Page 1 of Accidental Wedding

Chapter 1- Shane

There’s a rumbling beneath me and a weight in my hand. I’m laughing at a joke I don’t remember and staring off at an empty horizon. Suddenly, I’m airborne. I squeeze my eyes shut against the blur of tan and orange that’s everywhere. It’s followed a second later by the loudest sound I have ever heard. It’s like a boom, an explosion, but it echoes in the strangest way.

I stop falling, but I don’t feel the landing. Was I unconscious?

The tan and grey blur above me starts drifting and I can see the sky again. I roll to my side and fight a wave of dizziness to stand up. As I move, a tight pain surges across my back and I cry out in pain.

I choke on the smell of burning that fills the air and double over, coughing. The motion jars my back. The smoke is back and now it is so bad that I can’t see where I am. I wander around in a daze. Where am I? What am I doing?

Tripping, I fall to the sand and look around in confusion. There’s something big next to me—it’s metal. A truck, maybe?

Where is everybody?

I feel like I’m forgetting something…

Forcing myself to stand back up I stagger around the tipped over vehicle, looking for someone to tell me what’s going on.

“Shane…” The pained whisper is soft, but it might as well have been a scream in the silence. I chase the sound until I come across a crumpled form against the sand. The person’s shoulder is damp when I turn them over and I gasp in shock.

It’s Brad.

As I wrap my arms around my injured friend, he opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is an almost automated sound… something about a flight…

I jerk awake and sit frozen for a good minute before realizing that I’m not in the desert anymore. I’m not overseas. I’m in the United States. I’m on a plane. It has been months since my team was attacked. Brad has been dead for months. I am safe.

I have to repeat these undeniable facts to myself several times before my heart rate settles back to something approaching the normal range.

Scrubbing a hand down my face, I make an effort to pay attention to the flight update as the plane approaches Las Vegas. I hadn’t wanted to go on vacation, but my commanding officer had told me that it was this or extensive therapy. He was of the thought that time away from the job was what I needed.

I disagree.

My job is my life—I’m not taking a week away from the office, I’m a goddamn Green Beret. I need to be out there. When I’m doing my duty I’m focused, concentrated only on the task at hand. Being on vacation leaves me way too much free time to think, and I don’t have a whole lot of good things to think about right now.

My best friend was killed. Sure, it’s been a couple months, but Brad wasn’t just my friend and teammate—he was my partner in the field. I trust all the guys on my team, we were all friends, brothers really. They’ll have my back no matter what. But Brad and I relied on each other.

Now he’s gone, along with the rest of our team and I just feel so… lost.

Despite coming from a big family, I don’t make friends very easily. When I joined the Green Berets, I thought that that was it: Despite the risks, those would be the guys who’d be with me for life. Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked out.

We were heading out in our transport vehicle and I was sitting in the way back, keeping an eye on the road, making sure we weren’t followed. We hit an IED and the force of the explosion tossed me out of the vehicle. I hit the ground hard and was knocked out. The vehicle flipped over and the gas tank caught fire. It was really bad—most of my buddies died on impact.

Except Brad.

I keep dreaming about how I found him. He passed after only a few minutes, and it makes me sick to admit it, but I’m glad I was there to say goodbye to him. He was such a major part of my life.

He’s the reason I decided to try going to Las Vegas for my imposed vacation. Brad loved it. The bright lights, loud music, flashy attractions—he grew up in California, so Las Vegas wasn’t very far and he and his parents would go there for vacations when he was younger.

I guess this is my tribute to him. I’m going to go to Las Vegas, try to have a good time, recover from what happened, as ordered.

The physical recovery was fairly easy. I had a nasty concussion and some fractures and broken bones along with many first degree burns and several nasty second degrees, but nothing that would take me out of the game.

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