Page 4 of Carter's #Undoing

Two

CARTER

Unidentifiable.

The first time I ever really paid attention to that word, I was on my first mission with the military and we’d been ambushed in Iraq. I remember looking all around, shocked by the scene before me. The men who’d lost their lives within seconds, their faces almost unrecognizable.

Every day I fought in those earlier years I thought,Today may be the day. Today may be the day that I lose my life. Who would find my body if something happened? Would it be a soldier I knew or a soldier I didn’t? Would it be my enemy? Would it be someone who stepped over my body without a care of who I was or where I was from?

Would I be unidentifiable?Like the distorted face of the first dead man I’d ever seen. He hadn’t been a soldier, but was still a causality of war. I’d wondered if he was a father? A brother? A husband? A boyfriend? The only thing I’d known for sure was that he’d been someone’s son.

Death.

I thought about death a lot. Every soldier that I knew in the army had thought about death at one point in time, but I’d never really thought about a man dying at the cause of my own hands. But that was the thing about war. When you were fighting for your country, you didn’t get to take a second and see if you could talk some sense into your enemy. In the front line of duty, you had to be focused. Your vision clear on your mission. With my hands on a gun, I had to block out any and everything. Our enemies weren’t people. They couldn’t be. I couldn’t wonder if they had families or loved ones. I couldn’t think about what they’d had for breakfast that morning or what they would be doing if the current war wasn’t going on.

Contrary to what the news shared with the public, there was always a war going on. Always someone we had to fight. A mission to be won or lost. A person to be killed or captured. If I allowed my brain to treat even one enemy like a human being, I couldn’t do my job. And if killing people who my nation had deemed the enemy meant my loved ones were safer for it, I had to destroy the lives of those people. Innocent people, maybe. And what did that make me?

Monster.

That’s how Serenity Taylor looked at me. The woman who used to look at me as if I held the happiness to her future, now only saw me as a monster. It wasn’t because of the scar on my face, but rather, the fact that she was understanding I wasn’t the man she once knew. I’d done terrible shit. Fucked up things that I wasn’t proud of. Yet, standing there as her beautiful, dark-honey eyes widened in utter shock at the Carter that stood before her was the hardest thing I’d done in a while.

Her eyes were filled with hurt, disgust, misunderstanding, and tears that she refused to let fall. Proof that whatever love she’d had for me, she burieddeepwhen she realized I was never returning to her. Instead, that love had been replaced with animosity and reeked of disappointment.

I could take any hate because at least it was a strong emotion toward me, but I couldn’t take the disappointment I saw in her eyes. To have the one person who used to understand you better than you knew yourself look at you as if you’d failed her in every way possible was a tough pill to swallow.

My Serenity.My sweet Serenity who’d always worn her heart on her sleeve. She’d always been mine since before I’d even learned what her name was. Didn’t matter that we were kids back then. Or that there were people in the neighborhood who thought we were too young to be so serious about each other.

Hell, I hadn’t even known what it felt like to have a crush on a girl until I laid eyes on her. Andfuck, was she still as breathtaking as ever. When I left home, we were still practically kids. We hadn’t even been eighteen for long. Legal to smoke, but still too young to drink. She’d been beautiful back then, but adult Serenity was fucking gorgeous.

When I first saw her decades ago, I hadn’t even known how to talk to her. Had my brothers not been there, I’m not sure I ever would have found my words. If I looked close enough now, it seemed not even the slightest sliver of her could see that kid she started calling golden boy just to piss me off. Although she never admitted she was the one who started that and claimed the neighborhood already called me it, I knew it had been her. She’d always seen me as a much better man than I was, and because she had, others started seeing me that way, too.

She stepped closer once more, and for a millisecond I thought I saw the disappointment briefly leave her eyes, replaced by something I couldn’t quite make out. However, before I could study her more, Caden stepped in between us. “Take her back downstairs.”

Serenity didn’t say a word as she was gently led out of the bedroom. My eyes stayed on that hallway until Caden spoke to me.

“That woman who just led Serenity out of the bedroom was your sister-in-law, Avery, in case you’re wondering,” Caden stated, anger still dripping from his voice. “I figured the confused expression on your face meant you couldn’t figure out who the fuck she was.”

I knew who Avery was. I knew a lot of shit, but Caden didn’t give a damn. I couldn’t blame him. He didn’t know me, not anymore. He used to look just like me though. Even more so than Crayson, me and Caden used to look so much alike, it was hard to tell us apart. Looking at him now, you’d never know that. He hadn’t changed. Cowboy hat and all, that was always Caden. He’d only gotten older.I was the one who was different. Skin hardened, darker even. Internal and external scars too deep to ever go away.

There was one thing that hadn’t changed between us, though. We were still connected as brothers. As triplets. I wouldn’t have thought that part of us would be the same until this very moment, but I was glad I felt it because right now, I needed Caden to understand.

Empathy.

That was what I needed from him right now. As hard as it was to require something from my brother who I had dismissed and hurt more than the others, I needed his compassion for the situation right now. And who more compassionate than Caden?

“The others can’t know about this yet,” I told him.

“There’s no way in hell I’m keeping the fact that you’ve come home from them,” he said.

“Not that,” I clarified. “I’m aware that Avery being involved is unfortunate, but she isn’t my concern.”

“If your sister-in-law witnessing the only words you had to say to the love of your life being confusing as shit, then yeah, it’s a shame Avery had to witness that.”

I crossed my arms in front of me, and he did the same, the standoff feeling familiar and somewhat comforting since we’d done a similar stare down when we were kids. Caden used to be my best friend. Besides Serenity, he knew me more than anyone. Which was why I knew he was the right person to go to. The first key to help me keep her safe.

I didn’t know if it was brother’s intuition, or that after years of training myself to feel unaffected, one look at Serenity was already fucking with me, but I wasn’t surprised when Caden asked, “What kind of trouble is it?”

“The life or death kind,” I replied without hesitation. “I don’t have time to explain, but my enemies are after Serenity, and the less anyone knows about the situation the better. That’s why you can’t call the others over here yet.”

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