’am,” said Lance.

Caden spoke next. “Zack was awarded The Distinguished Service Cross for what he did in Afghanistan.”

I knew that Zack was running from his past, but it never occurred to me that he’d been running from friends, from people that were like brothers to him. He was running away from anyone and everyone he’d ever known.

“Why do you think he won’t speak to you?” I asked Lance.

“We don’t know why,” Lance said. “There are people who want to find him, including us and his family. But also there’s some folks who want to tell his story, put his name out there as a hero. Perhaps he’s running from all of that stuff—the notoriety, the fame he might get.” Lance shrugged, finally. “We don’t know because he refuses to speak to us. Just runs from one town to the next, fighting, drinking, fucking random…” his voice trailed off.

I felt my face flush but kept my chin high. “Yes, he’s quite active, isn’t he?”

“Apologies, ma’am, no offense. You seem like a very quality person, but Zack has not been with any one person or in any one city for long since he got out of the military.”

“Yeah, I gathered as much.” I sighed and shook my head. “I wish I could help you all, but in case you hadn’t noticed, Zack left me too. That’s why we’re all standing here together.”

And then my cell phone began ringing.

I pulled it from my purse and looked at it. The number was blocked. I answered, my heart beating fast. “Hello?”

“Caeli, are you with them right now?” the familiar voice asked.

“Yes,” I said.

His friends moved closer, staring at me as I spoke.

He urged me with a low rumble through the phone. “Can you get away from them? I need to see you.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I replied.

Zack’s breath hissed into the cell phone. “Caeli,” he said, his voice sounding almost panicked. “I need to see you, but I can’t…I won’t deal with them right now. Just get free and meet me in front of the Hotel Buckminster.”

“All right.” I hung up the phone.

My thoughts were spinning, and I was left feeling as if I was trying desperately to catch up in a math class where the teacher has moved on and you’re ten problems behind.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to Lance.

He looked down, knowing that Zack wanted nothing to do with them.

Z
ACK

T
his was
the worst it had ever been.

I was back, all the way back.

I’d just hung up the phone with Caeli and pushed my way into the hotel and asked to use their restroom. I was sweating, and I must have looked pale.

The concierge gave me a strange sidelong glance. “Just down the hall, sir,” he told me in heavily accented English.

When his hand slid beneath the desk, I had the sudden urge to drag him by his tie and scream a warning in his face.

Don’t fuck with me!

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, coppery and fresh, and I managed not to yell, but I felt like a live wire about to explode.

Inside the bathroom, I made my way to the stall, locked the door and sat down on the toilet.

I put my head into my hands and my body was racked by shivers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Chase is looking at me, he’s next to me, laughing. “Dude, you should see your face,” he cackles, slapping his knee.

FLASH.

And then his face is disintegrating into blood and bone and flesh and I’m smelling acrid gun smoke.

Darkness.

Gun in my hand as I fire over and over, running, chasing those fuckers down. Mowing them down as they flee before me like the animals they are. I’m shouting and screaming, and I’m death itself.

Another flash.

Now I’m crawling through dirt and sand and stone, trying to stay low.

I can hear voices so close that I know it’s only a matter of time before a bullet enters my brain or severs my spine and then it will all be over.

My leg stings, seared with pain.

I grit my teeth and look up to the blue sky and see a helicopter fly overhead, and I scream again.

Someone knocked on the restroom door.

“Zack? Are you in there?” the soft voice called. It was her—Caeli—my angel bringing me back to Earth, out of the hell I’d been stuck in a moment ago.

I sat up, blinking. I got off the toilet and opened the stall door. “I’m not feeling well,” I called out.

“I’ll wait out here,” came her muffled reply.

I went to the sink and started the faucet running, and then I splashed my face again and again. Patted my skin down with paper towels, crumpled them up and threw them out.

Thinking of Caeli out there, waiting for me, somehow I calmed just a little. I took a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror. My skin was pale and waxy, and my lips were stark and red in comparison.

I looked like a fucking vampire or something.

And then I was trying to smile as I exited the bathroom. She was standing there, gorgeous, sweet, vulnerable.

I felt so sick over bringing her into all of this madness—my madness.

“Caeli,” I said, reaching out and touching her cheek.

She blinked, smiled at me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Am I okay? I’m never fucking okay.

I nodded. “I think so.”

Her smile faded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” I said, feeling sick that she wanted to know more. My stomach lurched. My legs suddenly were jittery.

“Your friends told me about…everything,” she said. “How you were considered a hero for what you did in Afghanistan and how you came back to the U.S. and then you took off, refused to talk to anyone.”

It was as if Lance was talking out of Caeli’s mouth. I stepped back, away from her, pressing into the wall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

I heard gunfire in the background, and then screams.

“Zack,” she said, looking at me with worry. “What is it?”

“I can’t talk about this shit,” I whispered. “I’m not ever going to talk about this shit. You understand that I’m finished, right? I might look normal on the outside, but inside there’s…there’s nothing left.”

“You’re not finished,” she replied, color rising to her cheeks.

“You don’t understand what I’ve been through.”

“I can’t understand what you refuse to tell me.” Her eyes didn’t waver.

I felt a wave of anger pass through me and my fists clenched. “I don’t want to talk about it because I know what will happen if I do. You think they didn’t give me appointments with shrinks when I came back home? When I was in the hospital getting well?”

“I—I don’t know what they did,” she said, sounding unsure.

“They had me in therapy, they had me talking about my feelings, remembering the shit I went through, reliving it, and nothing got better. Nothing got better from talking about it and remembering it. What got better was when I drank and fucked until I couldn’t think straight.”

“That’s no way to live,” Caeli said.

“It’s how I live, though.” My eyes focused on hers.

“That’s a choice,” Caeli said. Her big eyes looked at me with so much caring, so much love and understanding and it was like she saw me and the emptiness and madness and she didn’t care about that stuff at all.

She saw past it, to whatever was left of who I used to be.

And then I felt as though someone had just given me oxygen, brought me back to life. I felt the breath come into my lungs and I sucked it in, gasping.

I fell back into the wall, gasping over and over, like a fish that had been taken out of the water, my mouth opening and closing. I slid down and she cried out, running over to me as I sank to the floor.