“Emily,” he says my name in a whisper.
“No.” I shake my head. “Those are the last tears I will cry for you, Ethan,” I say. “The last. Do me a favor and let me be. If you ever cared about me at all, just let me be.”
He walks to me now, and I don’t move, I can’t. “I’ll let you be,” he says the words. “But for the record, I loved you every single day that I was gone. I loved you every single second. In my darkness, you were my light,” he says words that cut me to the core. “In my pain, you were my strength, and when I looked into the face of evil and fought for my life, you were the reason I wanted to live.” My mouth opens, but just like I gave him my truth, he gives me his. He pulls his wallet from his back pocket and takes out a ratted old picture. “The color has faded with all the times it’s been taken out and touched, but this picture.” He turns it, and I see it’s a picture that we took together. He’s kissing my neck, and I’m laughing. “This picture saved me in more ways than one.” His hand comes out now to touch my face, his thumb wiping away a tear that is running down my face. “I loved you then, I’ll love you forever, but I’ll let you be.” He bends down, and my whole body shakes. “Be happy, Emily,” he says, kissing my cheek and walking away from me.
I watch him walk until I can’t see him anymore, then turn and walk into the house. My body feels like it's been beaten down. I walk into my bedroom and walk over to the drawer, lifting up the shirts until I find the same picture that he showed me outside. But mine is still in the frame. I look at the picture, bringing it to bed with me, and here in the darkness, I hold it to my chest and cry myself to sleep.
Chapter Twelve
Ethan
As I walk away from her, my heart shatters in my chest, and my mind goes around and around. I don’t know how I make it back to the house. Numb. That is the only word I know to describe what this feeling is. I don’t bother turning on the lights in the house before I make my way over to where I know the whiskey is kept. Without bothering with a glass, I take a pull straight from the bottle until the burning hurts so much I gasp out, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “What the fuck was I thinking coming back here?” Sitting down on the couch, I put my head back and close my eyes, but all I can see is Emily. The pain in her eyes, the hurt in her words, the destruction I left behind. I take another pull of the whiskey. When I left, I thought of none of that. I just thought about myself.
Walking away from them was so hard, but I had to do it for me. I was lost, so lost, and I didn’t know where to turn. I walked into church one night. I was dripping wet from the rain that was coming down outside. It was a mirror to how I was doing inside me. I was drowning, my head was under the water, and there were no lifelines thrown in my direction.
Sitting in the last pew in church, I looked up, not even sure what I was doing there. I was hoping I would get the answers I needed. I sat there for much longer than I needed to, and one of the parishioners came over to me.
“Son, you look lost,” he said as he sat down next to me. I didn’t say anything to him. “I know that look,” he said to me, looking ahead. “I’ve had the same look.”
“How did you get found?” I asked, not expecting his answer.
“Military,” he said proudly. “Band of brotherhood. Strangers one minute, family the next. I would die for each and every one of them.” He said the words, and when I walked into the recruitment office the next day, I felt like a piece of my puzzle was back in its place.
The sound of thunder makes me open my eyes just in time to see the lightning come through the window. I take another pull of the whiskey as Emily’s words replay in my head. The whiskey numbs the pain, and when I finish the bottle, it slips from my fingers at the same time as my eyes close and the thunder crashes again.
“Stay down!” Trevor yells from behind me, and the sound of bombs
