Page 37 of Homecoming for Beginners

Ollie didn’t mind the desert, apart from the sand and the heat. It could be beautiful. At night you could see every single speck of light in the sky.

He was guiding the chopper over a ridge when things took a turn.

First the sun seemed to stutter on the horizon, the last brilliant line of it shaking against the curve of the earth until it reversed course and dragged itself back into the sky.

The wind picked up, buffeting the helicopter with gusts of sand. Ollie’s instrumentation flickered. Comms went down.

By the time the sandstorm was on him, the dream had become a nightmare.

Suddenly Ollie was no longer flying solo. “We’re taking fire!” In the copilot’s seat, Theo yelled into his oversize headset. He turned around and shouted at the row of seats behind them. “Brace for impact!”

Ollie looked back. In the second row on the floor was another Theo, bleeding from a bullet to the chest, the same wound Hernandez had when Ollie medevacked him. A third Theo wearing a combat medic’s insignia pressed a pressure bandage to the wound.

Enemy fire impacted the tail rotor, and the helicopter controls heaved under Ollie’s hands.No, he thought fiercely.It can’t end like this.The best he could hope for was a controlled crash that might not kill them all.I’m sorry, I tried my best—

Something landed on his chest. Ollie opened his eyes.

It was dark, but not desert-sandstorm dark. Sprawling-Connecticut-mansion dark. He forced himself to inhale deeply through his nose, even if his breath shuddered, and focus on the comfort of the mattress beneath him.

In the bedroom doorway, Ty cleared his throat. “Ollie. You good? You were having a nightmare.”

Ollie’s lungs cooperated more smoothly this time. “Yeah. Thanks.” Exhaled. That was a horrible dream, but he hadn’t had to live the worst part of it. “What… did you throw something at me?” He squinted toward the hallway. They’d bought motion-activated night lights so Ollie and Theo didn’t get lost trying to find the bathroom, so Ty was silhouetted.

“My shirt,” Ty said sheepishly. “I didn’t want to get murdered.”

Of course. Ollie felt around on top of him until he found it. The fabric was still warm from Ty’s body. “So you sent your shirt to be murdered instead?”

This was probably the fastest Ollie had ever wanted to laugh after a nightmare. He chucked the shirt back at Ty, who caught it one-handed.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Ollie sat up. “Yeah. Thanks.” He rubbed his eyes. “What time’s it?”

“Like, three, I think?” Ty answered, muffled as he pulled his shirt back on.

Ollie frowned. “Did I wake you up?” Theo closed his door when he went to bed, but Ollie opened it again when he was turning in, then left his own open so that he might hear Theo better if he needed something. But if he was disturbing Ty—

Ty snorted. “No. There’s an owl outside my window, and it’s loud as fuck. And then once I was awake, I was thirsty. Just a coincidence.”

“Guess you could take a bedroom on the other side of the house for the night,” Ollie joked. “Thanks for waking me up, though.”

“No problem.” He paused. Then, “Hey, want to see if we can see the owl?”

It was better than trying to go back to sleep in a room that smelled like Ollie’s fear sweat. “Sure.” He got up and cracked the window—might as well air the place out—and then jumped half a foot in the air when the owl hooted. “Jesus, you weren’t kidding.” He craned his neck, but he couldn’t see anything.

“Try from the games room, maybe.”

The games room glowed with moonlight, or they wouldn’t have been able to see anything. As it was, it took them a few minutes of peering out into the night before Ty finally touched Ollie’s shoulder and pointed. “There!”

Ollie followed the line of his arm just as the owl hooted again, ruffling its feathers. A chill went down his spine. “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”

He could barely make out Ty’s grin in the moonlight. “Right? Not so bad to wake up to.”

Definitely better than the end of that nightmare, Ollie thought. “Not for one night, at least.”

And then another bird landed in the tree next to the first one.

The owls did a very cute face-bumping thing.

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