Prologue
Lila
I clawed at his hands, my eyes wide. He was choking me with his bare hands, cutting off the air to my windpipe.
Was this how it was going to end?
Was I going to die at the hands of the man I loved?
But this wasn’t him. This was a man I didn’t recognize. His blue eyes were wild and unfocused like he was somewhere else. I gasped for breath, tears streaming down my face.
I saw the moment when it registered with him that I was on the bedroom floor in a chokehold, his hands wrapped around my neck, making it impossible for me to breathe. He released me and sat back on his heels, tugging at the ends of his hair. I tried to breathe through the pain, my hand reaching up to rub my bruised neck.
“Lila,” he said, his voice raw. The moon was so bright tonight I could see the pain etched on his face. “Fuck. Lila. I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
He gathered me up from the bedroom floor, pulled me into his lap and held me in his arms, his forehead pressed against mine. His tears mingled with my own.
How had we gotten to this place?
“Talk to me,” I pleaded for the hundredth time since he’d returned home a year ago. Naively, I had believed that when he came home, we could resume our regularly scheduled life. I’d been wrong. So fucking wrong. Even though I was trembling on the inside, I fought through it. I had to ask. “Tell me what happened to you,” I pleaded again. “Please, Jude, I’m begging you.”
He buried his face in the crook of my neck and said nothing. It hurt that he couldn’t talk to me about anything when we used to confide in each other. Now, I was walking on eggshells. Constantly on the lookout for his triggers. Dirt roads. The Fourth of July fireworks. A rustling in the tall grass behind the barn. He saw danger in places where it didn’t exist.
And tonight, all I’d done was wrap my arms around him while he was asleep. I’d done it on instinct, reaching for him in the middle of the night like I’d done so many times before.
Nights were the worst. The circles under his eyes were testament to his lack of sleep.
“I love you,” he said, the words ripped from his throat like they were painful. “I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you more. I… Jude…” I clung to him.
Don’t go.
Don’t leave me.
But I knew that he was already gone. I’d lost him somewhere on the other side of the world. “We need to find someone who can help you.”
He didn’t say anything. He’d been seeing a therapist but it wasn’t helping. He was convinced that no one could help him. He was giving up. I could see the defeat in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said over and over. He kept saying it like that would make everything okay. But I knew that nothing would ever be okay again.
Jude McCallister was the strongest man I’d ever known. He’d survived three deployments to Afghanistan. Five years of active duty in the US Marine Corps. He’d been shot in the head and he had survived. I kept his helmet in my closet. A huge hole had ripped through the material, but the Kevlar had stopped the bullet and had saved his life. My photo was taped inside that helmet and he said he’d carried me with him everywhere he went.
I used to think our love was strong enough to survive anything. Even a combat zone.
I was wrong.
What I hadn’t counted on was the injuries that left no scars. The broken parts that no doctor was able to fix. He’d brought that hell home with him, and I had no idea how to help him. But I would keep trying.
I couldn’t lose Jude.
He was supposed to be my forever and my always.
Jude
I sat on the edge of the mattress and I watched her sleeping. She looked so peaceful. So fucking beautiful, her wavy brown hair all messy and disheveled, her long lashes resting in the hollows beneath her eyes. Those green eyes, the same shade of green as the grass in the meadow. My gaze lowered to the purple marks on her neck that I’d put there two days ago. She used makeup to cover them, but they were still there, clear as fucking day for everyone to see. No amount of makeup could hide the truth.
I had done this to her.
I had inflicted pain on the person I claimed to love above all others.
A few months ago I’d almost broken her wrist in the midst of a night terror. I hated myself for the hell I’d put her through. The shouting, the unfounded accusations, the drinking and the times I couldn’t bear to be touched. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for. Love shouldn’t have to hurt this much. She’d tried to convince me otherwise, but she was blind to the truth. And I’d be damned if I would continue dragging her down with me. Lila was tough and she was strong, but her love for me made her weak. She had stayed by my side, through thick and thin, when she should have left my ass.
Hell, she should have left my ass the day I went off to boot camp at the ripe old age of eighteen. Back then I’d had it all figured out. So cocky. So confident that I was strong-minded enough to handle anything. That was only six years ago, but it felt like another lifetime.
Now, she was scared of me. Scared for me. Afraid to leave me alone. Afraid I wouldn’t make it to my twenty-fifth birthday.
Look what you’ve done to her, asshole. Can you really expect her to love you for better or worse?
She deserved so much better than a psycho who had almost choked her to death. The list of shit I’d done to her—to my entire family—was long and unforgivable. Not just the past year since I’d been home, but the years she’d spent waiting and worrying about me while I was off fighting a war she’d begged me to stay out of. Lila would claim that she hadn’t made any sacrifices to be with me, but it was bullshit and we both knew it.
I stood up and set the note on the bedside table then walked out of the bedroom before I could change my mind. I hoped she would understand that I was doing this because I loved her. It was time to set her free. I couldn’t be the man she needed. That man was gone.
The sun was starting to rise as I drove away. I left my home. I left Texas. I left my family. And I left the love of my life. If I could have crawled out of my own skin, and out of my head, I would have left them behind too.
I cranked up the volume on a classic rock song—“Carry On Wayward Son”—and I drove.
Lifting the bottle of whiskey to my lips, I took a long swig.
“You fucked up, McCallister.” I turned my head to look at my buddy Reese Madigan, sitting in the passenger seat of my Silverado. He rubbed his hand over his buzzed cut, his other hand tapping out the beat to the music. Reese loved this song. Used to belt it out at the top of his lungs just to piss everyone off. Dude had the worst singing voice. Couldn’t carry a tune to save his life. “You should have known.”
“He was just a boy,” I argued. “We played football with him. Gave him candy. How could I have known?”
“You telling me you didn’t see the cell phone? You saw it but you hesitated, didn’t you?”
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm. My heart was hammering against my ribcage, fear and dread crawling up my spine.
I checked the passenger seat again. Reese was gone. Because Reese was fucking dead. I was talking to dead men now.