Page 126 of What I Should Have Done

Then, with a final caw, the crow took flight, disappearing into the bright sky.

Mikey

The Staged KIA

Her scream.

Despite the chaos, the gunfire booming through the air, all I heard was her voice. My eyes dry, staring unblinking through the sand in the air, it was her voice that nearly destroyed me. My chest burned, that damned button bomb ripping through skin, but it meant nothing compared to the absolute anguish that seared through the air.

“You promised!” Scottie screamed, her voice like claws that shredded my soul.

Unimaginable pain must’ve been tearing through her. Agony caused by me. The final drop of self-control, of following orders plunked into my heart, blackening it as dark as the death that I pretended to offer.

“Mikey!” she screeched again. The hollowness, the feral and raw torment slipping across her tongue consumed me. Guilt wrecked my body, begging me to rise from the ashes and comfort her. But I couldn’t. There was a possibility that she would never forgive me for the pain I caused her by faking my death, but breaking orders would guarantee my solitude from her.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! Please!” she begged.

I know, Scotch, baby.

I knew she hadn’t meant it. That was why I promised her we’d talk when I returned. I would return, no matter what happened. Having known the plan when I’d spoken those words to her, killed me. The small amount of light left in my heart jumped into her chest, lodging itself there in hopes that she would be okay until I returned.

But the roar of agony ripping from her desperate cries nearly buried me alive.

“You promised me!” she pleaded again.

It took everything in me to not nod. To not respond. To not rise from the dirt and run to her. She’d become tattooed upon my soul. I wanted her fire as much as the Earth needed rain. My skin craved her touch as intensely as the trees needed sunlight, as much as the sky needed the stars.

“Mikey, please. Please. I need you,” her plea softened. The roar of the fight ensuing still a blur behind her words.

I need you, too.

In a way that words would never be able to describe, I needed her. That brief relief knowing she would be okay right before that fucking button was pressed to set off the button bomb fled my system.

Maybe she wasn’t going to be okay.

A decision, an order that once would’ve been so easy to follow, now turned my beating heart ragged. I’ll be home soon, Scotch. I needed only seven days and I would be back. Scottie was going to be consumed by the most unbearable grief for seven days by my hand.

Upon returning, when we met again, when she saw me, I wasn’t sure how she’d react, which terrified me as much as this mission burdened me. How selfish of me to know that I wasn’t dead, but to leave her to a fate much worse than that?

Why was I afforded the peace and knowledge of this and she wasn’t? What cruel trick was played to land us here in this situation? She deserved so much better…

“We’ll come back for him,” Ford muttered. Rocks crunched beneath boots as a body slid away from me. An empty guarantee, and I knew Scottie knew that as she ignored his next plea to evacuate.

“No! I won’t leave him!” she screamed. The sounds of her fighting against Ford snapped into my ears, drawing in a small amount of the remaining chaos surrounding us.

“Scottie, let’s go. That’s an order,” Dom stated.

I swallowed stiffly as her next words hissed out like hot iron.

“You fucking killed him! How could you kill him?!” she screeched, her voice cracking. Hatred much like the all-consuming kind that once filled my soul toward a wretched man who should have never touched a boy slithered across her words.

There was no silent plea I could give to tell her I was okay.

There was no reprieve from the solidarity and grief that was latching onto her soul.

And it was all caused by me.

Which nearly destroyed me.

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