Page 27 of The Way We Fell

“You know, I’m quite capable of fending for myself in a perfectly safe forest for four days,” I start. “It’s not like I haven’t camped in the middle of deserts in war zones before and survived.”

“Don’t say that,” Ruth snaps. “Don’t act like it was all fun and games, Jay.”

“It wasn’t funorgames, Ruth,” I answer quietly. “It had its moments, but it was neither.”

“Exactly.” She pulls out a stack of sealed freezer bags and changes the subject. “These are coconut and cinnamon balls. Granny Bevan’s recipe.”

My mouth waters at the memory of our grandmother’s cooking. “You didn’t have to do this, Rooey.”

“Yes, I did. Just say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

My sister pushes onto her tiptoes and flings her arms around my neck, squeezing me tightly.

“Promise me you’ll be safe,” she whispers against my shoulder, clinging to me. “Don’t do anything dumb, okay?”

“I’ll be fine, Roo, I promise. Thank you for all of this. And for caring.”

“Always. Text me when you get to your camp site?”

“I promise.”

Ruth leaves, and once I’m done packing, I go to bed early.

When I was first deployed to Afghanistan in my twenties, I found sleeping in a tent difficult. If you thought the walls of old London terraces were thin, they’ve got nothing on a tent in the middle of a desert. You can hear—and feel—everything. Sometimes, we got lucky, and we’d be in canvas huts with actual camp beds and real blankets. Other times, we had tents and sleeping bags strapped to our backs as we parachuted into the most remote places, and we had to figure it out for ourselves.

Over the years, I grew to love the isolation of camping. The space and time it affords me to justbe. It’s something I’ve very intentionally and deliberately made time to do whenever I’ve been home between deployments, and I’m long past due a trip into the woods.

It turns out putting up a tent when your leg is aching from a long drive is a little more of a challenge than I anticipated. I’m glad I chose to drive down mid-morning, because with the amount of breaks I’ve had to take, I’d be doing this in the dark otherwise. At least it’s not raining. It’s actually quite warm for the middle of February—I guess we can chalk that one up to global warming—and I have to pause to drain a bottle of water and strip off my hoodie before I continue.

Once the tent is up and my sleeping bag and duffel are stowed inside, I start a fire in the designated pit and heat some water in a tin jug. I brought Ruth’s non-perishable care package, as well as a cooler full of items I can cook on a grill or over a fire. I use the hot water to make a cup of instant coffee and sit back in a camping chair, content to just listen to the trees for a while and let the tension leave my body.

Being close to the fire doesn’t scare me as much as I worried it might. I think that was playing on Ruth’s mind, too, when I told her how I plan to cook for myself out here. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly love the proximity to open flames, and the crackle and pop of the kindling sends a cold chill down my spine, but I managed to start the fire without too much hesitation and sitting by it now, watching as the orange flames lick at the air, my pulse is surprisingly steady.

My phone doesn’t pick up much signal out here. I’ve enough to send a quick text to my mum, Ruth, and Katy, as promised to let them know I’ve arrived safely, but I can do little else. It means I can’t talk to Ruth or Katy, and it means I can’t get in touch with Amie to ask for help getting some car parts shipped over for a project, but it also means my sister can’t call and baby me. It means I can’t doom-scroll through news sites, watching more innocent people fall victim to the whims of the rich and dangerous.

Four days of peaceful solitude is exactly the balm my soul needs. It’s giving me plenty of time to think, which is both a blessing and a curse.

When I joined the army, I did so knowing I wanted to join the airborne infantry battalion as a parachutist. Soldiers in the parachute regiments are always touted as the best of the best, and I wanted to be part of that. The thirty-week training course was gruelling as hell, but I never once doubted that I could get through it. It was that bravado that saw me get up time after time, every time I was knocked down.

Resilience. Discipline. Self-reliance. Those are the buzzwords I came to live by. Whether it was a training mission with soldiers from other nations, or deployment into a disaster relief or war zone, I conducted myself with those three things, and more besides. Courage. Versatility. Knowing when to pivot, when to move on, when to keep pushing.

All of those things seem to evade me now. My courage is long gone, blown up with the jeep and my best friend. My resilience might as well have gone along with it. And as for discipline—well, I’m just about breaking all of my rules these days, letting myself get close to Katy Keller.

Letting her get close to me.

I’ll always be a paratrooper, but I’m walking—or, more accurately, limping—a different path now. A path where I don’t need to be quite so disciplined or self-reliant; a path where others can join me, where I can call on them for help. It’s a hard habit to break, and the lock on my heart has damn near rusted closed. But fuck if Katy’s musical laughter doesn’t make me want to try and crack it open again.

Chapter twelve

Jay

It’sanothersurprisinglywarmday for the end of February, and the sun is shining. Spring has definitely sprung early if the last week of warmth is anything to go by. My trip to the New Forest reinvigorated me more than I could’ve hoped, and I’ve been feeling good. Even my leg has been feeling a little better—whether due to the unseasonable warmth, or the healing properties of time, I neither know nor care. I just care that it is.

As we exit the train station, Katy shrugs out of her leather jacket and drapes it over her arm, letting the sun beat down on her bare arms. She looks beautiful, dressed in a white sundress with a flowy skirt that falls halfway down her thighs, bright white canvas high tops, and that same pink lipstick I keep imagining staining my dick. Her hair flies out behind her as she tips her head and laughs. I bump her shoulder with mine.

“This way, Princess.” I guide her to the left with a hand on her lower back. I don’t even think about the contact; it just happens. It’s something the old Jay would’ve done. Katy turns to look at me, lips in a smalloand an expression of surprise before she relaxes into my touch. I can feel the warmth of her skin through her dress, and my blood hums with a similar warmth. It’s been a long time since a woman has affected me this way—since I’ve felt anything more than friendship for someone. But with Katy, it’s a kinship. It feels like she’s someone I want in my life for a long time. And that thought leads to some impure ones, some desperate ones, and some thoughts and concerns about whether or not that part of my anatomy still functions after all of the trauma.

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