“Don’t you get it?” Carson said, his voice much quieter but no less enraged. “I’m not just some regular guy! I was the top enlisted man in the whole fucking Navy! I could do anything! I saved the lives of good people and took the lives of bad ones! I got in and out of places without anyone ever knowing I was there! I shook the hand of the fucking President of the United States because something I did saved thousands of lives!
“But all that means dick because I couldn’t save my fiancée’s life! One person – ONE – died in that crash because I didn’t keep my promise! It would have been SO EASY to save her, but I failed! I promised her – right on the plane – I would keep her safe no matter what, and I LIED! And now she’s dead because I failed! Do you get it now? Well, DO YOU?!” Exhausted by the wrenching physical and mental outburst, he dropped back to his hands and knees. His body trembled and then, with a single, prolonged convulsion, expelled the contents of his stomach.
Carson crawled a few feet away from the ejecta and collapsed onto his side in the sand, facing away from Katie, who, he was sure, was running away as fast as her legs could carry her. His entire body shook from the gallon of adrenalin that had just been dumped into his bloodstream, and it was all he could do to clear the sand from around his mouth so he didn’t suck any into his lungs. His heart blasted against his chest wall like a jackhammer and he felt beads of sweat rolling from his forehead despite the cool evening temperature. At first he could see nothing but fuzzy blackness, but then the beach, water, and sky slowly separated into distinct elements as his vision cleared. The smell of the salt air and the gentle crash of the surf helped settle him down, and within a minute or two he started to think he might survive this ordeal.
Not sure if that’s a good thing, but here we are.
Finally his body checked in and told him he could probably sit up without an issue. He rose first to all-fours, pausing there for another internal systems check, before finally rolling to a sitting position. Taking another deep breath, it took him a couple of seconds to notice Katie was still standing in the same location, her hands resting at her sides, her fingers fluttering, her face a mask of concern.
“You’re still here,” he said, unsure his eyes were reporting back to him correctly.
“Of course I am. Where did you think I would go?”
“Well, after my meltdown, I’d think as far away from me as possible.”
“Do you want me to go away?” Carson wondered if the tone of her response, which told him she didn’t want to leave, was real or not.
“Well, I don’t want you to see – “
Katie managed to cut him off without raising her voice one bit. “I know what I want. I asked if you want me to go away.”
Carson felt a sudden longing for human contact, to feel the embrace of another person, someone from whom he could take comfort. It had been so long since he’d felt such a need that it seemed foreign, nearly unnatural. But once he remembered it, there was nothing he needed more.
“Not at the moment.”
With that simple admission, Katie sat down next to Carson, leaning her head on his shoulder and putting her arm around him. The touch of her smooth skin caressed his body like the worn, soft material of a favorite chair. He wallowed in the delight, and for a couple of seconds he just was, allowing the moment of peace to go on as long as possible.
Eventually, though, it ended when Katie stirred slightly. “Thank you,” she said tenderly.
“What on earth could you possibly be thanking me for?”
“For opening up. For letting your guard down in front of me. For being human.”
Carson wasn’t sure how to react to that. “I don’t know if you should be thankful I just popped a gasket. I honestly figured you ran like hell after I flipped out. If anything, I should be thanking you for sticking around.”
She laughed, the soft chuckle resonating through her upper body and into his. “It’s my turn to take care of you. You dove in for me. Now I have to make sure you’re OK.”
“I guess. But that was.… ugly.”
Katie’s voice became more serious. “It was only ugly because you held onto it for so long. You stuffed it so far down inside you that it grew bigger and stronger until the only way it was going to come out was in some massive explosion.” She hesitated for a moment, as if pondering the wisdom of an action, and apparently decided to take the plunge. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say this was the reason for your mixed responses to my interest in you.”
“Yeah, pretty much,” he responded. He longed to tell her more, about his occasional and illegal late-night activities, but that was different, and he figured he’d already hit her with way too much of his emotional garbage tonight. Better to wait, at least a little while.
“That’s good, because I was starting to get a complex,” she joked. “Look, I don’t expect that this little episode tonight will suddenly ‘fix’ you – I still think you need to see a professional about it to really resolve it – but I would like you to consider giving us a chance.”
He pulled back a bit so he could look at her, and when their eyes met, he was surprised by what he saw. Genuine affection. Not only had she been the catalyst
