Page 121 of Forged By Sacrifice

I got up, ready to go bruise my knuckles on some more faces. Ready to gut myself along the way.

“Robbie,” Dad said, stopping me. He pulled me to him in an embrace I didn’t deserve, and I had to fight harder against the tears. I had to fight against the knot that had built in my chest and my throat and was threatening to cut off my air.

I pushed him away, and he let me.

“I’m so sorry, Son,” he said.

“What the fuck happened, Dad?” I asked. “I told them a goddamn hundred times that operation was fucking impossible without losing men. I told them…” My voice cracked, and I stopped, wiping my hand over my face.

“An IED followed by gunfire. They knew we were coming,” he told me.

An IED had exploded a world away from me, but it was as if it was right here in the room with me. Taking everything. Changing my world in a way that I wasn’t prepared for.

“I want to go to the Pentagon,” I told him.

He hesitated and then nodded.

Dani came into the room, took one look at our faces, and dropped the papers that were in her hand. “What happened?”

“We’ve lost contact with a S.E.A.L. squad,” Dad told her because I couldn’t say the words. Wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to say the words. We hadn’t lost them. I had. I’d given up. Walked out. Run away. Chased dreams so stupid, naïve, and ridiculous that they weren’t worth the clouds they rested on.

“Oh my God.” Dani sat down, putting a hand on her stomach. “Nash? Darren?”

“The leader. The others we don’t know yet,” Dad told her. But I knew…Darren…maybe more. I walked out. I couldn’t deal with Dani’s emotions. I couldn’t risk seeing her tears on top of everything else she’d dealt with over the last three days. It was too much. Too much at once. Too much pain and anguish. Too many times I hadn’t been there in the moment that people needed me. Dani. Georgie. Darren. Nash. The faces flew across my mind.

I knew one thing for sure. I wanted someone to pay, even if that someone was me. I wanted to face the fucker who’d rubber-stamped the op after reading all my reasons for not doing so. I wanted to see his face when he shouldered the guilt with me.

? ? ?

It was close to midnight when I entered the apartment. I expected it to be dark. Instead, the lights were ablaze, and there were boxes sitting in a pile at the foot of the loft stairs. Another goddamn loss that I didn’t know if I could take. I wasn’t sure it mattered now, anyway, if she moved out or if she stayed. I wouldn’t be here to coax her back to me piece by piece, even if I’d been able to.

I wasn’t sure I deserved for her to come back to me.

Dani looked up from her spot on the couch, throwing her hands in the air. “I tried. I’ve talked to her until I was blue from lack of air. She won’t listen to me.”

She moved toward me, and before I could stop her, she hugged me. “Have we heard anything more?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Still dark. I’m heading down to SOCOM tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll know more then.”

“I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know what I could,” she said. If I knew my sister at all, she’d wanted to use it as one of the reasons to get Georgie to stay, but I didn’t want her to stay because she felt sorry for me. I wanted her to stay because she loved me. I wanted her to stay because we fit. God help me, I still wanted her. I wanted her even more than I ever had. I wanted to bury myself in her skin and lose my guilt and anger there.

Dani let me go. “I’m heading to bed now that you’re home. But come get me if you need me. Or if you hear anything. I’d like to know.”

I let her go, gathered myself, and then headed up the stairs.

Georgie heard me coming and stopped to stare at me before returning to the box she was filling with books.

“Where are you going?” I asked, trying desperately to hold onto my emotions.

“To Theresa’s. She has an apartment over her garage she said I could rent.”

I just stood, hands in my pockets, watching her. And maybe she’d expected me to fight her more. Maybe she’d thought that, after my refusal to grant her favor this morning, she’d have to push me this evening. And she should have had to. She should have had to stop me from dumping her box out on the carpet and restocking the shelf she’d emptied. But instead, I stood there mute, watching as the woman I loved thought she was moving on without me. Maybe, because of all of that, it was my silence that stopped her more than my words and actions would have.

She looked up, taking me in. My face. My stance. My heartbreak. And her hands stilled.

“What is it? Is it Dani?”

“We lost contact with a S.E.A.L. squad today,” my voice cracked.

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