“Dylan,” Dad says, and I don’t need to see him to feel his disappointment.

“So,” Holly says, standing up. She looks between Riley and I. “Is any of it a lie?”

I drop my gaze, folding the letter before placing it under my pillow. “I’m not cheating on her, Holly. I would never do that.”

“See?” Riley shouts.

Her mom ignores her. “But you hate her?”

“No.” I shake my head, my eyes drifting shut. “I wanted her to hate me.”

“Why?”

The force of my tears cause my eyes to open. I don’t look at Riley. I look at her. “Because I was hurting your daughter. And I wanted her to leave me.”

Holly’s brow furrows in concentration, or maybe confusion. “Can you give us a minute, Riley?”

“No!” Riley shouts, her hand holding mine so tight it begins to hurt.

Dad moves around the bed and carefully pries Riley’s fingers from my hand. He grasps her shoulders. “Come on, sweetheart,” he says, guiding her to the door.

She looks over her shoulder at me. “I didn’t mean it, Dylan!”

Holly waits until she’s out of the room and the door is closed before looking back at me. I keep my eyes on hers, because I deserve to see the sadness, the anger, the disappointment. After a while, she leans down and presses her lips to my forehead. When she pulls back, she’s smiling—a sweet, sad, pathetic smile. “I love you, Dylan. I love you for everything you’ve done for my daughter. I love that you loved her when she’d given up on love, and I love that you saw her when I was blind. I gave you my blessing and you broke her heart.” She takes a breath, her tears matching mine. “You created a fine line between honor and betrayal, Dylan. And you walked with a foot on either side. I’ll be taking her home with me. So, I guess, in the end you got what you wanted.”

There are now two sounds I’ll never forget. The gunshot that took Davey’s life, and Riley’s screams at her mother, begging her to let her stay, yelling that she was wrong—that she didn’t mean what she said in the letter. But the worst… the worst is when she cried, long and loud—She loves me. She’ll always love me.

Forty-Nine

Dylan

Dad goes back to work.

Eric shows up less and less.

They assure me it has nothing to do with the DUI.

I don’t believe them.

The guys come by.

So do the girls.

Only Sydney’s a regular and that’s because she works here.

She zips up the bag that Eric brought when he still gave a shit about me. “You ready to get out of here?”

I’ve been stuck in the same room for over two weeks. I’m well and truly ready to get out of here. When I tell her that, she spins me in the wheelchair until I’m facing the door. Two bodies dressed in black appear in the doorway, dropping to the floor as soon as I see them. They both look up, and even though they’re wearing black beanies pulled low on their brows, their faces covered in war paint, I can still tell it’s Logan and Jake.

Logan holds his wrist to his mouth as they slowly army crawl toward me. “All clear for Operation Banks Robbery. Target identified. Do you copy, Juliett Alfa?”

Jake does the same with his wrist as they continue crawling toward me. “Roger that, Lima Mike. Shit!” He looks up at Sydney standing behind me. “Target compromised.”

“Goddammit, Juliett! You had one fucking job!” Logan yells.

I shake my head and ignore how ridiculous they are. “What the fuck are you assholes doing?”

They stand quickly, brushing down their clothes. Then in unison, they grin from ear to ear.

“We’re busting you out,” Jake states.

Logan rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“I’ve already been discharged.”

The height of Logan’s repeated eye roll forces his head to roll back. “Obviously,” he says again.

“You know the rules, boys,” Sydney says, moving around me. “He stays in the chair until he’s off hospital property.”

Their cocky smiles drop as they stand straighter, puffing their chests. They salute her, followed by a united, “Sir. Yes, Sir!”

Sydney shakes her head. “Your friends are idiots, Dylan.”

Logan waits until she’s left the room before offering his fist for a bump that I return. He asks, “How you feeling, bro?”

Jake’s behind me now, slowly rolling me forward. I shrug. “Could always be worse, right?”

Logan grabs my bag off the bed and the crutches leaning against the wall. Six more weeks I’ll be using them while the cast is on my leg. “You ready?”

I nod.

Logan walks.

Jakes pushes.

I expect them to drive me straight home. They don’t. Instead, they take me to the garage where my car was towed. “What are we doing here?”

Logan turns to me. “Perspective.”

The physical details of what my truck looks like are irrelevant. But the visions, the memories of what happened that link to the damage—that’s why they brought me here.

“Poor Bessie,” Jake mumbles, standing beside me, hands in his pockets.

On the other side, Logan speaks up. “You’re kind of lucky to be alive.”

I look away from the truck, adjusting the crutches beneath my shoulders and face him. “You mean she’s lucky I didn’t fucking kill her?”

Logan’s gaze drops, his foot kicking the dirt we’re standing on. For a moment, I think about Afghanistan, about the seconds right before we entered the house of hell. The seed that planted the events that brought me to her. “I know it’s not the same,” Logan says. “But I get where you’re coming from. I understand the guilt. Your girl’s hurt, you think it’s your fault.” He removes his beanie, running his hands through his hair before adding, “I’ve been where you were man, sitting in a hospital room, drowning in guilt, the realization of your lack of self-worth eating away at you until you feel like it’s on you to save her from the pain you created.”

I listen to his words, each one meaning more than the last.

“So you feel like you need to run away to save her. You block her and everyone out to save them all from the destruction you’ll cause.” He sniffs once, his eyes lifting and locking with mine. “It doesn’t work though, D. I spent a year running away and the guilt is a thousand times worse when you’re doing it alone.”

“I don’t plan on running away,” I tell him.

“Maybe not physically, but emotionally.”

I stay silent.

Jake says, “Obviously something happened, man. From the time you came back for Riley’s birthday to now. And we’re not here to get you to bare your soul to us so please don’t think that. We’re just here to let you know that no matter what it is, we’re here.” He picks up a few rocks from the ground and starts pitching them at the truck. “I didn’t want to wait until it was too late like I did with Logan.”

“Shut up,” Logan snaps.

“I’m serious.”

“There’s no way you could’ve known. I didn’t even fucking know,” Logan says.