Page 14 of No Second Chances

Instead, I make it to the couch before the onslaught of memories push their way into my bones, and gunpowder fills my mouth as I’m taken back to the worst day of my life.

Fire rained down in the blistering heat, and I started running through the desert before the first piece of metal debris hit the dirt just up ahead.

“Danny!”

I had to be dying. My heart fucking hurt. Shards of glass pierced through my lungs, making it impossible to breathe as I pushed myself harder than should be possible. Even weighed down with gear, the heat, and the distance between us, I made it to the downed chopper in just a few seconds.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but run to my brother’s side. Gunfire erupted next to my head, filling the silence left by the chopper’s dying engine.

Flames roared, vehicles approached, and none of it mattered. The war didn’t matter. Only Danny mattered.

Numb, I didn’t even feel the blood seeping from my mouth when I ruptured something in my throat while screaming for my brother.

Hands tried to grab me, but I shoved them away while I searched for Danny. I called his name over and over again, shoving through the tattered remains of the chopper. Someone grabbed the pilot, pulling him from the wreckage, but I couldn’t find Danny.

Voices called out, screaming for me to leave the wreckage. I wasn’t going anywhere, though. Not until I found my brother.

I felt him there, in the destruction. I felt him reaching out for me, through the undeniable bond between twins. Agony, the likes of which no one could ever imagine, mixed with fear and death.

There. Under a piece of propeller, I found him.

His broken body. His blue eyes staring up at me as his chest rattled. His K-9 partner, Daisy, whimpering at his side, blood soaking into her fur. Danny.

“I got you. I got you. Come on, Danny.” I grabbed him, pulling as hard as I could to get him out of the flames. Away from the gunfire. Away from reality.

His mouth moved when I started to drag him, but no words came out. So much blood. There was so much blood. Danny smiled at me, his hand clutching mine, until it dropped.

“Please look at me. Danny. Please.”

He stared back, his eyes dull and lifeless, and I knew.

“No, Danny. No.”

Remy was there, grabbing Danny’s feet, and we lifted him from the carnage without saying a word. Danny’s lifeless body hung between us, blood pouring from a cut on the side of his neck.

We laid out on the ground, using the charred remains of the chopper as shelter from any attack.

Danny didn’t move.

He didn’t breathe.

He didn’t blink.

“Danny,” I cried out in grief, my voice nothing more than a broken whisper, a prayer of his name.

The medic shoved at me, trying to get to him, but I refused to let go. I refused to leave his side. I couldn’t leave him. I’d never leave him behind.

The unmistakable sound of incoming combatants filled the air. Screams, gunfire in the distance, and bombs exploding caused everyone to move.

Danny was gone, taken by a war he’d followed me into.

With the taste of death and metal in my mouth, I grabbed the rifle I didn’t remember slinging over my shoulder. Ringing in my ears was the only indication that I’d pulled the trigger. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. And as the bodies of our enemies dropped, all I saw was the smile on my brother’s face as he died in my arms.

I scream, ready to go to war with my rage, but I’m not in the desert anymore. The white walls of my living room surround me, and I stare at the ceiling, wondering how I got out of the desert. Wanting to know why I’m not covered in my brother’s blood. Trying to figure out how I can still feel the sand under my nails if I’m sitting in Maine.

“You’re home,” I tell myself. “You’re home, and you’re alive.”

Saying it doesn’t make it real, though, and I force my eyes to stay open until they are so dry I think they’ll fall out of my skull. If I close my eyes, I’ll be back in the desert again. I’ll be there, with Danny’s body behind me. I’ll be there, trying to die so I don’t have to tell my mother that Danny died. I clutch the dog tag I still wear around my neck, but it is the small ring on the chain next to it that I need. The one Kennedy sent during my first week overseas, the promise she gave me that we’d have forever to figure us out. The reason I made it home.

---