Page 51 of OneTime Lovers
Confused by his comments, I place the photo carefully back on the shelf where it was, then taking his hand he allows me to lead him over to the sofa, where we sit together.
“Would you like to talk about the photo?” I ask him gently, not sure what has happened to cause such a reaction in him. He’s no longer the carefree, smiling, cocky guy I know. Instead, he leans forward, his hands rubbing roughly over his face as if he’s trying to erase a memory.
After a few moments of silence, he answers me tentatively, “Maybe.”
Okay––that’s a start. Picking up our beers from the coffee table, I hand him one and we both take a long sip from our bottles.
“You’ve never really talked to me about your time in the military. Why is that?” He continues to stare down at the floor, sipping his beer, so I press on, “I get it may bring back bad memories, but I want you to know, you can talk to me. If you want.” He turns back toward me, clears his throat, and begins speaking, softly.
“It’s hard to talk about that time because all my memories include my best friend, Johno. Johno was my co-pilot, and we were a team in everything we did. When your life depends on your mate, you become close.” He stops abruptly, his jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck pulled tight, his whole body tense.
I place a hand on his arm, encouraging him to continue and he does after a deep audible breath. “Johno died in an accident a little over six months ago. It’s all still a bit raw. Seeing the photo of him hit me hard, but it’s time I stopped mourning the loss of my mate and instead remember the good times we shared together. We had a lot of good times flying the chinook together.” Scott takes another sip of his beer, and I can’t resist leaning forward to hug him tightly.
“I’m sorry about you losing your best friend, Scott. I remember Cassie speaking about it at the time, but I didn’t know that was him in the photo. I don’t think Cassie knew either. We thought you guys looked so happy in the picture and that it would be a nice reminder.”
Nodding, he squeezes me to his chest, saying, “You’re right the day the photo was taken was one of the good times.”
Settling back into the sofa, Scott wraps his arms around me as I lean back against him, before he continues, “Ben took the photo after we’d finished a training exercise with Blake, Luke, and their Ranger team. War is serious, but that day we joked and laughed like I hadn’t done for months. I can remember feeling relaxed and happy that day. Honestly, the day was probably the start of my close friendship with the guys.”
It feels comfortable lying back on the sofa, sipping our beers as Scott tells me more about his time in the military. From the time he joined the Australian Defense Force Academy at nineteen to do a university degree with specialist military officer training, through to his seven years of flying. Then after he qualified the deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world.
As he talks, I realize I want to delve deeper into this side of his personality. There are so many hidden layers to this man which I haven’t even begun to discover. I ask him questions about each of the countries he visited, but mostly I want to know more about his time as a Flight Lieutenant flying chinooks in Afghanistan with Blake and Luke.
Cassie has told me bits of the stories of how they all met, and then how Luke was injured. She told me how Scott came back for them that night, saving their lives, but I want to hear about the night from him, in his own words.
“Will you tell me about the night Luke was injured?”
Scott’s deep drawl rumbles from his chest behind me as he begins. “Before a mission, a big mission like it was, we would all train together for days sometimes weeks, to make sure nothing is left to chance. And that night everything was going to plan. It was an hour to the drop zone, and the guys were pumped, we all were. It was a textbook drop, no drama. Blake, the platoon leader, was to lead the guys through a canyon and down into a village in a valley on the other side. Some Taliban leaders were meant to be meeting there that night. The guys were providing cover for a SEAL team which had been embedded in the area for a couple of days.”
Shifting behind me, Scott lies back against the armrest completely wrapping me in his arms before continuing, “About twenty minutes after we’d dropped the guys, Johno heard Blake call in a medivac over the comms. They’d been ambushed exiting the canyon. It was a rocket attack. Two of their team were killed, Luke was seriously injured, Ben and Tim less so. There was no one in the area, so Johno and I went back for them.” I’m sure he’s downplaying his role in the rescue, according to what little Cassie has told me in the past.
Scott takes in a short, sharp breath and races on as if he needs to get the story out quickly before he can breathe easily again. “They were coming under heavy fire, pinned down and in serious shit, till the SEAL team and Apache gunships got to them, providing extra cover. Anyway, they made it to the landing zone, and we extracted all of them including the SEAL team, amid a full-on firefight.”
Scott drops his head down onto my shoulder and when he speaks again his voice is muffled. “It was the toughest extraction I’ve ever had to do. The chinook took several rounds. Lucky for us, none of them caused any major damage, thanks to my aircrewmen on the guns. There was so much going on and all the while, I could hear Parker the medic, shouting commands to the guys as he tried to keep Luke alive on the way back to our Kandahar base.”
For a moment we sit in silence, Scott lost in his memories. I have no words that could even begin to help ease the obvious pain which leached through his words as he relived those horrific hours.
These last minutes have made me realize, Scott is good at blocking out this damaged side from who he is today, hiding the depth of his pain and I feel terrible for bringing it all up to the surface.
I’m surprised when he starts to talk again, “You know I’ve only ever talked openly about that night with Johno. He was the one person who understood. I haven’t even really spoken to Blake and Luke about it. Blake has his own tortured memories of the night to deal with, and Luke ...” He stops mid-sentence, takes a deep breath then continues, “I don’t know how much you know, but Luke suffers from PTSD. Debilitating nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks all stemming from the ambush and the loss of his friends. Thankfully, since he has reconnected with Cassie, he's been much better.”
“Aah the love of a good woman,” I tease, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Are you offering up some loving to me, Jas?”
Ignoring his tempting suggestion, I slap his arm which is still wrapped around me. “You seem to be under the wrong impression of me being a good woman. I’m bad.”
He chuckles and it feels good to hear the sound. “I like your kind of bad.”
I smile at his flirtatious words which are typical Scott. But now after hearing his stories tonight I wonder at what really lies beneath the surface. “Scott, can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure, ask away, I’m mostly an open book.”
“How did you cope with war? All that pressure, all that suffering around you? I can’t imagine how anyone can walk away from those experiences unscathed.”
I realize once the words are out, I shouldn’t be probing him like this, after all we are supposed to be just friends. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable talking about this with me. Forget I asked,” I quickly add.
I feel him drop a light kiss on the top of my head, before saying, “It’s okay, I feel surprisingly comfortable talking to you about this stuff.” His chest rises behind me as he draws in a deep breath. “At the time I was okay with what happened that night, and the part we played in it. Adrenalin can get you through some serious shit and block out a lot. But I found it harder to cope when I returned home to Australia. Going back to so-called normal life after an experience like that is not easy. I went a bit off the rails, drinking, womanizing, living life too close to the edge. But my family stepped in and got me back on track.”
